The Chattering of The Sparrows.

Chinese characters for 
Mah Jong

Baltimore seniors at play.

 I wrote about Mah Jong several years ago in my Bruges blog but as I am now playing twice a week with two small groups which are, in fact, metamorphosing into one group playing twice weekly, it is on my mind. Virtually all these Bury members are beginners and I am frequently surprised at how fast some individuals have learned the basics and can also see that my own play is not quite so dashing as it once was!!

Mah Jong was banned by the government of the 
People's Republic of China in 1949.
Re-introduced after the Cultural Revolution.

The trigger for this blog, however, was a news item that caught my online eye! Last October police in Yushan, a small county in China’s south east Jiangxi province issued a statement announcing the closure of all Mahjong parlours in the region from 22 October. The move was bruited to “push forward the campaign against crimes and gangs to solve the gambling and noise problem and purify social conduct.” Although gambling is illegal in China with widespread problems from illegal gambling dens, those who engage in “win-lose entertainments such as Mahjong and poker involving small amounts of money ….. shall not be punished.”

Last year's backlash was swift and furious. Mahjong 

Police keeping an eye on suspects.

 parlours are legally licensed and as one commentator on social media site, Weibo, fumed, “ My grandparents play Mahjong as part of their daily entertainment.” Others opined that Mahjong itself was not the culprit as “people can gamble with anything.” The closure was seen as a lazy attempt by the government to curtail the real problem; illegal gambling dens, though one social media user saw the positive side of the ban, “Finally! I have been woken up numerous times by Mahjong players!” His joy was short-lived: the day after the imposition of the ban, Yushan authorities revised their statement after witnessing the furious protests, to make it clear that licensed Mahjong parlours were not included.

Mah Jong is a tile-based game originally called ‘maique’ in Chinese; this signifies’ the chattering of 

Mah Jong, 1920s, en plein air....

the sparrows’ which the clacking sound, as the tiles are initially shuffled, is said to resemble. There are 144 tiles, using Chinese characters and symbols, and each player receives 13 tiles to begin, except for the fourth player [the East Wind] who receives one extra to enable her to lead at the beginning of the game. Further explanation of procedures and rules at this point would only serve to mystify but it can be said that Mah Jong is a game of skill, strategy and luck! I should also add that playing the game offers unrivalled opportunities for socialising and relaxed mental exercise! There are many books explaining this mysterious game though my groups use the Australian players, Patricia A. Thompson & Betty Maloney’s “The Mah Jong Player’s Companion” published in 1997 and obtainable, second-hand, on various web sites like Amazon and Ebay. This illustrates over 120 different hands/combinations which players may attempt, is well-illustrated and comprehensively explained.

... et sur l'eau!

Mah Jong developed in China in the 19^th century and has spread throughout much of the world during the 20^th century. The game, and its regional variants, are widely played throughout Japan, Korea and South East Asia and have become increasingly popular in the West. An indication of the latter is its appearance in occasional mainstream pop culture. In the film, Crazy Rich Asians, two main characters meet for a showdown at a Mahjong parlour. And an American television show, Fresh Off The Boat which centres on an Asian-American family, dedicates one whole episode to Mahjong.

Probably not the championships but nonetheless of
daily importance to many. 
When I stayed for two months in Beijing, en route to the supermarket, I always passed groups
of scruffy, noisy, excited men, crouching at the edge of the kerb, engrossed
in their Mah Jong games, wholly involved and happy!
Gambling may have been involved!

An additional nod to the increasing respectability of Mah Jong as a sport, was given in September 1998 when Mah Jong rules were codified for international competitions and in June, 2007, the first official World Mah Jong Championship was held at Chengdu in Sichuan, China. And perhaps the interest of a luxury brand, Hermes, in promoting an expensive arpeggio, seals the deal! It has a luxury Mahjong set “in solid palissander wood” for sale on its website at 40,200 dollars.

