The Fairly Constant Reader

Zoning out the 'Zines

2012-02-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Working in a small market town, therearen’t many things to occupy your lunch hour with. Once I’ve examined library,visited elderly relatives or examined the cake selection in my favouritecafe, I’m done. There is, obviously, the ever (un)tempting option of joiningthe other rag-tag-and-bobtails in the park for a fag by the war memorial. I donot do this. Because I have been raised A Good Girl (despite the exploration of a few seedy side alleys of life).

But I do haunt the magazine aisles of thevery useless WHSmiths we have in town (note to managing director of said shop:Sort Out Your Shelving And Displays They Make Me Very Angry Indeed).

After a cursory glance at the women’s mags(Why Doesn’t He Love Me?, My Waistline and Me, Stop Being Afraid of YourBreadmaker, I’m A Feminist And Still Like Pretty Shoes, Ooh Look Here’s aSparkly Thing To Take My Mind Off Just How Sucky Everything Else Is), an evenmore cursory glance at the men's (Knockers 2: This Time They Bounce!) and adespairing glance at the children's (PinkPinkPink!, CarsCarsCars!), I move toother sections.

Let’s pass quickly over the travel magsshall we? One hardly needs the Lonely Planet when Norfolkis on this year’s calendar: as lovely as Norfolkundoubtedly is, all I shall be needing is directions to the beach and the pub.

There is always Country Living, as I live in the country. Mind you, the longer I do, the less relevance this magazine actually has to my life. It is the Location Location Location of the magazine world: pretty places, homes far beyond my reach and people that make me ~~desperately~~ faintly want to punch them when they complain about the fact there is another rooftop viewable from their converted loft space.

Hobby magazines are fascinating things, providing you skip past the men's 'hobbies'. Apparently they can't learn properly how to tinker with their car engine/motorcycle exhaust or camera unless some thin little thing is draped over the bonnet/bumper/handlebars wearing nought but the ragged denim hot pants and tight vests so beloved of middle-aged men thinking about engine tinkering. Every time I see them, I feel cold for the poor things - can't be warm enough for them: look, you can see their nipples! Freezing cold, that's what they are and all to make sure some chap's cam shaft is correctly working. One day I shall have knitted enough squares to apply them judiciously over those young females concerned.

Ahh but now we move on to Women's Hobbies - clean, wholesome things with no reference to oilings (nope, if you can see an oiling reference, you've gone too far, you're in Cosmo territory...come back a bit), although why there is the need for quite so many on the same subject is apuzzle. Why, if knitting is your thing, do you need Knitters Weekly, Monthly,Knitting for All, Knitting for the Bourgeois, Communist Knitting, Knitting Periodical, Yarning, Wool Talk, Knit Easy, Knit 'n'Stitch, Knit Stitch 'n' Bitch, Expert Knitter, Beginner Knitter, KnickerKnitter, Picky Knitter and, because there just will be somewhere, OrganicKnitting? I imagine that for the religious among them, there is also the HolyKnitter and Hair Shirt Quarterly.

The more obscure titles like to alliterate: Outwardbound Opticians, Nursing Newts, Museums & Their Mad (actually that's the current working title for my own fledgling publication). Tempting as all these titles are, I do the usual: pick up a copy of Private Eye, stick my tongue out at Grazia and Hello, refuse the half-price chocolate WHSmiths seem to be obsessed with (seriously, what is with that? No I don't fecking want a chocolate orange for 99p) and head out, reeling a little, into the hilly, chilly street.

French Fancy

2012-02-07T01:33:00.000-08:00

My favourite Saturday occupation of rummaging in secondhand bookshops and antique centres proved fruitful last week. Whilst I managed (just) to walk away from the vintage mandolin (£30, no strings or it would have been harder to resist), I did succumb to a book of French verse (£1) in a pretty paper cover.

I'd never heard of Catherine Pozzi before.

Scopolamine

Le vin qui coule dans ma veine

A noye mon couer et e'entraine

Et je naviguerai le ciel

A bord d'un coeur san capitaine

Ou l'oubli fond comme du miel.

Mon couer est un astre apparu

Qui nage au divin nonpareil.

Derive, etrange devenu!

O voyage vers le Soleil -

Un son nouvel et continu

Est la trame de son sommeil.

Mon couer a quitte mon histoire

Adieu Forme je ne sens plus

Je suis sauve je suis perdu

Je me cherche dans l'inconnu

Un nom libre de la memoire.

With the handy translation below (or I'd still be trying to translate with only my little French dictionary to help):

The wine flowing in my veins has drowned my heart and carried it away, and I shall navigate the skies on board a heart without a captain in which forgetfulness melts like honey.

My heart is an apparent star swimming in the divine nonpareil. Put off, strangely transformed heart! O journey towards the sun - a sound that is new and sweet and deep, is the thread that haunts my sleep.

My heart has left my history. Farewell, shape I feel no more. I am saved. I am lost. In the unknown I seek a name free from memory for myself.

Bookselling From Another Place

2012-01-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad - not a title I would have normally picked, but fitting in nicely with this year's resolution to read more of foreign places. So why was I a little nervous about reading it?
"I have written down what I saw and heard, and have tried to gather my impressions of a Kabul spring, of those who tried to throw the winter off, grow and blossom, and others who felt condemned to go on 'eating dust', as Leila would have put it."

I think my primary worry was that this was a book written by someone invited in good faith to this family's home who made notes on their conversations, the things they told her and the events she witnessed; and then she returned to her comfortable home, far removed from theirs, and wrote about them. This kind of behaviour makes me uncomfortable, as though I've overheard something I'm not supposed to. So I started off discomforted by it, and then I came across this:
"One powerful man had found an especially good stone, large and jagged, and he threw this with force, aiming it carefully at her body, and it struck so violently in her abdomen that soon the first blood of the afternoon showed through the chaderi."

Only 31 pages in and I'm rendered horrified, so nauseated by this sentence that I want to hide the book and run away. But I don't, and I keep going because these stories need to be told, almost regardless of who does the telling. There is no other sentence in here that made my blood run quite so cold. Have never understood the lust for violence; nor the bred-in-the-bone, natural-as-breathing belief in women as lesser beings. If you can't be used as a marriage bargaining chip or a breeder of children, your voice, your wishes count for nothing.
" 'She's crying, she doesn't want to,' her two older sisters tell Sultan and Sharifa in front of Belqisa. Belqisa looks down. But Sharifa laughs. It's a good sign when the bride is unwilling. That indicates a pure heart."

And then there's the Taliban: their rules seem drawn up merely to crush individualism, and more still just there to suck the joy out of every day:
"Prohibition against female exposure...prohibition against music...prohibition against shaving...mandatory prayer...prohibition against the rearing of pigeons and bird-fighting...eradication of narcotics and the users thereof...prohibition against kite-flying...prohibition against reproduction of pictures...prohibition against gambling...prohibition against British and American hairstyles...prohibition against interest on loans, exchange charges and charges on transactions...prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments...prohibition against music and dancing at weddings...prohibition against playing drums...prohibition against tailors sewing women's clothes or taking measurements of women...prohibitions against witchcraft..."

And lets not forget the separate 'women-only' clause:
"If women dress fashionably, wear ornamented, tight, seductive clothes to show off, they will be damned by the Islam Sharia and can never expect to go to heaven. They will be threatened, investigated and severely punished by the religious police, as will the head of the family."

This is no easy read: it provides no answers and although the author attempts to remain impartial, you can sense her anger and incomprehension at the treatment women receive, even those in the fairly enlightened family she is staying with, running like a red vein through the book. Leila's existence almost chokes you with it's poignancy and you wish bitterly that the change taking place in that country would get there a little faster.
"She feels her heart, heavy and lonely like a stone, condemned to be crushed for ever. Leila turns, takes three paces to the door, closes it quietly behind her and goes out. Her crushed heart she leaves behind."

I am ashamed of my own complaining.

Adventures in Sourdough Part 1

2012-01-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

A week. A week of adding flour, balancing it with a little water to make sure the starter was neither too wet nor too dry. A week of mixing, prodding, dampening the towel, worrying, sniffing (sourdough stater does not smell nice - the clue is in the name), mixing.

Finally last Saturday, I could measure out enough of the starter for a small loaf, leaving some in reserve to feed and grow for next time. Mix, knead, place in bowl, leave. For 12 hours to be precise as this sucker don't rise quickly - sourdough is the very essence of patience, I've discovered. So I went out for the evening and ate home-cooked Thai food that was so delicious, even as the chillis were burning my mouth, all I could think was "I don't care that this is hurting, I don't want to stop eating it".

Rose bright eyed in the morning and switched the oven on. Prodded my lump of dough with a tentative finger and watched as the indentation slowly puffed back out again and disappeared from the surface. Never before have I considered putting into my oven something that looks so unpromising (well, apart from the Mexican Puddle Pudding several years ago and despite looking like a brown-sugar-topped cow pat, it tasted pretty darn amazing). Gathering the remembrance of puddle puddings past to my wavering soul, I bunged the lump into the oven and took the dog for a walk to soothe my bakery nerves whilst the heat did its thing.

Down to the arboretum where the thinned out silver birches looked black against the sky and made a noise in the wind that sounded like bones hanging from a witch doctors awning.

There was a peculiar stillness about last weekend - possibly because I was on my own for the most of it, a grateful and much needed own-ness, but still the world felt as though it had hushed just to see how this bread experiment of mine would work out.

Which it hadn't, obviously.

So back to the house, now filled with the right type of just-baked-loaf smell. Take it out, up-end it. Tap on the bottom to hear the hollow sound that tells you bread is done and let it cool. Take myself out of the kitchen to prevent picking, poking or pinching of the hot crust. Read a bit of the paper. Fold some laundry. Flick little felt balls for the kitten to chase. Give in after just 30 lengthy minutes and get to work with the bread knife. The result?

Without a doubt the Best. Loaf. I. Have. Ever. Made.

2 slices later, I come to my senses enough to toast a couple more and butter them. Perfect with mackerel pate made the day before. As I sat, feet curled underneath me, reading the weekend book reviews and munching my way around the plate, I wondered why I eat anything else.

Balanced diet be damned - I may only ever eat this again. Oh, and home-cooked Thai food as made by the genius friend at the weekend.

A Problem

2012-01-17T01:30:00.001-08:00

I don't know what's happened or why the bloggy gods have stopped smiling upon me but for the moment I find myself unable to comment on other people's blogs, respond to comments left on my own or even (today's new twist) see comments on my own blog.

Believe me, after 3 days of trying on 3 different computers, I am more than slightly losing my temper.

At least I can (whisper it in case they hear me and take this away too) still post. So I will. But not today - today feels like a twitter kind of day instead. Also knitting.

How does your day feel?

Hey, look at that, it's all back! Which means I will be. Soon. But not right now. Have yourselves a happy little weekend everyone!

The Kneading Project

2012-01-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I stood in my little kitchen and pulled my long-neglected custom-made bread bowl (custom-made by this person - he really is very clever!) and stood with my bag of organic flour, waiting to create my very own sourdough starter from this recipe.

Given that I'd been, only this morning, to a lovely little deli and treated myself to one of the best sourdough loaves I've ever tasted, for less than the cost of my Saturday paper; why on earth would I bother to make sourdough from scratch?

I've always loved bread. From when I was very small and fussier than an injured barracuda, refusing all vegetables but carrots (peas at a push); prodding at all meat but beef and chicken with a suspicious fork; firmly clamping a stubborn mouth shut at any potato that wasn't roasted or chipped; bread was my saviour.
It soaked up the Sunday roast gravy. It pillowed a combination of cheese and tomato (the only way to get one of those red nightmares down my gullet - I will not ever never eat a tomato). Bacon butties on a Saturday morning. Spiked on a toasting fork and watched with an eagle eye as it browned over the fire. A mini cottage loaf, thickly buttered, to accompany a bowl full of soup. Sesame seed rolls toasted, with marmalade, as a second breakfast at my grandparents.

However, much as I love it, it can't be denied that there are serious problems with much of the bread you see today. Yeast and sugars used with abandon to make it rise faster; additives to make it last longer; the soft pulpy mass of your average bagged loaf is no more real bread than I am a Nobel Prize winner. I reject this bread.
The beauty of a sourdough is that the starter is created with just flour and water, using the natural yeast in the air that surrounds us to bubble and come to life. It creates a loaf both soft and chewy, that smells like bread should and tastes like angels made it. And it takes time. Time and patience, love and attention. Dedication. Care.

I don't make new year resolutions but, here on my little ship, I start projects. This bubbling, fermenting life feels like the right one to start now.

"I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabbata and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary, plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves."
La Cucina - Lily Prior

Things You Don't Expect

2012-01-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

Just how quickly the world you have spent so long creating will unravel.
Just how very hard it will be to get the words out.
Just how child-like and unformed your daughter's hands are as you hold them.
Just how your father's silent arm around your shoulder will prove as much a rock to lean against as your mother's garrulous support.

The 4am sleeplessness, stood outside with your head against the wall, looking for answers it refuses to give you.
The twisted, unexplainable, straight-from-the-soul logic behind decisions made.
The gut-aching fearful emptiness of the future.
The silvery, gutsy value of sisters and friends.

How tears will surprise you in the most inconvenient of locations.
How little you wish you could reverse decisions made.
How much you will change from the person you knew.
How a small golden thread of self is strong enough to carry you through some of the blackest months you have ever known.

After 17 years as a half of something that seemed, to the outside world, so strong and solid, rooted till the end of time, I'm not any longer. And everything I knew has to be relearned.
I feel adrift, unanchored for the first time in my life, but I'm the one who cut the anchor rope.

"A ship is safest in harbour, but that's not what ships are for"

What a Difference...

2011-12-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

... a year makes. This time last year, I was gazing out of the window with a rolling spin-cycle of feelings running through me: delight at the sight of everything made just so darn beautiful by the snow, and a churning ever-increasing panic at things I just couldn't do because I couldn't dig the car out.

But it was so very pretty, I remember as I squelch and slide through mud this year, vowing once more to invent dog wellies.

It was also the last Christmas that could be considered normal in this little house by the hill. Next year, we have to look for new ways of normal. I find it best not to think too much about this Christmas. It makes the heart and the head hurt.

I'll explain another day, promise. For now, I wish you all a mini-stollened, mulled-wined, turkey-stuffed and pudding-flamed Christmas. May the corks pop freely over your dinner table and I'll be back in the New Year.

A Literary Round-Up of the Most Unliterary Kind

2011-12-13T00:54:00.000-08:00

It would be interesting, I thought to myself, to see just how many books I read during the past 12 months. Not being one to write them all down (although I always mean to) anywhere except on this blog, my random musing led to a whole evening's worth of trawling through blog posts. My word but I do ramble on about nothing in particular to you patient lot!

Are you ready for the list? Then here we go:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt
The Last Cigarette by Simon Grey
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope
Selected short stories by Zola
The Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Aphrodite's Hat by Sally Vickers
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Hidden Bhutan by Martin Uitz
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful by Alice Walker
Laurie Lee biography by Valerie Grove
Elegies by Douglas Dunn
Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories
Colour of Memory by Geoff Dyer
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Fireworks by Angela Carter
Fludd by Hilary Mantel
Whigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Foundation: A History of England by Peter Ackroyd
about 10 Agatha Christies re-read for comfort purposes in September. Yes, sedate, stately crime from the 30s and 40s can be comfort reading.

So there we are: a grand total of 43, averaging 3.58 a month. I had been a little concerned that my reading tended towards the safe, comfortable, overwhelmingly middle-class, and that I thought no more of extending my range or stepping out of the comfort zone than I did of becoming vegetarian: it's reassuring to see that it's not necessarily the case. That I am capable of moving out of that zone with other voices. Standing out amongst the new books (shown in blue) are: In the Blue House, Mr Chartwell, Zola, The Bloody Chamber, Fludd, Whigs on the Green (for Mitford's lightest of touches) and Any Human Heart.
My only fails (to finish) were The House of the Spirits, and the Crimson Petal and the White - life is too short and reading time too precious to waste on books that don't make your very soul vibrate with excitement when you read them.

The run up to Christmas and new year will be spent revisiting some old friends - Pratchett, Gaiman, Austen and Masefield - I think another 4 can be fitted in before the 1st January dawns.
And next year? My mum has already handed me a copy of the Bookseller of Kabul, and I feel it's time to tackle writings from hotter, stranger countries than this damp and gloomy one I inhabit. Although I have promised myself a Bronte (Tenant of Wildfell Hall), a Duffy (The Bees) and a James (Death Comes to Pemberley); I'll be looking towards India, China, Afghanistan and Africa, to name but a few, to take me far away from daily life. Suggestions?

