Kathleen Jowitt writes contemporary literary fiction exploring themes of identity, redemption, integrity, and politics. Her work has been shortlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize and the Selfies Award, and her debut novel, Speak Its Name, was the first ever self-published book to receive a Betty Trask Award.
Week-end: the last month of Before
The good
Well, here we are in June. This may be baby month. Or it may not. In theory it’s going to be a lot quieter than May, but I’ve made plans for four work social things in my last two weeks, so…
Anyway, things are shifting; progress in sorting the house out is happening (gradually); I can’t say that I feel in any way ready, but it seems plausible that I will be able to cope. A long Zoom call with a friend yesterday. And we’ve just (well, several hours ago; I have had a nap since) had a very nice lunch out with family.
The photo, by the way, is more evidence of attempted tidying up (it gets worse before it gets better) than a deliberate celebration of Pride Month (our local Pride is, I have just discovered, on 29 July this year, which is some consolation for missing Ventnor Fringe) but it seemed appropriate.
The mixed
Lest I forget I am an introvert… an extremely productive and positive committee meeting on Wednesday evening left me staring at the wall for a long time afterwards. And then I was training on Thursday morning.
The difficult and perplexing
Being brought up short by my physical limitations. On Thursday evening I did what used to be my regular morning walk – twenty-five minutes up the hill, twenty-five minutes back. I had to sit down on almost every bench on the way back, and my lower back was complaining all night.
Experimenting with
A return to old-school internetting: a solid block of time on the computer, and when it’s off, it’s off. If I so chose, I could avoid looking at Twitter for a whole year. I might very well so choose.
What’s working
Snacks.
Reading
The Chronicles of Count Antonio (Anthony Hope). This is Hope in overwritten historical pastiche mode (as opposed to satirical contemporary mode) and it’s a little wearing; also, Count Antonio is even more ridiculously honourable than Rudolf Rassendyll and wouldn’t last five minutes in actual medieval Italy; still, it’s fun.
Writing
Starts Monday.
Watching
The remaining three Brosnan!Bond films, along with Licence to Queer and friends. Excellent fun, even if I wasn’t partaking in the cocktails (hey, a mint and lemon balm tea is vaguely similar to a mojito…)
Cooking
Risotto with peppers and smoked trout. Chakchouka. Omelettes.
Eating
Everything. I’ve been so hungry this week.
Moving
Walking. Too much, apparently.
Noticing
I think we had a goldfinch in the copper beech. We definitely had a pair of wood pigeons getting it on in a most conspicuous location, on top of our neighbour’s garage. I saw many excellent dogs when I was out on my walk.
In the garden
Planted the honeysuckle. Many, many things need cutting back. The arum lilies are blooming.
Appreciating
The weather. It’s sunny, but not too hot. I am grateful for this. (It has also been grey, but that hasn’t been too hot either.)
Acquisitions
Various packages have been arriving, but I don’t bear prime responsibility for any of them.
Line of the week
From this blog post:
We have to write a 2000 word essay about this treaty and its implications for ecosystem based management, and I’m only struggling a little because I just don’t think I have 2000 words worth of thoughts; all I have so far is: woof. also Yikes. And that’s just not essay length.
Saturday snippet
A little bit from Starcrossers:
I made a point of smiling very pleasantly at the newser who’d exposed my most recent peccadillo, and posed for a picture.
This coming week
Two office days, during which I really must do something about my desk, two pre-maternity meet-ups with colleagues, more training, a long appointment with the midwife, and the Cursillo Welcome Back. Which was for quite a long time the very last thing in my diary for Before.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: time slows
The good
Attending the Clausura (closing service) for Ely Cursillo #37. While the church wasn’t packed, people-wise, it was absolutely suffused with joy. It is such a privilege to lead this… movement? group? Community.
And now, winding up and winding down. After a very hectic month, this has been a nice peaceful week. I’m slowing down physically, but this feels appropriate rather than frustrating. Things are taking longer, and that’s fine. Walking thirty-five minutes to a routine ten minute appointment is an opportunity to be out in the sunshine; work tasks are taking as long as they take and the next time they happen it won’t be me doing them. But on the other hand, things that have been hanging over me for ages and which I thought were going to take ages have been tidying themselves up with remarkably little effort. We made a list of things to do this long weekend and got ninety per cent of it done on Friday.
And my concentration seems to be improving. It’s just taking a little effort now to settle down to an activity without trying to do three other things at the same time and check my phone every five minutes.
The mixed
The weather is gorgeous, but I am getting so hot.
The difficult and perplexing
I stubbed my toe on a chair at work. It bled a little at the time, but I thought nothing of it. Now I find that I have split the nail a long way down and half of it is flapping around, or would be if I hadn’t stuck a plaster over it. I have acquired some gauze and micropore tape, with which I hope I will be able to rig up something that will allow it to breathe and heal without catching on things. We’ll see.
What’s working
Immersion in water – whether by putting my feet in a plastic box full of cold water to cool them down, or by putting my entire self into a swimming pool.
Reading
I finished Seven Ages of Paris. Depressing (and, I can’t resist saying, not enough about the buses; though I don’t think that I had known that they parked them at fifty metre intervals down the Champs-Élysées to frustrate a German aerial troop landing: much good that did anybody) and, I feel, not entirely unbiased. But also entertaining and informative, and All Gall now makes much more sense to me. (I often feel that any study of mid-twentieth century history is a process of gradually getting more and more of Flanders and Swann’s references.)
And this piece on Soul Survivor (it’s mostly not about the recent revelations of horrible stuff, which does not feel like something that I have any standing to talk about), which made me feel very much as if I’d dodged a bullet. I never went to Soul Survivor, though two of my brothers did. I can see exactly how, in my late teens, I’d have been vulnerable to getting peer pressured into having a significant pseudo faith experience. Even at the advanced age of 37 I found I had a lot of Doing Faith Wrong monsters on the loose this week.
Mending
Sewed a button back on.
Watching
Still the Giro d’Italia. My goodness, that time trial! I think, that if there had to be a dropped chain in there somewhere, this was the most satisfying way for it to work out. But all the same, argh.