Leather Mah Jong set by Hermes "for aunties who like
to play in style." Tiles of palissander wood and all is 
printed on calfskin, to emit 'a delicate sound.'
57,000 Singaporean dollars!
Clearly, Aunties who like to play in style, have good taste
and are not poor!




[N.B. Mahjong seems to be written thus in online descriptions; I always use Mah Jong as two words
which seems to be more common generally in English  language prose.]

Literary Bury

  

Folio edition of Defoe's A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain, published in three part between  1724 and 1726.

I was idly glancing through a lovely Folio edition I have of Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724-6] recently when a sudden thought drove me to look up Bury St. Edmunds. Charmingly, the town was then called St Edmundsbury, [as is Bury Cathedral now] which Defoe compares favourably, en passant, to Ipswich, a town where “there are not so many of the gentry here as at Bury.”

The Abbey in its heyday.

He visits St Edmunds Bury “famed for its pleasant situation and wholesome air, the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England; this must be attributed to the skill of the monks of those times, who chose so beautiful a situation for the seat of their retirement and who built here the greatest, and in its time, the most flourishing monastery in all these parts of England, I mean the monastery of Edmund the Martyr.…. a house of pleasure in more ancient times; or …. a court of some of the Saxon or East Angle kings.” Defoe attributes the delightfulness of the town’s setting to the decision of the clergy to settle in Bury, “for they always chose the best places in the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or for health and pleasure in the situation of their religious houses.” Defoe believes it was once “a royal village, though it much better merits that name now; it being the town of all this part of England, in proportion to its bigness, most thronged with gentry; people of the best fashion and the most polite conversation.”

Angel Hill by J. Kendall. 1744.
This would be, more or less, Defoe's view. Produced 
before the Angel Hotel was built and when the 
Athenaeum, [far end] was one storey higher.

He describes a notorious murder in the town in 1722; comments on the lack of manufacturing in Bury save for spinning which was the “chief trade” arising from the needs of the local gentry “who cannot fail to cause trade enough by the expense of their families and equipages” and, without actually naming the River Lark, Defoe condescends to describe it as “a very small branch of a very small river” but comments that this stream, as it joins larger waters, has been engineered to be navigable for transport of heavy goods like coal, wine, and iron to the town “to the great ease of the tradesmen.”

The other famous literary name associated with Bury St Edmunds is, of course, Charles Dickens who loved the town and visited it on several occasions, staying at the Angel Hotel which is mentioned in The Pickwick Papers. 

 "Beg your pardon, sir,' said Sam, suddenly breaking off in his loquacious discourse. “Is this Bury St. Edmunds?” 'It is,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

The coach rattled through the well paved streets of a handsome little town, of thriving and cleanly appearance, and stopped before a large inn situated in a wide open street, nearly facing the old abbey.

“And this,” said Mr. Pickwick, looking up, “is the Angel! We alight here, Sam.”

Room 215.

Room 215 at the Angel still contains the four poster bed that Dickens slept in when he stayed over the years and, interestingly, the latest film version of David Copperfield was filmed in Bury St Edmunds while Ruth Rendell’s crime novel, The Brimstone Wedding is also set in Bury, a place she knew well. And my discovery of Suffolk Summer by John Tate Appleby, an American celestial navigator stationed near Lavenham for the last few months of WW2, which enchanted me, is probably the special book which sparked my interest in Bury’s literary touchstones. [See previous blog.] His huge love for Suffolk, especially Bury St Edmunds did, in fact, finance the Rose Garden in the Abbey Gardens through the royalties from his book, and thus made a generous, positive and lasting contribution to the beauty of the town.

"...the sun was just setting and the sky was full of gold and
orange and pink and ashes of roses and blue"
Suffolk Summer p. 99.

There are also writers currently living in, or near, Bury whose works are important and add to the reputation of the town for cultural excellence. Simon Edge, for instance, whose book, Anyone For Edmund is a delightful and inventive comedy based on the possible whereabouts of the Martyr. Martyn Taylor is a favourite writer on Bury St Edmunds itself and has produced a veritable library of books on the history of the town. I have a copy of his Secret Bury St Edmunds given to me by Secret Santa just before I came to live here in February 2022. It is incredibly informative, historically and fascinating to read.

