I have absolutely nothing intelligent to say today, but I have managed to dress to the prompt. So there’s that.
December Reflections 19: circles
Author: kathleenjowitt
December Reflections 18: handwritten
This is the last thing I wrote on any original fiction project, back at the end of November. Not as long ago as I’d thought, but it’s been a slow autumn. It’s been a slow year, writing-wise. I’ve had flashes of inspiration – the story on the left hand page there is now a complete first draft.
It’s not even that my writing brain has gone. When I sit down and talk with myself I can pull a plot together and work out who’s who and why they’re up to whatever it is. That process still spits up the first few gems that a story can accrete around.
But the wheels are stiff. I have to push and push and push to keep them turning. In fact, I have to push and push and push to do pretty much anything at the moment, and writing, which isn’t my main or even a significant source of income, never comes to the top of the priority list. Which is sad, but well, that’s just the way it is at the moment.
Anyway, shortly after I’d written that page I decided that this really wasn’t working, and if I kept on pushing I was going to end up resenting what’s usually a source of joy for me, and take the rest of the year off. Times and seasons. And even if this is a much longer fallow season than I’m used to, I still need to trust that it will come to an end and that my drive will come back.
December Reflections 17: I said goodbye to… (and Week-end)
Pa. Sort of. Incompletely. That’s the thing with an unexpected death: you don’t say the things that you might have done, otherwise. I would rather have it this way than the other, but I never actually said goodbye.
And that’s about all I feel up to writing about that, so on with the rest of the post.
The good
The snow was pretty? And not too inconvenient for me personally. I took the slow train to the office on Monday (nothing running on the fast line) and had a lovely time looking out of the window at white-blanketed Essex countryside.
The difficult and perplexing
I’ve had a horrible cold, which has run the gamut of symptoms (runny nose, nosebleeds, lost voice, cough, cough, cough, headache, exhaustion). This morning I woke at half past five or so and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’ve been very tired and grumpy all day.
What’s working
Hall’s Soothers, a bit.
Reading
I finished The Fellowship of the Ring this morning and started The Two Towers after lunch. I’ve read quite a lot of articles on the internet this week, a fact that I’ve found faintly encouraging.
Watching
I started The Detectorists earlier this evening. It’s quietly enjoyable so far, though it hasn’t really grabbed me yet.
Cooking
Finally got my act together and attempted vegan pierogi. The shells worked well; the filling, made with vegan spready ‘cheese’, lost all cheesy flavour when cooked. Also I need to be more careful about sealing them. I’m wondering about trying that yeast flavouring stuff, and/or vegan parmesan.
And pasta e fagioli from Tin Can Cook.
Eating
Other than the above, Thai green chicken curry, on my mother’s suggestion. Lebkuchen.
Noticing
A fox loping across a snowy meadow. Blue tits and great tits and robins at the birdfeeder, with a woodpigeon prowling hopefully on the ground.
In the garden
Everything is frozen.
Appreciating
Sleep, when I get it. Dungarees.
Acquisitions
Perfume – Ffern winter box came through this week. Haven’t opened it yet.
Line of the week
From Rejoicings in a Dug-out (a London Review of Books review of a biography of G. K. Chesterton):
His saintly lack of concern for practical affairs seems to have entailed not only a wilful failure to think about how his staff’s wages would be paid, but a deeper reluctance to address what he was avoiding and what he was clinging to – attachments that a life of prayer and self-examination are supposed to make clearer.
This coming week
One and a half days at work; a visit to Addenbrooke’s; and the last of the Christmas prep (I feel as if I’ve hardly done any).
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
December Reflections 16: treasures
So many. The more we go through Pa’s stuff, the more we turn up. Some of them are old friends – I have adored those lizards since I was tiny. Some were completely new to us – I’d never seen the German village before. Some are of genuine historical interest – Sir Julius Benedict’s watch chain, for example. Some are genuinely useful – I have been using the opera glasses for their intended purpose. Some would fetch a few bob at auction, though probably less than you’d think, and indeed some have already departed in that direction. Some came from auctions in the first place. Some have been in the family for years.
And there are plenty more where those came from. The ones I’m enjoying most are the ones that tell me more about family I never knew. For example, we found a little piece of cardboard with a clock face drawn on in ink: this, it said on the reverse, was made by my great-great-grandfather for my grandfather to put on his sandcastle on Bournemouth beach in the early years of the 20th century (I forget which specific year). This more or less doubled what I knew about that great-grandfather, as a human being.