Today is Licence to Queer’s Donate Another Day. I have places to be this morning (specifically, church, and not Our Lady of Smolensk) so I got ahead by watching GoldenEye last night. It’s my favourite of the Brosnan Bonds (and Brosnan is my Bond): such fun, and Natalya is great. Anyway, everyone else kicked off at ten today, and Tomorrow Never Dies starts at one, so join in if you like Bond, and chuck a tenner at Unicef.
Cooking
Yesterday I gutted and scaled and filleted a fish (a sea bream, to be precise) for the first time. I failed to get some of the flesh along the top side, but I think I’d do better with a proper filleting knife. Maybe I’ll get one. Made stock from the head and bones: risotto tomorrow.
Then I put a slice of prosciutto on top, sprinkled it with breadcrumbs, parsley, and parmesan cheese, and cooked it alongside roast courgette, pepper and onion (recipe from The Hairy Dieters). It was extremely tasty.
Eating
See above. Also (for I am not on a diet, hairy or otherwise) yellow-stickered Waitrose cream buns. I am getting massively hungry at the moment.
Moving
Swimming. Pilates (this happens every week, but usually on a Tuesday, so I’ve forgotten about it by the time I get to this post. This week’s session was yesterday).
Noticing
Three small deer (one fawn, and presumably two parents) on the path behind our house. Muntjacs, maybe? I’m not very good at deer.
A train in GWR livery at Cambridge station – rather a long way from home, one would have said.
In the garden
I weeded one raised bed and put in three tomato plants. The other one didn’t need so much in the way of weeding; I put runner beans in it. And I found space for five cosmos plants around the garden.
The first rose is blooming. I think this bush is my favourite, aside from its habit of trying to revert to the rootstock; it has a lovely, faintly lemonish, scent.
Appreciating
Time. Focus. Other people’s gardens.
Acquisitions
I finally gave in and ordered three frocks from Joanie. One of them looks more like a tablecloth than I’d anticipated; one will do very nicely for the autumn; and one is fabulous and I’m wearing it now. (I don’t think I mind looking like a tablecloth, but the dress in question doesn’t fit. Yet. I think I’m just getting to the end of the phase where taking my usual size and ensuring it has a very full skirt is working. Still, only another month or so to go…)
From plant stalls outside people’s houses: two chilli pepper plants (one cayenne, one Hungarian something or other); three tomato plants (one Garnet, one Roma, one I’ve forgotten); and a honeysuckle.
Hankering
Well, a filleting knife, now.
Line of the week
From Rosemary Hill’s piece Consulting the Furniture in the last London Review of Books. (It is about time I went back to Kettle’s Yard. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I am on maternity leave…
Kettle’s Yard’s particular kind of austere elegance suits Cambridge and its Puritan, parliamentary history. It could never have happened in Oxford.
This coming week
Bank holiday. A committee meeting. Some family coming to see us. And, I hope, I’ll get the study sorted.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: land and sea
The good
I’ve had a week off work, and have spent more or less equal parts of it getting things done and taking naps. I had tea with a friend I haven’t seen since before Covid (and met her daughter, who’s getting on for three, for the first time). Went to Brighton to pick up a banner from fabric conservationists, and got to hear about the other things they’d worked on – far more interesting than mine.
The mixed
I’ve spent an awful lot of time on trains this week. This has been good for writing, not to mention getting home, collecting things from Brighton, and seeing a friend, but my lower back is not impressed at all. I have come to a new appreciation of the fact that the seats on Thameslink trains are made of ironing boards, while the Cross Country ones are elderly armchairs that have been sat in by generations of dogs.
The difficult and perplexing
A mild but intensely irritating cold.
What’s working
Summer pyjamas. Reminding myself that not all possible scenarios can happen to one person at one time.
Experimenting with
The idea that this stretch of time (maybe beginning with the pregnancy, maybe beginning back before the pandemic) is new and different from what came before, and I therefore can’t expect everything to work the same way as it previously did. Rather late in the day, but there we go.
Reading
Not much, though I got through half of the latest London Review of Books on the train. Ah, and this Church Times piece: Autism: adventures beyond the neurotypical.
Writing
I finished and submitted a poem! I shall now do my best to forget about it, but I am pleased, because it’s been a very long time. Also another five hundred words or so on Don’t Quit The Day Job.
Watching
The Giro d’Italia, though truthfully I’ve mostly been falling asleep in front of it. (This is testament more to my physical condition than to the quality of the racing, as I’ve been falling asleep in exciting and boring stages alike.) Also videos explaining the various different stages of labour. (There was a balloon. My mother approves.)
Looking at
Garden centres. At the first one we went to today there were an awful lot of slogans (on signs and plaques and doormats and all sorts of things) saying things like Don’t come in if you don’t have gin and Love is a state of temporary insanity curable by marriage. One rather came away with the impression that the typical garden centre shoppers were alcoholics in desperately unhappy relationships, and this was an expected, even desirable state of affairs. Are the normals OK?
Cooking
Not much, though I did come up with the genius idea of dropping frozen gyoza dumplings into packet chicken noodle soup for an ideal sniffle day lunch.
Eating
Tesco have introduced cherry bakewell cookies, which are very tasty if somewhat oversweet.
Playing
Catan, with my mother and youngest brother, with a pause to wave at the ferry containing my eldest brother and his family as it passed the south coast of the Isle of Wight.
In the garden
Everything is extremely green. The copper beeches have put out new leaves. The apple blossom is almost over, and there are small fruits happening on the pears and the plums too. Lemon balm has self-seeded all over the place. This afternoon I pulled up a load of violets and put in some new herbs – tarragon, chervil, lemon verbena, lavender, thyme.
Appreciating
Being married to someone I like. Having a family I like.
Acquisitions
Herbs, as mentioned above. A little metal garden table with two chairs. Books: Wings On My Feet (Sonja Henie); Born to Dance (Margot Fonteyn); Hymns and the Faith (Erik Routley); The Morville Year (Katherine Swift).
Also brought many things back from the Isle of Wight. The family christening gown. The toy octopus I gave my father a decade or so ago. Various baby clothes originally made for various babies by various people. A maternity dress originally made by my mother for herself. Another ancestor portrait. A repro HMV record catalogue (this is for Research).