Anyone For Edmund
Simon Edge.

Martyn Taylor, local historian,
Chair, the Bury Society
and author of many books on Bury.

A bench with inscribed quote from The Pickwick Papers sits outside
the Corn Exchange [now Wetherspoons]on Abbeygate Street.

                                                 Bury is awash with literary connections!

P.S.  Almost immediately after the Literary Bury blog was published, I was reminded, as I walked through the Abbey Gardens, of the plaque in part of the Great Churchyard, to Henry Cockton. I had forgotten all about it though had taken a photo of the memorial tablet intending to Google dear Henry of whom I had never heard. 

The memorial stone erected thirty one years after 
his death by "A few admirers of his genius."
Henry Cockton
Born in London 1807.
Died in Bury St Edmunds of consumption 1853.

Henry was indeed a literary gent and achieved quite a level of fame in his short life, sufficient to prompt memorial action by admirers long after his untimely demise. He was a humorous novelist remembered primarily for his Life of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist, published in 1839/40, although he also wrote Sylvester Sound.  By way of apology to Henry for my ignorance, I am including no fewer than three images in his name!

"We Were Never The Land of The Free".

 

Protestors reacting in Washington D.C. to the Supreme
Court decision. Photo by Bill Clark/Getty.
Poster held aloft, "We were  never the land of the free."

America seems to be becoming evermore unrecognisable! The global bombshell that is the overturning of Roe v Wade [1973] by the Supreme Court has reverberated and appalled world-wide opinion in equal measure. Apart from the majority consenting judges having to be extreme right wing and Republican-leaning at the very least, [and in the majority on the Supreme Court, thanks to the arch criminal, Trump] their decision is, I think, based on the fact that abortion is not mentioned in their much-worshipped Constitution and thus "no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” The Supreme Court had been called upon by the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation action in which the only abortion clinic in Mississippi opposed the state’s efforts to ban abortion after 15 weeks and overturn Roe in the process.

Left to right; upper row. Samuel Alito; Clarence Thomas; Brett Kavanaugh
Left to right; lower row. Amy Coney Barratt; Neil Gorsuch; John Roberts

In a separate, concurring opinion, Clarence Thomas explicitly urged his fellow
justices to "reconsider all of this court's" cases that established rights to 
  contraception, gay marriage and sex.
The widespread fear is that the overturning of Roe v Wade is simply 
the beginning of the wedge of the destruction of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-desegregation
legislation in America.

This extraordinary move by the Supreme Court is now unleashing individual States from unwanted restraints; at least 26 States are expected to ban abortion immediately, or as soon as possible. So, from conception, a woman cannot choose to abort if she so wishes in nearly half of the U.S. and thus this so-called Dobbs’ decision will have profound consequences for the lives of millions of American women for decades or longer. In fact, it is estimated that around 85% of Americans favour legal abortion at least in some cases such as rape and/or incest, with a strong majority in favour of abortion being available generally. Generations of Americans have grown up taking the legality of abortion for granted as is the case in most Western democracies. But the opinion of the Supreme Court is not based on evidence, but clearly on politics representing as it does, Republicans in the Southern and Midwestern States. Part of being a Republican currently, seems to be the necessity to be anti-abortion though Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has voted against abortion several times. [A Dino, as one might say: Democrat in Name Only.] Apparently, a Republican strategist, Paul Weyrich, in the late 1970s, saw anti-abortion publicity, plus opposition to women’s rights and to desegregation, as the keys to unlocking the political support of millions of white, evangelical Christians. His clever religio-political strategy worked and continues to work; Fred Clarkson, an expert on the Christian right and an associate at Political Research Associated [P.R.A.] opines that this minority of the population, with minority anti-abortion views, has found effective ways of maximising its minority views by being better organised than the opposition. In effect, it has “mastered the tools of democracy to achieve undemocratic outcomes.”

