Author: kathleenjowitt

Reverb 3 and 11: wishing and singing

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

Day 3: What do you really wish for?

Imagine a scenario where you only had one year left to live. What is one thing that you really wish to do that you just haven’t had the chance to accomplish yet?

I would like to add: what steps could you take (however small) to ensure that you accomplish this thing in 2013?

I am a little hesitant about answering this one, not because I don’t have an answer in mind, but because only a month ago my answer would have been different. I’m not sure what it would have been, but it wouldn’t have been this:

I want to write my novel. I want to write it, and I want it to be good. And I think this is the one thing that I want to do that nobody else can do for me.

What steps can I take? Well, that’s easy enough. Write. Write every day until it’s done. (Within reason, and without getting myself so stressed out about it that I don’t want to do it any more.) Even doing ten days’ worth at the end of Picowrimo I found things coming together, of characters coming to life and beginning to drive the plots themselves, and it suddenly became plausible. I hope that if I keep working this will keep happening.

Day 11: What was music to your ears?

What was music to your ears in 2012, literally or metaphorically?

It hasn’t been a particularly outstanding year, music-wise. My two most impressive achievements were singing half the alto solo in This is the Record of John three times, and getting paid for playing the cello – both firsts. I should have done Record for the Advent carol service last year, but I had the flu.

I also escaped from the choirboy supervision rota and became slightly obsessed with operetta. We did several lovely pieces in choir – Byrd 3-part, And I saw a new heaven, There shall a star from Jacob come forth – but I don’t think there was anything particularly interesting that we hadn’t done before. But then I have been in this choir since 2008, and we do repeat most of our repertoire year on year, and so I have got to grips with most of it. Every so often I do suddenly realise how fantastically wonderful a particular piece is – it happened this year with the three mentioned above – and I really am very lucky. It’s impressive how quickly one gets used to such luxury (and by luxury I mean three practices and two services per week). I love it.

Reverb 2 and 10: spending and risking

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

Day 2: Your most significant spend

What was your most significant expenditure in 2012?

It doesn’t have to be necessarily the biggest expenditure, just the one with the most impact.

What difference has it made to your life?

As a matter of fact it was the biggest expenditure, or, rather, between the two of them, they were. Epona and Midna, the tricycles. Epona, £350, from eBay (whence she is shortly to return). Midna, twice that, from Evans, via the Cycle to Work scheme. They have changed my life, and I have to count them both, because if I hadn’t had the instant gratification of riding Epona, useless as she is, I’d probably have lost interest long before it occurred to me to look into Cycle to Work. And then Midna took so long to show up… Epona served her purpose, even if only for a few weeks. I am going to sell her on, but doubt I’d get much for her in the middle of December. Midna is great.

They have changed my life. Not in any dramatic, world-changing way, but cycling makes me more cheerful and gives me a little bit more independence. It means that I can buy twelve tins of tomatoes at a time if I feel like it. I cycled to and from work today, and even though it was simultaneously freezing and sweaty, and a little bit scary in the dark, and some wanker overtook me far too close (deliberately so, I think) it was such fun, in a way that sitting on the train for ten minutes never can be. It puts me in a whole different mindset.

Day 10: Your greatest risk

What was the greatest risk you took in 2012? What was the outcome?

Should I say, starting to cycle again? Perhaps. I did wonder if I was being a bit rash, forking out three hundred and fifty quid for something I wasn’t sure I was going to have the nerve to use. And actually every day I cycle is a risk; I’m always uncomfortably aware that I’m rather more likely to be killed on the road than I would on the train; but it is one of those occasions where you have to make the choice and stick with it.

There have been a couple of moments this year where I’ve felt physically in danger, and, looking back, have discovered that I took risks to get there – the most notable, perhaps, being where the path disappeared at Woody Bay, when I’d decided not to follow the boring, not-at-all-coastal, coastal path, and see if I could get round by the actual coastline. But that was all right: I swore a lot, clawed my way back up to the actual path, and trudged through a hell of a lot of mud to Seaview.