Eyre-ily So

2011-12-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

Whilst in Haworth waaaay back in October; the teen and I did pretty much as much Bronte stuff as we could, including a trip to Wycoller village. The hall is supposed to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre, which I have been re-reading this month.

To get there we had to park some way away from the hamlet itself and follow a tree-lined path that whorls and whirls around corners. Occasionally we would stop and ask someone coming in the opposite direction if this was the right way.

The main body of the village is set in a dip in the land, filled with the kind of honey-coloured houses that I immediately lust after. The size of the cars suggest that the only way I'd make it into one of them is as a governess though. And I don't have Jane's patience with small things.

Cross over the bridge, watching the clear water splash and play in the fading light. We'd left this visit till quite late in the day: "I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness of natural as well as sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked around in search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense, summer foliage..."

Glimpse black-edged ruins amongst the trees.

So this is Ferndean. I wonder what Charlotte made of it?

"...Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge..."

We looked and looked (well I did) for a Mr. Rochester striding forward, black eyes glinting beneath a heavy brow, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was still erect, his hair still raven-black; nor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled, or his vigorous prime blighted."

"It was as still as a church on a weekday: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage."

There was no rain, but turning leaves rustled in tree-tops, and the brook's constant chattering reminded us why it was considered a damp spot.

So we stepped quietly through gaps in the walls, watched the light play with the trees and wished for a moment we were rustling around in crinoline. Just for a moment.

"Then he stretched out his hand to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward."

Always Discovering

2011-11-25T01:32:00.000-08:00

I am reassured that, regardless of wherever I may find myself, who with, or what doing, I will never stop making learning things and making new discoveries. Here are some of this weeks:

1. this touching little note from the artist Georgia O'Keefe to her husband that makes me get more than a little choked up: 'fix your pillows nicely...'
2. A rediscovery of this song - it leaves me with goosebumps every time

3. The knowledge that no matter what, and in their own particular ways - whether it be my mum's garrulous hugs or my dad's silent arm round my shoulders - my parents truly are awesome.
4. That sometimes kittens are the only way to go.

5. Happy knowledge that Hilary Mantel isn't just stopping the story at Wolf Hall: we get to follow this through to the bitter, bloody end.

6. The story behind Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath: one of my favourite authors, sadly neglected in my bookshelves for too long, and the incidents that shaped a book. Which, in turn, had far more impact on me than Orwell's Animal Farm ever did.

7. Had you ever realised that the beech is the only tree to produce leaves that are leaf-shaped? As in child's-drawing leaf shaped? I hadn't until it was pointed out to me recently. I'm now staring at all trees to test the theory.

8. That my hair is now nearly long enough to plait and coil over the top of my head.

9. A book that keeps flagging up a major disaster about to befall its main characters will find itself placed firmly on the Top Shelf (where I keep the ghost stories, stories that make me weep and those I can't bear to read to the end of), and I'll root my copy of Jane Eyre out of the Teen's room to comfort read my way through the next couple of days.

So, I may not be American but these are the things I am thankful for. Oh, and the farm shop that sold plate-sized samosas thus solving my Friday afternoon "what the feck are we going to have for dinner tonight" panic.

Growing Pains

2011-11-16T06:09:00.000-08:00

The teen and I were sat on the stairs yesterday (this is not unusual: sitting on the stairs is my default place for middle of the night contemplation, serious daylight thinking and generally just sitting in peace when I can't take A.N.Other damn thing - it seems she has picked up on this trait), talking about the general horror that is being 13 and it's attendant woes.

Hormones (I'm with her on this, they utterly suck and the sooner the menopause hits this fluctuating form, the better)
Other kids
Other kids wanting to know why she doesn't want a boyfriend (again, completely with her on this, they utterly suck too and, as she pointed out, it always ends up with the girl crying in the playground)
Other kids and her reading habits.

Yep, others are proving the biggest hurdle towards adulthood: is she wearing the right thing, is she saying the right things in the right way, what music should she be listening too etc etc ad infinitum until I want to grab the unimaginative little buggers and shake them whilst yelling "Justin Beiber is a travesty of a mockery of a sham who makes all decent musicians want to gently weep into their guitars. And whilst I'm at it, pull your bloody trousers up - it's a waistband not an arseband."

However, my girl, my unique little eccentric is, for the most part, strong enough in her own character and happy enough in her own skin to be able to shrug these things off. She's not going to listen to Katy Perry just because you tell her to, she'll smile and nod politely before going off to a corner and switching her ipod to Laura Marling or Roddy Woomble.

But yesterday's barb stung. Her English teacher noticed she was reading Dracula which prompted a lively debate about the original vamp versus the weedy mock-goths in the Twilight stories. As I have pointed out to her (and she relayed to her teacher) - Dracula would have disowned poor little emotional needy Edward and thrown his sorry ass to the wolves for being so pathetic. If you're going to read about vampires, at least start with the original and the best.

A nearby boy looked my child up and down: "You read?" in tones of incredulity and horror usually reserved for the phrase "You eat babies?"
"Yeah I do."
"Weird."

Why? Why is this weird? Why, after the literacy campaigns, the endless re-imaginings of the Holmes/Bond genres, the library events, the thundering roar of a thousand excellent children's authors falling over themselves at literary festivals and bookstores to entertain the cloth-eared? Why is reading considered a weird thing to spend your time doing over, say, turning a small plastic steering wheel in your hands whilst facing a tv screen?*

By the end of our conversation, she was feeling better - still determined to listen to what she wants, read what she wants, do what she wants without compromise just to fit in. Which is hugely commendable and shows a strength of character virtually unknown in that age group. I am very proud of her. But, as I watch her wend her way back up the half a staircase to bed, I want to warn her just what a hard and lonely path that is to take.

*it should be noted that she also does this. As do I. Sometimes there really isn't anything better than guiding a small pizza delivery bloke around a series of illogical race tracks. God bless you Mario Kart

Seasonal Side Effects

2011-11-08T06:32:00.000-08:00

As exhilarating as this time of year is (yes, even with the dark drear mornings, the damp in the air, the mud underfoot - known in our house as the beginning of the Great Muddening that will see me daily mopping the floor after a trail of muddy paw prints), it brings colds.

Sniffles. Noses that neither allow you to breathe or move too far away from a reliable tissue supply. Hot itchy eyes. Coughs that would shame a 70 Galouise a day Frenchman. Sore throats eased only by honey and whisky in hot lemonade (that's all that will soothe mine anyway). A dollop of soft-tissued self pity, and a desire to be wrapped safely under blankets with a black and white film on, and possibly, if it's not too much trouble, some soup. Chicken please.

"...the first thing I did was to recall my delusions and send messages through to the anxious world. As I woke to the fever I thought of my subjects, and their concern always gave me comfort. Signals in morse, tapped out on the bed-rail, conveyed brief and austere intelligences.

'He is ill.' (I imagined the first alarm.) 'He has told his Mother.' (Some relief.) 'He is fighting hard.' (Massed prayers in the churches.) 'He is worse.' (Cries of doom in the streets.) There were times when I was almost moved to tears at the thought of my anxious people, the invisible multitudes up and down the land joined in grief at this threat to their King. How piteously they awaited each sombre bulletin, and how brave I was meanwhile. Certainly I took pains to give them something to be anxious about, but I also bid them be strong. 'He wishes no special arrangements made. Only bands and tanks. A parade or two. And perhaps three minutes silence."

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee.

Misty Wanderings

2011-10-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

Last Friday morning, I woke to the kind of misty autumnal weather that makes my heart leap about in a happy (and not at all heart-attacky) way. I love, just freaking love, autumn: the colder days, the colours, the foods, the way the weather will mess with your head, not to mention your hair.

So I grabbed the dog's lead, my keys, my phone (with its temperamental camera) and the mutt himself and headed down to my Camelot lake, to see the sun glow in an unearthly way through the damp air.

Passing many dew-beaded cobwebs that glistered in the weak light and my camera threw a tantrum, refusing to focus properly on anything that close, regardless of how beautiful I thought them, or how much I pressed down on the button and muttered curses through foggy breath.

There was a slight rush as I had other plans for the rest of the day but we sauntered far enough down to the arboretum with its 'Sleepy Hollow' like tunnels amongst the trees.

Certainly long enough for the sun to begin to win the battle, and make the colours of the leaves sing against the bark.

Later that day, after scooping up the Teen, we headed to Compton Verney for this exhibition, where the sun shone innocently down and baked our heads. Found myself unexpectedly moved by the works on show: the mothers and babies swimming freely, the old couple practising magic tricks together, the young couple picnicking by a tree-shaded pool. The sheer elemental joy that seemed to radiate from each one.

I fear I am becoming sentimental.

And we ran from thoughts of just what size arachnid would be able to create something like this:

Answer: a human sized one with two arms and an artist in residence permit. So not a spider at all. Which is a relief. The day those things start getting that big is the day I consider sealing my house and never leaving.

A suitably scary note to leave this Halloween day post on?

Wuthering Walk

2011-10-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

"I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society"

"But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day..."

"The sun shone yellow on its grey head , reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child's sensations flowed into my heart..."

"Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage...At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain."

"...turning to take a last glance into the valley, whence a light mist mounted and formed a fleecy cloud on the skirts of the blue...'It is not so buried in trees...but you can see the country beautifully all round; and the air is healthier for you - fresher and dryer..."

"...every breath from the hills so full of life, that it seemed whoever respired it, though dying, might revive..."

"...the windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones."

"...I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!'... As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window..."

"...one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few-stunted firs at the end of the house; by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun..."

"...listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth..."

By Candlelight

2011-10-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

I read the book by Susan Hill when I was an impressionable teenager. So impressionable it seems, that I've never been able to read it since. Or see the play. Or even the films.

Frankly even this trailer makes me want to hide under blankets with a torch.

But it seems right, in the last couple of weeks before Halloween, and with a trip up to Haworth at the weekend to honour the queens of Gothic fiction, that I should at least mention a modern Gothic classic.

Feel the fear...and run for your blankets anyway.

The Old Divides

2011-10-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Regular readers may wish to visit this link to get an idea of just why the following post is just so angry.

Some things never change and it seems that no matter how much they try to reach out and say they understand the struggles of those on less money, how much they want equal opportunities for all, how they want to raise children from poverty and ignorance - this government is happy to see the biggest divide of all take place.

Libraries, Mr. Prime Minister and the pet gibbon you call Deputy, are the only sources of free education left in this country. You don't need a uniform, the right shoes or even the latest flask with "Transformers IV: This Time It's Mechanical" plastered all over it. You don't even have to like school.
You need to have curiosity, an open mind, a willingness to be so awed by the world around you that all the books it contained couldn't satiate you. These things are free, and by these things, the most poverty-stricken child can raise itself above it's circumstances. With the FREE support of the local library.

My parents (who I adore beyond measure) took my sister and I to my local library every week: books were bought only for Christmas and birthdays; book tokens sent by busy aunts were things to be treasured and the spending of them would take days of careful deliberation. There simply was not the money to buy the sheer number of them that I wanted, so off to the library we trotted, every Saturday. By Sunday I would have read at least half of them, tottering cramp-legged out of my bedroom, drunk on words and the images they had conjured in my mind: places I could see, places no one would ever see, people, animals, plots. The minutiae of daily life could be transformed after having my mind blown wide open by the vast theories and spaces contained within plastic-covered paperbacks.

If you close them, what do you think will happen, apart from a further devaluing of the written word? Or do you really think that all our opinions should be formed by what we read in papers or see on the news? Hmm, the words 'Murdoch' and 'propaganda' spring to mind, completely unrelated I'm sure. With no access to free and unbiased literature, you have a generation growing up who's minds are closed, limited and unable to break free from their lives because they don't know there are any other ways of living. You turn them into automatons: waking, working, watching tv, sleeping to wake again and repeat the whole day, dulled into submission by endless fucking Top Gear repeats and National Lottery game shows.

But submissives, by their very nature, are easier to control, aren't they? Less likely to question your policies. Less likely to strike when you threaten to take their pensions away.

To close them is to deny the children you claim to be so concerned about a chance to access a truly astonishing range of literature that they couldn't hope to have at home. It is a snobbery to assume that everyone has access to an unlimited Amazon account. As much of a snobbery as assuming we all have access to organically hand-wanked salmon for our dinner parties. Or a Smythson 'Yummy Mummy' notebook.

Or a trust fund. For example. I think you may have heard of them.

Sunrises I Have Known

2011-10-13T04:59:00.001-07:00

Out of necessity, I have to walk the dog before 7am every morning. Necessary so that I can be out of the house by 8.10am and in work by 8.30am. Yep, sometimes areas of life have to be this regimented so that other areas can ebb and flow without leaving a washing pile large enough to make me cry.

On the plus side I often catch wildlife on the verge of waking: deer (red and roe) spindly-leg-stepping from amongst the trees; honking hordes of geese overhead; free-wheeling buzzards making the most of the breezy skies. The occasional irritable heron, cross that we've disturbed his breakfast fishing. Squirrels bouncing on branches and shouting at the trespassers.

And skies. Oh the skies. They really do make it all worthwhile.

Although it's now getting to be so dark, I need a torch to find my way through the trees where stray branches brush my neck and make me jump, and the rustle of mice make my heart pound. It's like walking through a Gothic screenplay every morning. On my own.

My fluffy tailed protector? Off looking for rabbits with nary a backward glance.

T'is the Season for it

2011-10-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

National Poetry Day seems like the right sort of hook to drag me back into blogging, whilst I reject the idea it needs to have theme, especially one that relates to the Olympics. Lord, how bored I am already about the Olympics. Maybe I should go abroad for 2012?

As I've been reading a mammoth biography of Laurie Lee and the apples are falling everywhere at the moment, this one seems more fitting than games.

Apples:
Behold the apples' rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with it's crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun's hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boy's teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
my entire season's dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

Whipping the Sticks

2011-08-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

Aah, Hugh Fearnley-Whippingsticks (thank you to Helen for the new unofficial moniker), how I do love you with your foodie zeal, ability to deconstruct an octopus in the bath (or was it squid? I don't know, stopped looking when I realised the black ink was real) without vomiting, willingness to look like an arse by getting drunk on national tv and then experimenting with hangover cures, and your slightly degenerate curls (which sadly seem to have disappeared recently). You have been more of a food mentor to me than any number of Jamie'th, Nigella's (look at my heaving buns) or stormin' Gordon's.

No one else has quite made the bucolic life seem so damn attractive, or made me contemplate for one, to all appearances sane, moment the building of a Chickenopolis. No one else would have made me consider for a minute the stuffing of a large puffball mushroom. That I didn't is neither here nor there, the fact is that I considered it before wishing again we lived nearer civilisation and a Thai takeaway place.

Sadly, my dearest, I feel we may have come to a parting of the ways.

I know, I know, I feel and share your grief: the parting is not of my doing - I would continue to follow you culinarily through the highways, byways, sinews and guttings of a true foodie genius. However a line has been drawn by the husband. For lo, in last Saturday's Guardian, did you preacheth the way of the vegetable and it is a way too far for a man so committed to a meat-at-every-meal diet.

Yes, he does see your point that the pressures of such a diet forces us to factory farming and unsustainable fishing, he agrees fully that a middle ground must be sought. But the day I get him to willingly consider lentils and beans as a viable protein substitute to sausages will be the day the Bernard Matthew's empire seriously considers closing down. One of national and incredibly localised celebration and tears of joy being wept in the streets.
Whilst I may drool over the sweet potato and peanut gratin, imagining great shining spoonfuls of it, he will wonder where the steak has disappeared. Whilst I will overcome my distrust of the fresh chilli to consider the silkyness of the chard and new potato curry, he will want to know where I've hidden the chicken.

Still I'll remain forever true, buy a copy of your new book, wrap the cover in brown paper and read it late at night to myself. This may just reach the parts The Crimson Petal and the White has failed to reach.

Two Go Off On An Explore

2011-08-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

To counter the notion (possibly sown by myself in the last two posts) that I did nothing but read during my two weeks away from the trudging, grinding mill that is work (actually, it's not that bad, on the whole I love it but these two weeks in the summer form a necessary recharging), I thought I'd best post some photos of Stuff What We Have Done.

"We" being me and the Teen. No, she did not ditch me for her friends. Yes, she did sting me for some new clothes and extra holiday money. In return I made her walk alongside me and have proper conversations.