'Escorts' who warded off anti-abortion protesters at the
single abortion clinic in Mississippi. It is now closed.

Victims of the recent Uvalde, Texas school shooting

But in the “greatest democracy in the world” [though many of us tend to incline the head more or less tolerantly in the face of this usual bombastic, vainglorious, typical American hyperbole] with its proud American values of autonomy, liberty and self-determination, how can this undemocratic leap back be happening? And we haven’t even mentioned the similar right-wing opposition to amending the appalling gun laws which facilitate the murder of swathes of schoolchildren by dysfunctional people who should not be allowed near a gun. And these children are really children, much-loved and important family members not newly-conceived clusters of cells.

There’s a mixture here of religiosity; extreme conservatism in politics and life generally; fear of modernity which brings women’s rights and desegregation. It is toxic and antithetical to freedom.

Suffolk Summer

 

Triple-arched bridge in the Abbey Gardens.

I wrote a little about John Tate Appleby in my last blog and was so impressed with the little I had read about him, I sent for his book [second-hand from Oxfam Online!] I am currently reading its 136 slim pages and am entranced with it, and with him, a man I would have loved to have met. He is described as an engineer from Arkansas which conjures up a certain picture but as soon as I began to read Suffolk  Summer, his love of language and his facility with the English language was quickly apparent. Almost as quickly evident was his deep joy in the Suffolk countryside.

He arrived in Cockfield in March 1945 when the war in Europe was almost over. From November 1942, part of the U.S. Eighth Air Force had flown from East Anglia on bombing sorties over Germany and the areas it occupied, and its last mission had been in April 1945. Appleby was a celestial navigator; I never did discover exactly what this signified but, given the time of his arrival in Suffolk, John Appleby did little celestial navigation choosing, instead, to explore the beauties of the county.

He started life in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in June 1907, as a prosperous farmer’s son, the family owning orchards and canning factories, but in adulthood, he moved far from his early rural life. He graduated from Harvard in 1928, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris before travelling around Europe during the 30s, as a correspondent for the Washington Post. When America entered WW2 in November 1942, he enlisted in the Eighth Air Force as a trainer in celestial navigation and it was this role that brought him to Suffolk towards the end of the war in Europe. Almost immediately he fell in love with the Suffolk countryside; he wrote of the “dazzling greenness of the fields and the beauty of the hedgerows.” He was stationed about eight miles outside Bury St Edmunds, in the country heart of Suffolk, near to Lavenham and Long Melford, villages steeped in mediaeval history and guaranteed to appeal to this mediaeval historian who eventually was to write academic works on English Kings John, Stephen, Henry 11 and Richard 1 and became associate editor of the American Historical Review. In his eventual obituary, a friend quoted Appleby as saying that his world ended in 1215! He was thrilled to discover that Bury Abbey had been the place where King John’s barons had gathered in 1214, to swear they would force their king to grant them certain rights which rights, eventually, became the Magna Carta.

Long Melford Church nave.

He purchased a bicycle and became besotted with his rural exploration, quickly stumbling over the art of brass rubbing, deliciously introduced to him by two American servicemen he encountered in Long Melford Church as they were making rubbings of the fifteenth century brasses there. He was thrilled and resolved to take their advice on suitable paper and the necessary heel-ball. “Heel-ball is a stick of lamp-black and wax, used by cobblers to blacken the edges of the soles and heels of shoes and boots.” One wonders if lamp-black is a term, or a process, known even to cobblers in 2022. But, as John Tate wrote, brass rubbing became an “absorbing occupation” and one which he felt connected him to a long-distant past. He was a devout Catholic interested in all ecclesiastical architecture and this passion combined with the new delight, contrived to keep this American serviceman on the road exploring his beloved Suffolk until he left in November 1945. He began his short career in brass rubbing in St Mary’s in Bury, on 21^st April, 1945, doing a rubbing of a 1481 brass of Jankyn Smith who had left a charity dispensed on Plough Monday every year. Does anyone now know the date of Plough Monday any more?

