A Valentine for Daisy - Discussion Thread

Daisy...let's see. Daisy Mae of Lil' Abner fame. Daisy, Daisy (the song sung by HAL in 2001 A Space Odessey), Driving Miss Daisy. Daisy Duke (Dukes of Hazzard). Daisy Duck. Conclusion. A nice name for a flower.

Thank you for the awesome Keynes link, Betty Keira. I was a bit sceptical...we here at The Uncrushable Jersey Dress have an agenda as regards politics and this blog. "Don't go there". We can discuss politics as much as we want, off blog...but this is not the place. We will have to tread delicately when it comes to subjects like national health care (a current hot topic)...in more than one Neels novel, the NHS and the Dutch equivalent are discussed. [Betty Keira] I'm with you about the politics-free zone but I think it's too late to stop the white-hot rage of the Keynsian readers from bursting into flame over the perceived affront from the Hayek boosters. My bad.

Moving on....I too love this book. I think my favorite part is where Daisy - along with her mother and sister contrive a "suitable wardrobe" for her to take to den Haag. When I was in middle school - 6th or 7th grade - our mom made blouses for Betty Marcy and I out of...wait for it...wait...(no not curtains)...new flowered bed sheets. I'm not sure I knew that she had made them out of sheets...until someone at school said something. In retrospect, I find it hilarious. I know I wasn't amused back then...but at least they were new bed sheets. That's the loving treatment you got as the first and second children, Betty Debbie. The "tail-ies" got shorts crafted out of vintage Noah's Ark sheets. Not new but tres funky. [Betty Debbie] I remember those sheets. You're right. Tres funky. And here is a clip of Carol Burnett wearing her own curtain fashion.

Fun stuff:

• The cook. "An older woman who spoke little English, and who, in Daisy's opinion, didn't look quite clean." The first of two lunches she serves up is fish fingers with tinned peas. I'm not sure what Daisy's problem with that was - it sounds very like what the "hot lunch" kids ate at my elementary school. The next day the unnamed cook prepares dinner in a muddle of dirty saucepans, potato peelings and unwashed dishes...and makes stew..."a wholesome stew"...bubble bubble, toil and trouble... Then the cook disappears!
• After getting the sack from Mrs. Gower-I'd rather be reading the Tatler-Jones it's time to peruse the local paper for a new job. "There was plenty of work for anyone who understood computers and the like." And the like? Discuss.
• Gower-Jones is what's called a "double-barrelled" name. Here's some wiki info on that:

Among nobility, in the past especially, if a woman married down from her social status it was common for her and her husband to use a double-barrel name. This was done both so as not to diminish the social status of the woman and to gain for her husband a higher social status.

Double-barrelled names are sometimes adopted when the man has a common surname such as Smith or Jones which the couple want to avoid after marriage; hence double-barrelled names often incorporate a common surname. For instance, if Mary Howard married John Smith, they could choose to become Mary and John Howard-Smith

• Betty Keira also brought up the "pigperson" job. It's so much more descriptive than "farm labor"...I suppose if "pig breeding flourished" (La Neels words, not mine) in my part of the world I wouldn't find it so amusing. Here in the sometimes rather wet Pacific Northwest, it's poultry...especially chickens. I have great experience along those lines - back in my high school days I gathered eggs (on the weekend). Me, alone with ten thousand chickens. I'm just saying - I could probably have hooked Daisy up with a chickenperson job. After high school I went with Betty Suzanne to work in an Alaskan fish processing plant. Highly educational, if you ask me. Daisy would have done just fine in the piggery and maybe, like Betty Suzanne, she would have snagged a husband out of it. (You are perfectly welcome to call me salmongirl, hereafter.) Hey there, salmongirl.
• Plasticine. It's not play-dough. Evidently though similar, it doesn't dry out like play-dough. I wonder if it wouldn't stick to the carpet as much.
• Winceyette pyjamas. Daisy deplores the fact that she isn't wearing "sturdy winceyette pyjamas" when she accidently runs into the doctor while chasing one of the twins. Instead she is clad in a "nightie". Valentine sends her back upstairs to dress the twins (and herself!), and says "Just do as I say, there's a good girl." ...she opens her mouth to tell him that she wasn't his good girl...Eliza Doolittle would have turned in her grave. This is not the only Neels book to mention "winceyette". I had never heard of it before. I love the internet (evidently I understand computers...and the like) - anyway - winceyette is apparently like flannel. Or it is flannel. Or something.
• Uncle Val takes the twins and Daisy to the zoo. They visit the snakes, scorpions, bears and camels, then the kids have a ride on the elephant. Really? Elephant rides? That wouldn't happen here in the U.S. - I'm pretty sure. Pony rides, maybe (my own children rode the ponies at Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle), but growing up in Oregon...we only got to ride the zoo train (which is pretty darn awesome - and frankly I'd rather ride on a train than a pony. Or an elephant) Dr. Seymour is very casual about sending three-year-olds on a elephant ride. Most paediatricians of my acquaintance are more likely to be safey scolds and look upon children in the light of Nazi informants: "Does your Mommy put you into a car seat every time you get in zee auto? Talk! Or zere vill be conzequenzes!"
  

• The Venerable Betty uses the number 999 for emergencies three times in A Valentine for Daisy. In America the number is 911 and, notwithstanding the 9 and the 1 being on opposite ends of the number pad, my kids have accidentally dialed it no less than three times in their toddlerhood. Usually you get a call back from an operator asking if there was an emergency but one time when I lost the phone I had a totally hot police officer show up at my house to ascertain if everything was all right. In a situation as mortifying as that, the least he could do was be paunchy and unattractive. We had that happen once...not only did the policeman come to the house, he insisted on checking up on the kids who had just gone to bed. I was mortified - not so much that he came, but that, at bedtime, the house, particulary the kids bedrooms looked like a natural catastrophe had recently occurred.
• At one point in Den Haag they go up Scheveningenscheweg. I think Betty was being cheeky. Anyway, when I Googled it I had the distinct pleasure of being asked by the search engine, "Did you mean Scheveningen Scheweg?" Dear me, I suppose I did.
• At one point Daisy thinks to herself, "Fate always answers the wrong prayers." I think she must have been a fairly ecumenical gal so saying "Providence always answers, etc." would have been less doctrinally jarring and at least as ecumenical. Discuss. I think of "fate" in the classical sense (think Oracle of Delphi) - a predestination of certain events. It's a convenient thought. I don't go for "fate" answering prayers -perhaps that's why it answers the wrong prayers. That said, I can be a bit "fatalistic" at times. Que sera, sera.
• Valentine, like all doctors, has terrible handwriting. Daisy puts it thus: "Written with the wrong end of a feather and with his eyes shut..."