In summer it’s gridlock on the roads into and through Cornwall. To cope, most of the little seaside villages that charm – and even if we may never visit them they still do (‘Doc Martin’) – have giant holding areas on their outskirts. From them holiday makers/day trippers are then taken by bus into into these tiny, narrow-streeted places to witness their joys. It was at one such that Bill Bryson met Matthew Facey.

The latter was a parking attendant at the facility outside Mevagissey. Bill had endured an interminable drive into the duchy – Cornwall is not a county. He was heartily sick of constant hold-ups on the freeway so, on the spur of the moment, decided a quiet country lane into the Cornish resort would be preferable. Mistake. It was bumper to bumper chockers and it took him forever to get to its carpark. On arrival, not only was it packed to the gunnels, but there was a long queue waiting. Bill realised it was pointless to wait as to do so would mean he wouldn’t make his ultimate destination before nightfall – but, of course, he was trapped. So it was Matthew F to the rescue. He orchestrated the author’s about turn. In their manoeuvrings Bill discovered Facey did camera-pointing on the side. Bryson resolved to check out his rescuer’s on-line gallery and was impressed with what he saw. Turns out he is one of Cornwall’s most esteemed snappers and his work is quite lovely. I know. I checked it out too.

Needless to say, as with all of Bill Bryson’s publications, ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’ is a gem. It’s a belated sequel to the tome that set him on the way – ‘Notes From a Small Country’. And it’s also a celebration, being that it’s twenty years since that break-through publication descended on us, making his name. This latest offering was to give Bill an opportunity to note and riff on all the changes in those years to the places he visited first time around – or at least that was his agent’s notion of what he should do. Bill, after some musing, decided he would take a different approach. He resolved to travel from the south to the north of the UK – but taking as his guide a vague following of longest possible straight line that can be drawn between those two compass points that doesn’t cross any water of the salted kind. We should emphasise the ‘vaguely’ bit. In the end he sort of criss-crossed the Bryson Line, working his way up from south to north – with numerous side excursions en route. The result of all this is an engrossing, funny and at times, even worrying read. Worrying because of the stupidity of humankind – numerous examples of which Bill is only too happy to point out to his readers.

There’s a lovely review of the Anglo-American’s effort this time around, to be found on-line, by Richard Glover – himself having received some recent kudos as a writer of memoirs. RG claims there is a game of one-upmanship played by Bill B devotees revolving around which is the funniest passage to be found in all of author’s now numerous list of titles. These Brysonists are able to reel their anecdotes off word perfect. The reviewer cites some examples. It’s worth reading. I will never get out of my own mind the image of our man as a new arrival in the UK. He fronts up in Dover, landing on the doorstep of a prospective bed and breakfast and greeting its host with his underpants firmly attached to his noggin. The self-deprecating description of him reluctantly dipping his toe into the Pacific Ocean at Bondi, in his account of his travels in Oz, is pretty memorable too. He’d read of all the creatures in it that are out to kill unsuspecting bathers and doubted his prospects of survival – despite the thousands of fellow humans frolicking off the same stretch of strand. And, likewise, he doesn’t let us down in ‘…Little Dribbling’. He regales us with the account, early on, of how he bravely, without fear, walked up to the counter, during an infrequent visit to a McDonalds, intending to place a family order. Despite numerous attempts to get it right and having to deal with a clueless and incompetent pimpled dolt taking and entering said order, he is left enraged and had to be led away quivering by his ever-patient wife before blood was spilt. It was vintage Bryson and the choked chortles I was emitting reading it led my lovely lady to come post haste from another room as she feared I was suffering some form of apoplectic fit.

