Note to self: No politics, no religion, no fake news, no grammar.

This, of course, means that I have had to scrap my planned opening sentence:
‘In my opinion, Trump weren’t the antichrist.’
 (Incidentally, whether I judge that sentence disqualified on three or four counts is for you to guess and me to know.)

So, instead, let’s start by considering whether Dickens is the greatest second-tier English novelist. Or, rather, let’s start somewhere else entirely (apparently) and see if we can get to Dickens.

Some of you may have recognised the title of this week’s post as hinting at the apocryphal opening of a barmitzvah boy’s speech in the 1950’s, whimsically referencing the cliché barmitzvah gift in England at the time. By the time of my barmitzvah, in 1963, the joke had more or less driven the gift out, and I received not a single writing implement. This should not have been a problem, because, when I was an adorable two-and-a-half-year-old, Auntie Mimi had married Uncle Sam.

As a gift to mark the occasion, we were each given a classic Conway Stewart lever-fill fountain pen, marbled pattern, gold nib, in a magnificent padded and satin-lined box that snapped shut with a reassuringly solid thud. Over the next eight-and-a-half years, I opened and closed the box, caressing the satin, removing the pen from its bracket and feeling its heft in my hand, many times.

However, I was not actually allowed to use it until grammar (high) school, at the age of 11. In primary (elementary) school, we had wooden desks with an insert enamel inkwell at the top right corner, an ink monitor (a dizzyingly high rank, only slightly lower than milk monitor) who ensured that the inkwells were full each day, and wooden-handled pens. May I draw your attention to the authentically ink-stained forefinger in Exhibit A. Rest assured: this was as nothing compared with the state of my fingers at the end of the average schoolday.

At school, I vied with Elizabeth Jones for top marks in all subjects….except for penmanship, at which she excelled and I…didn’t. For one thing, her page of writing displayed a perfect flow and evenness of letters, where mine looked like a sampler for 50 different sizes and styles of lettering, none of them one you would want to select. For another, the rest of her page was a pristine cream, while mine looked like an aerial view of wetlands. In addition, by the end of the day all the digits of my right hand were stained blue, whereas Elizabeth could have modelled Nivea hand cream.

My greatest achievement of penmanship (or, more correctly pen-and-pencilmanship), however, was in grammar school, where we were required for homework to trace an outline map of Australia, and shade the outside of the outline in blue pencil, to indicate the sea. My homework was returned with a mark of 3/10 and the comment: This is the most spineless work I have ever seen. 58 years later, I still have no idea what a spineful map of Australia would look like.

To return to the Conway Stewart, lever-fill, marbled effect, gold-nibbed pen, you can imagine my excitement when, at age 11, I was finally allowed to take the pen from its box, unscrew the cap, gently lower the nib into a bottle of Parker Quink ink, ease the lever from its recess on the side of the pen to compress the ink sac, slowly replace the lever, lift out the now full pen, dab the nib with a piece of blotting paper to remove any excess ink, and securely replace the threaded cap. Thus armed, I set off for Day 1 at grammar school. With such a magnificent pen in my inside breast pocket accompanying me through seven years of school, I would surely triumph.

On Day 3, I lost the pen. I naturally contemplated running away from home, but reckoned they would find me wherever I hid, and so I eventually decided to face the music, and a succession of cheap, plain pens without gold nibs accompanied me through the rest of my school career; these pens, aggravatingly but predictably, were never lost.

All of this explains why, while not receiving a fountain pen as a barmitzvah gift should not have been a problem, I would actually have welcomed one. But it was not to be. Instead, I received no fewer than three briefcases – all with the exotic and tangy aroma of real leather – which actually just about saw me through my entire seven years of grammar school, despite being: thrown in advance over railings before I scaled the railings myself; landed on by numerous goalies making extravagant saves during pick-up football games; used as assault weapons in impromptu scraps; and generally given the full range of Which! Briefcase reasonable usage tests.

