Lunchtime read: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

My wife commented last night that Alice as standard reading in her convent school days and she expressed surprise I had chosen to read it. Having explained that I wanted a non Disney version she understood.

Already there are several differences with the first main one being that the book is incredibly episodic with one meeting with a character or set or characters being completed before another is started. There is only one character present almost throughout - the white rabbit – and apart from mistaking Alice for a maid he hasn’t spoken to her. There seems to be a habit of most of the characters of not really being able to engage with Alice in conversation or show any interest about where she has come from.

Highlights from chapters seven and eight

* In one of the most famous scenes from the book Alice heads to the mad hare’s home and stumbles across a tea party in full swing with the mad hatter, hare and dormouse all sitting round a table

* The mad hatter explains that because he annoyed time it is permanently six o’clock and tea time and to relieve the boredom they move places and tell each other stories - something they try to get the dormouse to do

* Alice keeps arguing with the dormouse over the story and then the hare and the hatter are rude to her and she leaves in disgust and comes across three playing cards painting roses from white to red to appease the queen

* At that moment the queen arrives and drags Alice into a came of croquet using hedgehogs for balls and flamingos for mallets and the monarch seems to have an obsession with issuing executions

* Her next intended victim is the Cheshire cat but without a body there is an issue about exactly how he could be executed and Alice lets it slip that the duchess might know – who is currently awaiting execution – so she is sent for

More tomorrow…