I think I need to make my posts shorter still. Short enough to type on my phone with one hand while feeding the baby with the other. Like this one.
Returning with October leaves
Author: kathleenjowitt
Wednesday reading
Recently finished
Unapologetic (Francis Spufford). I’d always been put off by the subtitle (‘why, despite everything, Christianity still makes surprising emotional sense’) but once I’d picked this up found it much more personal (and more readable) than I’d expected. It’s not Mere Christianity, it’s much swearier and it isn’t seeking to persuade through logic, or to argue (except when it can’t resist the temptation). It wouldn’t be a bad introduction to Christianity.
Run Away Home (Antonia Forest). This is a strange way to finish the Marlows series, except of course I don’t think it was intended as the final volume; she just never wrote anything more. It’s somewhat frustrating, because on the one hand I’d like to see the aftermath (and on the other I’d be watching between my fingers). It’s clearly a response to We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, but the plot runs on a succession of bad decisions as opposed to a series of unfortunate circumstances. One could argue that this makes it stronger (dunno, though: I was muttering ‘stop making excuses and just take the damn ferry!’); it certainly makes everyone less sympathetic. As the late great Susan Hall put it, Commander Walker’s famous telegram would have been just two words long.
Currently reading
I keep picking things up and putting them down again. I’m finding that books have to be a very specific size and weight in order for me to be able to read them. And they have to be reachable from the sofa. So, things that I’ve started or returned to and may yet finish include:
- Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich (paperback, should be fine once I get it downstairs)
- Phroso: a romance, Anthony Hope (hardback, may not happen at this time)
- Towers in the Mist, Elizabeth Goudge (middle book of a hardback omnibus edition, not a hope)
Up next
Might have a look at my e-reader to see what I’ve been neglecting.
Other media
An awful lot of daytime TV, most of which has been quizzes. I’m starting to get fed up with all of them. I finished what’s currently available of Ghosts (the UK version; might try the US one but I understand it’s basically the same arc and I’m not sure I can tame my embarrassment squick for long enough). Then yesterday I found that ITVx had pulled Sapphire and Steel to the top of the page, presumably as a tribute to David McCallum, so watched quite a bit of that while the plumber was replacing the shower. It’s rather good, the kind of very low budget, very uncanny, almost unclassifiable thing that British TV did so well in the seventies and eighties.
Why I haven’t been writing
Top of the list, most obvious, there’s the tiny hungry person who’s currently asleep in my lap.
Also, we’re between new moon and full moon, and I never write between new moon and full moon. Well, hardly ever. Well, not much. Not more than a sentence per project per day. Recently, it’s been very much less than that. (This started out as a way to give myself a break and has become something like a discipline. I keep thinking I’ll revisit it, but I haven’t yet.)
Then there’s the news I’ve been waiting for, and, while I could have been writing while waiting, the other factors combined and meant that I wasn’t. It’s good news. I’ll probably say more about it soon. In the meantime, it’s going to be one of those pleasing and harmless secrets, to be carried around and smiled at when I think about it.
Monday making, mending and growing
Not much to report other than in the garden, but I want to establish the Monday format while I remember what it is I think I’m doing. I now have all the components for my big winter skirt. I also have ideas for a couple of quilts. What I don’t have, or not for long enough to get anything done, is free hands. I’m hopeful that a baby bouncer may help there…
In the back garden, chaos continues to reign. I am meaning to get out and pick the blackberries before the devil spits (or worse) on them at Michaelmas, but I have a nasty feeling that’s as far as it’s going to go. In the front garden, I co-opted my youngest brother to plant a passion flower to replace the two that died in the heat. Tony has cleared several bags’ worth of slate chippings and all of the membrane, and the next step is for me to order some more plants to fill in the gap. I have managed to put half a dozen bulbs in with my own hands while someone else holds the baby, or she takes a (very short) nap. It’s slow going, but then gardening often is.