We went to our very most favourite place in the whole wide world: Snowshill Manor. Once home to my own personal hero and somewhere I've been coming to since childhood when I used to not be able to go into the room with the Samurai costumes in case one of them moved. As it holds such a huge place in my heart, I overlook the rampant commercialism that seems to be invading all corners of the National Trust: the charging of £1.50 for a tiny pot of cream big enough for only 1 scone was particularly hard to swallow. Unlike the scone itself, which was lovely and soft, eaten to the backing track of an enthusiastic door greeter who shook hands with everyone entering, asking where we were from and appearing genuinely concerned that we had had a safe journey.

Ah, the National Trust...where retired men go to give their wives a break.

There would have been more photos of food but every time a plateful of something delicious turned up in front of me, I was halfway through before remembering that I was supposed to be keeping a record for this blog. So here are some cherries. Which were photographed last year, but I did eat some last week. Promise. And some apricots and nectarines. Gotta love the fruit this time of year - better than ice cream!

Oh and I bought flowers. Lots and lots of flowers! Not big bunches, just the odd stem here and there but they made even the rainy days seem brighter.

And shoes! How could I forget? The Teen and I managed to buy her uniform for the new school in a record thirty minutes flat (it's now all hanging in her wardrobe with tags still intact just in case there's a growth spurt before September). We also tried to buy shoes but the poor thing has feet so wide, it's nigh on impossible to buy anything that doesn't look as though it's been made with bunioned 80 year olds in mind: it becomes ever more tempting to just weatherproof some shoe boxes instead. I did manage to score though: behold the red loveliness!

Oh and we walked. We walked when it was sunny, we walked when it was overcast, I walked when it rained. Up hill, down wood, up more hill and along streams that struggled to babble as their water levels dropped. We picnicked, we spotted things, we swatted ineffectually at bastard flies that swarmed around the tops of our heads. I got soaked from head to foot and was forced to bring out the natty red waterproof coat, which I shall deny owning if anyone asks me.

The discovery of our very own Sleepy Hollow tree was worth all the tribulations though there was a notable absence of our very own Johnny Depp.

More Bookyness

2011-08-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

I have been doing other things apart from reading, I promise! But a post about those will have to wait for next week. For now, this is what I've read in the past seven days, and mighty fine all three were.

In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt: "But happiness wasn't like that. It came over, descended; sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. It was as intangible as mist. Something numinous...Above all when he thought of happiness, he thought of Frida...Frida swam into this world of choice and colour as if it were her birthright. She thought it was everyone's birthright."

The Last Cigarette by Simon Gray: "The best stories were the favourite stories, beginning them again made your toes tingle , and your eyes still popped with surprise at revelations you knew by heart - now, half a century later, I read some books again and again, most particularly Jane Austen...it's that I want to hear Jane Austen's voice, so personal and confidential, that has run through all my adult life, and makes me believe that I have a continuous self..."

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: "Yet I was myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone...I needed to be alone so that he could come back. This was the beginning of my year of magical thinking."

I do feel as though I've woken every morning and drenched myself in words, letting the minutes drift by without my customary rushing and panics. The Blue House took me easily away from the everyday, slightly back in time to when I was studying the Russian Revolution: I can remember staring down at pages of mug shots, the people, men and women, blank eyed with horror at what they knew was coming and I, at 16, had only the faintest of ideas. Wonderfully written, every page: nothing jarred, nothing felt out of place. More of this writer is needed.

Simon Gray, I've written about before: still as unsentimentally uncompromising about himself and those who surround him, he is an acerbic pleasure to wade through.

And the Year of Magical Thinking? A clear-headed account of how grief can derange and dislodge from reality even the most literate of minds: feeling wrung out by the end, her loss feeling like my own.

And that's it: I have one day left of my holiday, which I shall be using to sleep, catch up on a few things that escaped my attention. Well, they didn't escape, I let them slide past, but not for long. Tomorrow they must be tackled, for Monday we work. Somehow, it doesn't feel like 2 weeks since I was last there.

Catching Up Bookily

2011-08-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

Oh the sheer bliss of time and space (somehow found amongst the uniform shopping, food shopping, tidying and dog walking) to be able to do nothing more strenuous than stretch out on the sofa, and give over a few hours to reading - I had almost forgotten what a pleasure it is!

Down and Out in Paris and London: "I wish I could be Zola for a little while, just to describe that dinner hour. The essence of the situation was that a hundred or two hundred people were demanding individually different meals of five or six courses, and that fifty or sixty people had to cook and serve them and clean up the mess afterwards; anyone with experience of catering will know that that means. And at this time when the work was doubled, the whole staff were tired out, and a number of them were drunk."

Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi: "he had been promised risotto and the lack of the risotto meant that his desire for the risotto grew to be all consuming...the failure to consume the promised risotto became, in itself, so all-consuming that he could think of nothing but the risotto and his failure to consume it."*

Any Human Heart: "Some people never have any luck in their lives and during the years I loved Freya and she loved me I was awash in it. And then the bad luck came back.
"That's all your life amounts to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience. Everything is explained by that simple formula."

The Orwell was so evocative and real, I could smell the stinking piles of kitchen rubbish, hear the noises that disturbed his sleep at night and, momentarily, was put off eating out ever again (that quickly passed, I'm relieved to report).
The Boyd. Oh the Boyd. What to say? I loved this from opening letter to closing full stop. I wept buckets at parts, laughed at others and closed the covers at the end feeling as though I'd sat at the protagonist's shoulder throughout his life, just to let him go at the end. But I didn't want to let him go.

It's taken a couple of days to recover from that; now I've moved on to In The Blue House. Sooo looking forward to this: several years ago Meaghan Delahunt was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival and I heard her talk about this book, her first. Shallowly, because I was also there to listen to a once-teenage-crush, I didn't buy her book there and then. Sometimes feel as though I'm permanently trying to catch up with Books I Should Have Known.

* This isn't actually how the passage about risotto is written in Jeff in Venice: it is my very own sardonic homage to the fact he will take a word and repeat it until the poor thing begins to lose all meaning for you. In this case, risotto. Risotto, risotto, risotto. Yes, I love "that shit" too, but I'm momentarily sick of seeing it in written form. Repetition does not a national treasure make.

Rounding on July

2011-07-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

I did it, I did it! Finally, undaunted, bloody and bruised (really was if I fell asleep whilst reading, damn thing weighed a tonne) but unbowed, I clawed my way to the top of my own personal Everest. All 514 pages of a life. Yep. I turned the final page of Caravaggio last night and my brain would like to thank Andrew Graham-Dixon for a book so bleedin' well researched and written that I'm still slightly caught up in a time that isn't my own.

My wrists would like to thank me for reaching the end but want it noted that anything longer than 300 pages in the near future will result in them snapping.

I turned 35 and ate a Devon crab linguine here that was sooo good I wanted a private room. Just me and the linguine. Maybe that bottle of wine too. A do not disturb sign.

In the spirit of doing things I have never done before (please note this will neverever include paragliding, hot air ballooning, abseiling, parachuting, rock climbing or finding the loss of the News of the World a sad blow to journalism); I went to this festival. Where one sipped wine whilst admiring the views of rolling Cotswold hills unfurling as far as one's eye could see.

And saw this woman performing with her band, which included her younger brother (a person so very talented I was completely blown away by it), and a tiny willo-the-wisp of an accordion player. Seriously, the thing was half the height of her and twice the width. And if she wasn't hefting that thing around, she was clog dancing. Yes dancing. In clogs! Like a tiny, curly haired, stompy-footed whirlwind - have never seen anything like it.

Will hopefully get to see it again next year. Best evening I've had in many a year.

Took the teen to her first ball. Hmm. Whilst she looked sweet and like a 13 year old leaving middle school, there were some that did not. Some looked like they should be binge-drinking in Manchester city centre. I fear I am becoming as thin-lipped and prudish as a maiden aunt - surely only a few disapproving frowns away from wearing my spectacles on a handy chain around my neck so they can rest upon copious twinsetted bosom.

And I'm sorry, but a ball? For 13 years olds?? Who are all going to see each other again in September??? My inner maiden aunt just made a 'phshaw' noise.

Ooh, and am extremely, merrily, overthetopily demob happy, for today is my last day in work for TWO freaking weeks. Yup, the teen and I are having some quality time together. By which I mean I am taxi-ing her around from friends house to cinema to friends house to town to sleepover. In between all that I shall fit in reading some, if not all of the following: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; The Crimson Petal and the White; Down and Out in Paris & London; Any Human Heart; Travels with Myself and Another; and finally The Year of Magical Thinking.

I may be overestimating how much time I have.

Oh, and I would like to go down to the sea please. I don't need sunshine, or ice cream, or a classy place to stay: I just need sand between my toes, sea spray making my hair sticky and the sound of waves against pebbles.

Just Lightly So

2011-07-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Opening envelopes tucked up in bed on Sunday morning, I found a friend had sent me this one:

It will do as a new mantra, don't you think?

The Rain It Raineth

2011-07-16T06:05:00.001-07:00

Well today it certainly is as the Great British Summer once more pulls its party trick out of the bag and dumps the chilly, soggy contents of an Asia-sized cloud over our heads in one morning. But this is Britain, where the weather is as fluctuating as our waistbands, as changeable as a football crowd when their side suddenly loses an important point (or are they goals? I don't really know and suspect I'd stand at a match yelling 'Come on Tim' because all I really know is that I'm watching men in shorts running from one side of a field to another after a small ball (insert own gag here) - whether they kick or hit the thing with rackets is beyond my willing comprehension)..where was I?

Oh yes. Our weather varies, all right? It will tip down in the morning and suddenly clear to puppy-like innocence in the afternoon. You can start the day in a pretty little tea dress and end it in three layers of heavy-knit jumpers and some wellies. It can be foggy one end of the road and eye-stingingly bright at the other. And I love it. Love the fact that I'm now wearing my favourite black opaque tights in the middle of July (no I'm not kidding) and that I had to put my absolute favourite coat on this morning.

There are though, essential activities and objects needed for a rainy day:
- blankets and pillows: doesn't matter if you're nesting in bed, on the sofa or, please no, a floor, you must absolutely be surrounded by warm downy softness.

- books: old favourites, exciting new ones, that challenging biography of vast bigness that actually, yes, you will manage to get more than one well-researched page through before waking up half an hour later with a definite tender spot on your cheekbone where it clouted you as your grip loosened. Magazines and newspapers can also be added to the mix.

- the ingredients with which to make rock cakes. Basically cream together 4 ounces* of butter and sugar plus 1 egg, add the same of self raising flour, a handful of sultanas and some mixed spice. Mix well, add some milk if it looks a little dry, then scoop out with your fingers and splodge onto some grease-proof paper. Sprinkle with more sugar. Bake until they are golden brown and looking like, well, rocks (about 20 minutes). This was a staple make of mine when growing up - most Sundays involved rock cakes. Rainy Sundays most definitely did.

- Pyjamas and red shoes. Pyjamas so's your comfortable but decent should unexpected people ring the doorbell, red shoes so's when you do have to stand up, your feet are going to look cheerful.

- a chicken that's been thoroughly infused and stuffed with lemon, thyme and garlic: roast slowly, letting the smell fill the house. Serve in between great wodges of crusty bread with some mayonnaise and watercress. This is not a day for knives, forks or etiquette ('etty-ketty' as my Nan used to say).

- Something to watch: in our house that's all three Star Wars films (of course I mean the originals, refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the new ones. What new ones?), two series of Blackadder, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail followed by Rebecca - the original with Sir Larry doing his best stiff-upper-lip thing.

- Mugs of tea x many. Made strong. To be swapped for wine once the sun is considered to be over the yard-arm. You may decide the timing of your own personal yard-arm, judge ye I shall not.

However you may choose to spend this weekend - battling elements, dozing under blankets, sending up offerings of joy for the momentous occasion that is my birthday - I wish you happy eating of it.
*yes I still measure in pounds and ounces, or lbs and ozs if you will. Was bought up to measure that way and will die measuring that way, no matter how much Hugh FeW tries to make me bake for the other side.

Before the Cake and Wine

2011-07-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

T'is my real birthday this weekend: I have been promised cake and wine, amongst other things.
So, as a birthday treat to me, from me (well, not me really, my old English A level teacher who encouraged me to see beyond the dirge-like Hardy poems we were studying all those years ago), this is my very favourite poem.

Attics

A room, unutterably feminine,
A room she dreamed, but painted by Gwen John -
I see a white-distempered attic in
Her mind, pastel, and faintly put-upon
By men, who cannot understand the light
From the window, lingering on the lace
Curtain's folds, or the disturbing woman-white
Illumination on the mirror, almost a face.
A girl is sitting on a fragile chair
With her sad brushes and her thoughts, her hair
In tints of autumn, and her skin says, Kiss,
Kiss, kiss my skin, for I am touch and sense
Brushed womanly into this eloquence,
Unclothed in paint to teach you nakedness.

Douglas Dunn: Elegies

What a difference...

2011-07-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

...a year makes.

Yup my lovely followers of taste and distinction, I am a completely whole 12 months blogging older, and 2011 marks the second year of my attempts to describe my life and its associated doings with some sort of clarity and reason. Hmm. We'll just glide right past that one shall we?

And in this past year, just what new nuggets of golden information have I panned from the river of life?

Never, ever to write a sentence like the above ever, ever again on pain of having all my blogging privileges revoked and my fountain pen ceremoniously broken in front of me.

That my obsession with Paris has grown and stretched to become an obsession with travelling in general. I have a whole world's itinerary mapped out now. And my Mum may think I got her the Lonely Planet magazine subscription for her birthday as a thoughtful gift, but I know that it was really so I could get my hands on it after her.

Actually, as she knows me so well, she'll have already seen through that and is no doubt planning her revenge. I'm half expecting a delivery of 'The Good Granny Periodical', or 'The Royal Family Weekly'.

That my brief experimentation in the chunky heel will leave me hobbling with both ankles twisted and resolutely back in flat shoes, regardless of what the chiropractor may say - bring on the flat-footed padding.

That whilst I like getting up at 5am most mornings, Saturdays have become essential 'lie-in' days when to disturb is to risk an elbow around the chops.

That age will have caught hold of me by the collar and announced "you are too old for this shit" - this being sleeping in the back of the car as a viable alternative to calling a cab or staying sober at a friend's 30th birthday party.

However, it appears that I am not too old for:
long lengths of plastic beads,
plaiting my hair,
attempting to sit on swings (here it seems my arse and I are going to have to disagree),
using the phrase "oooh" when excited about something,
sniggering at a really good double entendre,
sniggering at an entendre that's not so much double as so obvious you could poke your eye out on it.

That I will and do use text and youth speak in a completely ironic and detached way, thus indicating its inherent ridiculousness, innit. LOL.

That no matter how surreal I may find my days becoming, it is a constant privilege to be sharing it with others - be they family, friends or bloggers.

That I'm not really comfortable with overt mushy emotional stuff, so that's more than enough from me or I shall start sniffling and counting my blessings. From that we are a mere hop, skip and musical number away from Doris-Day-ness. And no one needs that.

Aaaallll together now! "Que sera, sera..."

Breaking it

2011-07-04T05:50:00.000-07:00

This month's quote from C.S. Lewis seemed to fit the way I've been with this blog recently. And, it has to be said, with really real people too. A certain amount of pulling back, retreating and regrouping my thoughts. It's not a good thing for me to be doing - my thoughts dominate far too much of me as it is.

So out I go into the bright shiny world and attempt to make contact. And am almost instantly damn near blind-sided by an elderly old man who clearly thought my indicator flashing right actually meant left and pulled out in front of me. Being the very model of restraint and decorum, I avoided honking the horn, yelling through the window or even making graphic but silent gestures with my left hand. But I did think them as I drove on with knees suddenly made wobbly.

The child and the husband returned from their grungy experience apparently free from dysentery, gangrene or enforced U2 listening. Small mercies. And bless my child for she hath forsaken the Glasto way as she doesn't like the toilets - I'm not to tell her dad but she 'prefers hotels'. That's my girl.
Although it doesn't bode well for her second career of saving the tiger in India.

In their absence I read, wrote, crafted, walked, shopped, lay in bed for far longer than I normally get to, talked to the cat, listened to music.
Ate simple grilled fish without someone poking at it with the tip of a fork: 'but it's not battered'.
Shopped for a very long time with my Mum. Well, she shopped, I bought pencils from the RSC that say '2B or not 2B' on the side of them. Verily shopping happiness is made up of such essentials.
Visited a friend and laughed so hard, muscles ached the next morning.
Revelled in the echoey silence of my normally too-small house.