It’s a privilege. Goodness knows my husband’s grandmother, for example, was not in a position to collect little bits of cardboard of sentimental value and take them with her to Siberia. Sometimes it’s poignant. Sometimes it’s a duty and a burden. Sometimes it’s a chore. Sometimes it’s so interesting that you lose the rest of the afternoon. And we’ll be doing it for a while yet, and I’m sure there are plenty more treasures to be found.
December Reflections 15: journal/planner
You get to see the journal. I spilt hot chocolate in my handbag a month or so back and it went all over my Filofax. Anyway, this is far more interesting.
I started keeping an agenda journal in 2017 after seeing the technique on The Soul of Hope, and it’s the only form of diary I’ve managed to keep up with any kind of regularity. I don’t make an entry every day, but to date I have been able to make an entry for every day. It serves as a repository for all the silly bits of paper that are too pretty to throw away and too silly to keep around, it serves as a record of what I’ve been up to and tells me when I last emptied the compost bin, and it’s fun. I’ve never yet got more than a week behind, and if I do find that I just can’t remember a day (or if it was just too boring to record in detail) I fill the gap with stickers.
This spread comes from the week we travelled down the Rhine – a most excellent trip, and one I’m glad to remember. This year’s journal is rather fatter than last year’s, although not so much so as I originally thought before I compared them.
December Reflections 14: I said hello to…
… Bond fandom (here personified by David of Licence To Queer) in person, at the author talk for Double Or Nothing at the British Library. It was an excellent night with many lovely people. I think I’ve mentioned before that Bond fandom is refreshingly straightforward: we all know our fave is problematic, and that means we can skip straight to the fun part, which is talking about it.
I still feel slightly odd being fannish on main: it probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t fallen into a Twitter conversation. But it’s been a good eighteen months now and nothing too weird has resulted. Actually, I promised myself last year that I was just going to let myself enjoy stuff and be fannish about things. This being the sort of year it’s been, I haven’t really got into anything with any degree of enthusiasm.
Although, thinking about it, that doesn’t necessarily follow. My last significant illness – early 2017 – I fell headfirst into Yuri!!! on Ice and stayed there for a long time. Maybe there’s hope for me yet, even if all the narrative complexity I can cope with at the moment is ‘can this woman get down this hill faster than the previous woman did?’ and rooting for the Italians on the extremely shallow justification that they have the best national anthem.
Anyway, there’s no sense trying to predict it. Last year I fell for Romeo and Juliet like I was fifteen all over again. I certainly didn’t see that coming. All I can really do is wait for whatever the next thing is. And try not to get hype backlash before that pirate thing gets to the BBC. (I am dreadfully susceptible to hype backlash. It’s one of my least favourite things about myself. But if one friend too many enthuses about their New Thing, or if one friend enthuses once too often about the New Thing, I get fed up with it. Not their fault, nor yet the New Thing’s.) In the meantime, there’s no harm in falling back on an old favourite or (double O) seven.
Photo by Antony Lowbridge-Ellis
December Reflections 13: delicious
I am feeling pretty miserable today. I’ve picked up a cold, including a horrible sore throat, which on top of the ongoing fatigue has more or less wiped me out. So a dish that would slip down easily, and which I can make in my sleep, was called for. This is Leeks Lucullus (known more often in this household as Green Mash) from Katharine Whitehorn’s Cooking In A Bedsitter. As she says, it ‘looks like pale green mashed potato, but tastes delicious’.
I often find that cookery books that assume the cook is operating under some set of restrictions more inspiring and accessible than those that assume they have at their disposal all the kitchen gadgets and delicatessens the heart could desire, even if I’m not in fact bound by those restrictions. If I could theoretically make something delicious on a single gas ring with a hostile landlady prowling (as Whitehorn was) or create a delectable creation entirely out of the contents of tin cans (Jack Monroe) then surely I can manage it with all the advantages of a kitchen of my own and a regular veg box delivery. Actually, the veg box delivery helps a lot, too. It’s much easier to think, ‘oh, leeks: what do I do with those?’ than it is to start from a blank sheet.
I do have How To Eat (Nigella Lawson) and enjoy reading it for the sheer pleasure she gets from food, but I very rarely cook anything out of it. Though she has more in common with the other two than you might think: all three think that food is good and people should be allowed to enjoy it. Which is a sadly and surprisingly rare attitude in cookbooks.