Coming out to the Rector felt risky at the time, but turned out to be safe and moving and vaguely hilarious. It does feel risky, living without the mask, particularly when it’s a long time since you’ve looked at yourself without it, and the person behind it doesn’t look the same as last time. Yes, I think that was the biggest risk of all: being prepared to let the label fall off. It’s worked out OK; I do tend to forget and to slip back into my idea of who I ought to be, but when I do remember it’s very liberating.

Starting – late

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

I forgot all about reverb12 until yesterday, and then couldn’t find it. I should have begun on the 1st; it’s now the 9th. I will attempt to catch up by posting two a day until I’m back on schedule. We shall see how this works.

Day 1: How are you starting?

How are you starting this last month of 2012?

Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath and ask yourself the question: how do you feel…

… in your body? in your mind? in your day job? in your creative life? in your heart?

This is rather retrospective, of course, but I’ve felt rather stuck in the first week of December, and only really woken up today, so let’s go with it.

When I went into December I was fed up with 2012 – so much so that I was talking, only half-jokingly, about switching to the liturgical calendar and calling it new year already. My depression was atrocious, made worse by the dark mornings (because they are getting dark, now). This led to my not wanting to get out of bed in time to cycle to work, which led to me feeling worse.

Work has been one long slog since July, dealing with staff absence all over the place, feeling that I was enjoying what I was doing, but there wasn’t enough of it, and I wasn’t actually supposed to be doing that, and anyway, what was the point? I’d not picked myself up properly from a mental crash in October, having finally got fed up with being dragged into other people’s causes, and feeling like a fraud for being paid to care about other people’s causes.

My creative life, on the other hand, had suddenly picked up, thanks in large part and the House of Laity. I got some blinding white-hot fury down in pixels, and this kick-started a project that had been stalled (even, I thought, abandoned) since – well, the last time I decided it wasn’t worth writing. This time it’s looking a lot sharper; it has much more shape to it. That’s a positive, then.

Day 9: Your favourite book?

What was the best book you read in 2012, and why? (And by “Why?” I mean: Why did you read it? And why was it your favourite? Although these answers could be one and the same…!)

To Kill A Mockingbird, without question. Why did I read it? Because it was the May choice for our works book club. Why was it my favourite? Because it was so utterly convincing. Because I was kicking myself for never having read it before. Because it made me so sad, and so angry. Because everything else I’ve read this year has disappointed me in one way or another, and To Kill A Mockingbird didn’t.

Synodfail: where I go from here

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

A friend retweeted this earlier:

Yet another thing I genuinely don’t get: why women want to part of a club that resolutely keeps telling them to fuck off.

It is a very good question. Here is my answer. A lot of it is similar to this post, which I wrote back in 2010. Some of it, however, is considerably more hopeful than I was in 2010.

I should first make it absolutely clear that I am deeply disappointed and saddened by yesterday’s Synod decision. It hurts like hell. I think it is bad for the Church’s mission, in terms of both ministry within and credibility without. I had almost begun to believe that we would see the first female bishop in the Church of England before I turned thirty – and could then move on to eradicating inequality elsewhere.

With this decision the Church of England has, of course, rendered itself unworthy to speak on the topic of inequality, hurt and betrayed hundreds of its own best ministers, and, it seems, hung out a huge sign saying WE DON’T WANT YOU.

I, however, am staying. Here are some reasons why:

The overall vote was 72% in favour. 72% of Synod do want us.

The measure got through the bishops. It got through the clergy. It only failed in the laity. Of course this is disappointing and infuriating, and highlights how bloody stupid the voting system is, but I am, in an odd way, encouraged. The bishops and clergy are there because that’s their job – and the vast majority of the bishops and clergy want women to be bishops. The laity are there because they’re fanatics with an axe to grind, on one side of the debate or the other, who have gone through all the hassle of being elected to Synod in order to grind that axe. (I, of course, am a fanatic with an axe to grind. I’m not on Synod, so just think how fanatic they’ll be who actually are.)