And now? Well now, the house is too small again, the dog is shedding hair as though he were being paid to, and I have earned myself brownie points for being so damn wonderful about letting them go in the first place. Summer is looming and plans must be made, new uniform must be bought and friends in further away (East Sussex - we're crossing borders here, people) places visited. But first? Think I might just sit in the sun, listening to the bees, for a little while longer.

Maybe go pick some raspberries to eat like sweets.

Waterproofs and Wellington Boots

2011-06-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ahh Glastonbury...

The tor, the abbey ruins, the countless hippy shops offering to read your tarot/palm/tea leaves. The occasional outburst of tango in the streets. The bookshops. The prize-winning fish and chip shop (seriously).

This is the Glastonbury I've merely passed through a couple of times but love. Who does not need more crystals, wind chimes and runic necklaces? See, look, look how peaceful:

The husband however, prefers this version:

Rowdy, noisy, sometimes muddy, always funny, never with enough toilet facilities (for me anyway). This year he takes the teen with him. Umm, yes. It's possible I may be a little worried.

She's in the very best of best hands but still.

Apparently the family fields are full of places where she can learn to juggle, unicycle, tumble like a clown, listen to poetry, become at one with her inner, meditative hippy. She can run riot with the face paints or merely go in circles on the traditional fairground rides.

He has promised to take her to listen to this man speak - the thought of which has left her delirious with joy. She has money with which to buy assorted prayer wheels, mini broomsticks, beaded necklaces and pan pipes. She has enough anti-bacterial wipes to clean the entire festival. An amount of credit on her phone that would normally last her 6 months. Waterproofs (the cause of some sulking as they are NOT cool) and wellington boots. A sleeping bag, ear plugs, eye mask and enough changes of clothes for several festivals.

But still.
Dysentery is a possibility.

I wonder if I could just wrap her in surgical cling-film and attach a tracking device?

Snapshots and Soundbites for the Short of Time

2011-06-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

It's kind of reassuring that no matter how grown up the teen may pretend to be, the idea of creating her own ice-cream dessert will still bring on a bout of squealing for joy. That it has the same effect on the husband is not so reassuring.

The roses this year bloomed early: spectacularly and briefly. Petals are smooshed on the ground underneath now thanks to some pretty heavy rain over the weekend.

A pretty damn fantastic splashback in my friend's new cafe venture - where the coffee was good, the cake even gooder and I got to play shops for a couple of hours in the guise of 'helping'.

And the even more fantastic view from it's site not far from the Malverns. Camera phone really not doing it justice: one of those 'ta-DAH' moments the English landscape likes to throw our way every now and then.

The frankly awesome cover of the new notebook I bought from this place on a rainy Sunday - before finding somewhere warm and flapjack-filled to while away an hour.

Whilst the books on the sidebar over there on the right may not be changing, reading has not necessarily stagnated. It's just there's been a return to the previously read, the comfortable and comforting. Basically nothing that's going to ask my brain to perform beyond it's tired capabilities in the evening. So: Marrying the Mistress, a collection of Zola's short stories, The Italian Affair and Then We Came to the End. Now zipping through Aphrodite's Hat by Sally Vickers.

And now begins the Great Glastonbury Countdown. No, not for me. Camping? The very idea!

On the use of bananas as a useful prop

2011-06-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment, if you will, a woman coming down the stairs and flopping back onto the sofa next to her daughter. She's relaxed for the first time all week, blissed out and happy after a very satisfying bath. Eyes closed, she's only vaguely aware of the ads running from the tv in the background, some twinkly starry noises and a woman's low voice muttering about something or other.

"Mum?"
She opens one eye to look at daughter, following her gaze to the screen. A long fingered cartoon woman is making a condom packet float through the air. Oh shit.

"Yes?" {pleasebeaboutschool, pleasebeaboutschool, pleasebeaboutschool}
"I don't understand how they get them on."
"Get what on?" {pleasebeaboutshoes, pleasebeaboutshoes, pleasebeaboutshoes}
"Get those things on," a small hand is waved in the direction of the screen.

A wide-eyed wild glance around the room provides no route for escape; the husband is out walking the dog; the cat is unhelpfully not demanding to be fed and the phone is the most silent its been all week. Take a deep breath dear, there's no escaping. Suck it up. So to speak.

"Well, child o' mine...thing is...when...you see...certain things..."
An innocent expectant gaze meets the not-so-innocent panicked one, the owner of which is fighting an overwhelming urge to run giggling hysterically from the room.

"Have you not been told all about this in school?"
"No. I think we're just beginning those lessons."
Oh.
I wonder if we have any bananas left?

Books to Grow With

2011-05-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

The child is nearly 13. Yup, in exactly 15 days she will stop being the child and become The Teen - a moniker that scares several levels of hell out of me because I remember the stroppy unprincipled brat I started to become the minute 'teen' was added onto my age.

I could always refer to her as the 'Small Grownup' but as she's only an inch shorter than me, that would be A Lie. Or the 'pre-adult'? No. That sounds like a section in a video rental store. Possibly 'the Brave' as she has coped with bullies, fracturing friendships and a generally shifting world with good humour and just a few tears.

'The Untidy' as befits one who cannot see, despite being asked, that there are books on the floor, crumbs on the sofa and glasses in her room?

Or possibly 'The Slightly Ruthless but Quite Ambitious' as she informed me the other day that she won't be having children. Why? Can't be a physicist and save tigers with children hanging around apparently.

Well, quite.

And as she changes, so do her reading tastes. No longer satisfied with Harry Potter (thank god - how many times do you need to read the same 7 stories over and over again?), sneering of the teen-vampire-doomed-love genre that seems to be filling bookshops at the moment, and yet not ready for Austen or Bronte, she's stuck. So, to mark her day, I'd like to get her 13 books that should carry her through the next few turbulent years with grace, wisdom and humour. A bit of drama wouldn't go amiss either.

So far I have: Cold Comfort Farm, Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, Animal Farm, I Capture the Castle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Robber Bride, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings...hmm. 6 more to find. A little help? What would you have most appreciated being given at 13?

Engraved

2011-05-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so not everything has been panicky, or consumed by the gloom and the fret. I took time to visit a friend at her gallery where the annual Society of Wood Engravers exhibition was on.

We chatted, and I stared at the engraving above her head. No, shake my head at fleeting thoughts of folly. We drank coffee and I stared a bit more. No again. Took the entire world by it's ankles, shook it for interesting conversational pockets and I took a longer, closer look. Umm...maybe? No.

Went to say goodbye with hugs and promises to be in touch. Oh go on then.

I am now the proud owner of a Sue Woollatt, spending many moments gazing at the crooked little houses in their crooked streets. Imagining myself by the sea.

So, A Pause...

2011-05-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

Have been plagued recently by the feeling that all the threads of my life are slowly, slowly, picking up speed, slipping from my fingers. It wasn't until last Sunday when I rolled up my sleeves and reclaimed some territory and mind space for my own that I could get it to abate somewhat. Cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom may not be everyone's path to inner peace but, bloody hell, it worked for me.

At least, it has for the moment.

Snapshots from the day job: this occupies my thoughts more and more. Even on trips to other museums and galleries, I can't switch off but am constantly looking around, making mental notes for the things I could do, would like to do, could never manage.

Taking the air: wandering around ruined old abbeys that we've been to before but seeking a peace away from the blanket chaos that was the May bank holiday. Take note - one man's thoughtless graffiti is another's archaeological discovery.

Discoveries: every time we come here, more of the old medieval wall paintings seem to reveal themselves. Once all our churches were covered from ceiling to floor with scenes from the bible, the better to illustrate moral messages to a largely illiterate population. Whitewashed over once the Puritans began to gain the upper hand and insisting on plain, bare, white buildings, they are gradually revealing themselves.

Listening to: with an almost greedy passion, this track from the Unthanks new album.

Reading: hmm, how to admit this? Since finishing I Capture the Castle, I've stalled. Picking up and putting down just a few pages later, wandering off to leave them abandoned on beds, sofas, next to the bath. So far I have started a Mantel, a Lawrence Durrell, Isherwood's Berlin stories, Pride & Prejudice and can we please not mention the Caravaggio?

So. Things are slightly disjointed at the moment. My most still moments are either first thing in the morning, or late at night: I think this is called being a Grown Up. And my mum would say that she did try to warn me. Damn, but that woman's always right.

Noble Deeds

2011-04-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

Was in a sleep-deprived fug of crossness and self-pity for most of Easter (well I was working), until I read these four sentences:

"Oh joyous thought, tonight is my bath night! And if Stephen is in, it must be tea-time. I shall go down and be very kind to everyone. Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression"

Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle

Sometimes nothing but a hot bath will make the world feel right again.

And the noble deed? Giving away something I made and would love to keep for myself. Go see t'other blog for details.

Rarities

2011-04-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

The day job sometimes throws open hidden doors to priest holes, unknown files and unopened boxes of fossily treasure.

Yesterday, carefully turning the pages of a rare 16th Century "Matthew" Bible, recording any damage to the pages, I came across this image, hidden in pages I've never previously turned.

Adam, Eve and a plethora of wildlife.

Days like this make up for any amount of broken heating, draughty doors and mysterious creakings.

Yellows, Blues and Sleepy Golden Hazes

2011-04-19T02:05:00.000-07:00

For once in this currently short-lived yet long-feeling year, plans were not scuppered by weather, unexpected guests, calender fuck-ups or my own revoltingly bad mood. So, dammit, up the hill we were headed, making like the von Trapps but without the singing, clothes made from curtains or ex-nun. So not like the von Trapps at all.

Which is always going to be a good thing.

Through the churchyard,

past the crumbling tombs (I'm afraid I agree with Lucy Mangan - they really do provide an education beyond just history) where we tried to decipher names,

Past fields of rape that made the air shimmer with their overpowering fragrance

skipping under natural arches created by fallen branches,

over the stream in ways both unconventional but direct...

...and conventional (well these are my new trainers and I didn't want them ruined in a stream on their first outing. Besides, if you're going to paddle it should always be barefoot).
Until we reached this place:

and the air stilled, quietened and let us rest, breathing in a heady scent of bluebells, so very reminiscent of this book that for a moment I was transported to a crumbling, moated castle...

...until the sound of 3 different cameras whirring and clicking away broke the peace.

"Why? Why?" I demanded to know. "Why do you need to take exactly the same shot I am?"

"Because my camera's better than yours, not to mention my eyesight," replied the husband.

Just because he has a point does not make it ok to mention it but it's too nice to sulk, there are groups of people all waving plastic-covered copies of this very walk and wearing sensible shoes heading this way, and the pub is but a short journey away, so back we head.

Down different footpaths, past randomly abandoned balloons,

and thence to the pub.

Where at least two of these were necessary for a recovery. Not to mention the roast beef sandwiches.

Some napping may have taken place in the afternoon, but I figure I earned it.

Things Learnt Thus Far

2011-04-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

That falafels are possibly the only things to eat on a Friday being both delicious and nutritious whilst allowing you to feel full and slightly cosmopolitan in your approach to lunchtime.

Sometimes feeling a little cosmopolitan is needed to get you through the next 4 hours without wanting to put your head through the computer screen.

That Fire Risk Assessments do not get more interesting or less frightening with long acquaintance. But nor do they put you off the idea of candle-lit baths.

That an early-morning walk can reveal Excalibur's last resting place:

See?

I am yet to be unconvinced.

That my miraculous, wonderful phone can indeed survive an unexpected dunking with no more than some odd buzzing noises for an hour afterwards.

The new album from the Unthanks is a work of flawless folky genius, but on the way to work, sometimes you have to let the diva out with this from Ms. Amos.

First of the season asparagus is waiting for me at home: a whole two bunches all to myself, bringing a note of class to the "it's-been-a-long-week-here-are-some-fish-fingers" dinner that's planned.

May just skip the fish element and eat asparagus with my fingers.

That this is my 293rd post in 18th months and I still cannot get the spacings right on blogger - this actually takes longer than writing the post.

I think the 300th needs celebrating, but I'm not sure how yet. Answers on a postcard please!

Wishing you all the very best 'gras-y, diva-releasingiest, legendary, candle-iest weekend: I plan to sleep late, read more of the book I'm struggling with, build a castle in the sky (or house amongst trees) and eat hot-cross buns because it's nearly Easter. Even for atheists.

Superly Blogging

2011-04-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

I still seem to be finding life a struggle between reality and the dreamings of my own brain, which has led to whole hours being wiled away, staring into space (tip: this will really help you get things done and the people you share your life with will love it). For example, I think I lost a whole afternoon musing about what kind of super-powers I would actually want.

N.B. these are entirely subjective and the desired superpowers of the writer at the time of writing. She reserves the right to have different ones to any readers and to change her mind as and when something else really gets on her nerves.

1. The freakish ability to summon up a small, whirling dervish of pure energy that will sweep from one from to another tidying, vacuuming, dusting and scrubbing: sucking all the crud up into a seemingly insatiable mouth.
2. Whilst I may have already inherited my mum's bat-like ears (capable of detecting the rustle of an illicit crisp packet being opened 2 rooms away), and eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head, I'd still like that ramped up a few notches please, so I can hear what's being muttered sotto voce (if not just thought) in other houses, as well as the ability to see through walls and around corners.
3. I'd also like to stand heroically, pointing my finger at some miscreant, proclaiming loudly "I command you to feel empathy" with pink and orange sparks flying about my head, thus altering forever, their personalities for the better.*
4. I would be able to change whatever piped music is assaulting my ears, in any given shop at any given time,, just by merely raising an eyebrow. Rhianna offering umbrellas in the bank? I don't think so.
5. Malfunctioning appliances would be fixed by a simple pat on the side. Obviously, I'd be able to do this with the really important, big things (nuclear power plants for example**), but also the small and globally unimportant things like the washing machine that has decided to break down with a full load of wet washing locked inside.
6. With a wink of an eye, I'd be transported to whichever country I felt like visiting, with whomever I chose to visit it with, because even superheroes need to get away from everything now and then.

It goes without saying that I will not be dressing in leotards, pants worn outside shiny blue leggings, boob tubes, or any other god-awful outfit creation foisted upon all previous female superheroes ever since pubescent man learned how to how a 2B pencil in his left hand. No, I shall be sensibly dressed in jeans (with deep pockets for my zapping Wand of Justice - steady now, you at the back - for verily it shall be called that despite the opportunity for deliberate misunderstandings); my trusty red Docs with which to stamp on evil-doers; my vintage top of 90s indie brilliance and the fabled Beads of Truth fashioned from the finest 1920s amber-like resin.
I shall, in short, kick ass.

* on a purely personal and shallow note, I'd like this power used first on a certain chairman of a certain building society. In no way, no how is it ever the right thing to do to leave people sitting under a redundancy axe for 18 months and then make apparently arbitrary decisions based on whether you like the cut of their jib, or colour of their tie, or whatever half-arsed reasoning you are using. It should never, ever get to the point where a tribunal is threatened because you are too much of a, well, git to treat others with any shred of humanity. May your personal pension wither henceforth.

** obviously I'd also be able to create an alternative energy source, so there'd be no need for nuclear power, or fossil fuels or Jeremy Clarkson. If you're going to be a superhero, you may as well do something really BIG and planet-changing.

Of Disconnected Duchesses and Cake Sales

2011-04-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

It's fair to say that March has been a peculiar month for me. Or rather, I have been a peculiar individual this March. A feeling of being utterly disconnected from my day to day life has followed me around, jabbing me in the ribs during meetings, occasionally tripping me up, generally making a day trickier and more complicated than it has any right to be.

I make arrangements for friends to come over for dinner only to discover it clashes with a family birthday where the pack drill is rightly that we are all gathered unto the maternal fold once more. The instant reaction of a sane me is to rearrange the friends there and then, apologising for the mix-up: instead the disconnect makes me feverishly rejig the day around and around for days, in my head, trying to accommodate everyone, until eventually the husband steps in with a firm 'don't be stupid'.

Ring the bell at the chiropractors: 'Morning,' I chirp at the receptionist who stares at me in some puzzlement. Sit myself down in the usual seat and stare the opposite wall for a whole 5 seconds before standing myself back up, and declaiming, like some feathered and bejewelled dowager duchess "I do not belong here" and making a stately exit. I really didn't. My appointment is next week.