Hankering
We are still considering a larger garden table. (The little one will do very nicely for evening drinks under the pergola, but we want something to put on the lawn and eat dinner off.)
Line of the week
Not something I’ve read this week, but this line from The Painted Garden (Noel Streatfeild) has been going through my head:
Days on land are like beads threaded on a string, big beads, little beads, gay beads for Christmas and birthdays; but days on a ship cannot go on the same string. They are different somehow and feel as if they need a special thread all to themselves.
Saturday snippet
This is from Don’t Quit the Day Job. I am getting to the point.
Nevertheless, unscrupulous institutions – and plenty that think of themselves as scrupulous, too – are entirely to take advantage of their employees’ sense of vocation, to take in general, to take, take, take, until there’s nothing left to give.
This coming week
I reach the end of the dashing around. There’s a trip to Essex tomorrow; then I go back to work, with a couple of days in the office; there’s the last of the antenatal classes, and an appointment with the midwife.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: the last dance
The good
Wedding! One of my brothers got married yesterday; it was a lovely afternoon in the sunshine by the river. There was a bus jaunt and a ceilidh and dancing to Pa’s 45s at the end of the night (hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart…).
I couldn’t help noticing how much better I was yesterday than at the last ceilidh I attended, thirteen months ago. Back then I was a month out from COVID and managed three dances, with extensive sit-downs between them. This time, seven months pregnant, I did two thirds or more (though my goodness, I was feeling it in my hips all night afterwards).
The mixed
Rail strikes made travel more complicated than it needed to be, though in practice this just meant an extra night in Portsmouth and a relaxed amble to the hovercraft.
The difficult and perplexing
I felt dreadfully flat afterwards. I think this was mostly tiredness, as I’m more cheerful today (also helps to have seen, and had longer conversations with, more of the family over lunch today). But the other part of it was that this was the last big thing before the baby arrives, and suddenly the calendar, which up until now was full of little islands of events and excursions, is all unexplored territory.
What’s working
Letting other people sort themselves out.
Reading
The Third Policeman (Flann O’Brien), which, at two chapters in, is already engagingly weird. Elephants Can Remember (Agatha Christie); I remembered the entire solution, which rather spoils it, though Mrs Oliver is always good value for money.
Writing
Little and not very often. I have a week off so maybe I’ll get some down when I get home. Or maybe I’ll rearrange the study. Or just nap.
Making
Nothing, but I note here that the person who previously owned my frock clearly had exactly the same problem with the neckline, as I found the remains of some stitching just where I was putting a safety pin.
Watching
The Giro d’Italia, though not so much the last few days. Maybe I’ll catch up. Maybe I’ll catch up with Eurovision, too.
Looking at
The delightfully eclectic mix of buildings in Old Portsmouth: eighteenth century pubs and 1960s council houses and the cathedral which has been a church for a very long time but a cathedral only for a century or so all rubbing shoulders. And the end of the A3, which runs out in a narrow street, laid with setts and disused tramlines, at the harbour.
Eating
Things with chips in pubs and various sorts of breakfasts in various different cafés (the Spinnaker at Portsmouth and the Blue Door in Newport were both very good). Wedding cake. And so forth.
Drinking
Warsteiner Fresh (alcohol free) – really not bad at all. And an excellent cup of coffee while we were waiting for the hovercraft at Southsea.
Moving
Dancing. Lots of it. And walking around Ventnor, which takes no little effort.
Noticing
Lizards! I always go looking for lizards when I’m in Ventnor during the summer months, and I spotted three or four when I was walking back from the seafront today. Yesterday I saw four impressively large fish in the river after the wedding ceremony (I do not know what species they might have been).
In the garden
It got a lot of rain last week, and I didn’t do much to it before we went away.
Appreciating
My family, and how we generally get on with each other and like seeing each other (not universally the case, as a conversation with my taxi driver on the way to the station on Thursday morning reminded me). A lift home from Tuesday’s antenatal class, saving me from a prolonged downpour. Having the disposable income to book an extra night in a hotel without having to worry about it. My frock fitting (another week and I think it would have been too tight). Modern technology meaning that I could participate in a discussion that I was at least partly responsible for initiating.
Acquisitions
A charity shop top with a design of leaves and leopards.
Hankering
Nothing, really.
Line of the week
I have a cat on my lap; this feature may follow when I don’t. Or it may not.
Sunday snippet
As above.
This coming week
One day of attacking the contents of my father’s house (I thought I might do some of that this afternoon, but I had a nap in a chair instead), then home to get my own house in order.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: so you can cycle while you cycle
The good
We had a weekend at a spa! I had never done this before, having mentally classified it under ‘not for the likes of us’ and also been nervous about getting it all wrong and exposing myself as a total fraud, but the in-laws suggested it as a nice thing to do before the baby appears and we disappear into a mountain of laundry, and I had to admit they had a point. So we booked into Quy Mill, just outside Cambridge, for one of the few free weekends we have this summer.
Anyhow, the conversation somehow moved from ‘haha, we could cycle there!’ to ‘actually, we could cycle there!’ and our successful excursion to an antenatal class in Littleport demonstrated that taking the Bromptons on the train and cycling to our destination was perfectly practical. (I know this in theory, but it had been a while since I’d put it into practice.) So we decided to cycle there. And then the purchase of a cargo bike happened rather faster than we’d anticipated, and suddenly it made sense for Tony to pick that up on the way. Fortunately it is large enough to hold one folded Brompton, so he was able to cycle to pick up the new bike and then cycle onwards on the new bike carrying the old one. (Yo dawg, I heard you liked cycling, so I put a cycle in your cycle so you can cycle while you cycle…)
This made it possibly the most Cambridge spa trip imaginable, even if we hadn’t then cycled over to Anglesey Abbey the next day.
It was very pleasant. There was extremely nice food; I had a lot of stress massaged out of my back; I also had my toenails painted. I went swimming twice. And we avoided most of the coronation hoohah. (I am what you might call a pragmatic monarchist: I can quite see that you need someone to cut the ribbons and all that, but my patience for the breathless commentary had been wearing very, very thin.)
Other good things this week: the political news was encouraging; the antenatal class was very interesting; the garden is flourishing.