Lavenham.

John Appleby’s deep love for the churches, brasses, villages and countryside of Suffolk is almost palpable in Suffolk Summer. In Bures one evening, he follows the advice of the pub landlady to walk by the river in this Constable country. “I followed her suggestion and found a lovely walk along the Stour, with the light dying in the sky and the moon beginning to shine. There were tall poplars along the stream, and the air was fragrant with flowers and the evening mist.” His lovely book is a testament to a deep love affair he chanced upon as his war ended.

St Mary's, Bury St Edmunds.

"The English landscape at its subtlest and loveliest is to be seen in the County of Suffolk. I can say this with dogmatic certainty because it is the only county in England that I can pretend to know. Furthermore, the people of Suffolk themselves tell me this, and I know it must be so."

Robert de Bures, 1255-1331
Acton Church, Suffolk.

On June 17th, Appleby went to Bures determined to find the famous brass there.
"The brass is a full length, life-sized portrait of Sir Robert de Bures, in armour,
and dates from 1302. It is, I believe, the fifth oldest brass in England and is a
work of great beauty."
This brass was undoubtedly crafted before Sir Robert's death and depicts the 
armour fashionable three decades earlier.

Flatford: Constable country.

Addendum.

A correspondent has sent the following information on Celestial Navigation. Good to know!!

It's where you determine the location of your aircraft by taking accurate observations of the stars and other objects in the sky through a transparent aperture in the roof of your aircraft and using the resultant numbers  to determine your position.

 

It's a much more complicated version of what they used to do on ship with a sextant to determine where they were sailing.

 

Roses All The Way

 

One of 400 varieties of rose in the 
Appleby Rose Garden, Bury.

Bury is so different from Brugge in spite of strong similarities: long history of at least 1000 years; ancient beauty and modern municipal protection and active care, plus bags of civic pride among residents. But Bury has had to tolerate and suffer many fewer of the foreign invasions, enemy occupations, inter-regional and inter-state powers shuttling an area back and forth between and across national boundaries; the bartering and bargaining between the ruling elites solely motivated by power with whole regions [like Flanders] caught in the crossfire. I like to think that the chequered history of Flanders accounts for the wariness of the general public, of strangers in the streets of Brugge. In contrast, I could hardly believe when I arrived in Bury the open trusting friendliness of passers-by towards strangers they may never see again. For instance, my early morning walk today of a little less than an hour elicited at least twenty ‘Good mornings!’ from passing strollers/dog walkers/parents en route to school with small children, whom I may never see again. It confers a feeling of public companionship, fraternity which is low level but comfortable and reassuring in its every day, effortless presence.

One fleeting corner of the
Abbey Gardens.

But rather like Bruges, whenever I am out, I seem to come across Something Happening. I was amused to see publicity for a Beer Festival next month in … wait for it …. the Cathedral of all places. Impressive. En route to the cinema last week I had to stop to let pass a long musical parade of airmen and soldiers marching vigorously up Abbeygate Street in strict formation. Not sure what was being celebrated, but it was fun and impressive. Several times, Crazy Golf corners have popped up, then disappeared quickly, in the Abbey Gardens and occasional clusters of tents and marquees have materialised, again in the Abbey Gardens, ready for brief action. I say ‘brief’ because it or they have disappeared two days later. Another constant seems to be a musician or two,, different every day, providing a marvellous musical backdrop for pedestrians in Abbeygate Street; begging of course, and well worth an offering from passers-by. Someone told me that the now Really Famous Ed Sheeran used to busk in Bury frequently, in his salad days.