And also, with this wordsmith, there is always a background story to most of the sights he sees. One that particularly intrigues this time was the snippet of information he gave about a Taswegian. In the 1860s a railway company, the Midland, was searching for a new route into Scotland. Competitors had taken up the two seaboard options, so the controllers of the new player decided to construct right up the middle, receiving parliamentary approval to do so. Trouble was, right up the middle meant a section of the Pennines that was particularly inhospitable. The company had a go, but soon realised building a railway there was such a challenge it would more than likely bankrupt them. They asked the country’s lawmakers to give them permission to desist. As this was against the provisions of the contract they were refused and the company was forced to plough on. Fortunately they found someone willing to accept responsibility for the completion of the task. I’ll let Bill take up the story at this point:-
‘Almost nothing is known about Sharland other than that he came from Tasmania and was only in his early twenties. The immensity of the task confronting him was almost unimaginable and made all the harder by the privations of labouring in the wilderness. Sharland slept in a wagon and often worked for hours in drenching rain or driving snow. Even more remarkable, he did all this while suffering acutely from tuberculous. Inevitably, it caught up with him and, with his work almost finished, he retired to Torquay at the age of just twenty-five. He died soon after, having never seen a train run on the line he helped to create.’
That line, through the Yorkshire Dales, is now regarded as the most dramatic and scenic in the UK – but Bill’s right. I checked to see if the ether held any more on Charles Stanley Sharland and came up with zilch extra information, although there does seem to have been a UK book about him back in 2012.

Bryson has been chided by some critics for being so crabby in this latest release. He is very unhappy in many sections, dropping the f-bomb with unprecedented frequency in his ire. His piss-offedness knows no bounds as he vents his spleen at the state of humanity in the world around him. But in places he still finds the old-fashioned Englishness of the sort that first attracted him back in ‘Notes From a Small Country’ – a quality he feels, to his distress, is fast disappearing. But his delight in renewing acquaintanceship with it in some locations is palpable in his writing.

In ‘…Little Dribbling’ he indulges in a fair amount of railing about the pressure the money-makers are placing on government to do away with the famous green belts of British cities – they want to cover them with mass housing and already are having some success in shearing off the green bits to allow this to happen. The author is most vociferous, persistent and eloquent in placing his arguments down on paper as to why continuing to do so would be a travesty. He laments the increasingly ‘Black Booksian’ nature of the service to be found in the retail outlets of his adopted country, contrasting it with the intrusive inanity of customer service in his birth nation. Which is worse is the question. He produces an extended list of his pet hates at one stage – these include people who say ‘stonking’; salmon coloured trousers and the men who wear them; the parents of any child named Tarquin and Meryl Streep when she’s being ‘adorable’. He despises the new ‘loudness’ to be found around a country once noted for its quietude, again likening it to what’s always been in the brasher US of A. He blames the mobile phone into which moronic chavs have to shout on the public transport and streets of the once more restrained UK. And don’t get him stated on the Chinese made tat that passes for souvenirs found in tourist hot-spots all around the country.

But amongst much ranting he gives us some marvellous yarns as well. There’s the story of the invention of the public park by the redoubtable Joseph Paxton and how a visit to it in Birmingham inspired the creation of NYC’s Central Park as a result. And he gives us a close encounter with a Beatle. He was gobsmacked at one stage to discover his home bordered on Ringo Starr’s estate and that his wife was encountering the legendary drummer in their village all the time, conveying to a stunned husband that she found him ‘…quite a nice man’ in their chats. Bryson, to his disgust, never laid eyes on him when out and about. There’s the tale of how the tongue twister ‘She sells sea shells by the sea shore’ became part of the parlance – and just who the real Eliza Doolittle truly was.

Spending time with Bill Bryson and one of his books is like shooting the breeze with an old mate. There’s only been one of his oeuvre I haven’t taken to and that’s the one they made the recent movie about. There are a handful of writers these days I would term global, as opposed to national, living treasures. I think this bloke has just about reached that stage.

Bill B’s website = http://www.billbrysonbooks.com/

Richard Glover’s review = http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/road-to-little-dribbling-review-bill-bryson-has-another-romp-through-england-20151020-gkcjbr.html

The headline described them as ‘Pungent Observations on the Twists of Modern Life’. Pungent? Well, yes. She pulls no punches, does Tegan Bennett Daylight, with some of her descriptiveness – the death of a friend; the truly awful taste of that diabolical elixir we all drank back in our formative years (Brandivino); the fragility of friendship as we first attempt to reject individuality to be accepted by the herd. And one could not fault the writing.