Find myself incapable of even making a decision as to where to walk the dog in the morning: weighing up each of the options every time, calculating the risk of running into other people at the unholy hour of 6am against the likelihood of the dog taking off after rabbits and having to be tracked down in some muddy, ditchy hedge. Invariably I make the same choice, and invariably I hit my head on the same branch every time.

The disconnect isn't reserved entirely for my enjoyment though: the child is susceptible too. Feverish in her attempts to change the world via the powerful medium of the cake sale, she has me baking three different types one evening after work. At 7.30pm we stop: clammy of brow, floury of hair and chocolatey of fingers (ok, so that may have been a bonus). Clothes are rumpled with a dusting of icing sugar and every surface looks as though we've exploded a box of Mr Kiplings: we are skippity-skipping our tired way around the various dropped candied and dried fruits on the floor. The next day dawns and I wash the remaining fairy cake batter from my hair, continue with my day and collect her from school.
Me: all ready for tomorrow's cake sale?
Child: oh, it's not till next week
You are freaking kidding me.

She is not and Every. Single. One went in the freezer. Saving the world is all very well, but it takes organisation. Best she learns it now with cakes.

2011-03-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's taken its own sweet time about it, but finally, finally Spring has made it's springy little way into my step. After starting March thinking I would never feel warm again, I have cautiously been able to remove the cardigan that has been an almost permanent feature since November (was genuinely concerned it might put up a fight and fuse itself to my wrists). Of course, being a good English girl, the vest stays on until May's out.

Some of this abundance of exuberance (sorry, tortured sentence but actually quite liked the way those 2 words sounded so close together) is down to the Blessed Parent's safe return from New Zealand where, just 20 miles north of Christchurch, they had seen the ground rolling under their feet like solid green waves. As well as views like the one above. All the photos have the same incredible dragon-spined background which means the eye is automatically drawn away from the foreground.

Is there any other country with such BIG scenery?

Walking the dog now takes place just as the sun is rising over the tops of trees and houses, startling birds into song and the crows into, well, crowing. Loudly. The odd early bumblebee crosses our path and the dog darts here and there, driven to distraction by the scent of a hundred now-invisible rabbits.

Watching the crows in the trees could become a full-time occupation: preening and shouting at each other, showing off the splendour of their nests. Except for the youngsters. These poor things flap back to their chosen branches, whiskery twigs poking out of the sides of their beaks and, like children starting a jigsaw, drop the pieces down and stare at them as though that's enough to make them magically assemble into a female-tempting nest.

The ground underneath is littered with failed attempts.

The weekend and a possible resolution to the husband's job situation looms. Having dragged on since last Summer, the end may be nigh. Or it may be postponed for another year. Frankly not sure how much more of the circular conversation I can bear having, so I shall be listening to Paul Temple (fully indulging my camp escapist side) and attempting to find the surface of my desk.

Having failed at this a couple of weeks back, I am determined to complete this last little bit of Spring cleaning before the child and I settle down to our weekly fix of Prof. Cox.

*small sigh*

On the other hand, watching the clouds go by does seem like a very legitimate pastime too.

Crooked Ways

2011-03-09T08:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a funny old week: clearly all the painting and shifting of furniture triggered something in my back because I've been laid up for the last few days with something nasty going on in the region of my lower spine. A very nice chiropractor is sorting it for me and the ability to stand and walk without looking like Julie Walters in Acorn Antiques is a huge improvement

A confident stroll around a nearby town quickly turned into farce as my pace grew slower and slower and the pavement appeared to be rising up to meet me as I gradually grew more stooped. Made it back to the car, buying daffodils en-route to cheer myself up. Despite not being a very active person on a day to day basis, I do take being able to move freely for granted.

According to my chiropractor, the 'body thrives on movement...' blah blah bleh. I prefer to think that it doesn't, especially as it appears that turning the pages of a book is not enough movement. Not even one as large as Caravaggio. Yes, it has arrived and I can't even read it! Too heavy to hold in the prescribed position, it's going to have to wait for a bit. Luckily I had this arrive in the post towards the end of last week:

Joan over at the wonderful Flowers and Stripes blog had organised a giveaway, and my name came out of the purple beret! Hadn't read Whigs on the Green before but had long been intrigued by it as the book that caused an enormous blow-up between the Mitford sisters - the fascists of them objecting to the comedic lampooning of their cause and, in Diana's case, lover. Nancy Mitford refused to allow its reissuing during her lifetime saying that "too much has happened for jokes about Nazis to be regarded as funny or as anything but the worst of taste".

"At this point a very old lady came up to the crowd, pushed her way through it and began twitching at Eugenia's skirt. 'Eugenia my child,' she said brokenly, 'do get off that tub, pray, please get down at once. Oh! when her ladyship hears of this I don't know what will happen.' "

So I made myself a small nest of knitting, book, newspaper, red & white spotted tea pot and mug, and settled in for the weekend (yes, I remembered to get up every now and then, and walk around for a bit). By the end of Sunday, even the child could see I was bored and picked me these:

I'm now back at work and slowly, slowly returning to normal - can't wait for the day when I can finally bend properly and pick things up! Have taken to standing mutely next to things and pointing at them, in the manner of a distressed silent film heroine.

Needless to say, it isn't working.

Painterly Ways

2011-03-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

The contrast between a week off for the child and a week off for myself could not be greater: she has enjoyed days with her friends or lying around reading, drawing, playing on various computery things whilst eating crisps. Me? I've painted the inside of the house, in a whirling fury of resentment that the damn walls need doing again.
I am not a natural decorator as the splashes on the floor, in my hair, on my feet, glasses and clothing will attest. To be done and done quickly is the only goal. In consequence, 3 rooms may have been done in 2 days but the evidence of the doing is trodden into the carpet or smudged on the ceiling.
The temptation to wrap all surfaces in plastic is growing. Anything so that I never ever have to shift wardrobes, pianos or yet another pile of bloody books (yes at times like this, even I will agree that there are maybe too many) ever again.

On the plus side, the gleaming walls with their invitingly plain surfaces, like a toddler's face scrubbed clean for Sunday best, have provided me with a place to put the wall hanging I made a couple of months ago.

As always when I've finished a book that takes me in as much as Mr. Chartwell did, I'm flailing around slightly, not entirely sure which way to turn with my next read. Polished off the Angela Carter within a day of buying it, and can't quite face William Boyd at the moment: I even pottered around the idea of picking up the Time Traveller's Wife again before remembering that I'm too busy to shut myself away for 3 days. So I've had a moment of almost-spring madness and splashed out on a copy of Andrew Graham Dixon's Caravaggio which I had ordered from the library, but judging by the length of the list of people before me, it could have been Christmas before it was free. A biography of someone far removed from me is just about right for now. Although, judging by its size, I shouldn't read this lying down: there's a real danger of accidental black eyes if this thing slips.

There's been so little on tv to appeal and what I have tuned into has had my fists clenched in fury as the presenters all fall foul of the condition known as 'Schamaism'. First coined when I watched Simon Schama present the otherwise excellent History of Britain; it can now be seen to have spread and infected most male presenters of anything historical or even mildly interesting. The head bobs back and forth, the arms flap, the camera pivots round them as they continue to speak with the utmost sincerity, sentences are uttered with Emphasis on Random words thrown here and There.
Oh, and the worst, the very worst of these things are the little cut aways to someone stood in historical dress looking thoughtful and a little melancholy. As I have a longer attention span than 2 minutes, this really gets on my nerves - I don't need a red-headed woman in pearls and ruff pulling the sort of face she thinks Elizabeth I would have pulled at court.
So pay attention Sebastian Faulks. Your series on fiction was excellent all on its very own. No more of it.

Happier things have also occurred: tulips, meals with people I want to spend time with, long conversations, syrup sponge puddings, big enough gaps in the rain to venture outside. Actual sunshine. Plans. Daydreaming whole afternoons away. Winning the giveaway on the truly excellent blog Flowers & Stripes - thank you Joan, can't wait to read this!
I am happy. Now when did that happen?

On Reading Alice Walker in the Mornings

2011-02-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

"These mornings of rain
when the house is cozy
and the phone doesn't ring
and I am alone..."

'Muuummmm!'
What?
'I can't find any socks!'
Have you checked the drawer? Or the laundry pile? Or under your bed? ... Got some?
'Yeah but they don't match.'
Are they both white?
'Yep!'
Then they'll do.

"...These mornings of rain
when my lover's large socks
cushion my chilly fee..."

'We're out of rolls!'
Try looking in the bread bin.
'Got them! Where's the cheese grater?'
In the cupboard. And the bread knife is in the knife block, and the butter's in the fridge.

"...t
and meditation has made me one
with the pine tree
outside my door..."

Greebo, drop it! Bad cat - no live mice in the house. Out, outoutoutout, Out!

"...These mornings
in Fall
when I have slept late
and dreamed
of people I like..."

'Has anyone walked the dog?'
In a minute.
'I don't think he can wait a minute.'
Alright, alright, I'm going.

"...These mornings
I do not need
my beloveds' arms about me
until much later
in the day..."

'Mum quick, I need a pound.'
Why? Why do you?
'You know, lunches, pens, stuff'
Your lunch is here, see, in this box.
'Yeah I know. Can I have a pound now please?'

"...On these blustery mornings
in a city
that could be wet
from my kisses
I need nothing else..."

Right, that's it, time's up, everybody out. Come on, outoutoutout!
'Jeez, I'm going.'
Have you got your PE kit? Why are you still eating toast?
'Yes I have and I'm still hungry.'
Go, go, the bus is here! Don't slam the...door.

"...And then again,
I need it all."

Mr Chartwell Calls

2011-02-18T06:17:00.000-08:00

We all know that Winston Churchill suffered depression, a condition he referred to as his 'Black Dog' conjuring up a large, mammoth-pawed creature padding silently and malevolently behind him. Rebecca Hunt writes something quite different: Churchill's dog isn't silent - he's loud, opinionated and surprisingly funny.

" 'The D'urbervilles. Thomas Hardy wrote that she had a smile like roses full of snow.' He shuffled his head about. 'I paraphrase. It was something similar, perhaps that. Either way, a nice smile.' He lifted the skin of his muzzle to show her, flaunting hooked fangs in a mossy mass, some damp grey, some dappled brown, a few in curving tusks.

Esther took in the exhibition of teeth. No roses of snow, it was a split haggis stuck with shards of coconut bark. "

Her dog is a heavy, visceral, filthy presence that invades the home, lies across the legs making movement impossible; scrabbles filthy giant paws over your carpets and bedding; punctures conversations with jeering asides as easily as he punctures bones.

" He cracked at the bone with the egg-sized molars at the rear of his mouth. An eye tightened in a squint. The bone crushed into fragments. Black Pat's muscular tongue worked to get at the marrow inside. Splinters scattered over the table and cards, teeth grating. "

And yet there is something almost seductive about this stinking, lumbering creature: he promises a lifetime of unremitting devotion and companionship. The attention you've been seeking, he can offer regardless of how you look or how badly you behave.

" 'I was loyal to him, devoted,' countered Black Pat. The words came through an unusual smile, 'And I'm devoted to you.' The desire was alcoholic, making him teasing. he hammered a paw to his chest. 'I'm devoted. Esther, this...' his paw pounded at the chest in demonstration, '...this is devotion.' That coaxing, the animal masculinity of him, they urged her relentlessly. 'Come on,' Black Pat pleaded, 'I'm here now, Esther. Let me stay.' "

But the best words, the best ways of dealing with him come from Churchill himself who battles Black Pat throughout the book with inventive curses, voicing a vicious contempt for the creature whilst never underestimating what he can do:

" 'It should be stated that the blackest words deserve no more heed than intestinal wind.' "

Utterly true.

Listen

2011-02-14T01:49:00.000-08:00

Listen,
I never dreamed
I would learn to love you so.
You are as flawed
as my vision
As short tempered
as my breath.
Every time you say
you love me
I look for shelter.

But these matters are small.

Lying entranced
by your troubled life
within as without your arms
I am once again
Scholarly.
Studying a way
that is not mine.
Proof of evolution's
variegation.

You would choose
not to come back again,
you say.
Except perhaps
as rock or tree.

But listen, love. Though human,
that is what you are
already
to the student, absorbed.
Human tree and rock already,
to me.

Alice Walker: Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful

Losing Myself Darkly

2011-02-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this book, having to be dragged from my lunch-time hidey hole or from my corner of the sofa, the covers taken from my hands so that I actually leave for work. Churchill's black dog has a wonderfully dark sense of humour:

"Black Pat went to make a pithy comment but caught one of his paws and pitched into the towel rail, dragging towels down over him.

'You're drunk!' Churchill broadcast to the room, watching over the rim.

'And you're naked,' Black Pat shouted through the towels, trying to remember the quote. 'But in the morning I will be sober.'

'Obnoxious guinea worm. In the morning I will be clothed,' Churchill shot back, retreating out of sight into the water. 'But you will always be a bastard.'"

Fry Like Lightening

2011-02-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

The artichokes still linger, thinking about their potential fate from within the confines of the vegetable drawer in the fridge (I didn't puree them, having an innate distate of pureed foods, and as for foam? Urgh. Why? Why would you want that on your plate?). I digress. Having been assured they can last a few weeks in those conditions without the RSPCV being called in, I'd left them there whilst scouring cookbooks for recipes.

Well, when I say scouring, I mean looking at my copy of Elizabeth David and making a 'phhhfff' face when I realised she didn't have a single helpful suggestion. Then I flicked through my copy of Sir Hugh F-W of the Most Halo-ed Food but got distracted by gross images of him dealing with a squid in the bath (I kid you not). In desperation, I even looked at the cover of the one and only Nigella, before deciding that the husband had only ever purchased it for me because her apron appeared to be losing the fight to contain the upper part of her in a demure fashion.

Luckily my growing collection of early 20th Century cookbooks has proved more useful, most especially this one:

Published in 1931 with menu suggestions such as Snipe Bonne Femme and Pigeon Crapaudine. Mimosa eggs anyone?

There's even a Don'ts section at the back with the sage advice that "butter and good salad oil or good frying oil are lubricants and the money which is saved by buying margarine is spent in buying artificial lubricants at the chemist."

Good to know.

However, the woman does know her artichokes: "take cold, boiled artichokes that are still firm and cut into small cubes. Make a batter by mixing 1/4 pound of flour with 2 beaten egg-yolks. Season with salt and pepper and add 1 cup of water gradually, mixing thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Now add the whites of the eggs, beaten to a stiff froth. Put the pieces of artichokes in the batter, take 1 dessertspoonful of the mixture at a time and fry in boiling lard* until golden brown on each side. Place the fritters on greaseproof paper in a slow oven to drain. Serve very hot. "

This I may be able to try.

*Probably without the lard though

Newly Hibernated

2011-02-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Finished reading Lady Audley's Secret: I had been really concerned that I'd find it turgid and unreadable as I do most Victorian novels (The Moonstone excepted) but this? This I loved: a female protagonist completely unrepentant and determined to survive in her own way against all the stacked odds. Of course you can't throw a man down a well without some kind of karmic kick back but reading about her fight to dodge it for as long as she did was gripping.

Bought The Bloody Chamber, Mr Chartwell and Any Human Heart to smuggle indoors. It was pointed out to me this week as a small cascade of books fell to the floor, that perhaps we have too many in the house. How many is too many?
Sadly he may have a point. Occasionally setting one free via Book Crossing is not addressing the balance. Some decisions are called for this weekend.

Was made aware of this event: World Book Night, sadly too late to get on the list but you can still take part - click here for more details.

I'm afraid that February is the month I really do hibernate away: still cold and gloomy with mud everywhere. In the past I've fought off the melancholy this month brings on by taking the dog for long walks, buying flowers, reading only books that leave me happy. This year I'm trying something new - new books, painting the house new colours, new adventures. How are you getting through the back-end of winter?

Infinitely More Interesting than...

2011-01-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

...the month-end figures I had been working on.

Rewarded a long and productive day with some web-based browsing and stumbled across these bundles of booky joy:

All available from The Literary Gift Company: the last especially resonates. My parents used a variation on this quote to describe me for many years when I was growing up!

Remembering the First Time

2011-01-26T05:51:00.000-08:00

Having finished Lady Audley's Secret and being nearly finished with Hidden Bhutan, I was casting about the house for something loved and familiar to wrap myself up with before moving on to a Jonathan Coe that's been waiting since Christmas. Joan's post about Virago's reminded me of this book:

Zora Neale Hurston

I'd bought it on my first ever unescorted trip to Hay on Wye (as close as I'll ever get to any sort of holy land) in a shop called Bookends where, stretching as far as the eye could see, rows upon rows of green-spined books waited for someone to blow the dust off and take them home - nubby and cracked, with letters worn through use. And to this day I couldn't tell you what made this one stand out among the dozens of others. But after countless re-readings, I'm very glad it did.

