Round the Herne

 This is my reading of E F Benson's amusing short story "The Psychical Mallards" (1921) which in some regards foreshadows the childhood of Harry Potter and his life with the Dursleys. I wonder if J K Rowlings had read this story at some point in the past and it sowed a seed? The fatherly conversation about queerness raises a bit of a school boy snigger. It can be read entirely innocently (and was most likely meant in that way by the author), though the word queer had started to be associated with homosexuality by the late 1800s and as Benson was himself a lover of men he might well have been familiar with its dual implications and its relevance to boarding school life. Anthropologists have noted that some cultures associate magical talents, such as possessed by Tim, with sexual ambiguity - but I think that may well be reading rather too much into a simple tale of wizardly nonsense (plus he does get married, eventually)  Incidentally, if some listeners think I have lost th...

A few days ago I accompanied a friend who lives halfway up an Essex mountain to attend a clairvoyant gathering near where he lives. Without being too specific, this was not a Spiritualist Church but a meeting in a hired village hall. They have different psychics taking the stage each month, and this particular one was a lady hailing from one of the cultural epicentres of that county. After a vaguely Christian prayer, the evening's guest medium launched into her patter and delivered various messages to random people in the audience (neither I nor my friend being on the receiving end of any Words from Beyond). My friend had been several times before, but this was my first visit and I was there as an observer more than anything. It's an interesting thing to watch in so many ways, and brings many questions to mind. Even the most devout believer must accept that there is an element of performance involved in any public display, and there were certainly times when it felt as if we ...