The headline capped a review by critic and editor Peter Pierce. He lauds the author of these ten tales for being a ‘…morally astute, technically adroit, anti-formulaic and unsentimental practitioner of the short story craft.’ Tegan BD is all that, but for me there was something missing. Perhaps Pierce summed it up when he stated the collection exhibits ‘…virtuous skills but no flashiness throughout.’ He intended it as a compliment, but is that what it needed to have more of an impact on this reader – a dollop of flashiness?

I initially discovered this writer some time ago. I cannot recall which of her previous novels (‘Bombora’, ‘What Falls Away’, ‘Safety’) it was – too many years have passed and I cannot locate the record. It may have been the first listed as I have a vague recollection it centred around surfing. I do know I liked it very much and made a mental note to watch out for future publications. But sadly, they have been a while in the making. ‘Bombora’ was twenty years ago – it won the Vogel. ‘Safety’, almost a decade.

The stories in her latest reportedly did contain linkages with past books. And in some the characters make repeat appearances. They are slices of life taken from various stages of the journey we all make – childhood and through the teens to adulthood. A few characters are seen, as from above, in multiple stages. Conclusions, deliberately, are sometimes open to more possibility for, after all, that is life. They’re not sewn up neatly as a package. Just when this peruser was getting to know a protagonist and settling in, though, often a tale would terminate and we were on to the next. But I will say that with what the author has started here there is plenty of fodder for an extension into the longer form. There are novels awaiting within, Ms Daylight.

Despite the coolness of her observations, for me, this offering did not fully satisfy. Talent abounds – that’s easy to discern – and I do trust it is not another decade before the next title is placed on a shelf in a book store to tempt me.

The author’s website = http://teganbennettdaylight.com/

‘Is there anyone left who isn’t totally in love with Magda Szubanski?’ Well, yes in fact. Me. It is not that I dislike her. How could anyone do that after reading ‘Reckoning’? It’s just that, apart from her role as Sharon in the beloved ‘Kath and Kim’, she hasn’t been on my radar much. I have never seen ‘Babe’, nor her various shows (‘The D Generation’, ‘Fast Forward’, ‘Big Girl’s Blouse’) on the small screen. And yes, before you ask, I have nothing against females who make their living by making us laugh in one way or another. I very much love Kitty Flanagan, Fiona O’Loughlin, Denise Scott, Hannah Gadsby, Celia Pacquola – the list goes on. But later, in a review I found on-line, is the following statement, ‘Anyone who doesn’t adore Magda Szubanski the clown will be awed by Szubanski the A-grade non-fiction writer.’ Well, again I wouldn’t perhaps use the word ‘awed’ in this context, but there’s no doubt her memoir is totally deserving of all the accolades it has garnered to date. This lady has decided literary chops. But I am in ‘awe’ of her for another reason. It’s for her bravery, a few years back, when she came out on ‘The Project’. To do so was all class – and the supportive reaction of the bulk of the Australian public shows that we, as a nation, are ready for the next step. Come on Mr Turnbull.

I also suspect, given time, the striking initial line to her memoir will be recognised as one of the best opening hooks in Aussie lit. ‘If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.’ Her father, indeed, casts a giant shadow over this tome, as he does the author’s life. And he was a good man – a good man carrying the burden of memory. As a Polish freedom fighter he did back to the Nazis what they did in spades to everyone else.

Yep, some of the stuff in ‘Reckoning’ is pretty grim, but overall the book’s tone is uplifting – even inspiring in places. Magda’s spirit shines through, even when it seems the odds are stacked against her. And she has had some real battles to wage too – failed projects, her weight issues, her sexuality. Maybe the latter two shouldn’t be such, but sadly, in today’s media climate, they are – particularly for those in the spotlight. All are elaborated on frankly, but there are tales of levity as well. There is much of interest for this particular reader in her recallings – the contrast in her twin visits to Warsaw between pre the end of the Cold War and post. I enjoyed her taking us behind the scenes of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ – I have often wondered about the mechanics of putting together that wonderful show. But it’s the concluding chapters that are the most intensely moving of the whole exercise – especially the description of her final unpacking of what made her father tick.

