The Best Days, by Graham Swift

The Best Days, by Dora Sarrión

Sean and Andy are two friends who attend the funeral of Daffy, their former headmaster of Holmgate School, where they had studied six years ago.
It was a grey afternoon and there’d been a solemn and silent moment when the hearse departed, but then, someone had called out “Bye Daffy!!!” and the atmosphere was broken, it was almost like joyful liveliness. People started waving to each other, hand shaking, smiling, speaking. Everyone was freshly aware of being alive in the world and not dead in it.
The two friends spotted in the crowd who assisted to the funeral an old school friend, Karen, whom they both were in love with when they were students.
Karen turned up with her father, who was clearly a bit drunk, and her mother, who was wearing an outfit that was almost identical like his daughter, both were dressed in a vulgar and inappropriate way for a funeral, almost like whores. In Andy’s opinion, the mother “looks a right old baggage”.
These words bothered Sean, because, although deep down he agreed with Andy, he had an experience in the past that brought back him memories about Karen's mother, which were themselves embarrassing, but also pleasant, even exciting.
Sean remembered that, one day, while he was travelling on the bus where Karen was also, he noticed that she had forgotten her bag on the seat when she got off the bus. So he picked it up and decided to deliver it to her house, hoping to see her.
But she wasn't there, Sean found only her mother, who invited him to "come in and wait for her". Sean hesitated for a moment, but in the end he came in.
Suddenly, he found himself in Karen's mother arms and, without being able to avoid it, he lived his first sexual experience with her.
The author mixes several topics in his story:
Death: The atmosphere that usually surrounds funerals is contradictory, on the one hand people usually show sadness and pain for the deceased person but on the other hand, when the coffin is no longer present, they feel relieved and a great joy for the fact of being alive.
The loss of youth, reflected in Karen's mother: Sometimes, it's difficult to recognize the deterioration that the pass of time produces in our physique, and we insist on not accepting that reality, although we know that we cannot hide it even if we disguise ourselves as young people.
Memories: Over the years, when we think back to experiences that we lived in the past, many times they appear in our memory in a blurred way, in a form of sensations, smells, colours, music or phrases. Sometimes, we don't recall the events as they happened, but we can remember the emotions they produced in us. Sean keeps in his mind his first sexual experience, summarized in a sentence, which would stay with him until the day he dies.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters

Sean

Andy

Clive Davenport

Karen Shield

Do you have fond memories of your primary or secondary school? Have your opinions changed, positively or negatively, in the course of time?

Do you think unemployed people spend their time doing things that when they were employed couldn’t do?

Graham Swift like to emphasize situations talking about the weather. Did you find an instance of this in this story?

Why do you think a funeral is a good occasion for gathering people?

What kind/class of people attended the funeral? How do you know?

Why does the narrator describe their suits as “interview suits”?

Do you think she had left her bag in the bus on purpose?

Why do you imagine Karen and her friend did at Cheryl Hudson’s?

When the narrator says the “TV was on”, did he want to mean something else?

There are some details to show us that Mrs Shield isn't drunk. What are these? Why does the writer insist on this?

“Had she done this before?” What’s your opinion?

Mrs Shield is very practical: how does the writer show this?

What do you know about In Praise of Older Women, by Stephen Vizinczey, or Elogio de la madrastra, by Vargas Llosa, or about the film Ce que le jour doit à la nuit?

Would you have another point of view of the situation in which the boy was involved, if instead of a boy it had been a girl, and instead of a woman, a man?

After making love, he tried to work out his bearings. Does this feeling have any relation to the saying “Post coitum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier”?

Was Sean a bit in love with Karen’s mother? How do you know?

Can you imagine how the life would be going on for the mother, the daughter, Sean and Andy?

Were those days for Sean the best days?

What is Sean’s moral lesson?

 

VOCABULARY

hearse, spillage, turnout, blustery, daffy, milling, makeshift, grim, barn, craned, drag, stance, abuse, rebuke, outbreaks, drab, flouncy, headpiece, tarty, fetching, sight, smothered, cutely, perky, unredeemed, scruff, blunt, cocky, old baggage, curb, the big V, tugged, goody-goody, delve, primness, sternly, fluffy, deed, ducking, cluttered, glow, bearings, peck, daubed, slab, goggling, prat, lovey-dovey, preening, big-time, jump, get the hots

People Are Life, by Graham Swift

Crisis in Six Scenes, by Woody Allen

PEOPLE ARE LIFE, by Aurora Ledesma

 Vangeli, a Greek Cypriot barber, is cutting the hair of an elderly customer. It’s the last customer of the day for him, and he is quite tired when the working day is over.  The customer confesses that is mother has just died. He had lived with his parents all his life and feels a bit abandoned now.