"She couldn't make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God."

"He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it around from the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."

Gold Covered Pleasure

2011-01-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Made for the birthday weekend, and surely a sign that, no matter how bad the cold, its never so bad you can't make a chocolate cake. Especially one that feels vaguely indecent to eat in public.

recipe and image from here

Brush a 9 inch round baking tin with melted butter, then dust with ground almonds. Melt 300g dark chocolate (make 100g of it Green & Blacks Maya Gold) with 275g caster sugar and 165g unsalted butter over barely simmering water.

Whisk 5 large eggs with 1 tablespoon ground almonds then fold into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the cake tin and bake at 180 celsius for 40-45 minutes. Remove the sides of the tin, allow to cool, then brush with edible gold powder.

If you can, leave overnight to become more fudgey and wicked than any cake has any right to be. But as you're human, go cut a slice now. Eat it. Lie down for a bit until your brain stops whirling.

Thank your lucky stars you didn't opt for carrot cake.

My Week in Short Sentences

2011-01-22T06:12:00.000-08:00

Mainly because I have a cold and don't want to pass it on to you.

Completed Reading: Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker, plus Julie & Julia by Julia Powell. Both made me laugh.

Unfinished Reading: Orlando. It's not that I don't like it, I just can't bring myself to care about the self-absorbed little twerp. Except that now he's a woman. So that's much better then.

Started Reading: Lady Audley's Secret: currently hoping that she outfoxes them all and avoiding like mad the spoiler on the Wikipedia page. Already 2 thirds through thanks to a fairly long wait at the minor injuries unit.

Sat in a Waiting Room: the child has fractured her arm. It is 'not a sprain' as I kept repeating with slightly deranged optimism. She's fine and wanting the proper cast so that people can write on it. Priorities.

Watched 10 O'Clock Live: why was it not as funny as I'd hoped it was going to be?

Opened the door to the veg box delivery man. Jerusalem artichokes. My sheltered upbringing had not prepared me and my exact words may have been "what the knobbly-assed hell are these?" Apparently they are good pureed and added to soups, risottos and the like. Will let you know.

Listened to:

Bought presents. Tis the husband's birthday today. Meals out are planned. I may be exiled to a different table. Still, I did at least remember to get him this. Not getting it could have led to a lifetime of stored grudges.

I wish you all the most presentiest, foodiest and wrapped-in-a-blanketiest of weekends. Hopefully full blogging mojo will have returned by next week.

There's no GUE holding all this together

2011-01-16T04:16:00.000-08:00

I had plans all this week that I would do some big, epic post about Christmas and New Year (which mainly consisted of lots of this, presents and drinking - the order of events may depend on the day in question); and then I was made furious by this article in the Guardian about library closures (which, actually I'm still really angry about - not everyone grows up with their own leather-bound library in their very own stately home, Mr. Cameron, as you should be dragged into the streets and made to see for yourself).
See? Really quite cross.

But no, this blog has not got where it is today by attempting to right social wrongs. Nope, it's got here by being written by a navel-gazing, shallow 34 year old who, today, has a kicker of a hangover and wishes the whole world would just be quiet for a little bit. And who has her parents visiting this afternoon, so should be wiping the skirting boards or something but actually barely has the strength to lift a coffee mug.

I've been waiting for years for the realisation of adulthood to arrive, an explosion of reality, an epiphany, a new dawn where I would wake and think 'so this is how adults feel'. It hasn't happened. There's the occasional break in the clouds (or cloud in the blue sky, depending on your point of view) and momentarily I find myself in the grip of the Grown-Up Effect, or GUE, if you will.

Another grey hair will appear, as it did this morning, on my head, and I know it's a new one because I sometimes make my hairdresser count the ones that already exist (3, at the time of the last cut, thank you). Mind you, it wasn't so much grey as properly, shockingly white: maybe my secret wish of having a half head of white and half of black is really going to happen without me having to reach for the dye? One lives in hope.
The GUE is then ruined as I try to dash out of the shower to tell someone (husband, child, dog, don't care who), slip and nearly crack my head on the door jamb. I am forever doomed not to grow more graceful, apparently.

Last night, whilst in the swankiest of big houses that our hovel resides next to, drinking from extraordinarily large wine glasses and nodding sagely to the most boring of boringest men telling me about his company's move into China, I hear myself saying the words (I'm almost so embarrassed to write this down, my fingers are blushing) "of course, China has really opened up in the last few years". The GUE is immediately spoilt by me trying to stare down at my own mouth in the dawning horror that it was me saying such a pretentiously wanky thing. A warning: doing this in the middle of a crowded room will make people back away from you.
It's like the time I tried to see my own earrings before remembering that when you turn your head, your ears turn with you.

And last week at the market: I bought fresh fruit. Bags and bags of the damn stuff, including 2 enormous pineapples, and instead of letting them eventually rot and stink the kitchen out with a sweetly-sick aroma, I actually managed to slice, peel and chop them into little pieces which I put into small tubs and took one a day into work. The GUE doesn't extend to other foodstuffs though - there's some broccoli in the bottom of the fridge that I'm fairly sure has developed its own eco-system after, high on pineappley-fructose, I managed to completely forget about it for a week.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some paper flowers to put together. And a cold compress to prepare.

Of Gollums and their Perfectly Understandable Hatred of Customers

2011-01-10T06:47:00.000-08:00

The town I live nearby is extraordinarily blessed with not one, but TWO bookshops which is why the child is coming to the stage of refusing to accompany me as I can happily spend whole days here, just breaking for lunch at my favourite deli.

The first is the antiquarian/second hand book dealers: set in a very old building, it can only be accessed down a narrow passageway made even narrower by the ramshackle racks filled with green and white crime novels, orange classics and bundles of Jean Plaidy, Georgette Heyer and Philippa Gregory. This passageway alone can keep me occupied for an hour, searching amongst the greens and the oranges for missing Christie's or Mitfords. Then you enter the main building itself and stand in wondrous awe (or you do if you're even slightly human) at the sight of huge leather, cloth and paper bound books that pile up on the shelves around the walls, reaching their rustling way up to the dimly-lit ceiling.

So here I stay, stroking the spines, reaching for things just out of fingertips grab, sniffing the general air of must and paper, rifling through maps from the 1920s and gazing with covety-longing at the creaking first editions.

Then I leave, usually reluctantly, usually dragged by a member of the family whingeing about being tired/hungry/bored. If I'm lucky, I shrug them off and make my skippity-skipping way along the 100 yards to the next one.

This is a shiny new bookshop: full of clean carpet, polished shelves, the latest technology and books. Books that are still untouched by human hand or creeping cobwebs - their corners are uncreased, their margins sparklingly annotation free, unsmudged words leap from the still firmly-fixed pages and the spines are promisingly smooth.

So I put on my intellectual face and wander the two floors browsing Booker, Orange and Pulitzer prize winners, making my way through gardening, cooking, philosophy and travel. The child is ensconced on a beanbag in the children's section trying to decide if she's now too old for the countless Jacqueline Wilson's or still too young for Michelle Paver. Meanwhile, I've worked my way steadily and stealthily to the hidden corner and, checking over my shoulder to make sure no one's looking, get a sneaky quick look at a Calvin & Hobbes before making my way back down to pay for my faultlessly literary purchase.

This is where the two buildings sync, merging seamlessly into one scene from a twisted Tolkein where the Gollums glare suspiciously at me over the tops of their respective counters, jealously guarding their treasures. I can try to strike up a conversation but the eyes carefully regarding me are almost hidden by scowling, beetling eyebrows and glasses besmirched by inky fingers, and really, I know deep down that I'm not worthy. The Mantel will have a coffee mark by the end of the week; the Amis will spend its days propping up a corner of that wonky table; the Joyce will lie on the car floor, trampled by dog and children alike. Corners will be creased, spines cracked, the cover will get scribbled by a vaguely wandering pen, pages torn and words smudged.

It's no wonder they glare at me.
I would too.

T'was the night before

2010-12-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

"The days were clear and bright. Laura and Mary stood on chairs by the window and looked out across the glittering snow at the glittering trees. Snow was piled all along their bare, dark branches, and it sparkled in the sunshine. Icicles hung from the eaves of the house to the snow-banks, great icicles as large at the top as Laura's arm. They were like glass and full of sharp lights."

"In each stocking there was a pair of bright red mittens and there was a long flat stick of red-and-white-striped, peppermint candy, all beautifully notched along each side."
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Well, my dedicated followers, random passers-by and fellow bloggers in this strange, strange virtual world, I wish you the very best of Christmasses: may you all find what you really want in your stockings tomorrow morning.

Wolves at the Door

2010-12-21T01:15:00.000-08:00

For one reason and another, I delayed walking the dog yesterday until the light was beginning to fail and the snow fall had slowed. We trudged the usual paths, shoulders hunched, listening with cold ears to the slithering slumping of snow sliding in heaps from branches to ground, and the wind making the trees whisper and sigh.
Beyond that, absolutely nothing, no sounds. No cars, no low motorway hum, no planes, no people out and laughing; just the muffled almost-silence of snowbound woods and fields.

And it suddenly dawns that what is pretty and enchanting in the full bright sun of the morning, is now sinister and eerie in the darkening half-light of dusk. Snowfall starts up again, heavier and faster this time; would it actually be possible to lose the path, to miss the familiar markers along the way?

The disturbed pheasant's rattle makes the heart pound faster, and it is possible to believe that somewhere, just beyond those trees, there may be wolves tracking every step:

"It was dusk - winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger.

Snow lay thick too, upon the roof of Willoughby Chase, the great house that stood on an open eminence in the heart of the wold... The house was all alight within, and the joyous hubbub of its activity contrasted with the sombre sighing of the wind and the hideous howling of the wolves without."
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

Sky Blankets

2010-12-18T11:01:00.001-08:00

I know people are stuck and they can't get to work, or they can but then can't get home;

and I know there is still shopping to be done with only 7 days left and shopkeepers tearing their hair out at the sight of all the deserted streets.

Relatives and friends are still to be visited, cards are undelivered and parcels may not arrive on time;

but there is something about walking in this place in this weather that is so completely beautiful that it all seems worth it for now.

Although my current feeling may have something to do with the hot chocolate and blanket-wrapped afternoon I had immediately after this walk.

And the always-appreciated sight of the dog looking his most wolfish.

"The Mole came and crouched beside him, and looking out, saw the wood that had been so dreadful to him in quite a changed aspect. Holes, hollows, pools, pitfalls, and other black menaces to the wayfarer were vanishing fast, and a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up everywhere, that looked too delicate to be trodden upon by rough feet. A fine powder filled the air and caressed the cheek with a tingle in its touch, and the black boles of the trees showed up in light that seemed to come from below."
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Know Him Better

2010-12-14T00:56:00.000-08:00

The ultimate, the very e-pit-o-me of Christmas stories and the part where everyone's favourite Ghost makes his presence known: a scene to bring a christmassy glow to even the sternest of hearts. Although I might draw the line at a meaty throne in my own house.
Taken from my own, battered 1893 edition of Dickens' Christmas Books (oh yes, for he wrote more than one):

'The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney... Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese. game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light upon Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.

"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better, man!" '

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Stone Wall

2010-12-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

This poem's been on my wall for quite a while now: it makes me strangely reassured about the way life has been changing and shifting recently. As long as there is some sure and solid stone, everything will be ok.

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job's done,

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,

Confident that we have built our wall.

Seamus Heaney

Creating Lists of Previously Unimagined Wantings

2010-12-06T00:59:00.000-08:00

There's no getting away from the fact, however exciting you find Christmas as an adult (and I find the whole thing very exciting), it's even more so for a small person. The decorations, the lights, the special foods, the secret whisperings and rustlings behind closed doors, most importantly, the List.

Once upon a time, the child wrote such things upon a list as new pens, chocolate rabbit, books, a real kitten, wellies with frog faces on; and we were all charmed by her innocence and modest wishes, praising our good rearing techniques for creating one so untouched by materialism. Yeah, such smugness will always come back and kick you when you're least expecting it.

This year's list has just 2 items: an ipod, or a trip to the moon. With the pencilled proviso that that is all we'll need to get her. Honey, try 'all you'll need to buy me for the rest of my entire lifetime' and you're still not even close.

So an ipod it is (she doesn't read this, stop worrying I've ruined the surprise) which has led to many a heated discussion between the husband and I as he can't see the need and, I suspect, hankers after a trip to the moon himself. It also led to the following confrontation yesterday:

Me: where's your DS? Child: don't know. M: go and find it then, M & A will be over in a bit. C: well I sort of do know where it is. M (patience stretched as thin as Kate Moss on a detox): well where, my dearest creation? C: um, well, thing is...I may possibly have broken it. M: you are freaking kidding me, for the second time?! C: yeah, it was on my bedroom floor and I didn't see it, and then I stood on it.

I have made her sign the following legally binding document: "I, the undersigned, do hereby promise to look after my stuff - especially the expensive stuff - and to keep my room tidy and organised at all times from now till Christmas Day. If this does not happen, I understand that anything fun, enjoyable and/or expensive will be removed and given to my annoying 5 year old cousin to stamp up and down on"

My own list is quite simple: a bottomless bottle of wine please.

Unsettled Spicings

2010-12-03T00:06:00.000-08:00

'Tis officially the first week in December and I felt it necessary to find my favourite books and search through their pages for the Christmassy bits:

"It was Christmas week: we took no settled employment, but spent it in a sort of merry dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night." Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

"I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices; and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper - the scoured and well-swept floor." Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

May your weekend be full of shopping of the most leisurely and pleasing kind: I'm going to start on the first of many batches of mince pies. By which I mean making them, not eating them!

Although some of that will take place too.

Scenes from a Cold Front

2010-11-30T01:01:00.000-08:00

Snow day! I apologise for this post being yet another photo-heavy one, but seriously, the day-job looks at its very best in the snow.

A 14th Century former Almoner's house no less. That lacks underfloor heating. Or effective heating of any sort, for that matter.

We do have lots of medieval abbey stone though, because you can never have too much of that: one day we'll have gathered enough to build a small-scale replica (the original had a tower that was 310 feet tall, before it fell down).

And what you can't see from here is the frankly awesome tilt to this section of the building - puts Piza to shame. And causes me the occasional mini-panic.

Luckily my toes are warm thanks to the application of some very thick socks and my red Docs (which I love possibly more than is healthy)

I hope your snow days are not too troublesome. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some snow angels to make!

My Week In Pictures (and at least 1 music clip)

2010-11-26T06:08:00.000-08:00

hidden, overgrown gardens

abandoned, tumbledown watermills

a smooth minestrone-ish (the child doesn't like lumps) soup with chill-infused olive oil

candles lit by 7

plants in new and worrying locations

Jane Eyre and a malteser brownie

frosty mornings.

Busy this week with events, birthdays and general happenings.
May your weekends be smooth and chilli-infused!

Pencilling It In

2010-11-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

So last night, timed as if by design to coincide with my feeling Christmassy for the first time this year, there was a 32 page leaflet in the post box bearing the legend: "longer-lasting than a fruit cake, cheaper than a flatscreen, more fun than a partridge in a pear tree..."

Now before you get too carried away with what it could possibly be, I should just say that it was from the bookshop in the nearest town (which is probably deserving of a blog post all of its own one day - it really is extraordinary).

With not a little ado (family to feed, things to clear away, the usual domestic crap that I wish I could hire someone else to deal with), I settled back with a glass of wine, the leaflet and a pencil - because I know how to have fun on a Monday.

Not all women before Elizabeth I were downtrodden, meek little things: some fought and fought hard to be regarded as something like equals, and, shamefully, I don't know enough about them.

Because fonts are a bit of a passion of mine (yes, really. Really, really)

An unsurpassed travel writer and an equally unsurpassed designer: both with lives I want to wander about in for a bit.

So I can bluff my way through conversations about writers like the Amis' (father & son) and others. And because I've read some of them in the Guardian and they are, frankly, hilarious.

Carol Ann Duffy and Rob Ryan? Do I need another reason?

Surprised myself by this being the only piece of fiction I want, but Atkinson is a fabulous weaver of stories and has created a masterpiece in Brodie. Her talent makes me very jealous.

That's me sorted then!