I wasn’t able to listen to the actual debate, being at work and all and therefore restricted to the Church of England’s Twitter feed, but I understand from people who were listening that several people who spoke (and, presumably, voted) against the measure did so because they felt that it did not protect women bishops enough. A clearer case of shooting oneself in the foot I never saw, but it does suggest that the House of Laity is not entirely a herd of misogynist dinosaurs. Of course, misguided idealists can do just as much damage…

Outside of London, where all things can be found, I very much doubt that I’ll find another congregation that’s simultaneously sound on women and LGBT, and has a decent choir. I’ll be interested to hear the Rector’s sermon on Sunday; I suspect it will be along the lines of ‘keep working for this, because we will get there’.

In a repeat from 2010:

This is my Church. It is my Church by right as an Englishwoman, by baptism, by faith, and by inheritance. I am working to see it become more like the Kingdom of Heaven, and I am not going to stop doing that just because those members who wish to restrict the ministry of other members have ‘won’ this time.

The Church of England is still the Established Church. For as long as it remains so, it behoves me as a member of the Church that belongs to the nation to make sure that the doors remain open to the nation.

In fact, in a bizarre way, this feels a lot more hopeful than 2010. I stopped crying last night when I thought how other members of my church would be feeling the same way as me. This time it’s not just me and a couple of other wingnuts on the internet. This time it feels like the vast majority of the Church of England, the rank and file, the clergy and the congregations, crying out in pain and fury. We are all standing at the foot of each other’s crosses. It’s rather like the end of Life of Brian.

We wanted it. And we will get there. And I want to be there when we do.

Walking Godstuff

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

It was about time I did another long walk anyway. Having most of a week to myself to walk out allowed me to integrate some things that were buzzing around in my head. (‘Integration’ and ‘integrity’ seem to be this year’s words; I was aiming for ‘balance’, but of course there’s an element of separation to that which turns out to be not what I need…)

Quite apart from the usual OMGWTFBBQ sea! butterflies! lizards! houses! yachts! cliffs! thing (um, God revealed in creation, you know what I mean…); also, a Non-Tame Lion, and connected spontaneous thankfulness, I did manage to get some thoughts, if not nailed down, then at least with a paperweight on them for five minutes.

It mostly seemed to be about sex and the Incarnation. I got about a third of the way through Women’s Experience of Sex (Kitzinger) – it’s very eighties and occasionally made me want to punch someone, but had some good stuff in – specifically, about letting sex be about more than genitals. And I read this post about the Incarnation and the necessity (or otherwise) of the Crucifixion, which is an elegant rendering of the idea that Anne and I ran into over pasta and sardines on Maundy Thursday in Redecilla. (Incidentally, I have been catching up on La Vuelta a España, and getting very excited when I see Camino waymarkings at the roadside. I have been looking out for them specifically, but still.)

What I have been getting from this particular combination is that I need to get my sexual and spiritual aspects meshing with each other, I think. This is yet another thing about myself of which I do not have to be frightened, but it’s not that easy. That in becoming human Jesus made the physical world good, or demonstrated that it was good. That it doesn’t matter whether he was married or gay or whatever, because just by being human he made it right to be what you are. (This makes more sense in my head.) (If anyone can recommend any reading around this, preferably something that isn’t a How To Have Good Christian Sex manual, that would be extremely useful.)

That’s probably enough brackets. Anyway, it all feels like a significant spiritual gear shift, and there will probably be more to it than that. I have been feeling surprisingly positive of late (Friday evening, big brain crash, excepted), reading all the back entries of Hannah’s blog and not feeling jealous of her for having a calling. (This is something that I struggle with more than I like to admit.) And this despite the fact that I’m slightly dreading going back to work, though going back to work will allow me to sort out some of the things that have been bugging me, and usually the vocation jealousy pops up when I am feeling frustrated when work isn’t going too well…

PM says PE teachers not sadistic enough. ‘We do our best, dammit!”