The mixed
I generally enjoy thunderstorms, but not when I’m trying to get somewhere. I spent quite a long time sheltering in the underpass beneath the A14, 300 metres from my destination, but also 300 metres from the last lightning strike.
Also I got lost in Fen Ditton. This is becoming a habit and I could really do without it. I think I’d have beat the thunderstorm had it not been for that extra two kilometres.
The difficult and perplexing
I haven’t quite got the hang of ‘winding down’; or, rather, I’m doing OK at the doing less, but not so well at the feeling OK about it.
What’s working
Being outside. Using the Brompton rather than the (heavy) town bike.
Reading
I’m keeping on with Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne). Have reached the twentieth century. No mention of the buses yet but it may yet happen (we have had the taxis of the Marne). Began Towers in the Mist (Elizabeth Goudge) – more appropriate than I’d realised, since the action begins on May day.
Finished Black Gay British Christian Queer (Jarel Robinson-Brown): very good indeed. Also God’s Lovers in an Age of Anxiety (Joan M. Nuth); Julian of Norwich continues to be the best.
Read Miss Marple’s Final Cases and finally ran out of steam with Agatha Christie with Murder is Easy.
Watching
Never Say Never Again was on telly on bank holiday Monday, so I joined in the Licence To Queer watchalong. I think it’s rather underrated, actually, and I much prefer it to the original Thunderball (omits the coercion and a lot of the tedious shark stuff).
I have been watching the Giro d’Italia with Tony. And we managed to turn on the telly at exactly the right moment to hear the new Vivats in I Was Glad (and then to be irritated by the commentators talking over the rest of it and confirm our decision not to watch any more coronation stuff).
Looking at
The Last Supper, a set of sculptures by Silvy Weatherall, at the cathedral. These are abstract busts made from broken crockery stuck together with gold, kintsugi style. While I could see what she was getting at, I failed to get beyond my initial reaction – which was ‘Doctor Who monsters’.
Cooking
‘Asian-style aromatic pork’ from one of the slow cooker books – OK but not particularly exciting.
Eating
Quy Mill did very nicely by us. I was particularly impressed by the slow-cooked lamb and the (remarkably light) sticky toffee pudding. Last night we went to the White Hart in Fulbourn, and I had a Mediterranean vegetable pizza.
Moving
Cycling – nothing further than 8km, but quite a few short journeys. (It’s rather galling to have someone on the exact same bike whoosh past you, but I don’t think he was seven months pregnant…) And swimming.
Noticing
Nesting swans on Ditton Meadows (when I rode past on Friday evening, the one that wasn’t in charge of the nest was blocking half the cycle path; today, it was swimming in the ditch). A wagtail at the hotel this morning. Very vocal blackbirds. The same graffiti on the Chesterton railway bridge that’s been there as long as I can remember.
In the garden
Loads of apple blossom, and bees enjoying it. Plenty of wisteria flowering too. The white rose that always flowers first has five buds; the others are beginning to think about it.
Appreciating
A four-day week. A weekend of mild hedonism.
Acquisitions
I have mentioned the cargo bike – not that I shall be riding it for another couple of months. A couple of small fripperies in the shop at Anglesey Abbey.
Hankering
We’re considering some garden furniture – the main problem being that ‘big enough to eat dinner off’ and ‘small enough to fit sensibly under the pergola’ are incompatible specifications. Some thought required…
Line of the week
From the London Review of Books, here’s Sam Rose on Clive Bell:
it’s hard to feel very sorry for a man who insisted on having it all, got more than his fair share, and spent his life increasingly embittered about the little that had been denied him.
This coming week
Another bank holiday, another antenatal class, some travel that’s become rather more complicated than it needed to be, and, most excitingly, a wedding.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: ancestral
The good and the mixed
Spending time with family (and the friends who might as well be family). We buried Pa’s ashes in the family plot, as he’d always wanted, on the most beautiful April day with the bluebells coming out and a cherry tree in blossom, and had a long late lunch afterwards.
Then there was a theatre trip with the brothers – of which more later.
And it was a good week. But everything felt like a dreadful rush, somehow. (Bolting a meal at Wagamama and dashing to the theatre is fast becoming a tradition for me and my eldest brother…) I didn’t speak to many people for as long as I’d have liked, and I have a nagging sense of having missed opportunities. Part of it, of course, is being tired (partly because it’s a lot of rushing around, partly because I am just tired all the time these days) and therefore not being able to engage as fully as I might otherwise; and part of it is pure practicalities: it’s difficult to talk to people when they’re at the opposite end of the table from you, and of course you can’t talk in the theatre.
The difficult and perplexing
I could really have done without skinning my knees again. I suppose there’s a certain symmetry in bookending my week with sticking plasters.
What’s working
Naps. Naps continue to improve everything.
Reading
I finished Wildfire at Midnight. Hmm. Personally I’d have murdered some other characters, but there we go. It’s a very compelling read. Then I finished Bad to the Bone. This was excellent: a five-minutes-into-the-future (at least, at the time of publication), quasi-surreal account by an anonymous narrator of a doping(ish) scandal in the professional cycling peloton. The prose was excellent and, while the mechanics were far-fetched, the racing felt incredibly real. I feel that it could have tried to answer a few more questions, though.
Yesterday I had a ‘lounge in bed’ sort of a day, and read a lot of Agatha Christie: A Murder is Announced (very good, but I remembered too many of the twists from last time for it to be surprising), Ordeal by Innocence (not one of her best, and very of-its-time in the way it thinks about adoption), and Appointment with Death (OK, but not brilliant).
Mending
Some things that have been waiting for a very long time – Tony’s dressing gown, a fancy T-shirt, the collar of my Apollo blueprint dress.
Watching
Sweeney Todd – subtitled The Victorian Melodrama, and sub-subtitled NOT the musical by Stephen Sondheim (Opera della Luna). This took the script of the original 1847 production and added – as seems to have been consistent with period practice – background music from a small orchestra. The music came from various (higher-brow) composers of the era, including my great-great-great-grandfather Julius Benedict. Hence our going to see it: I may never hear Benedict’s music performed live by professionals again. Of course, the problem with its being so very obscure is that I couldn’t distinguish it from that of the other composers (though I did recognise Home Sweet Home – Bishop – and When Other Lips – Balfe). But anyway, it all sounded great, and the orchestra also did sterling service making the sound effects.
