Author: kathleenjowitt

Week-end: and year-end

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Morning sun and bare trees seen through a glassless window

The good

I’ve enjoyed these first seven days of Christmas. We’ve seen lots of family, and a few friends, and I’ve been alternating between cooking, reading, and doing absolutely nothing. Now we’re back home with the cat.

And I think I’m getting my brain back.

The mixed

I could do with fretting less when we’re both away from home. I’m better now that we have a cat – because that means that we have someone coming in to feed her, and surely if the house burned down they would let us know – but I’d really like to be not quite so on edge until that first check-in.

The difficult and perplexing

Had to see some of the family from a distance, as they were struck down with the lurgy.

What’s working

Letting other people do things. Though I still need to work on this.

Reading

Wintering (Katherine May). I bought this because a lot of people on the DecemberReflections Instagram hashtag named it as their book of the year. I have to say that there wasn’t a whole lot in there that felt revolutionary to me: the central idea, that some periods in one’s life are just bloody difficult and to deal with them one needs to take a step back, is one that I first encountered in Lesley Garner’s Everything I’ve Ever Done That Worked back when I was a student, not to mention something that has been brought home to me by experience this year. And the concept of living in season is something that’s explored in far greater depth in Waverly Fitzgerald’s Slow Time. I was unimpressed by the uncritical repetition of the factoid about Hallowe’en being ‘when the veil between the worlds grows thin’ (anyone who follows @Cavalorn on Twitter will know that this is an idea that dates back no further than the twentieth century) and was consequently preprared to distrust anything else May wrote about wintry festivals; fortunately she didn’t, much. However, there were some lovely bits of observational writing, and I’m glad to have read it even if I didn’t get my mind blown. And I have Winters In The World (Eleanor Parker) to read next, and I have much higher hopes of that.

Agatha Christie: a very elusive woman (Lucy Worsley) was a Christmas present: very readable. I found the constant use of the first name (Agatha this, Agatha that) rather uncomfortable, although since Worsley’s point was very much that Agatha Christie was a complex mixture of personalities, not all of them called Agatha Christie, I can see why the choice was made.

Watching/listening to

The Neujahrskonzert on BBC4 is on in the background while I write this.

Cooking

Simultaneous soups, one vegan and one from the remains of the Christmas chicken.

Eating

What haven’t I been eating? Turkey, I suppose. I have not eaten any turkey this Christmas. I have eaten many other things. Roast lamb. Macarons. Smashed avocado and poached egg on sourdough toast. Fishfinger sandwiches with chips. Vegetable curry. Shepherd’s pie. Chocolate cake. Many types of cheese. Stollen fudge (just seems to be standard fudge with dried fruit in so far as I can tell).

Playing

Two different railway-building games: TransAmerica and Ticket To Ride. I lost spectacularly in TransAmerica and won Ticket to Ride by three points.

Noticing

A huge Newfoundland dog – first peering under a gate, and then out for a walk with its owner. Various birds of prey I couldn’t identify (I am rubbish at birds of prey; they were probably all very common). The lovely sign on the A421 that points to Toseland Yelling Graveley.

Appreciating

My green corduroy trousers. People helping me with things and/or doing them so I didn’t have to.

Acquisitions

I did pretty well in the sales in Milton Keynes. Brushed cotton pyjamas. A nice floaty top. Starry pants. And – in the rather incongruous charity shop – a gorgeous blue dress that might do for my brother’s wedding.

Hankering

Several things in LionessElise’s sale. But I don’t need any of them.

Line of the week

From Wintering:

Encountering the extremes of cold drew us both into that most clichéd space, The Moment, forcibly pulling our minds away from ruminating on the past or future, or tilling over an endless to-do list.

This coming week

Lots of thank you letters to write. News to share. Bank holiday. Back to work.

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here! And I hope 2023 brings you many good things.

December Reflections 24 (stillness) and 25 (today is…), and Week-end

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Grey sea and grey sky fading into each other at the horizon
Discarded wrapping paper

The good

I am more or less over my cold and was able to sing most of the Christmas carols as I would have wished.

The mixed

Christmas with the family, the first time we’ve made it since Covid happened. It’s been good. Tag-team organised chaos. Missing Pa. Ended up in charge of two major meals. Slightly overreached myself with the Wigilia and had a cry midway through making the pierogi (need to get better at coopting minions, particularly when it’s just a case of following a recipe in a book).

The difficult and perplexing

Being ill has meant I haven’t been to nearly as much church as I normally would, and having melted brain and general fatigue has meant I haven’t been able to do as much in-depth Advent study as I usually would, and really all I could do was turn up at midnight mass and hope it was doing its thing somewhere deep under the surface.