Things Learnt, Completed, Contemplated or Wilfully Ignored This Week

2010-11-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

That a 'happy birthday' call to my dad will last precisely 1 minute and 32 seconds: a full minute longer than a standard call to him. Luckily we talk more in person - the telephone seems to act as some kind of conversational black hole.

The very early mornings in November smell like bonfires and leaves and fog.

Tractored-hedge cutters are now out in force, leaving ruts so deep in the soggy fields that I have twisted my ankle twice.

The child will make the transition from child to almost-teen overnight, taking my favourite shoes with her.

When the season turns in on itself like this, it's time to draw the curtains, light the candles and get out the copy of Jane Eyre.

If you're going to try and sneak pieces of pistachio-studded, icing-sugar-covered Turkish Delight, you need to check in the mirror afterwards for the tell-tale smudges. And not wear black.

A desk full of things that need doing will always look like they have been done if you tidy it: this is also a good way of spending the time you should have given over to those things in the first place.

That the best starting point for any weekend is a hot bath and a full bottle of something grapey - or at least, it is once you're 34 it seems.

The prospect of the 3 year old nephew having his first sleep-over at this house does not fill me with dread, but a warm happy-aunt feeling instead. Although everything has been moved out of his reach. Including the cat.

Sometimes it is nice to have nothing planned beyond sitting back and enjoying the views:

Have a very happy weekend everyone: may it involve long and lazy breakfasts!

In the mood for noticing things that normally I would let pass me by

2010-11-17T07:08:00.001-08:00

So whilst over on the Book Crossing wesbite, I noticed an ad (which normally I'd ignore, but this is a prime example of knowing where your target market is!),

for this company who not only make t-shirts with book covers on them,

(and not just any book covers, but the really eye-catching, iconic ones),

but also send books to Africa via this scheme

which is something I think Jane would approve of after her African trip.

Out of Print: go see!

Crossing Words

2010-11-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

So I tried. I really, really did try. Hating to be defeated by a handful (albeit a large, weighty handful) of pulped tree and ink, I struggled on, taking it page by page, waiting for it all to suddenly gel. Waiting for the characters to step forward and claim my attention as I'd been told they should.

But it just wouldn't happen. Instead I'd turn the page and groan out loud at the sight of yet more words marching their tiny steps across the paper, as relentless as any Dickens. I'd open it up at night with the noble intention of getting at least 2 pages in, and would wake up 2 hours later with the book on my face and a sore spot where it had banged against my cheekbone.

Enough, I finally cried at 2am this morning when it neither engaged nor sent me to sleep. You need a more deserving audience, someone who'll treasure you and bless the day you came into their life. Someone who devours the words like a man starved. Someone who wraps the sentences around them like a blanket.

So I have finally made use of my membership of Book Crossing
and set it free for someone else. Which is a pretty cool idea and may provide the answer to the shelves reaching critical mass.

Pink Sheep

2010-11-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just need to spread your wings a little bit and try something new.

Sadly for me, I've run out of time to try this exhibition which I'm more than slightly annoyed about.

So, instead, I shall be prepping for this event and considering the bookshelves, which once again are reaching their limits.

And you may look at these fabulous beasts, on display here.

Have a lovely weekend!

Diving In

2010-11-09T00:46:00.000-08:00

About 670 pages and whole worlds away from where I began The Lacuna, I closed it last weekend and instantly wished I were back, getting answers to questions left, exploring places that I've never seen and mapping my way around a history I know shamefully little about. Although, who could not know at least something about Frida:

" The mistress had stopped to haggle with a man and buy another bird. She was so tiny, from the back she also looked like a servant girl. But when she turned, her skirts and silver earrings whirled and her face was very startling, an Azteca queen with ferocious black eyes. Her hair was braided in a heavy crown like the Isla Pixol girls, and her posture was very regal, though she wore the same ruffled skirts as her maid."

What was extraordinary was how Harrison Shepherd, the main narrator, remained so in the background, almost as invisible as he wished to be; observing, experiencing and recounting:
"The Avenue of the Dead runs down the centre of the ancient city, with the Pyramid of the Moon standing mighty against the sky, and the Pyramid of the Sun opposite, even taller. Temples flank the central avenue all the way down its length, some with great carved snakes undulating across their facades. Coral bean trees sprout from between the huge pavement stones, reaching for the sky with their blood-red fingers of blossom. Really, no one knows who lived and died in Teotihuacan, to what end. Walking wide-eyed and human among the great temples, though, it as easy to imagine blood and flesh, hearts ripped out to appease a terrible destiny"
But, thankfully, he couldn't remain that way forever. Rather, as clear as the words on the page, the image of him built, layer upon layer, until he was almost in the other room, pacing around waiting for me to finish, waiting for a judgement or vindication of decisions made and choices taken.
"His desk, all those unfinished sentences. The wax cylinders that still hold his voice, somewhere. His desk calendar, if it is there, lies open to August 20, the page he last turned over, with life's full and ordinary expectation."

And I cared desperately that he should be safe: from the sea, the assassins, the war, the crazed anti-communist witch hunts - safely back in Mexico surrounded by what he knew and what would let him be:
"Here life is strong-scented, overpowering. Even the words. Just ordering breakfast requires some word like toronja, a triplet of muscular syllables full of lust and tears, a squirt in the eye. Nothing like the effete 'grapefruit' which does not even mean what it says."

So caught up with him and his trying to find his way through mid-20th Century America with all its attendant hysteria, that when the almost-end came, I actually shouted 'no' at the page, threw the book down and sat staring blankly at the wall, hoping it wasn't what I'd thought.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't - some things I like to leave you to find out for yourselves.

A Lacuna? A gap; a missing section of text; a lexical gap in a language. Holes so deep they go to the centre of the earth.

Of Mists and Flames

2010-11-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

It's exactly the right sort of misty, drizzly day that makes me want to creep quietly through woods, searching for hidden houses and faces in the trees, before going home and curling up under a blanket with a very good book *sigh*

'Tis also the 5th November, the day when we apparently celebrate the foiling of an attempt to blow up parliament by setting fire to large piles of wood. Well you might, we'll be saving ourselves for the frankly epic birthday party being thrown in this person's honour tomorrow!

I wish you all a happy, sparkly and monumental weekend!

And a swift recovery on Monday.

Spine Chilling #5

2010-10-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

The last one today, and what better for a dark, overcast and blustery day than the absolute classic, Hound of the Baskervilles?

Forget all the frankly terrible films/tv adaptations (although I'll be interested to see what the new Sherlock does with it) - nothing will make you look over your shoulder like this one.

So, grab a copy, get under a blanket and try to pretend that the howling out there really is the wind and not some spectral hound...

"as if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing."

"There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. the cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it...

...I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralysed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish, be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog."

Have a terrifyingly good weekend everyone!

Spine Chilling #4

2010-10-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

Are we all sitting comfortably my dears? Curtains drawn, candles lit, alone in the room? You may want to open them, blow them out, get someone in to hold your hand because today's quotes come from the superbly bleak imagination of M.R.James, the king of understated menace; the champion of drawn out, bloodless horror.

Taken from the slinkily creepy 'Whistle & I'll Come To You' - enjoy!

"...now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. There was something about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close quarters. It would stop, raise arms, bow itself towards the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying."

"...It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. Turning half way from him, it became suddenly conscious of the bed he had just left, and darted towards it, and bent and felt over the pillows in a way which made Parkins shudder as he had never in his life thought it possible. In a very few moments it seemed to know that the bed was empty, and then, moving forward into the area of light and facing the window, it showed for the first time what manner of thing it was."

Spine Chilling #3

2010-10-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

It felt like a Turn of the Screw day today: something to do with the sun shining cheerily down on ground that's covered with damp, decaying leaves.

"He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed his place - passed, looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenellations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew."

"The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight."

Spine Chilling #2

2010-10-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

The turn of Edgar Allan Poe (himself an enigma) and The Tell-Tale Heart

"So I opened it - you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily - until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot out from the crevice and fell full upon the vulture's eye.

It was open - wide, wide open - and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness - all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person; for I had directed the ray, as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. "

"But for many minutes, the heart beat on, with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the walls. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. The old man was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more."

Spine Chilling #1

2010-10-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween Week everyone!

Going to start the 5 days of eerie, creepy and spine-tingly posts with some words from the Daddy, the unreconstructed Master of them all: Dracula by Bram Stoker

" 'Are we to have nothing tonight?' said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror; but as I looked they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. "

"It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity - of anger and hellish rage - which came over the Count's face. his waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound...

...There he turned and spoke to us:-

'You think to baffle me, you - with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest; but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine - my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!' "

The Kindness of Strangers

2010-10-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

I think it's fair to say that since I started blogging over a year ago, my tastes in regular blog following have been eclectic to say the least. I love the artisan ones, the book-based ones, the design based ones and the fashion based ones, but one that I have been following from the start has been Lulu Letty run by the fabulous and oh-so-chic Maria.

Maria is great enough to arrange giveaways which I always enter with the green-eyed gleam of the covetous and greedy. This time I won!
Yay me!

So when my treasures arrived, I made the child pose;

for which I shall be expected to pay out as she is a reluctant model despite the practically-porcelain skin and extreme photogenic-ness which I seriously lack.

However, make no mistake, these goodies are mine and mine alone!

Huge, huge thanks to Maria and her sponsor, Bohemian Bisoux Vintage for making my October a brighter place to be, and my head a chicer thing indeed to set eyes upon!

The Calm before the Horror

2010-10-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

Next week is Halloween week, and I'm planning a whole 5 days of quotes from the very best in spine-chilling books (think Dracula rather than The Fog though). Before we get there, you may have a poem to carry you through the weekend:

You, you only, exist.

We pass away, till at last,

Our passing is so immense

That you arise: beautiful moment,

in all your suddenness,

arising in love, or enchanted

in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may

wear me away. From you to you

I go commanded. In between

the garland is hanging in chance; but if you

take it up and up and up: look:

all becomes festival!

Rainer Maria Rilke

Have a lovely weekend and half-term if you've been lucky enough to bag the next few days off: I'll see you next week!

Two Hit The Town

2010-10-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

A very good friend of mine is turning 30 in a couple of weeks. What do you get someone for their 30th? Shoes never go amiss, obviously. A bag? Chanel nail varnish? Javier Bardem is slightly out of my price range. How about - given she has 2 children under 5 - an afternoon of adult conversation, shopping, eating and generally being a grown-up without someone wanting feeding, or changing, or telling her they're bored, or wanting to go home, or demanding the correct anatomical proportions explaining on the statue that takes pride of place in the middle of the street?

Actually I'd quite like them explained but am too busy pretending to be a grown up. And is it just me, or does that hare look bloody terrified?

So I took her to the Cheltenham Literature Festival where we saw Audrey Niffenegger talking about her new book, her old books and her plans for the future (some of which involve a bookshop/library in her home town of Chicago - for which I'd move just to be near) and the oddly comforting fact that she distanced herself so much from the film of the TTW that she hasn't even seen it. The woman is truly fascinating with a background in book-binding, letter-press and paper arts that makes me envious; a voice that sounds like melted chocolate, and a general persona that makes you want to take her out for a drink somewhere and have a proper conversation.

Then we shopped, and ate delicious food (including a warm chocolate and walnut brownie that was so good I wanted to take it into a private room), drank a pleasantly appley wine and generally took the universe to pieces, held each one up to the autumn light and then reconstructed it to our own pleasing; before heading back to the festival to hear Ms. Niffenegger talk about Highgate Cemetery with Catharine Arnold, whose book Necropolis is now on my must-read list.

Oh, and I bought some new shoes, which I think are channelling the witchy librarian within me and called out for purple tights this morning. They also make a satisfying clipping noise when I walk, making me sound efficient and busy when actually I'm just heading off to make coffee again. It's all good.

How were your weekends?

From Lions to Fish, Sudan to Mexico

2010-10-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, a couple of weeks ago I picked this book up from our local library:

Opened it that very afternoon, knew it wouldn't be an easy read but felt ready for a challenge. Wasn't quite so prepared for it to be so damn harrowing:
"The lion was a simple black silhouette, broad shoulders, its thick legs outstretched, its mouth open. It jumped from the grass, knocked a boy from his feet. I could not see this part, my vision obscured by the line of boys in front of me. I heard a brief wail. Then I saw the lion clearly again as it trotted to the other side of the path, the boy neatly in its jaws. The animal and its prey disappeared into the high grass and the wailing stopped in a moment. That first boy's name was Ariath."
This isn't just a story invented by Eggers, this is his written account of what he was told by Valentino Achak Deng, one of 4000 boys who walked miles across Western Africa, orphaned following the war in Sudan. Author proceeds from the book go to the foundation set up in his name: www.valentinoachakdeng.org. Seriously, go read it, but be prepared - it isn't a soft option.

So today, I wandered into my local bookshop, just to browse you understand. No, really, just browsing. Still just looking. Shouldn't be allowed into them without some sort of adult supervision, because, despite the pile of books by the bed, I came away with this:

Hooked by page 6:
"Underneath the ocean is a world without people. the sea-roof rocks overhead as you drift among the purple trees of the coral forest, surrounded by a heavenly body of light made from shining fishes. The sun comes down through the water like flaming arrows, touching the scaly bodies and setting every fin to flame. A thousand fishes make the school, but they always move together: one great, bright, brittle altogetherness."
I don't even like snorkeling but it makes me want to see it for myself.

A final quote from Kingsolver that feels particularly resonant today: "The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down it's hallways, touching the walls on both sides."

Furious Torments

2010-10-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, a peculiar mood takes hold of me: the family can usually tell by the strange glitter in my eyes as I bring out bottles from under the sink that never normally see the light of day and promise in screaming letters to 'make things whiter', to 'banish dirt forever' (this is undoubtedly A Lie) or to end the 'torment of limescale'. Now many things are a torment: wasps, the dog, small children - yes. Limescale - no.

This is when they make themselves scarce, waiting the storm out in other people's houses.

Now this is not to suggest for one minute that we live in some kind of hovel. Nope, certain things make me very contented in our little house, so I do them: clean bathroom, clean sheets, dishes that don't have weird bacterial cultures living in them, a floor that doesn't look like we just shaved the dog and carpeted throughout with the hair, clothes that can be worn in public. It's just that usually I do them in a fixed burst, a look of fury and hatred for the task making my brows furrow, because I do them and then (here's the kicker) they need doing all over again.

Ideally no one would be allowed to move or sleep or eat here for 24 hours afterward apart from me:

So last weekend I scrubbed and polished and changed and rinsed and generally banished bacteria as the ads promised I would: less conquering hero brandishing a flaming sword of cleanliness, more angry woman seeking some restoration of order. This does not make for an exciting weekend, but a thoroughly satisfying one. Until I came downstairs this morning: the dust appears to be regrouping and forming an impenetrable shield wall, and apparently we have no basket for washing other than the floor, despite the purpose buying of said basket several years ago. Is it possible to kennel the entire family outside?

Change of Plans

2010-10-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was National Poetry Day and I had a post planned out for you all and then I spotted this and every idea in my head flew out of the window.

It's taken me 24 hours to track down a copy of the magazine (which isn't something I normally buy), and I'm not about to rehash the old arguments that plagued Hughes all his life,

nor am I going to reproduce the whole thing. But you can have the 4 lines that made me stop in the street:

"At what position of the hands on my watch-face

Did your last attempt,

Already deeply past

My being able to hear it, shake the pillow"

Gray Days and Writings

2010-10-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take much to convince me that curling up with a book is going to be far more rewarding than whatever else I had planned (Saturday's cleaning; Sunday's trudging the dog through the rain), and as the child was equally happy to do the same (with a copy of Coraline in her case) whilst the husband wheezed and sneezed through his cold, I basically sat cross-legged on the bed for a large part of the weekend until I'd finished this book:

"I have many of the instincts, though none of the grace, of a porpoise, I believe - I saw a kindred spirit, a recumbent porpoise, toes turned up, arms stretched out, head cushioned on the water. It was the wife of the man with Alzheimer's, the Alzheimer widow, as I've come to think of her, not fussing and worrying and scowling, but taking her ease in the ocean, lolling to the manner born..."

"... found myself swimming away, heading out to sea as fast as I could until I was out of my depth, and then swam a bit further, and a bit further, the sea got colder, my body weaker, until I couldn't swim anymore, the waves seemed to be rolling inside my head, I started to shake, pawing feebly at the water as I slipped under it, and the next thing I was in his arms."