Sunday sentence: 10p huha
While I do get reliable computer time these days, I don’t get much of it. At least, I could, but it’s time I could be sleeping. And for these few months at least I need to take every possible opportunity to sleep. So for the moment I’m breaking my Week-end format up into its component parts, in the hope that I’ll be able to post little and often. In some cases this actually means joining in with a more widely used meme at the proper time, and this is true for my Line of the Week, which I borrowed from #SundaySentence on Twitter: the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.” Since I’m no longer posting on Twitter the timing feels a little bit off, but never mind. Here we go.
If it’s only worth making a 5p call, stop making a 10p huha.
Run Away Home, Antonia Forest
Eleventh hour
Or minus eleventh hour, I suppose. Anyway, the Bikes In Space Kickstarter has eleven hours left to run, is very nearly funded (it’ll be extremely annoying if it doesn’t quite get there), and has a brief interview with me on the updates tab. Go and have a look, and, if you were thinking of backing the project, now is very much the moment to do so.
Week-end: small adventures
I’m on Bluesky now. Having been mostly avoiding Twitter for a while now, I’ve rather lost the knack of microblogging, but for what it’s worth I’m at https://bsky.app/profile/kathleenjowitt.bsky.social.
The good
We took the baby to visit her great-grandma. This was the first trip involving an overnight stay, and went very well, all things considered.
Things change every day. Usually they get slightly easier than they were the day before.
The difficult and perplexing
The baby does not like long car journeys. I shall leave it there.
What’s working
Whingeing in a closed forum to sympathetic people. At the very least it relieves the perception of being on my own. Quite often, I’ve noticed, the problem in question removes itself quite soon afterwards. Coincidence, no doubt, but I’ll take it.
Putting the baby in a sling (see, in particular, Cooking and Moving, below).
And always, always, remembering that whatever the particular moment of difficult is, it’s temporary.
Reading
Finished Acts and Omissions; read Unseen Things Above; now need to see which of the others I have on my e-reader. I am, as ever, a little frustrated that Fox ducks out of showing us any really awful marriage, because I think that’s an important part of the conversation she’s trying to have in these books.
I got round to the Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) several years after everyone else and read All Systems Red late on Saturday night. It was enjoyable enough, though I wasn’t blown away.
And in between times I’ve been working my way through the Tiffany Aching books, and have finished The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky so far. I’d never read them before, and they’re lovely.
Writing
Some work on Don’t Quit The Day Job. I would like to do rather a lot more, sharpish.
And the Kickstarter for The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which my story The Ride for the City (portal fantasy, Cambridge, bonding over terrible books) appears, has just over two days left to run. If you want a copy of the book, the Kickstarter is by far the quickest and most convenient way to get it, and also makes me more money.
Making
I have obtained the fabric for the skirt I was talking about last time. (Olive green twill, with some rather lovely green and red shot lining.) I have also thought about the pattern. But I’m not going to be able to start cutting out until I have an afternoon without a small person strapped to my chest.
Watching
Good Omens, season 2. Quite fun but felt rather lightweight compared with the first season.
Looking at
Some extremely impressive Lego models at Ely Brick Show. I think my favourite was the War of the Worlds diorama, but it’s a tough choice between that and the Underground station.
Cooking
One-pot things that are forgiving with regard to timings. I have some chakchouka in the slow cooker at the moment. The other day I managed to turn all the green tomatoes into green tomato chutney.
Eating
At this precise moment, jelly beans. We’ve had a couple of rather uninteresting pub meals.
Moving
We’ve instituted an evening walk. If it’s late, it’s just up and down the road, to keep within the range of the streetlights. But several times we’ve managed what used to be my morning walk, a full fifty minutes.
Noticing
A small deer (muntjac, maybe?) wandering across someone’s front garden.
In the garden
Picked some of the pears, a few of the apples, and most of the tomatoes. Which feels like a huge achievement, actually.
Appreciating
Family. The friends in my computer. A little more sleep than I was getting before.
Acquisitions
Bras. I’ve managed to lose one, which is weird and annoying.