Quite apart from family pride, it was extremely enjoyable as a piece of theatre – a proper old-fashioned hiss-the-villain fun, with a small and talented company playing a very large cast. The theatre (Wilton’s Music Hall, in the East End) is a fantastic building.
And today Tony and I went to watch the eel parade, which is one of those delightfully specific local celebrations. The eel was constructed along the lines of Chinese New Year dragons, and followed by: representatives of the Royal British Legion; a samba band; a couple of dance schools; and Brownies/Guides/Rainbows. And one enterprising youngster had a smaller papier maché eel. Very much like Remembrance Day, except for all the ways in which it wasn’t.
Looking at
St Swithun’s, Martyr Worthy, which is a delightful little church with a Norman door. According to the lay reader who took the ceremony for us, it’s still regularly used and there is a decent variety of services. There’s a monument to someone from Sir John Moore’s company – Pa was always interested in the retreat from Coruña and I wonder if that was where that started.
I was interested to see that the visitors’ book was chock full of people walking St James’ Way, which seems to have really taken off since I did it in 2015. (For starters, I don’t think the church was open then, or I’d have looked in; these days it has a sello.)
Cooking
Not much this week, as I’ve mostly been out, but I did rösti with purple sprouting broccoli and fried eggs yesterday. Pretty good.
Eating
Scampi and chips in Winchester; ramen with vegetable gyoza at Wagamama; Scotch egg from the market today.
Noticing
A bush with blue flowers and loads of bees. From the train, several deer. In a charity shop in Sutton, several James Bond tie-in model cars.
In the garden
I did quite a lot this afternoon: trimmed a couple of bushes, sowed sweet pea and nasturtium seeds, watered the pear trees, pulled up some weeds. I also repotted the agave and aloe veras. Our predecessors’ compost bin has obligingly produced a load of compost (I’m not sure I looked into it at all last year). The wisteria is looking likely to produce more flowers than we’ve ever had here; the lily-of-the-valley is beginning to flower, and I think the peony may not be dead after all.
Appreciating
Sunshine. Small towns. The way you don’t need to explain family to family.
Acquisitions
Two parcels today: a new bra and Run Away Home.
Hankering
I was rather taken by a lampshade with a print of eels. I shall continue to think about it. It would certainly be an improvement on the ribbon-and-plastic-bead monstrosity that’s currently in my study.
Line of the week
There were several candidates from Bad to the Bone.
Their nerves are running on ninety seven per cent adrenalin, their fuses so short that if they were off their bikes and a leaf fell on their head they’d beat it to a pulp; and then somewhere inside someone’s head the little glass capsule shatters, the acid snaps the spring, muscles convulse, tyres lash tarmac and they’re on their own, elbows overlapping, bikes barrelling through forty five degrees beneath them as they screw them left and right, arms heaving, feet whipping, riding inside the arc of each other’s elbows, trying to get down the inside, through the gap that opens and closes three times a second, round the outside of a guy who’s going nearly as much across the road as along it because he’s got his head down between his knees because that way he can concentrate exclusively on pulling the bars off his machine without distraction.
This coming week
Bank holiday. Antenatal class. Midwife appointment. And we are going to a spa.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: Euston, we have a problem
The good
Cherry blossom. Mozart. Seeing a book with one of my stories in on a real shelf in a real bookshop. The fact that I do not have to deal with any of the difficult stuff on my own.
The mixed
Chaired a meeting yesterday. It seemed to go OK – at least, other people keep telling me so – but I am feeling very flattened.
The difficult and perplexing
This has really not been a good week in terms of physical and mental health. I’ve been feeling gloomy and depressed, lonely, and tired. On Friday night I tripped over a paving stone (I assume) on the Euston Road and scraped my left knee and twisted my right ankle, both very painfully, and had the usual crowd of concerned bystanders asking ‘Are you all right?’ one after another when I wasn’t at all sure and none of them had anything actually constructive to offer. And of course when one is pregnant there is a whole load of worry about potentially having hurt the baby on top of the consciousness that I’m going to be a dreadful liability when I’m a little old lady. (Baby is flailing around happily, so far as I can tell.) Today I was tired and headachey.
What’s working
Remembering to pump up my bicycle tyres. I also wrote down all the projects I theoretically have on hand, from the review of Ely Cursillo’s printed publications to clearing my father’s house to three novels and producing a baby. I’m not sure that I can say this worked, as such, as very few of them are much forrarder as a result, but it did put it all into perspective and made me feel better about the fact that they aren’t all done yesterday. I genuinely do have an awful lot going on.
Reading
Got caught up on Wildfire at Midnight. Started Bad To The Bone (James Waddington). Gave up on several articles because they were just too depressing (this says more about me than it does about them). Today I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Writing
A little bit on Starcrossers.
Watching
I finished Our Flag Means Death; it is good fun.
Listening to
Ely Choral Society singing the Mozart Requiem and Haydn’s Salve Regina. (The latter was a little awkward because nobody in the audience seemed to have heard it before, and we didn’t know when to clap. But I very much enjoyed the concert overall.)
More Maintenance Phase, mostly for company on lone WFH days.
Cooking
Chicken drumsticks glazed with honey/mustard/curry powder.
Eating
Friday was going to be a takeaway night even before I did my lower limbs in; I had some very nice fried sea bass in a lemon/chilli/cashew nut sauce from one of the two Thai places.
This afternoon I walked into town to go to a shop which turned out not to be open on Sundays; so I made up for it with a cornet of cassata siciliana (candied fruits) from the gelato shop instead.
Noticing
The cherries are doing their thing (well, it is still Eastertide, so they are only a little late). I keep seeing goldfinches.
In the garden
Things are blooming away with very little help from me. This includes a load of dandelions, but at least they’re cheerful.
Appreciating
The people who do things. I am not, after all, making all of this – any of this – happen by myself.
Acquisitions
I have a new mouthguard to keep me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. I also get a very accurate model of my lower teeth. I am not entirely sure what to do with this, but it’s quite impressive, particularly since it was created by the dentist waving a camera round my mouth. For the moment I’ve put it in the bathroom cabinet, from which it will no doubt fall and scare me at the worst possible moment.