What’s working

The shower! At least, better than it was before. I think I must have knocked the temperature control at some point.

Reading

I finished Bright Smoke, Cold Fire. Holy cliffhanger, Batman! I suppose I’ll have to read the next one now, but I disapprove. Picked up The Master and Margarita again; I continue to find it rather heavy-going. Started Sisters of the Forgiving Stars. And also Letters from Tove [Jansson], which I can see I’m going to enjoy immensely.

Watching

I finished the first season of Detectorists and enjoyed it. Quite a lot of skiing. And we watched a programme featuring Susan Calman taking a Christmas cruise down the Danube, which provided me with an opportunity to try to recognise bits of Vienna and Bratislava.

Cooking

Almost an entire Wigilia (Polish Christmas Eve) meal, modified to account for two vegans and one vegetarian. I was particularly pleased with how the pierogi (three flavours – mushroom, sauerkraut, and potato, onion and ‘cheese’) turned out, even if it would have been better to make it in advance.

The barscz came out of a Tetrapak and the uszkas came out of a bag. I made a sauerkraut salad and a cucumber and ‘yoghurt’ salad, and got Tony to do a tomato one. Lidl ready to pan-fry sea bass for the carnivores. Stuffed tomatoes for everyone else. And I had made the cake ahead of time.

Ended up mostly in charge of Christmas lunch, too, until I got the timings out by half an hour and gave up with a howl of despair. There were plenty of other adults to take over.

Eating

See above.

In the garden

Finally got around to unloading compost from the Hotbin.

Noticing

Arundel looking impossibly fairy-tale in the declining winter sun.

Appreciating

Family. Friends, not least the online ones. And the hovercraft coming back into service just as we got to Portsmouth, cutting an hour off the journey.

Acquisitions

Other than Christmas presents, a lot of sewing thread.

Line of the week

From the verse of O Little Town that’s only in the New English Hymnal:

Where charity stands watching
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.

This coming week

More seasonal shenanigans.

If you’ve been celebrating Christmas today, I hope it’s been a very happy one. Otherwise, I wish you a nice peaceful day and hope it all doesn’t get too annoying.

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!

December Reflections 23: orange

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Small citrus fruit and a perfume sample bottle on a yellow box

Actually, that’s a clementine, but close enough. The abundance of citrus fruit is one of the consolations of this time of year. I’ve gone off apples a bit recently, but oranges retain their joyful tangy appeal.

The perfume sample is Ffern’s latest, and it starts (for me) with a burst of friendly orange before the cooler notes come in. I’ve been enjoying experimenting with scent the last few years – working my way through discovery boxes, picking up a bottle of Molton Brown Recharge Black Pepper in the duty free on the ferry home from the Netherlands, spinning through the seasons with a Ffern subscription… And I often do end up liking the orangey ones best.

December Reflections 22: made me laugh

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A business card from The White Horse at Woolstone, with handwritten text on the back: 15th August 1985 Kathleen's First Pub (inside) (Fox & Hounds at Uffington - 10th August - outside)

It isn’t just family history that I’ve been discovering this year. One of the boxes that came out of storage was my birth box – new baby cards, newspaper announcements, and this little souvenir from my first (or second, depending which way you look at it) pub visit, at the age of less than a month. Which most definitely made me laugh – firstly, that I’d have been taken to the pub at that tender age, and secondly, that somebody (my father) would have recorded it. But then of course he would.

I’m thinking I ought to organise a return visit.

December Reflections 20: one year ago

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Detail of a week to view engagement diary with the space for 20 December filled in with details of the day's activities

One year ago I was still at work. (Today I clocked off at lunchtime.) One year ago I was getting quite a lot done, by the look of things. (Today I got a reasonable amount done, but not that much.) Last year and this year both I suspect I was racing to get things tidied up before the Christmas break. Last year I apparently had the energy in the evening not only to do some writing of my own (Short Work was at that point the working title of the Romeo and Juliet thing) but to make cauliflower cheese.

Still, it wasn’t all unbounded energy and motivation. I see I took a nap on Sunday afternoon, and, rather than work all the way through until end of day Christmas Eve, I took a last-minute leave day on the 22nd and noted it was a good idea. Looking back through the blog, I thought I was tired then.

This is the great thing about these quick daily records. So often they correct my memory, give a little more context for actions and decisions that just become the way things happened. Assuming, of course, that I remember to look back.

December Reflections 18: handwritten

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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)

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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

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Collection of objects on a wooden table: two letter openers shaped like lizards; a pair of opera glasses; tin containing a medal with the image of the Royal Albert Hall; metal chalet, horse, tree and dog

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.