December Reflections 12: little me
Aged about two here, and no less a poser then than I am now. I still like smart coats and spectacular hats – and practical footwear.
December Reflections 11: best decision of 2022, and Week-end
I think it’s a bit early to call the best decision of 2022. I don’t know how a lot of them are going to work out. Although I can say that I’m glad to have made them, rather than vaguely hoping that they’ll sort themselves out without any input from me.
In the meantime, I can report that taking a nap has pretty much always turned out to be a good move.
The good
Lunch with friends today. Hadn’t seen them in ages and it was very good to catch up.
The mixed
Yesterday I took a long walk around Ely delivering Christmas cards. It was absolutely beautiful in the frosty sunlight – at one point I turned a corner and saw the cathedral all lit up in rose gold – but it really brought home how tired I’m getting, because I had to sit on a bench for a long time before I felt up to walking the last twenty minutes home, and then I was falling asleep on the sofa and had to take a nap.
The difficult and perplexing
Things got a bit much for me at work. I’ve been feeling like rather a fraud lately – largely down to the fatigue and the accompanying lack of focus.
What’s working
Thermal leggings. Double socks.
Reading
Bright Smoke, Cold Fire (Rosamund Hodge) – a fantasy take on Romeo and Juliet with zombies and blood magic. Enough has been changed to keep me guessing, and the generally gothic atmosphere fits beautifully.
And today, Licence To Queer’s Queer Re-view of Skyfall – long and fascinating. (Also it quotes me, which is gratifying, particularly since I’m about to delete the ‘Writing’ heading in this post, on account of I haven’t done any.)
Watching
Gloriana (Benjamin Britten) – English National Opera. This was billed as a ‘concert performance’, which in practice meant that the chorus was on a stepped platform and the principals moved and acted and sang in front of them. This worked reasonably well, although I think the big set pieces suffered from a lack of movement – particularly the dance at Whitehall, where the so-called volta wouldn’t have raised so much as a ladylike glow.
I found it sad and moving and, as I said on Thursday, very listenable. I can see why it was a flop in 1953, though, and I wonder what on earth Britten was thinking. It’s not a coronation piece. You really need an audience who’s watched Glenda Jackson demythologise Good Queen Bess.
Anyway, it’s probably the only time I’ll ever get to see it, and for that reason alone I’m glad I did. (And Willard White was in it, singing two bit parts. Easily the biggest opera name I’ve seen live.)
Otherwise, winter sports. Having tracked biathlon down to Eurovision Sports Live (it’s all but disappeared from Eurosport) I’ve had that on in the background while I’ve been doing various tasks, and it’s been the Grand Prix Final this weekend.
Looking at
Forgot to mention last week: I looked into St Mary’s, Ely, to see what it looks like post-refurbishment. I was impressed – it feels much lighter and airier, there’s more that can be done with the space, and the more interesting features are showcased rather than hidden away.
Cooking
A thing out of Jack Monroe’s tin can book involving chickpeas and spinach, except I used cannellini beans and leftover cabbage. Worked fine.
Eating
Delicious turkey lunch cooked by the friends we were visiting, and most excellent mince pies made by the friend who gave us a lift there. We have good friends.
Moving
Long Christmas-card-delivering walk, as mentioned above.
Appreciating
An extremely productive Friday. And an instant freezer meal for when I hit the wall at seven o’clock.
Acquisitions
I did very well in Oxfam and picked up an omnibus of Joan Aiken’s Armitage stories and a couple of the Bagthorpes series.
In internet shopping: one pair of teal corduroy trousers, one pair of burgundy corduroy dungarees, one box of perfume samples.
Line of the week
From Queer Re-View: Skyfall:
And even when the story is over, many of us perpetuate the fantasy in a multitude of ways: playing the film soundtracks allows us to enact our lives as spies, even when we’re just commuting to work; we can pretend we’re experiencing the luxurious existence of an agent on a generous expense account by making cocktails at the weekends in our kitchens; we can literally walk in Bond’s shoes (or a pair that look like them if we can’t afford Crockett & Jones).
This coming week
Is going to be very cold (by UK standards) and I’m glad to be mostly working from home.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
December Reflections 10: brings me joy
Ventnor Fringe combines a lot of the things that bring me joy. Live music. Live theatre. Books. The most beautiful bus in the world. Things I didn’t know. The sea. Sitting around talking nonsense with my favourite people.
Kathleen Jowitt 