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

… is the message I am getting from this story – which is unfair both on Cameron and my PE teachers, most of whom were fairly decent sorts. However, it does seem to me that there are two competing aspirations here, both laudable, and making school sports more competitive will only work for one of them. To win more Olympic medals, and to get the nation’s children, and, indeed, the nation’s adults, more active.

Let me tell you about how I became more active.

I hated sports at school. As I have hinted above, this was not because of my teachers. It was because of me. I was unremittingly hopeless and, because I was good at pretty much everything else (Design Technology excepted) my sporting incompetence was horribly conspicuous. This held true from primary school (where I was in a year group of five) through Key Stage 3 (class of thirty, year group of ninety) to GCSE, where I was in a year group of one and managed to lose it from my timetable.

I was hopeless. I was the fat asthmatic kid with glasses (not all at the same time, I will admit – the asthma came first, then the glasses, then the fat) and, no matter how hard I tried, I was never anything other than slow and clumsy. I did try. I was a conscientious child, at least in other people’s time, and not being good at stuff frustrated me, so I tried to get better – but my classmates always improved more, and so I continued to be slow and clumsy, and increasingly disillusioned with sports as played at school, with the (apparently insufficient) emphasis on competition. I was never going to be as good as Nicky or Jack or Abby, so why was I even trying?

None of which stopped me being reasonably active. I skipped; I hit tennis balls against walls; I taught myself to ride a bike by throwing it and myself down the drive until I stopped falling off. I stayed fit despite school sports, competitive or otherwise, not because of it. (Although, now I come to think of it, I did do trampolining for a while as an after-school club; that was fun, and I wasn’t too bad.)

Then we moved to the Isle of Wight, and to a house with a much smaller garden, I moved schools three times in one year, I hit puberty (late), my parents separated, and my first bout of depression set in. None of that was much fun, and I stopped doing pretty much everything that could be even vaguely described as ‘physical activity’.

When I was eighteen I got a job at a hotel two miles away. The job was pretty grim, but the two miles was wonderful – I could walk it. Two miles of soul-cleansing cliff-top, two miles of beauty, two miles of exercise – and the first glimmerings of my independence. I started walking between my parents’ houses, four miles apart, and those four miles became mine in a way that neither house ever did. They connected my broken family, but they also gave me space away from it. And – incidentally – I was getting fit. Suddenly I had a form of physical exercise (I’m not sure one can really call it a ‘sport’) that I loved wholeheartedly. The same thing has happened this year with cycling. I’m one of the slowest things on the road – and that’s not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing. It’s just a thing, and meanwhile I keep cycling.

And so my point is this: making school sports more competitive may well give us our next generation of Olympic medallists, and I will be as pleased for them as I am for the current ones – but it will not get the nation fitter all round, because it will do nothing for those of us who don’t do exercise that way, who don’t particularly want to compare themselves to other people, who just want to find something they enjoy and to do it. I have found that I enjoy activities that get me from A to B and allow me to enjoy the scenery. Other people will enjoy other things. Trampolining! Badminton! Judo!

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s at school that’s the problem, the way that most people hate most of the books they had to read for English. I don’t know. I don’t think there is an obvious answer – and I am convinced that making school sports more competitive isn’t it.

(As for the private vs state school question – the GCSE years, where I managed to escape sports altogether, were at a hilariously terrible private school. I will tell you about my wacky adventures there some other time.)

I love my trike with an A

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

I love my trike with an A because it makes anywhere accessible. Additionally, it is affecting my assertiveness amazingly. I hate it with an A because argh! my arse! All that admitted – Allez! Allez! Allez!

#ilovemybike with a B because otherwise the hashtag won’t pick it up. Down with this two-wheeled exclusivity!