The barber senses that the man’s reflection in the mirror reveals more than his speech. Vangeli tries to sympathise but wants to know what is the full message. He asks himself, What is he telling me? That he is all alone in the world?

The barber offers the consolation that is apparently expected of him with phrases like:

“Well it had to happen”, “Sooner or later”, “Eighty – Three’s not a bad age”, “But you have friends”, “If you have people to see and talk to, then you have friends”, “If you have people, you have life”.

The talkative barber narrator dispenses bits of wisdom like the story title to the customers who want a little philosophy with their hair-cut.

The protagonist is just as lonely and friendless as his customer. His mother and father died years ago in Cyprus. His English wife Irene died too, just three years ago. They’d been split up for years. He has two grown-up boys also who are both in computers and are embarrassed by their father who’s just been a barber all his life. Despite his loneliness and his problems, he says nothing to his customers. He knows how to listen to the sorrows of the others but he has no one to tell his own. At the end of the day, what he likes most is to get home and have a beer.

When he finishes serving his customers, he pats them on the shoulder and tells them.

-“ Thank you for the tip, and now go and live your life”.

  

Some reflections

The story makes us reflect on the true childhood friends with whom we shared everything, our homes, games, worries, sorrows and joys, friends with whom we spent all our time together and later in adulthood we wonder, where are the real friends now? Maybe, like the barbershop customer, we only have people with whom to share anecdotes in a café. Even the protagonist Vangeli, who, after a lifetime in England, doesn’t know the names of his customers and is surprised by some English reactions, doesn’t have real friends.

QUESTIONS

Can you make a summary of the narrator’s life?

“People are life” versus misanthropy / loneliness. What are the benefits and the shortcomings of one kind of attitude versus another?

“The last costumer is different”. Do you think people treat costumers differently according to the time of the day? For the barber, why the last one is different?

Different kinds of friendship: people to whom you say hello, people who you meet, mates at work, friends… How can you define true friendship? Is a real friend “someone you can talk to”?

Is a barber a kind of psychologist, philosopher, confessor (he didn’t know his costumers’ names)? And the hairdresser?

What do you think of this type of communication?: The barber looks at the man who is talking to through the mirror. Is it similar to the communications through mobiles or computers?

Do you think there is a relation between the way you wear your hair and your personality? And what about your hair’s shape, colour…?

“We are in each other’s lives: that’s having friends”: do you think is it a good definition? Why?

What do you know about Cyprus? History, politics…

Did the costumer really need a haircut? How do you know? Do you go to the hairdresser if you have to go to a funeral?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ jobs? Are there “low” jobs or only “low paid jobs”? Who usually does the “low paid jobs” nowadays?

“It’s how the English are.” What are English people like? Is it all clichés?

Do you think is it easy to become a barber?

What differences can you find between a barber and a women’s hairdresser?

 

VOCABULARY

snipped, hefty, tough, crinkly, clippers, split up, gabble away, regular, flick

Remember This, by Graham Swift

Remember This

The story has two very different parts.

First: A just married couple go to see a solicitor to make their will. They feel elated making this great document with an attorney that is a really nice person. But, after the appointment, the weather isn’t so nice: the sky is threatening with clouds and rain. All the way, they went to celebrate it, and make love twice and spend the rest of their day off at home because of the rain. There they discuss what they’ve just done and how can a solicitor be so nice and inventing a family for him.

Second: In the evening, while his wife is sleeping, the husband gets up and decides to write a love letter to his wife, because he has never written one. The beginning is easy, but he doesn’t know how to go on. So it’s only three lines long and signs it. He puts it in an envelope with only his wife’s name on the address, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. Was he giving it to her? In the end, he hides it, waiting for a special moment to delivery it. But he never does, because they get divorced, and in these circumstances it wouldn’t be a good moment. And he keeps the letter forever.

 

I think this story is a very special one because in it the divorce isn’t a kind of catastrophe, but something that will happen in the course of any marriage. It’s as if a divorce was a regular phase in the life of everybody who is married. In my opinion, the key of the story is the written document that tells our legacy. They make their will to give their possessions to the other, and the husband writes a letter to remember all the love he felt for his wife, even when they got divorced. And not “love” in general, but the love they experienced for each other in that Friday when they made their will. So that day off was the treasure, the diamond, of their love. And then, like a testament, he will never deliver it while living. Perhaps his heirs will.