"I've just raked my pen across my yellow page, and jabbed it down and down and ripped it across. An attempt to write a primal scream. After all, I'm a writer and should be able to express everything, but here, once again, I've failed - who, on looking at these marks would think they represented a primal scream without my having to say so - the need to do something savage was because I'd been sitting with my head in my hands, running my fingers through my hair, and thinking how I really couldn't put down another word, I really couldn't..."

"...what really incensed me was - is - that 'to be fair' has now become a sort of tic with sports commentators, every other sentence, sometimes two in a row, beginning with 'to be fair' - 'to be fair on the lad', which is how one of them began a sentence on Trevor Sinclair, 'to be fair on the lad, he did play very badly', that's what he actually said."

I loved it for the ice-cold honesty that made my eyes widen; the rambling streams of thought that appeared to spill straight from his head to the page; and the unconscious pathos (which I suspect he would have hated) of his almost-casually announced illness. The flashes of searingly bad-tempered comedy made me laugh out loud. Now I have to spend the autumn tracking down everything else he's written, and hoping for more gray days spent in his company.

Practicalities of the Season

2010-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Well, it is officially the month I love the most today, smack bang in the middle of my favourite season. Yes it's now dark when I walk the dog, but there is a special silence and stillness about it. Yes it rained buckets today, but that provides me with all the excuse I need to settle under a blanket with a book for the evening.
And that's not even beginning to touch on the smell autumn air has: all mist and smoke, that clears away to leave days like this:

where if it weren't for the apples, you'd swear it was still summer.

Where rose hips look like leggy cherries and you lose yourself for hours tracing the veined maps on the back of conkers, smoothing the contours with your thumb.

The light fractures through night-damp branches and you realise that it's just possible this may be the year

you have to buy something waterproof for your feet.

On Klingons and Piaf

2010-09-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

I think it's safe to say that the husband and I have different tastes in films: he will actually watch a Star Trek film and rank it in within the order of brilliance (in his eyes) created by all the other Star Trek films. I on the other hand, decided long ago that all Star Trek films pretty much suck badgers, despite providing an opportunity to learn to swear in Klingon (a useful skill for family gatherings), and would no more watch one than I would tear my own arm off and beat myself over the head with it.

I have a fondness for french films which usually I get him to sit down to by telling him there's bound to be some nudity in there because, well, it's french innit? I think, in retrospect, that La Vie en Rose was a gamble too far and now, nothing short of catching him off guard with Belle de Jour will reverse the image of an aged and dying Edith Piaf.

We do both agree on the sheer genius of the original Star Wars films and the utterly despicable tragedy that are the three new ones: although the execrable dialogue in all 6 make me howl with laughter. And we make an exception for Simon Pegg films (although I haven't forgiven him for Shaun of the Dead) because of our very tenuous link to him.

So, on Sunday, I switched this film on fully expecting him to sneer and head for the computer to look up car parts or gadgets for the next two hours:

not a bit of it (the bottle of wine I was jealously guarding may have had more to do with his decision than the film choice). We sat, we watched, we loved it. An incredibly sweet and funny film with an excellent cast (Alison Janney letting the superior ultrasound technician have it is possibly my favourite scene). You should watch it, you really should. Be prepared for a small amount of eye-welling to take place towards the end.

Not Exactly Seasonal

2010-09-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

One of the downfalls of having a veg box delivered to a house where vegetables are considered an optional extra (I'm trying not to, I really am but jeez, how many times am I supposed to be inspired by cabbage), is that sometimes there is a surplus.

And by surplus I mean so much that I'm forced to cancel this week's order before we open the fridge and are instantly crushed to death by excessive beetroot storage and a rogue onion rampages through the house.

So imagine my cautious joy when I discovered this book in the local cafe's honesty book shop:

Yep, that's right: The Today's Woman Book of SALADS. From 1953.

Even better, inside the previous owner has left a photo of a formidable looking woman dressed in fur: her facial expression suggests that salads are for wimps and rabbits, both of which she will garrote with her own sturdy hands. Or possibly trample under her sensible shoes.

She may be the husband's soul mate (he likes to sing "you don't make friends with salad" every time I suggest one, then he asks if it will be a steak salad. With extra steak).

Having now spent some time reading from cover to cover, I can confirm there seems to be more emphasis on the use of gelatin that actual fresh veg. For example, the Jellied Christmas Tree Salad contains 2 envelopes of unflavoured gelatin, a 1 pound can of jellied cranberry sauce, 1 cup of chopped cabbage and half a cup of diced celery (an evil and pointless vegetable if ever I had the misfortune to be fed it at family gatherings).

This book may be the saving of us all: I will finally learn what to do with gelatin; the veg box will be used up every week; the tiny abandoned carrots in the bottom of the fridge will find a new lease of life in a Vegetable & Pineapple Souffle Salad; we will be so full of Vitamin C, we will glow. I may even wear an apron. The dog will bring the husband his slippers and the child will always have her hair neatly brushed and held back by an alice band.

Yeah, and I might win the Pulitzer.

N.B it should be pointed out that the company who delivers said boxes are wonderful in the extreme and my incompetence when faced with turnips is in no way a reflection on the quality of their produce, or the general loveliness of their staff. They also provide recipes every week that contain no gelatin.

Sea Dreaming

2010-09-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

It seems increasingly unlikely that we'll manage any kind of holiday this year; so, ever one to beat myself up over what can't happen, I'm currently repeating this to myself:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide,

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume and the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,

And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield (writer of possibly the best children's book ever), once poet laureate and a reasonably local lad; found on the wonderful Moonlight & Hares blog.

Calming Down

2010-09-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

Some calming images for a Tuesday, found on etsy:

make you want to pack some bags and go, don't they?

Click here for the link to the etsy store and frankly marvel at the brilliance.

Dusting It Down

2010-09-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

So it's 4am again, still dark: hens, dog, family, cat are all asleep on or in their respective perches. Except me. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now: I wake at about 4, regardless of what time I actually went to bed; I stare at the ceiling until I can't stand it anymore, then I get up and go do something, anything that might still the thoughts.

In the meantime, my mind is having a whale of a time, spinning round and round, throwing subjects in the air and seeing where they land. I'm in the middle of a freaking whirlpool here and every time I feel I've managed to fight my way up for air, I get sucked back down into it (thank you also to my brain for bringing that dream back).

And whilst part of me would rather feel this way than nothing at all (may as well not exist then, right?), I'm beginning to realise that carrying on at this pace may actually lead to me not existing.
So this morning, in sheer desperation, I pick this book up:

Now, I'm not sure why it's even on the pile by my bed, nor why it's on the top: normally this kind of book has me running, screaming, in the opposite direction. I don't choose to read books about people's breakdowns and spiritual awakenings because I can't shake the cynic in me that wonders why, if it's all so bloody spiritual, they had to then write about it in great length and earn money from it. Not only that, but the part of my brain that loves scientific analysis and debate has huge issues with the words used, the complete lack of any stepping back and observing with a detached eye. And I don't do yoga.

But I do do food, and once we're past the divorce and self-destructively bad rebound relationship (honey, you think you're the only one who's been there?), and are safely in Italy with glorious descriptions of meals savoured, I settle down and switch the cynic off.

By 9am I have read the entire book and whilst the whirlpool is still there, it's thundering is quieter and I can actually breathe without a rising tide of panic about the amount of hours sleep I've lost today.
I'm not about to disappear off to India, or even Italy; nor will I head for spiritual retreats or take up vegetarianism or any kind of transcendental meditation, but. But I do envy her the final state of calm she finds in the ashram:

"I climb down that ladder into my own hub of stillness. When I get there, I can feel the world halt, the way I always wanted it to halt when I was nine years old and panicking about the relentlessness of time. In my heart, the clock stops and the calendar pages quit flying off the wall. I sit in silent wonder at all I understand."

But It's Not Tuesday

2010-09-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

No, I know its not, but a lack of internet connection has meant all my planned posts have gone out the window. Instead you may have this as a stop gap, and I'll get back to you when life is normal.

Already love this band and then a friend of mine told me about a variation done with the BBC orchestra. I didn't think they could improve, but this is truly awesome. Enjoy!

Escaping

2010-09-09T06:10:00.000-07:00

So it appears that whilst I should be reading intellectual tomes, making meals and ensuring the pathways through the house are at least clear, I would rather stare at images of glaciers in Chile;

temples in Cambodia

and prayer flags in China

This won't do at all.
There is stuff to be done.
Clothes to be folded and put away,
paperwork to be filed, blogs to be updated.

Instead I'm staring at the sky and wondering what the time is in Japan.
Even my capacity for daydreaming is in overdrive.

Of Maps and Motors

2010-09-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

So, Saturday dawns bright and early, the merry band of yokels are bleary-eyed and slightly edgy because one of us has decided to drive (being the sort of person who would drive over hot lava to avoid catching a bus) to North Clapham where we are due to meet the hapless couple who thought we'd be easy to take around (actually they are incredibly nice and patient and have good reflexes).

They take us on the 88 bus so we can see many sights: I'm ever-so-slightly over-excited by the sight of Jermyn Street (I do love a really well tailored suit on a man) and the Tate and by something happening in Trafalgar Square. I practically have a meltdown when we get to the library and I realise that this building:

(I'm sorry but this is not an impressive enough building: where's the awe, people?)

contains books, and manuscripts, and the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight text, and ...
...this map:

(this is a tiny portion of a copy I have at work: taking photos in museums & libraries? Most emphatically not)

Which I proceed to spend the next 10 minutes staring at (oh, there's the awe) with great big covety eyes - I love this little (in comparison to some of the others) map so much that I have to be dragged away by the husband as a large queue of disgruntled Londoners is building up behind me.
I love the map so much that when I should have been concentrating back out on the streets I could only see the tiny medieval script and was nearly run down by a Sweeney impersonator, thus proving the excellent reflexes of said friend.

We recover, well they do, I'm still not really with them, in the pub.

The rest of the exhibition? Yes, it was very good: loved the Grayson Perry map of himself and his world which was incredibly thought-provoking; fantastical beasts and wonky borders abounded from every corner, and there is the most beautiful map of China painted on silk. Definitely worth the 100 mile trip down.

(this was from this morning, not London at all but it was a beautiful sky today, so you get an extra treat)

And now, back home, everything is quieter, I can hear people speak to me, I crossed the road by our house without having to look and there are people I love up here. But sometimes, I think I'd rather be anonymous in a city somewhere.

No Blues Today Please

2010-09-03T00:29:00.000-07:00

An early morning post today: my usual time is going to be taken up with a lunch date, collecting dry cleaning and dropping off something mechanical at somewhere mechanical, so for today's delectation, we have W.H. Auden.

Now we could have Funeral Blues, but I do hate a cliche; instead we have At Last the Secret is Out because I love the imagery it conjures up of gossipy old women and naughty goings on in big houses.

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,

The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;

Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,

behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,

Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh

There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall,

The scent of elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,

The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,

There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

What ever you may be getting up to yourselves, have a great weekend.

Things Going Bump

2010-09-02T05:46:00.000-07:00

I think, following my trip down the last two stairs in the house today with a pile of washing, it's fairly safe to let you in on the not-so-secret secret that Grace and I do not agree with each other. Poise has gone away in a huff, Style won't speak to me and Elegance is not returning my calls.

I trip over non-existent stones, I twist my poor bruised ankles in the shallowest of dents, I forget where my elbow ends and the walls begin, I walk into brambles and turn round to find fences where I was sure there were none. In short, I bash myself about on a regular basis, and our little house is frequently resounding to the sound of me going "ow, godammit, who put that fecking wall/pair of shoes/table/door/flight of stairs/hot coffee there"

So today, my dears, you may have this little story of the Time We Went To France:

We'd got married on the Friday, I'd stupidly mistaken the adrenaline that was feeding me all day as a new found tolerance to vodka: consequently the hangover was delayed until the Sunday when we sailed. Yes sailed. In the Worst Weather Ever: may the sun forever shine on the happy drug bunnies who invented travel pills. Monday we decided to explore France - in torrential rain - so we headed to Rennes, without doing our homework: for future note, everything is closed on Mondays in Rennes in the rain in August.

The next day is also raining but we can't stay in anymore, so head out to Granville and the Christian Dior Museum: this is by way a sop to my foul temper (seriously, the hangover is still there and kicking like a mule). I look like a bedraggled hippy: Monsieur Dior must be spinning as I cross his threshold but the staff are lovely and the clothes magnificent. Now is time to remember the ankles...

...for as I skip happily down the stairs, aware of the crowd of people queuing just outside the door (I can see them through the glass), my ankle does indeed give way, allowing me to slide with all the grace and poise of a shot moose down the final 6 steps before landing in a damp, squishy heap at the feet of an elderly old woman dressed entirely in chic black. She goes on to prove the hefting power of little old women everywhere by hauling me to my foot (the other has a sprained ankle attached to it) whilst the staff flutter about screaming, fetching bandages or rolling their eyes in a particularly horrified manner. The crowd outside, momentarily distracted from the rain drumming on their heads, fall about laughing and have to lean on the rails to stay upright. I'm pretty damn sure I heard the husband laughing too.

This actually is an effective way of making sure that you get to spend the next few rainy days on the sofa, giving your hangover the hair of the dog that bit it, until the sun comes out again. 2 days before we leave.

I fully expect to fall off a bus, break something in the British Library and drop food down myself this weekend.

Once upon a time...

2010-08-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

...in 1390, there was an abbey that had grown from it's humble Saxon beginnings to be one of the largest in the country. It had many things: abbot, monks, psalter, saints, money-spinning relics, illuminated bible, but it had never had it's own world map. One day the prior decided that this really wasn't acceptable and he commissioned a monk to complete one. When it was finished, this map was one of the most beautiful things in the abbey, mapping the spiritual world in glorious reds, blues and greens. Tiny palaces and ecclesiastical buildings adorn the most important places, Adam and Eve stand sheepishly at the top with the serpent, and England lies on it's side.

In 1540, the abbey was closed after Henry VIII discovered that breaking with Rome just to scratch that particular itch was a costly exercise; the map was taken from its home, down to London, where it ended up in the College of Arms. The College have lent it to the British Library, where it has stayed on display throughout the summer: on 19th September it will be taken away and stored once more in the College.

This weekend is my only chance to see it in the vellum, rather than the paper copies we sell back in its home town. A trip to Londinium is called for: given that I'm taking the others with me, it may be more of an epic journey than I had originally planned...

And now for something completely different...

2010-08-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

I discovered Anne Sexton through the very controversial biography of her that was printed in the 90s, and completely fell in love with her work, spending the last of my pennies in Hay-on-Wye buying a first edition of The Death Notebooks. One of the mad, bad, genius group of confessional poets that emerged in the Boston area during the 50s and 60s; she was tricky to handle and tricksy with a pen. This poem she claimed was her signature and she started every reading with it:

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm cave in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranged the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

My Kind of Festival

2010-08-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

Oh happy autumn days tumbling towards us with a rush of drizzle and damp! Among the things I love about it (come to mama, lovely boots) is this annual festival:

click on image for link to site

This year, I've booked to see Audrey Niffenegger in the afternoon talking about The Night Bookmobile, followed by her again in the evening talking about Highgate Cemetery which I'm fascinated by.

As I am by her: how come her lead males are always written so damn well that I fall in love ever-so-slightly with them? Don't worry, I get over it quickly, what with them being fictional and all.

I've booked 2 tickets for each on the slimmest of slim thoughts that the husband may wish to come with me. I suspect she is not high on his reading list: the absence of dwarves and ents is weighing heavily against her.

Found it

2010-08-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

The other week, a friend and I were discussing this band (who I've seen live) and the fact that this album is their utter best. It's taken me nearly 2 weeks to find my copy on the top of one of the bookcases at home.

This track is the the one that'd get onto my desert island.

Sometimes you just can't beat a bit of mid-90s melancholy, especially on a grey afternoon.

Worries and Flurries

2010-08-23T05:46:00.000-07:00

And how was your weekend, privileged readers of whatever is sitting at the front of my brain waiting to be spilled upon this screen? Mine passed in a blur of headbands, tablecloths, bunting and handmade paper: preparation for this event has reached levels of hysteria not often seen in our house unless I forget to keep taking the Evening Primrose.

Because there is only 4 days till the Big Day, postings on this blog are likely to be short, sweet (well, maybe) and sporadic!

I did manage to read a huge wodge of this book before my eyes closed: it was a relief to read something full of short. Staccato. Sentences. I could avoid getting caught up in the words like a tangle of wool, and just let it unravel before me.

And finally, the tablecloth I spent an hour measuring, cutting, muttering and stitching together: not bad for a sewing machine without a motor.