This box has now been removed, filled, taped up, and addressed, and will shortly be posted. Poor cat. I’m sure we’ll find her something else to sit on and scratch up.
December Reflections 7: paws
Author: kathleenjowitt
December Reflections 6: best book of 2023
Haven’t been reading much lately so had to go back some months, but here’s one fiction book and one non-fiction.
“Hood” dates from before Emma Donoghue started writing historical fiction, but has become a period piece in its own right – a snapshot of the Irish lesbian scene thirty or forty years ago. Complicated, but generally likeable, characters, and a really convincing portrait of the intricacies and contradictions of grief.
“Winters in the World” is much more recent – in fact, probably the most recent book I read this year. I think it came out late 2022. It’s lovely – a slow journey through the seasons and festivals of the year as seen through early medieval literature. Some of the pieces quoted were familiar, from church or from my long ago Eng Lit degree, but most were new to me. Much more enjoyable and edifying (she tells herself sternly) than arguing online over whether some advertising gimmick invented in 1957 is a sekrit pagan survival. (I don’t actually argue, but I do waste time and emotional energy muttering to myself about it.)
Not pictured, because on my e-reader, Plain Bad Heroines (Emily m Danforth) and Bad To The Bone (Brian Waddington) – two slick, stylish, cynical novels with what I’d like to call a side of magical realism if only that didn’t sound so much like whimsy. Which they very much weren’t.
December Reflections 5: here I am
On the sofa. I spent a lot of last year on the sofa, and 2023 continued the trend. Lately I’ve been making sure to get out of the house at least once a day, but I always end up back here. It’s a good sofa.
December Reflections 5: hygge
Hygge is one of those words that sets my teeth on edge (and do you know how hard it is to find an NHS dentist these days? I have failed to find a replacement for mine. No wonder I’m grumpy today). It’s not that I object to loan words. It’s that it was everywhere a few years ago, and, more to the point, it was everywhere trying to sell me stuff, and fads have always got my back up (fortunately I am not currently having to seek any treatment for my back).
My understanding, however, is that it’s generally taken to mean something like ‘being cosy indoors while it’s miserable outdoors’, which I am all for. So here’s what’s going on on my sofa.
December Reflections 3: fave photo of 2023
Not sure if this is the favourite, but it’s certainly a favourite. That’s my youngest brother putting out a hand to hold the ship on which my oldest brother and family are off on honeymoon, and my mother waving. A gorgeous evening in May, a view that’s always restorative, and the honeysuckle running riot. I think there was a cat twirling around my feet, too.
December Reflections 2: paper
This was meant to be the Christmas newsletter but the printer decided that what I really wanted was instructions for the breast pump. We got there eventually.
I always keep the Christmas letter to one side of A4. This year it’s one side of A5: our very big news meant that there wasn’t much space in the last two quarters for much else. Some people get very snobby about them, but I think they’re as good a way as any as keeping loved ones updated.
I think maybe you’re all meant to know each other’s news already? It doesn’t work that way in my immediate family. My father, who spent most of his evenings on the phone to various friends and relations, was a distinct outlier; the rest of us are dreadful at it. Then there’s the point that a typed letter looks superficial and impersonal. Yes, but definitely better than nothing. Certainly last year, when I was pregnant, not telling anyone about it quite yet, and suffering first trimester exhaustion the like of which I’d never imagined, I was in no mood to write out fifty times by hand that my father had died and that I’d had a bout of COVID that it had taken me two months to get over.
Or are you meant to assume that people don’t care about your news, on the grounds that you don’t care about theirs? But I do care. I always enjoy reading other people’s letters, regardless of whether I was present at every event they report on or haven’t seen them for years.
Anyway, friends who do them, keep writing them; I’ll keep reading them; and I’ll get mine sent out as soon as I have some time to write some cards. Which might be this month. You never know.
December Reflections 1: star
Beginning with this slightly wonky Advent candle, which I need to jam more firmly into its bottle. I’m not sure that I’ll share pictures for all the prompts (I’m generally not sharing baby pictures publicly, for a start), but we’ll see how we go. It’ll be interesting to see how the prompts do or don’t match up with the names of Jesus on the candle, and the windows in the calendar, and the poems in the book (any of which I may drop behind on any day, of course). Anyway, I have to burn my way through this star to get the whole thing started.
Second day soup
Yesterday’s chilli, together with the remains of yesterday’s vegetable goulash, and a little more paprika. Five minutes in the pressure cooker, and a blast with the blender. Not bad at all.
Leftover black pudding chilli
I had a morcilla (Spanish black pudding) left over from a dish I cooked at the weekend, so I skinned it and bashed it around in a saucepan over a medium heat until it broke up. I added a chopped onion and let it fry in the fat a while, then added three tins:
- Black beans
- Chopped tomatoes with garlic
- Carrots and petits pois
And some smoked paprika and some chilli flakes, and let it all simmer together while I crisped up a microwaved jacket potato in the oven.
That was yesterday. Today I added red wine and more chilli flakes, and served it with the end of a sour cream and chive dip. Even better.
Tree and light, remixed
Another take on the combination of silver birch tree and golden light – real this time. It wasn’t like this yesterday, I’ll tell you that much.
Kathleen Jowitt 