I also received, and this struck me as a little excessive, three travelling alarm clocks. For those who can barely remember a pre-cellphone age, these were in the form of a case, three inches square and an inch deep, which unclasped to become three hinged panels. One of the end panels consisted of an alarm clock face and mechanism. The hinges opened to 60^o, to allow the three panels to form a stable triangular block that could sit on a bedside table. Luminous hands, and a satisfyingly chunky key-shaped winder at the back of the clock were impressive features. However, the button for switching off the alarm was usually less accessible and aggravatingly fiddly. Needless to say, none of these clocks has survived the intervening 57 years…or, indeed, needed to.

The only presents that have survived are books…and not even all of those. A few years ago, in our last major clear-out, I forced myself to part with the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia, finally admitting that not only is information more easily retrieved from the internet, but also that huge swathes of the 12-volume set – science, political geography, arts…almost everything, really, except for Greek and Roman mythology – were no longer relevant or accurate or politically correct. I kept the 13^th volume, an index and overview, for sentimental reasons, and, as is their wont, books soon arrived to fill the gap left on the bookshelves.

However, I still have the religious books I received: a Tanach (full Old Testament) with a rather leaden translation, a Haggadah, which I still use every seder night on Pesach, and which is almost-living proof that matza crumbs do not degrade over half a century, and my set of Routledge machzorim (festival prayer books), whose publication can be dated, of course, by the wording listing the names in the prayer for the Royal Family. In my case, it is:
Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth (so 1952 at the earliest)
Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (so 2002 at the latest)
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (no help – 1947 at the earliest)
Charles, Duke of Cornwall (so 1957 at the latest)

The other books that have stayed with me are a complete set of Dickens, bound in red mock-leather with my monogram on the covers. Very handsome they look in the bookcase, too.

Although I read and enjoyed many of the novels over the years, I often felt that Dickens was, as I mentioned at the start of this meander, perhaps the finest of the second rank of novelists. Of course, I recognised that technically his books were splendid: his plotting and control of the narrative were immensely skilful, and he was able to conjure up a host of memorable characters. And yet….and yet…for many years I felt that there was a depth missing. I suspect that there were three dimensions to that perceived depth that , as I then thought, marked out ‘great literature’: a tragic ending, ambiguous characters and complex emotions. I believed that all great literature must be tragic, and also that there was something intrinsically second-rate about characters that could be easily understood and situations and events that evoked a clear and simple emotional response in the reader.

I was forced to reconsider when, over 20 years ago, I took a job which required me to commute daily, for three months, from southern Jerusalem to central Tel Aviv. This meant that I was taking three buses each way daily for a total of about 18 hours a week. I decided to use this time to plug some of my Dickens gaps. Over the three months, I managed to read six or seven of the novels I had not read previously. At the end of that period, I was a convert to what, I believe, was Dickens portrayal of the world as he saw it. The clarity in the books that can sometimes seem childlike reflects the clarity with which Dickens saw the world, and the overwhelming affection he felt for his created characters. I now feel that my earlier assessment was the result of prejudice: Dickens proves that great literature can be different from what I expected.

30 years ago, Peter Ackroyd wrote a fascinating and very idiosyncratic biography of Dickens, which is now out of print. An abridged version was published in 2002, which I believe omitted Ackroyd’s imaginative reconstruction of Dickens’ thoughts. If you can find the original version, it’s a sometimes bizarre and always fascinating read.

If, on the other hand, you have only 90 minutes to spare, you might prefer to listen to Simon Callow ‘performing’ Peter Ackroyd’s The Mystery of Charles Dickens. Callow is not only a passionate Dickens fan, but also is, I always feel, quintessentially Dickensian himself – larger than life and relishing all he tastes of life.

Meanwhile, back in Penamacor, Tao has graduated to Escapology 201. He has fully grasped that one needs to understand how a buckle works if one is to learn how to release it. Note, also, the triumphant Yes at the end: one of his few words at the moment, and one he clearly relishes.