What is constant are the views, the flower beds, the green tunnels of trees and foliage and wild plants like nettles and grasses; the crowded pavement cafes and strolling families; the Wednesday and Saturday markets with the now-familiar plant stalls, fruit and vegetable sellers; the Saturday Iranian expert who sells beautiful tribal rugs; the stalls of wooden terrace furniture and the one selling a variety of metal bowls, implements and mirrors. Bury is a quintessential English market town with its own individual quirks and characteristics. I haven’t even mentioned the little miracle of a relatively small town having the Apex Theatre AND the Theatre Royal, a quite tiny Regency survivor with a marvellous period feel. Plus of course not only a bus station but a train station too!

The Buttermarket. John Tookey.

Jubilee Weekend.
Passing Crown manned by five people.

Unusually, I visited the impressive Rose Garden in the Abbey Gardens this morning and it was glorious with blooms; I read the plaque explaining it owes its existence to John Appleby, a Sergeant and engineer in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Rougham during WW2. John published his book, Suffolk Summer in 1947 and contributed royalties from it to fund the Memorial Rose Garden. Such a long-ago heartfelt and generous gesture which continues to bear fruit, in the guise of roses, today. It conveys Appleby’s deep love for Suffolk, developed while involved, involuntarily, in conflict as a member of 487^th Bomb Group in Lavenham.

John T. Appleby's Rose Garden.

Near the Great Graveyard, early morning
shadows and parasols of cow parsley.

 

The Simple Life.

Early one morning in Bruges.

Reflections along the Groenerei.

Somehow, certainly by chance and then habit, but now by design, I have discovered the joy of the early morning walk; first in Bruges over the last several years. There, after rising early simply because I awake early in these, my mature years, I wandered one fine sunny morning along the towpath of a canal nearby and found so many delights in studying the art of the architecture; examining the assembly of boats along the Coupure; taking in the mediaeval houses in the numerous narrow, ancient streets; enjoying the longer views lit by early morning sun and loving the scattered monuments and statues and the gilded embellishments of centuries-old holy places. The pleasure was intense and lasting so that, come the turn of time and season, it mattered not that it was gloomy or rainy or cold; I almost needed to walk and absorb the landscape.

In the Abbey Gardens this week..

Cow parsley submerging headstones in early May.

That pleasure has continued in Bury where good fortune means that there is history and beauty all around and also the constant but surprising feeling that the early part of the morning here is mine! It seems, as suggested by Henry David Thoreau, that “an early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” Originally I stepped the Bury streets, old and narrow and lined with various shops, coffee shops and cafes, banks and insurance outlets and, twice a week, the splendid chaos of town-centre markets. I found the Abbey Gardens an early magnet, situated both near me and offering green and floral spaces with the delightful little aviary and the magnificent ruins of the tenth century Abbey, stripped of its original stone down to the foundation walls of flint and random stones. More recently I have settled into often following the pretty Circular Walk which takes me back to the centre through the Great Graveyard which I love. There over the last few months I have taken pleasure in seeing the cow parsley bloom and flourish so that, by early May, it frothed white and rampant, chest-high, rendering the venerable headstones, apparently scattered randomly over a large area, engulfed by the wind-blown blossoms. Now the blooms have turned into seed heads, the feathery fronds of high grasses grace the mixture and the profusion is green but remains wild and abundant.

Misty, moisty March meander!

Nearing Angel Hill, my walk enables me to catch the windows of the Tourist Information; the Cathedral Shop; the Hunter Gallery and I find pictures and scarves I would love to buy, before I walk towards the Angel Hotel, always in my mind as the Dickens’ Hotel and head to home. Now that I have adjusted possessions and psychology to the smaller apartment I now have, I savour entering, opening the door to the terrace and taking instant pleasure in the sudden brightness of light with the flowers and plants beckoning.

St Johns Street, Bury, full of interesting small shops.

Somehow, an early morning saunter confers a sensitivity on mundane but refreshing pleasures and on the individual who simply went out to stretch her legs and take a breath of air! As John Burroughs remarked about walking, “ these are some of the pleasures of the simple life.”

Some of the many beautiful ruins of the 10th century Abbey.

Part of the terrace today.

Plaque on  the Angel Hotel.