Roger Deakin in Kyrgyztan–
We were quartered in dormitories in the lodge, which, being miles from anywhere, was lit by electricity generated by an ingenious waterwheel in the millstream. It was improvised from the back wheel hubs, axle and transmission shaft of an old lorry. Steel paddles had been welded on to the wheels, thirty-two on each, which were mounted under the spouts of two steeply inclined twenty-foot steel tubes, the stream having been split in two and funneled into them from the concrete mill race ten feet above. The resulting pair of powerful jets spun the wheels at high velocity, and the whirring transmission shaft turned a pulley and belt-drive running up to a dynamo mounted in a protective box astride the stream. Wires on poles led back to the lodge. So intent was I on examining this machine that I lost my sunglasses in the mill race… [Wildwood, pp325/6, my ellipsis.]
Deakin often reminds me of Robert Byron; but I can’t compare them because I’ve tossed my copy of The Road to Oxiana, which that so totally serves me right. I loved that book.
‘That vehicle was carrying twice its proper number of passengers, and their luggage as well. Exhilarated at the prospect of his journey’s end the driver tore downhill at forty miles an hour, lurched across a stream-bed, and had just rebounded against the opposite slope, when to my great surprise the off front wheel ran back towards me, buckled the running-board with a crunch, and escaped into the desert. “Are you English?” asked the driver in disgust. “Look at that.” An inch of British steel had broken clean through.’
Opened at random (p80 in the Penguin Classics edition), but it seems related, in a second cousin-ish sort of way. I culled Byron too, a couple of years ago, then in Spring saw the Penguin copy on a shelf at the Brisbane State Library bookshop and was viscerally struck by how much I’d missed him. The lady at the till said she hadn’t seen anyone hug a book like that in ages…
Haven’t got to Wildwood yet, I’m currently wallowing in By Night in Chile, which is the longest short book I’ve ever read. I’m wondering if Bolano’s doorstop works will have a miraculously opposite effect…
And then there’s this, All These I Learnt, Byron’s poem for his son:
http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/uploads/AllTheseILearnt(RobertByron).pdf
“Actually, dad, I just want to work in Accounts – ”
Shepherds purse on a slag heap: magic.