When I went to pick it up I popped into Gay’s The Word, and came away with Tales of the City and Illness as Metaphor.
Hankering
I have reached a state of dissatisfaction with most of my shoes (this before I fell over, too) but don’t really know what I want to replace any of them with.
Line of the week
From this article from The Road Book:
If you didn’t see it, well, after 267km of a typical Amstel route – apparently based on the trajectory of a very angry fly trapped against a small window – the final was clearly boiling down to a sprint between Julian Alaphilippe and Jakob Fuglsang.
Sunday snippet
I’m enjoying the chance to let Starcrossers have some breathing space, and to put in some backstory and worldbuilding that there just wasn’t space for when it was going to be a short story. Though I’m not sure yet which of those this bit’s going to be:
Alone in my quarters, I let myself think of the one who could no longer be named. This was an infringement in itself. I ought to have forgotten her already. That, I’d been told as a child, would ease the pain. It was the only way.
This coming week
A lot of dashing around, mostly family-related. And then (whisper it) absolutely nothing over the bank holiday weekend.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: I think the cover was blue
The good
It’s been an excellent week. I have slept a lot; I got a load of cat-herding and yak-shaving done on Monday and Tuesday and am now much less stressed about all the things that were formerly stressing me; I had a long phone conversation with one friend and went out for tea with two others. I logged into my work email once to see what the news was, and I liked it. I had my hair cut and I liked the result.
The mixed
April showers! Only one of them seriously inconvenienced me, though, and I got a lift home.
A visit from a hedgehog! (I was very glad to see the hedgehog, and it’s certainly good news that it’s got through hibernation, but it shouldn’t have been in the garage.)
I’m still slightly despairing about the state of the study. And I would have liked to have got more writing done.
The difficult and perplexing
Honestly, it’s mostly been good. Woke up too early this morning. That’s about it.
What’s working
Setting deadlines (for other people). Just doing things. And, on occasion, not doing things.
Reading
I was very zonked on Wednesday morning, so collapsed first on the bed and then on the sofa with After the Funeral (Agatha Christie). (My copy has a cover consisting of stills from the – very loose, by the looks of it – adaptation Murder at the Gallop, starring Margaret Rutherford. It looks bizarre.) Yesterday I read through all of the Heartstopper webcomic (Alice Oseman) that currently exists. I shall now do my best to forget about it for six months, as I know from bitter experience that waiting eagerly to read three panels once a fortnight (or whatever) is the quickest way for me to fall out of love with a canon. (It happened most spectacularly with Check, Please!, though I think Heartstopper is more coherent in tone and certainly less eyebrow-raising in its attitude to coming out. All the same, I’m not going to take the risk.) Anyway, I read the Nick and Charlie novella today and that ties things up nicely.
Writing
I wrote 700 words of what’s probably going to turn out to be a blog post on wanting things. I moved some things around in and made some additions to Don’t Quit The Day Job. And I typed up a bit of Your Household’s Rancour that I’d apparently forgotten about. As I said above, I’d have liked to have got more done. Pa used to swear that he couldn’t write if he didn’t smoke, and I’m half-tempted to wonder if I’d concentrate better if I were back on the coffee. (But I have rather gone off coffee.)
Most definitely not writing: The Long Lent, which would be the Stancester gang versus early Covid. I am not sure that anybody wants to read about early Covid. And it would mostly be about Will, and I’m not sure that anybody wants to read about Will, either. It doesn’t have much of a plot. It occurred to me that it doesn’t have to be a full-length novel. All the same, I found myself rereading a lot of The Real World when I was awake too early this morning, and trying to work out what jobs people would have been doing by 2020, and then at lunchtime I was looking for the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, which I think would form a sort of structure. I couldn’t find it. I’m sure it has a blue cover.
But anyway, I have two novels on the go, another one to expand from a short story, and the workbook that is in theory my principal project. I’m not convinced that this isn’t a ploy by some twisty part of my brain to stop me finishing anything.
Watching
I finally got through the world figure skating championships. I was glad I left the ice dance until last; it just got better and better and better through the last couple of groups.
Cooking
Indian masala carrots with coconut lentils.
Eating
Leftover bigos for lunch through the first half of the week. (It was OK, but it really needed belly pork; the meat was a bit dry.) Pizza, with various meat products, on Wednesday night. (Apparently my blood pressure is a bit low, which may explain my recent preoccupation with ham sandwiches.) Easter chocolate. Yesterday I got some rum and raisin fudge from the fudge shop: a rare treat.
Moving
Swimming. My new bathing suit arrived and seems perfectly satisfactory.
Noticing
As mentioned above, a hedgehog in the garage. (I was not, in fact, the first person to notice it; it triggered the motion sensor and Tony saw it. But I was the person to see it in its prickly reality and, protected by a pair of gardening gloves, get it out.)
There have been a lot of goldfinches around lately. Robins and blackbirds, very vocal. And one of our resident woodpigeons has discovered that it can sit in a bush and eat from the seed feeder just above it, which looks most comical, like a student doing a yard of ale.
In the garden
The tulips are most definitely out and it’s all got a lot brighter. The pear blossom gets more luxuriant by the day. I chopped some dead bits off the palm tree (it’s not a real palm tree, but I can’t remember the name of it). I’m not convinced it liked the cold weather earlier this year. Can’t blame it.
Appreciating
Friends who have been in my life for getting on for twenty years. A week to do more or less exactly what I wanted.
Acquisitions
Theatre tickets! We are going to see Opera della Luna’s Sweeney Todd. It is not often that you get to hear your great-great-great-grandfather’s music done live by pros (well, depends on who your great-great-great-grandfather was, I suppose, but mine has slipped into obscurity). I am very excited about this.
Hankering
I still have my eye on the teapot dress, but there’s no point buying it yet. As it is, I’ve been trying on various dresses in my wardrobe and doing calculations along the lines of if I expand by one centimetre every week and the wedding is in a month was it worth paying a tenner for a dress that was a size too big in January and how much extra time do I have to allow to go shopping in Portsmouth and what on earth do I do about a bra?