And I’ve just ordered a travel cot. The hope is that it’ll do for naps downstairs as well as for actual travel. We’re going to need a new pram, as the baby is about to grow out of the pram bit of the existing travel system while being too small still for the pushchair bit.
The cat’s current preferred location
Various points in the sitting room; she spent most of the week on the table at my left elbow while Iwas feeding the baby. You can tell from the fluff deposit.
Line of the week
Some painfully well-observed prayer in Acts and Omissions:
And not being a Charismatic Evangelical either, he hesitates to give the Almighty matey advice in the subjunctive mood.
Monday (oh dear) snippet
A new bit from Day Job:
Why should the world that’s captured between the covers of books be one that only a tiny privileged minority inhabit? As we’ll see in the next section, even the pale, stale and male Western canon develops some significant holes if we remove those who wrote around the edges of their paid employment.
This coming week
Rather a packed schedule, actually, and a party on Saturday!
Anything you’d like to share from last week? Any hopes for this week? Share them here!
The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy – Kickstarter live now
It’s that time again… this year’s Bikes in Space Kickstarter is live. In fact, it’s been live for a few days now and is already over halfway funded. You have ten days in which to join the party: backing the crowdfunder is by far the easiest way to get your hands on a copy of the book, and there are various other rewards to tempt you as well.
This year’s edition is The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy, with a theme of books and bikes. My portal fantasy story, The Ride for the City, is first in the table of contents. It’s a tribute to Cambridge, that strange city of contrasts – and to the power of books, even terrible ones, to bring people together. This book, however, is not terrible. Quite the contrary.
Summer-end: big milk thing
Whoosh. Suddenly it’s six weeks later and we’re rounding off August with a blue moon. It seemed like a good moment to pick things up again over here.
The good
The baby is delightful, and gets more interesting by the day. It’s lovely, too, seeing others’ reactions. So many people are genuinely pleased to see her, friends and strangers and the guy I know by sight but whose name is a mystery.
We have succeeded in getting out of the house. Several times. There was my birthday; there was Pride; there was the Cursillo study day (labyrinths); there was a barbecue at my aunt’s; there were at least three church services.
The difficult and perplexing
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I would say the same thing at times that are not three in the morning. It’s the being on duty all the time.
It’s the first time in years I haven’t been in Ventnor for Fringe week. (I did have a weird feeling last year that It Was All Going To Be Different, though I hadn’t guessed how or why.) I lived it vicariously on the Instagram hashtag.
Hormones. I spent the first month crying about pretty much everything. (Child is not feeding. Child will not stop feeding. Child is small and utterly dependent on me. I wish Pa could have seen her…) Plus, of course, the lack of sleep.
What’s working
Having my mother to stay. Coke (the fizzy sort). Keeping in touch with other adults over the internet. A sausage-shaped cushion thing that ties on behind my back. Remembering that this is my only job at the moment.
Also, let me stop a moment to extol the Really Useful Boxes. Because they are. Quite apart from storing baby clothes and nappies and toys, I’ve been using them as footstools, for handwashing, and for catching and evicting a huge spider. And the cat likes sitting on them.
Reading
A couple of ‘how on earth do I do this motherhood thing’ books: What Mothers Do (especially when it looks like nothing) (Naomi Stadlen); The Gentle Sleep Book (Sarah Ockwell-Smith). Both useful in confirming that I wasn’t missing something obvious, it really is this intense, and there’s only so much you can do before you just decide that this is the way things are and you’re going to go with it; both, I think, pushing back against the Gina Ford school of babyraising (which seems to have fallen out of favour among the professionals, at least in our neck of the woods). Of the two, the Stadlen is the keeper.
The Balloonists: the history of the first aeronauts by L. T. C. Rolt. Rolt was most famously the author of Red for Danger, the absolute classic of disaster analysis. There’s a certain amount of disaster in this (as you’d expect given the quantity of hydrogen used in the early days of ballooning) but it’s by no means the whole story. The whole story is very interesting and engagingly told.