QUESTIONS

Have you done your will and your last orders? Do you recommend doing it? Why?

When do you usually dress up? Did you find in an embarrassing situation because of your clothes?

What do you think about formalisms? When are they necessary, and when are they old-fashioned? A dress/position, does it change your personality?

In your opinion, why is the husband thinking about his wife’s bum when they were going to the solicitor and even at the beginning of their meeting?

What can be the difference between “grow older” and “age” (verb)?

What is the symbol of the umbrella in this context?

After the meeting with the solicitor, “the clouds had thickened” and while they were having lunch, “the sky turner threatening”. What does it suggest?

Why do you imagine this day was more a celebration for them than even their wedding?

So much thinking about Mr Reeves, what can be the author intention for this? Can another person’s character change your points of view?

Do you regret that the habit of writing love letters has been lost? Do you think it’s better the modern way with WhatsApp or emails? Examples of love letters.

What do you think it’s better for a love letter, the details or the solemn statements and promises?

“The essence of love letters is separation”. How true is this sentence?

Are you a person who procrastinates? Do you think it is a serious problem and that it can be solved? How can it be solved?

The way of destroying a letter: Do you approve of rituals, or do you think they’re unnecessary formalisms?

Do you have a secret place at home?

“It was like looking at his own face in the mirror, but not at the face that would  […] replicate what he might do”. What do you know about “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, by Oscar Wilde?

Why do you think that at the end he says he was a “poor sad fool”?

 

VOCABULARY

solicitor, giggly, grim, steered, drafted, pending, commitment, clingy, common, enhanced, slithery, shrug, pelt down, stair rods, starter home, sopping, Welsh rarebit, lingeringly, inkling, smitten, welling, nuzzled, woo, assailed, random, stash, fountain pen, release, bland, snags, prickly, chocking, faltered, yearning /longing, misdeed, spilled, fitted, propped, endorse, anointing, poker, quilted, penned, last ditch, warped, fabrication, concocted, smirking, mustered

Wonders Will Never Cease, by Graham Swift

WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE,
by Begoña Devis 

The story is about the friendship between two men, who both did the same PE course at college. This is a metaphor about seeing life as a race, like athletes or behind women. In both cases, the trophy is the goal.
The narrator is fascinated by his friend Aaron, who according to him gets the best women, while he must conform to those he rejects. In fact, he ends up marrying one he rejected, Patti.
But after the years his friend calls to ask him, along with his partner, to witness his wedding. Then he sees that his friend isn’t so attractive as he expected, and that his future wife isn’t either. In fact, he now believes that his wife is more beautiful than Aaron’s.
In addition, he also likes the relationship he has with his wife more than the one his friend has with his, which seems much more childish to him.
Is it possible that he has done things better than his admired friend? It could be: Wonders will never cease.
 In my opinion, it means that sometimes we believe ourselves inferior to other people, just because they seem to have chosen a more interesting path, while we have chosen a more ordinary accommodating one. But then it turns out that everything is deceiving, and that we have been wasting our time ascribing virtues to other people that they did not have.
On the other hand, the story is terribly sexist, although it must be understood according to the way of thinking of the other times, hopefully forgotten by now (I hope).

QUESTIONS

-Talk about the characters

The narrator

Aaron

Patti

-The narrator says about himself: “I’m the type who sees the life like a book, with chapters.” How do you see life? Like a novel, like a river, like a circle? Why?

-The protagonist has to content himself with the girls Aaron rejected. There are big novels about being the “second one”. Do you remember any?

-The wedding in the story is a very simple ceremony, with only the narrator and his wife invited. Why didn’t he invite more people?

-Talking about weddings: have you ever had to make a speech in one? What do you have to say in a like speech? Do you remember famous speeches in films? Prepare a speech for a friend/son/daughter wedding and tell us in our meeting.

-What is the pun with “Wanda will never cease”? Do you know other puns in English?

-In the story there are two different kinds of love: Aaron and his wife, Patti and her husband. Can you describe them?

-What do you think it’s the morality of the story? Who are the happiest? Why?

VOCABULARY

hurdles, hang out, letting the side down, count me out, hankering, out of the blue, cagey, wound up, arm-twisted, spell it out, shacked, pared-down, locked up, twigged, glint, going places, kid myself, goosing, sorting ourselves out, head start, crashing, peep, upended, mucking around, stopwatch, handicap, real deal, missis, chuckling, yanked