Showing posts with label colleagues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colleagues. Show all posts

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