I love my trike with a C because it carries copious cargo on my commute.

I love my trike with a D, dashing downhill 😀

I love my trike with an E because it enhances my eccentricity. Its name is Epona and I bought it from eBay. I extol Evans. Excelsior!

I love my trike with an F because it is teaching me to swear.

I love my trike with a G for the goslings on the green and the gregarious guys who greet me on the road to Guildford.

I love my trike with an H, in spite of hailstorms, headwinds, harassment and honking.

I love my trike with an I because it gives me my independence.

I love my trike with a J because I can jog around the jams. And I don’t jump the red.

I love my trike with a K, and count in kilometres.

I love my trike with an L for liberation, looking forward to likely lungs and legs – though I’m lairy of lycra. I hate it with an L for long loud lorries – and look at my legs!

I love my trike with an M, managing the Mars Trail on Midna, making misty Monday mornings magical.

I love my trike with an N, though I bought it on the never-never so, nitpicking, it’s not mine.

I love my trike with an O; it is my obvious obsession. I hate it with an O for the obnoxious overtakers.

I love my trike with a P, because precious little else would have me parade in pink shorts. I hate it with a P because every pothole is painfully palpable. It is a Pashley.

I love my trike with a Q, because it’s quick around queues.

I love my trike with an R for the rolling English road. I hate it with an R for the rain.

I love my trike with an S for its stability swooping through Surrey, not stranded on the station waiting for South West Trains to stop being stuck at Surbiton.

I love my trike with a T for its three wheels. I hate it with a T because there is no such thing as a tailwind. It is a Tri-1. T’other is a Trailmate.

I love my trike with a U in the urban undergrowth. I hate it with a U because other users undertake me more than I ever undertake anybody, and how can this road be uphill both ways?

I love my trike with a V because I am visible. I hate it with a V for the van drivers.

I love my trike with a W when I whoosh around Woking. I hate it with a W because Walnut Tree Close is a wind tunnel, without mentioning the woeful wonder that it is the longest road in the world.

I love my trike with an X because it allows me to indulge my xenophilia and imagine exploring.

I love my trike with a Y. Its name is You Bastard.

I love my trike with a Z, zipping along with the zeitgeist, zero to zoom.

Self on Trike

Describe your daily, common soundscape, from rouse to turning in.

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

Waking. Fighting the dry, tickling cough until the inevitable defeat. Up. Kettle burbles and clicks; computer sings. Now for a proper cough. Feeling more human: patter between bedroom and study to deal with emails (ping!), alarms (bringle, bringle, up and down the scale). Gather together the necessaries for work (‘I shall be late!’ and cursing freely), pack the bag and unlock the trike (‘what’s the time? I shall be late!’), and – now it starts:

– the click-click-click of the freewheel, the clunk of the gear change, the whir of the tyres. A sulky purr from the car behind me (‘yes, well, you can wait, can’t you?’), a honk if I’m unlucky, the roar as it passes. If it’s a motorbike, roar-whoosh. If a bike (they’re all faster than me, and can pass more easily) a slight disturbance in the air, and perhaps a ‘good morning’.

Birds. I never used to hear birds on my way to work; the fresh air never moved fast enough past me. My own gasping breathing (‘come-on-you-bastard, come-on-you-bastard, come-on-you-bastard’) – and down the other side of the hill, and I’m not sure whether I hear the air or feel it.

Back towards the main road, now. A siren. A hundred engines ticking over. The shrill peeping of the pedestrian crossing. The clatter of a train. Sometimes this seems like the longest road in the world. I am so nearly there.

Into work. ‘Kayjay!’ I am not fit for human interaction until I have had a shower. And yes, I am allowed to take the lift to it. I’ve just cycled seven miles you know. GROUND. FLOOR. Lift going up. SECOND. FLOOR. The extractor fan in the shower sounds more like a jet engine.