Line of the week
From After the Funeral:
It was a nice painting of white satin and pearls. The human being round whom they were draped and clasped was not nearly so impressive.
Saturday snippet
From Don’t Quit the Day Job
The challenge is remaining in that [writer’s] mindset when I’m back in London and the phone’s ringing and I have five spreadsheets to convert into a report. Writing on the commute helps. So does reading in my lunch break. I also like to wear one or other of the pieces of jewellery that I associate with my writing identity. (A current favourite is a pair of earrings featuring glass beads in the shape of coffee beans.)
This coming week
Back at work. In fact, it’s a perfectly normal week before things start getting absolutely ridiculous next Saturday, and remain so for the subsequent month.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: harrowing of/hell/of the North
The good
Easter! Alleluia! I can’t help comparing with last year and seeing how much more with it I am now than I was then. Granted, every excursion outside the house demands a nap later in the day, but I am, for example, quite capable of doing the Walk of Witness followed by the Three Hours – rather than reclining on the sofa watching the liturgy on YouTube. And it was particularly good to make it to the Easter Vigil last night and find some friends who were there to support confirmation candidates from their parishes.
And this is only the beginning of a week’s holiday (not that I am going anywhere).
The mixed
It hit me this week that the bulk of the big comms projects is… done. Of the three major documents that needed revising and redesigning, one’s done and published, one’s at the printers’ now, and one’s there but for some tiny edits. Oh, there are plenty of small bits to tidy up, and the comms only accounted for half of the stuff I want to get wrapped up before I go on maternity leave, but I’m noticing that I’m transitioning into a ‘before I go on maternity leave’ mindset, and that’s a little disconcerting. It’s all coming up rather fast.
This morning, the cat ate a rose leaf, made some alarming noises, brought the rose leaf (but nothing else) back up again, and was wandering around with it caught in her fluffy tail. I have now removed it.
The difficult and perplexing
I am wobbling a bit about whether I will ever finish a book ever again. That’s something to get my head around this week.
Also missing the family somewhat – they were all here last year! – but will be seeing them all pretty soon.
Also [way TMI, so I won’t tell you].
What’s working
Naps, still.
Reading
Different books for different circumstances. Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne) on the train: rather tediously blokey in parts, but I am learning more French history than the very vague outline I previously had. She Gets The Girl (Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick) at lunchtime in the office: that rather tedious combination of characters who are more than usually aware of their own shortcomings but apparently incapable of acting on that knowledge. I think this is a Thing in YA, which is where this book probably wants to sit. That aside, it’s interesting to read a campus novel set in the United States and be surprised at the very different norms (how many students have cars, for example, and the assumption that having a roommate is the default).
But really this week’s book has been The Man Born To Be King (Dorothy L. Sayers), a cycle of radio plays she wrote in the early 1940s. I meant to skip straight to the plays, but ended up reading all of the introductions too. I’d read the whole lot before, at university, and revisiting it was amused to note how much it’s shaped my understanding of the Incarnation, and my thinking about the inherent corruptibility of any institution you care to name (really, it’s all I’ve been writing about ever since…). What’s particularly interesting to me is the way she talks about the work that has to go in to turn the curated collections of sayings and happenings that make up the Gospels into what the twentieth century would recognise as a coherent narrative. (Although I don’t think this is entirely missing from the Gospels themselves: I noticed a couple of Christmases back the different, but both extremely relatable, from a writerly point of view, devices that Matthew and Luke employ to get the Holy Family to where they think they ought to be.) The plays themselves feel sometimes very dated and often extremely powerful. I think Sayers makes Judas more complicated than he really needs to be; I dislike the conflation of Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene and the woman who was a sinner; and I’m not sure you’d do the same thing with Nicodemus today; but overall it works.
There was the usual OH DLS NO for the usual reasons. It’s fascinating, in an infuriating kind of way, how the gratuitous offensiveness seems to come from a place of affection. (I’m thinking here of the way she talks about her characterisation of Matthew – I’m not going to quote it – but Matthew comes across as one of the most likeable characters in the whole thing and I think that’s deliberate.)
I attempted The City of God but, while I think I probably do have the brain for St Augustine, I don’t have the brain for a four hundred year old translation. Can anyone recommend a newer one? I dislike Oxford World Classics for their irritating habit of filling the text with asterisks, but am otherwise open-minded.
Writing
Nothing to speak of.
Listening to
Podcasts – not usually my thing, but when I have a repetitive task I quite like having something on to occupy the other half of my brain. The Ffern podcast is a favourite; I’ve also been enjoying Maintenance Phase lately.
Making
Messing around with stamps and embossing powder for some cards.
Mending
Darned the elbows of a pyjama top, a couple of holes in the legs of the trousers, and most of a pair of socks. (I have only really started getting holes in my pyjama trousers since we acquired a cat. Funny, that.)
Watching
Paris-Roubaix Femmes. I do have mixed feelings about filling the hole of Holy Saturday with televised sport but did it anyway. But what a race!
Cooking
Pasta with vegetable-heavy (though not vegetarian) sauces: first this one, then this one.
In between writing this I’m getting bigos going for tonight. I’m not quite sure when bigos became an Easter tradition (and we didn’t have it last year, because of feeding my mostly-vegetarian family) but it is one now.
Eating
Hot cross buns, of course. I also got a Simnel cake (too tired to cook one) and had the first slice after the Vigil last night.
Noticing
The blackbirds have become very vocal lately; the robins, slightly less so. On Friday there was a right old to-do on the green, with two herring gulls perched on somebody’s roof and shrieking away, a black cat a long way up a tree, but not near enough to get at the crow in the same tree, and a load of black-headed gulls watching the show.
In the garden
The tulips are most definitely blooming now; the apple trees are just beginning to come into leaf; the pear trees are doing leaves and blossom together, starting at the top. A bush that I thought was dead is also producing leaves. There is no sign of the peony, alas.
I’m enjoying seeing other people’s pictures of the progress of spring – internet friends in Japan (some resident, some visiting) sharing the cherry blossom; closer to home, many variations of daffodils, and blossom, and birds – and comparing with my garden.
There is plenty going on in my pot of herbs, though I didn’t label anything so will have to wait until it all gets bigger to find out what’s what. I don’t think the tarragon’s going to come up but the beans and the cosmos seem happy enough.
