Past Three of the Clock . . .

on a decidedly cold and frosty morning.

(More reactions to E.M.Forster's, Howards End.)

Whether I can legitimately reduce it to the Findus Fish Provencal, the cheap Hungarian Merlot or the absurdity of life I do not know - but all three might have contributed to the waking in the early hours, the reading of a chapter of this infuriating book and the igniting of a brain that refuses to lie down and die.

Another meal.

Two little asides - one concerning a clergyman with the expressed opinion, "Their Emperor wants war; let him have it."

The other concerning the rich man's socialist - a construction to be knocked down easily - and other people's socialists, more robust.

In a book published in 1910, four years before the First World War and seven before the Russian Revolution?

The Kaiser (easy) and Lenin (harder)?

And off my brain went.

Forster is writing about a society he doesn't like, characters he has little sympathy for (although great empathy with) and beliefs he thinks groundless.

The authorial persona (whoops, bit of fish - or the calcified accretions of too much education?), the voice Forster adopts to tell the story, is distinctive: It worries some as too smarmy, too arrogant, too distanced - but I think it is a self defence mechanism.

Edwardian England - rich, prosperous and wealthy; Empire ridden, and undergoing a construction boom (incidentally, much better building work than the late Victorians - The suburbs still stand, Victorian terraces, Jerry built, foundation thin, fall quickly): An England smug and doubtful at the same time, enduring 'a peace', and predicting a war; rushing off for holidays in the country, but building ever higher in the cities where the money is made.

Rich men in their clubs, and at their dining tables, demonising a socialism they don't actually understand whilst Lenin and the revolutionaries sit in smoke filled, London cellars, around clothless tables, and plot the downfall of the capitalist (or the socialist's capitalist?) dictatorships.

At another table, poor old Edward Forster, pen in hand, trying to make some sense of it all.

He is no free spirit - he can't shoot off two barrels at the lot of them: He's a Humanist - and that carries a concern for all humanity - he has to care for his characters, all of them, irrespective of how muddle headed, cut throat, or plane daft.

So he tells his story with a, "One may as well . . .” The regal, distancing, 'One'.

If you force me to tell you . . . and a sigh.

Yes, I dislike the people in this story, but I am going to be as fair to them as I can be - but don't make the mistake of thinking I am like them.

My genuine thoughts and beliefs will be hidden away in the tale, but you'll have to search for them in the negatives of what is said and what is done. They’ll pop up in the half-formed asides of passer-bys and minor characters. The tragedy of the human situation will be delivered with a smile - you can get away with saying anything, if you smile when you say it.

If I sound condescending and smug, that's not a problem - after all, some of the characters you are defending against my condescension are just the same - so why defend them?

Dickens was lucky, he was dealing with a Victorian World, cruel, exploitative, crude - we are much more enlightened now, much more civilised, and we are spiralling ever downwards into the chaos of war and revolution.

Six of the clock, the church bell is banging away (yep, Saturday morning!) and I need a shower.