Phones. ‘Good morning, how can I help?… I see – when is your meeting?… have you spoken to your branch?… I’ll get the duty officer to give you a ring back…’ Will this bloody computer never load up? ‘Where are we with this committee?’ ‘What’s the craic?’ Always questions. The sickening crunch that means the photocopier has broken again.

The hum and the bleeping of the microwave. The inane witterings of whoever’s presenting this property show. A colleague’s get-rich-quick scheme (why does he never try them, if they’re so good?)

More phones. The tinny Westminster chimes of the doorbell. It is the photocopier man, who is not best pleased at being out here again. Or a courier with a trolley. ‘You coming out for a fag?’ Of course one of the smokers’ phones goes immediately afterwards. ‘No, I’m afraid he’s away from his desk at the moment. No, he’ll only be ten minutes or so. Can I get him to give you a ring back?’

‘Bye everybody!’ And then the long ride home. Whir, gasp, click, whoosh.

I am a tenor when I shower at home. ‘Yes! let me like a soldier fall!‘ The camper the better. ‘this breast expanding for the ball to blot out every stain. Brave manly hearts confer my-hy doom, which gentler wu-huh-huh-uns may tell… and the planet of love is on high, beginning to faint in the light she loves, on a bed of daffodil sky‘. Marie Lloyd used that to prove that smut was in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think she would have had to try very hard, but I suppose they hadn’t invented Eng. Lit. back then, at least, not the sort that deals with Subtext. ‘Beginning to faint in the light she lo-oves, to fa-int in the li-ight and – to die! Come! Come! Co-ome, my own, my sweet! Co-ome, my own, my sweet! Maud! Maud! Come! Come! I am here at the gate – alone! pom pom pom pom’.

The sizzle of hot fat. ‘I know I say this every time, but I don’t half make a damn good omelette.’ Somebody hits ‘shuffle’ on iTunes. Something loud and French. Or something sugary and soppy by the Kings Singers. Bairstow. Jackson. Or Youtube. Horrible Histories (‘My name is – my name is – my name is – Charles the Second’) or QI (‘Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening good evening’).

And so to bed. ‘Night night.’ ‘Sleep tight.’ ‘Do not let the bedbugs bite.’ ‘Wake up in the morning light.’

A single car passes. And the call of a night train – wah-waaah.

Give us a paragraph or more prompted by the Edgware Road (even if only the name). Evoke, please.

kathleenjowittLeave a comment

I had to look it up. In London I walk north to south, Euston to Waterloo – Bloomsbury, Holborn, Charing Cross. Where I do not walk I do not know. What is the Edgware Road? Merely a notch on the Bakerloo. ‘What is the Edgware Road?’ I asked.

‘It goes whoosh to Marble Arch.’

And so I must have been there; I have eaten Tesco sandwiches in Hyde Park; I know Marble Arch. Or am I thinking of somewhere else? I like London, but it has never felt as if it belongs to me. Knowing it would take more time, more energy than I have to give it.

Marble Arch at one end, then, but where does it go the other way? After all, a road must have two ends, perhaps more, and if you can’t say much about the one, follow it the other way. Back to the A-Z, and run out of pages at Maida Vale. Just as well: show me a map that took it further and I’d be planning to follow it.

Describe the most remarkable sky you’ve seen

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Early to bed, early to rise, in a land that only woke properly in the evenings. I had walked for weeks, and seldom seen a true night sky in that time. I had walked for miles, through Navarra, La Rioja, Castile, and now León, from the snowy Pyrenees to the arid plain; the variation in the landscape had petered out (though I was following James), the relief of walking a flat path at last replaced by the tedium of crossing a flat plain, hundreds of feet above sea level and with nothing on earth to see.

But the sky. My God, the sky.

It was cold. I stood, bare-foot, bare-legged, at the centre of a wooden O, a tiny world, between bed and bar and bathroom, and there was the great bowl of the sky curving above me, reaching down beyond me on every side, deep velvet blue spangled with countless stars, all of space layered thick in one dark illuminate dome.