Appreciating
Spring! Paschal triumph, paschal joy! Friends both on and offline. Cat pictures. And the real cat.
Acquisitions
I have ordered a maternity swimsuit.
Hankering
Much as last week, I think.
Line of the week
DLS in snark mode:
Sacred personages, living in a far-off land and time, using dignified rhythms of speech, making from time to time restrained gestures symbolic of brutality. They mocked and railed on Him and smote Him, they scourged and crucified Him. Well, they were people very remote from ourselves, and no doubt it was all done in the noblest and most beautiful manner. We should not like to think otherwise.
Sunday snippet
As noted, I barely wrote anything, so you get a few lines of angst about whether I am in fact capable of writing anything…
- I’m very tired.
- It’s Holy Week.
- And Paris-Roubaix. I think.
- I am worried that I have forgotten how to finish things.
- [The memory of picking an apple from a tree, how you simply hold it gently and lift it and it comes away in your hand]
This coming week
Sleep. Various appointments (haircut; midwife). General life admin. Maybe test the new swimsuit when it arrives. Get the study into some sort of order so that it can become something else entirely when the time comes.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Week-end: YELLOW CROWN IMPERIALS (and crimson roses)
Absolutely everything is going under ‘mixed’ this week.
The mixed
My manager retired yesterday. I’m going to miss her. She’s been my manager for ten years of the thirteen I’ve worked for the union, three at the beginning and then seven after we ended up in the same team again, and she’s been supportive and encouraging ever since I was a temp who couldn’t say boo to a goose.
Anyway, that meant a team meal out on Tuesday, and a party last night. I caught up with some people I haven’t seen in years, and I danced. I haven’t danced that much since… probably before the pandemic. My feet were complaining on the walk to the station last night, and I’ve spent most of today doing absolutely nothing.
What’s working
Allowing for nap time.
Reading
Finished These Violent Delights, which ended with some blatant sequel bait. I don’t think I shall search out anything further. It had a fantastic premise but really needed much more editing. (Also, reading it in the current climate it was somewhat galling to have a strike presented as an incident of disaster, though I realise that at least part of that was the appropriately warped worldview of the protagonists.)
Then I moved onto Plain Bad Heroines (emily m. danforth) and finished it in three days. This was what I’d been missing: a slick, confident prose style. It had the kind of assertive narrator my friend Kit calls an Oi Pal; they’re always intruding themselves into the page to point out something they think you should be looking at, or to give their own take on events, or make some kind of sarcastic interjection. In some books this grates, but in this case it worked; it strengthened the sense of being in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. This was mostly fulfilled, with the two timelines (early twentieth century boarding school and present day Hollywood) unfolding in tandem and a delicious sapphical-gothical feeling across both. It faltered a little at the denouement, with what should have been the climax taking place offstage, and (I thought, anyway) an unnecessary diversion into the backstory. I also hadn’t much time for Mary Maclane, the Not Like Other Girls author of the book that drives a lot of the plot. Very readable, though, and I’m glad it’s not wasp season.
And I have started Wildfire at Midnight (Mary Stewart) for the romantic suspense bookclub. Very different, but equally skillful, prose.
Watching
Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) – English National Opera. I knew pretty much nothing about this beyond the fact that it was set in Bruges and based on a book called Bruges-la-Morte, so bought a programme. I do wonder if it’s one that might in fact be better watched unspoiled. So all I shall say is that it’s a very twentieth-century opera; it couldn’t have existed before Freud, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a mental breakdown put on stage in quite the same way. It does have the perennial opera problem of being sold as a timeless tale of love and loss and actually turning out to be about a creepy entitled man, but there we go. The music is gorgeous, and also loud, and you can see why Korngold was so good at film music later in his career.
Looking at
I went to the V and A yesterday and, after pausing to look at a fantastically detailed micromosaic panorama of Rome, went round the exhibition on musicals – costumes, set designs, and an awful lot of LP covers. Plus a long reel of extracts from archive recordings from the last couple of decades, which made for a nice excuse to sit down. Must go back another time to look at the model theatres.
Cooking
Pork chops with cabbage (the cabbage comes out very soggy, but very tasty).
Eating
Italian, mostly. We went to Wildwood with the in-laws on Sunday (bruschetta, chicken and asparagus risotto, panna cotta with a pleasantly tart blackcurrant compote); then Tuesday’s lunch was at Albertini’s (fusilli with tomato, sausage, and greens, followed by tiramisu).
Noticing
Quite a few rabbits out in the fields. And pheasants.
In the garden
The tulips are beginning to show what colour they’re going to be. The plum blossom is out and the apples and pears are on the way. The grape hyacinths have gone a gorgeous deep blue.
In the conservatory, the cosmos seeds have sprouted very satisfactorily; so have some of the beans, and something is going on in the big herb pot, though the tarragon seems to be doing nothing at all. The cat grass has come up and been put into service.
Appreciating
All the excellent people I have in my life.
Acquisitions
Flowers! Along with the pram, which was the official purpose of the visit, the in-laws brought one of those lovely tiny rose plants. It has four crimson blooms and is doing well despite the best efforts of the cat. And at the market on Sunday I bought a yellow crown imperial and planted it in the garden. It wasn’t very impressed by the wind and rain, so I’ve tied it to the trellis for support.
Hankering
I’m still thinking about that teapot dress. It’s occurred to me that a lot of my summer dresses are not going to be much use to me this year.
Line of the week
There were several contenders this week. Here’s one from Plain Bad Heroines:
The night was drunk on the liquor of late spring, on wet grass and pale moon, on air still warm even after the sunset, air now scented by the rain-smacked lilac bushes planted at the back of the theater, their branches so heavy with blooms and moisture that several were bent against the ground.
Saturday snippet
Started adding to Starcrossers again:
[I was still on Crew territory.] Even if I hadn’t known that, I’d have been able to tell from the broad street that gave me nowhere to hide. When I’d ridden through earlier it had been crowded with the booths and stands of the ten-day market, and I’d had to be careful. Now I wished they were back.
This coming week
Holy Week. And getting to church at all will be an improvement on last year.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Kathleen Jowitt 