Feeling in need of something trashy I reread Glittering Images (Susan Howatch) and began Glamorous Powers before deciding that really I wanted to read about scandalous bishops more than psychic manpain. So I have abandoned Starbridge and moved on to Lindford (Acts and Omissions, Catherine Fox).
Writing
Nothing to speak of in terms of new words on new pages, but I should have some news on an older project soon.
Making
I’m planning a full skirt in olive green with lilypad patches. Need to do some maths and obtain the olive green…
Watching
A lot of daytime TV. I’m particularly enjoying The Repair Shop at the moment; I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of years about physical objects and sentimental value, about what things mean and how good it is when something can keep on doing the job it was made to do.
I’ve also returned to Ghosts, and this time managed to get past the second-hand embarrassment of the early episodes and into the kinder, more constructive stories of season 2.
Before that there was the world athletics championships; before that there was the super combined world cycling championships; before that there was the Tour de France.
Looking at
Pretty cars gathered outside the cathedral. Some gorgeous work by Ely Guild of Woodturners (who, if any of them are reading this, ought all to be charging twice as much for their pieces as they currently do).
Cooking
Is pretty much impossible with a baby. I did manage to pickle some plums (and regret leaving the jars in the conservatory in the hottest month of the year) and, several weeks after that, make the topping of a crumble.
Eating
A lot of ready meals. The charming snackpot that Tony assembles and brings me before he goes to bed and leaves me to the night shift (this evening’s contained two sorts of pretzels, dried apricots, crystallised ginger, a chocolate digestive biscuit, and three Mikado sticks.) And a reuben sandwich at the last (and, for me, only) Foodie Friday market of the year.
Moving
A little bit of walking.
Playing
Whatever will keep me from falling asleep with a baby on my lap. Minesweeper, mostly.
Noticing
Dragonflies. Or are they damselflies? I’m not sure what the difference is. Butterflies. Sunflowers. Hollyhocks.
In the garden
Chaos in the back (it is, infuriatingly, a really good year for fruit, and I’m not managing to get out to pick it, and if I were I wouldn’t get round to doing anything with it). Progress at the front, where we have much less in the way of slate chippings and much more in the way of lavender and thyme.
Appreciating
All the people who have come to see us, sent messages, cards and presents, and generally provided solidarity in a massive life change. The Rosie Birth Centre and the community midwifery team.
Acquisitions
Leaving aside all the baby gifts, or we’d be here all night: a lovely turned elm bowl from the woodturners’ exhibition; a couple more Joanie dresses; a whole load of plants (Norfolk Herbs: very reasonable); more fabric patches than I actually needed; some Pride tat.
Hankering
I haven’t been to the seaside this year other than incidentally, and I’d really like to. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though.
Line of the week
L. T. C. Rolt on the develoment of the dirigible:
Unholy marriages were consummated – most of them only on paper, fortunately – between the balloon, the kite, the ornithopter and the helicopter.
The cat’s current preferred location
In the conservatory, either on top of a large cardboard box, or on the windowsill for optimum garden surveillance.
How has your summer been? Have you also given up on Twitter, or were you never on it in the first place? What’s your social medium of choice these days?
Week-end: and beginning
I said last Sunday:
Really I just want this baby to show up.
And didn’t she just. It took her four hours to get from making her intentions clear to emerging into the world with a few minutes to spare before midnight.
Had we named her after the day’s Tour stage winner, as I think I mentioned some friends suggested, she’d be Michael. Had we named her after the day’s Giro Donne stage winner, she’d be Chiara – which would be rather appropriate; that was the name of one of her midwives (all of her midwives were fantastic).
I shan’t be talking about her very much around here, because I feel strongly that it’s an individual’s prerogative to make their own mistakes on the internet in their own time, without their parents doing it for them. But you can take it as read that I’m extremely happy she’s here.
This series is on hiatus until I regain my sense of which end of a week is which. Look after yourselves in the meantime.
Kathleen Jowitt 