For a first-timer ‘Reckoning’ is an achievement. It holds interest throughout and is a book this scribe looked forward to returning to after daily impediments intruded. And I concur with the final sentence of that aforementioned on-line review, ‘Let’s hope the books keep coming.’

It looks as though I was born just at the right time – lived my life when the living was, relatively speaking, easy – at least for those of us lucky enough not to be a citizen of a third world country. My generation missed the most traumatic events of the last century, saw the Cold War off without nuclear catastrophe, then ushered in the digital age – for better or worse. That being said, we also did just enough to bugger up our planet for the generations that follow. But then, we will be gone before the real crunch hits. Our ineptitude and our belief in deforestation, dirty coal and petrol guzzling machines is now certainly starting to make our atmosphere an unhappy place. And it’s already paying us back for that. Those who come after us will need to clean up our mess if humanity is to survive in a manner we’ve grown accustomed to on our planet. Or find a way to cope with a very altered environment. They’ll be able to do that, won’t they?

Will those gifted scientists, following the not so gifted ones who were like a wrecking ball for the Earth over the last five decades or so, be able to find a way to suck all that deleterious CO2 out of the sky? Will they find somewhere safe then to put it all – or perhaps even make something useful to humankind out of it?

Tim Flannery thinks that those brainiacs who are working on it now and down the track; the politicians in charge presently and into the future; as well as a more environmentally savvy general populace will have the combined nous to do this. Fingers crossed. There is much to be optimistic about, as reflected in ‘Atmosphere of Hope’. In general, though, it does make for some pretty depressing reading. Everything will have to go exactly right. At least, since the tome was written, there has been the hoped for positive outcomes from Paris. The two world leaders who were road-blocking progress for all they were worth – our own head-in-the-sand man Abbott and his mate, Canada’s Harper, have both been consigned to the dustbin of history. In Trudeau and Turnbull we at least have guys who think that the science has got it right.

Yes, Flannery reports, this science is on the march, starting to grapple and make some headway with the solutions required. And the greed of the vested interests in the ways of the past? Well, it is now being shown as what it truly has been all along – profit at all costs to benefit a small minority to the detriment of the masses. Despite this, it will still be touch and go.

I must admit, reading this, some of that aforementioned science had me glassy eyed with the plethora of figures Flannery used to make his various cases. He did his best to put it all in layman’s terms, but my difficulties with it didn’t detract from the impact his writings had on this reader. Some sections I truly found engrossing reading, such as the chapter entitled ‘The Great Disconnect’, discussing the gap between where the politicians are at as compared to those endeavouring to save us all. It is narrowing, but there’s still work to be done. And what’s to be done includes this – and it’s sobering. ‘The latest research…(has) found that more than 80 percent of known coal reserves, 33 percent of oil and 50 percent of gas must stay in the ground if we are to remain within budget.’ to get the emissions down to the Paris limits. Can you see the multi-nationals out there, plundering the Earth’s resources, laying down and taking that? Well, it’ll have to happen.

Geo-engineering seems to be the great hope – but it comes at a ginormous cost in monetary terms – and maybe also in the experimentation to get it right. It seems there are plenty of theories around to cool the planet by this means – from space sunshades to all buildings having white roofs. These range from sensible, no-brainer actions to those worthy of Dr Strangelove. Flannery examines the more plausible of these, declares some to be viable – but the cost, the cost. ‘Drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is, at the moment, an extraordinarily complex process involving mind-blowing quantum mechanics.’ But the Aussie climatologist is hoping that where there’s a will, there is also a way. He takes us through some models for this.

Yep, it seems, there is hope. It’s all not lost – but sadly he has given up on the Great Barrier Reef. He reckons it is gone for all money. As for many of the species we share this planet with, mega-numbers are on a quick path to extinction in the wild. They’ll find it impossible to adapt to the changes besetting them in the time they have left. We are already seeing it – think polar bears, orangutans, frogs. The list is long and salutary.

Yes, I am glad I read this book. I feel more informed and even a little more optimistic than beforehand. I have a fair grasp on the challenges ahead thanks to Tim F. I know the planet will survive the onslaught we have made on its checks and balances – and hopefully humankind will too, in one form or another.