Author: kathleenjowitt

Recent reads: January

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A fluffy black cat lies on a sofa, looking ill-used
As it happens, I have been yelling, if not ‘Touch not the cat!’, ‘Not her face!’ and ‘Not her tail!’, and ‘Don’t pull her fur!’, quite a bit of late…

Mostly non-fiction so far this year. The exception is:

Touch Not The Cat (Mary Stewart), which I read for my romantic suspense book club. We started it last year: I’d been keeping myself to the two chapters per week for scheduled discussion up until the second week of January, when I gave in and finished it off. Having read a fair few Stewarts for this group – and not the Arthurian ones – I was rather surprised by the ESP element (this isn’t a spoiler; it’s introduced very early on) but it worked rather well. I wasn’t so convinced by the parallel 1835 timeline. Usually I read Stewart romances for the armchair travel; this was more armchair nostalgia, as the bulk of the action is set in the region where I grew up. It was equally enjoyable: Stewart is always good for an evocative description or several.

Permanent, Faithful, Stable: Christian same-sex partnerships (Jeffrey John) has been  on the shelf for ages, and I felt both that I really should have read it and that I was fed up with it being there making me feel guilty. A quick read – and it is one – sorted that out. I think it’s probably the most succinct summary of the theological debate around same-sex relationships that I’ve read and would recommend it on that basis, though I did have a few quibbles. (Specifically: I did not feel that the author engaged adequately with the argument that marriage is a human institution and replicates human, patriarchal, systems of exploitation. More generally, I have been bearing a grudge to the tune of the most biphobic remark I’ve ever heard from the platform at a supposedly LGBTQ affirming event. The scene in The Real World where Colette walks out of the LGBTX West Country meeting? Not terribly far from real life.)

This was a fairly old edition, and events, in the form of thousands of actual same-sex marriages, have overtaken it. The arguments still feel very familiar, though.

The Queer Parent: everything you need to know from Gay to Ze (Lotte Jeffs and Stu Oakley) – very much the book I needed to read, squaring as it did the vicious circle where I’ve been feeling increasingly adrift from my bi identity but very conscious that as parenthood goes I haven’t had to deal with any problems that are not common to all. In a weird way, it was most affirming to read an interview with a bi couple who said that they were finding it hard to reconnect with the queer community. But it was interesting (and often humbling) to read about the experiences and decisions that I haven’t even had to think about, from surrogacy to IVF to doing the whole thing as a trans person.

The Road Less Traveled (M. Scott Peck) – was a wild ride. It’s one of those books whose existence I’ve been vaguely aware of for a long time, but could have told you nothing about beyond ‘er, self help?’ Then I read bell hooks’ All About Love last year and was intrigued by Peck’s definition of love which hooks quotes:

the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth

And I think that probably was the most useful part of the book. To summarise the rest of it: life is suffering, because life is change and change inevitably involves suffering; we have the choice as to how we engage with that. It was extremely readable – short chapters, and with most of them the promise of a mystery worked through, which is what I always enjoy about case studies (really I should just go and read more Oliver Sacks). I did feel that it rather lost its way when it got more heavily into the spiritual side of things. And there were a few ‘yikes!’ moments where it became less possible than usual to forget that this was published in 1978.

So it’s going back to Oxfam and I’m keeping All About Love. I’m not sure that I entirely adopt that definition, but it’s still better than a lot that I’ve seen.

Big Garden Birdwatch 2025

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A bird feeder stands in a small suburban garden. It is just about possible to see a starling pecking at a suet ball.

I missed last year’s Big Garden Birdwatch because I was in hospital.

The year before that I was in Avignon.

In 2023 I diligently sat in the conservatory for a whole hour and saw:

  • One unidentifiable Little Brown Job
  • One wood pigeon, which sat for a very long time on my neighbour’s chimney and never came into my garden, and could not therefore be counted.

I was therefore very pleased with this year’s much more respectable list:

  • Two wood pigeons
  • Five long-tailed tits
  • Two blackbirds
  • Four house sparrows
  • One robin
  • One great tit
  • One blue tit

And, in the “not a bird” category, a grey squirrel. Much more like it.

Saint Vincent of Saragossa

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Extremely poor photo of an eight-panel series of tiles depecting the life of San Vicente de Zaragoza, in blue and white, with captions in rhyming couplets in Spanish
Extremely poor photo of an eight-panel series of tiles depecting the life of San Vicente de Zaragoza, in blue and white, with captions in rhyming couplets in Spanish

It seems to be a day for deacons. I’m listening to Choral Evensong from St Lawrence, York, and this morning the Daily Prayer app told me that today is Vincent of Saragossa, Deacon, first Martyr of Spain, 304 [Commemoration]. Wikipedia tells me that this martyrdom took place under Diocletian, and notes that according to tradition it involved roasting on a gridiron, a detail which may have been carried over from the hagiography of St Lawrence. As if it were contagious, at least among deacons.

Up until I looked at Wikipedia an hour ago, everything I knew about St Vincent came from this series of tiles – which, since my Spanish is not great and apparently in 2007 my photography skills were worse, wasn’t much. They were displayed – probably still are – in the parish rooms of the church of Santiago in Logroño, to which I and my friend Anne, and another pilgrim, Ursula, were invited by the priest after mass on Palm Sunday. He gave us the run of the place, encouraging us to help ourselves to pizzas and packet soup from the kitchen. It was a kindness that we appreciated very much on a trying day.

And so, eighteen years on (good grief), the name of St Vincent, San Vicente, carries for me an association of hot, salty soup, and olive branches, and warming up on a grey, chilly day, and hospitality gratefully received. It’s been pleasant to think of it today – a day that’s been distinctly cold, and actively misty, a day on which I’ve been glad to be at home, cooking omelettes with potato and red pepper and smelly cheese.

A kindness to one’s survivors

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A shallow flood blocks a path that's blocked again by a five bar gate

This week I’ve been transferring photos from my phone onto an external drive. I’ve had this phone for nearly five years, and there are a lot of photos on there. Fewer than there were on Monday, though.

As luck would have it, I hit January 2022 just as some online friends were discussing preferences for funeral music. My father died on 8 January 2022, and the pictures from that month are a jumble of memories and plans – beloved objects, photos of photos, and important documents – some taken by me, some shared by family members and friends.

Among those important documents was a two page note in my aunt’s handwriting, a summary of a conversation she and Pa had had during a COVID lockdown. On the first page were the details of the solicitors and the insurance. On the second, a very detailed list of funeral preferences. What. Where. Who should speak. Which hymns, including specific tune in one case and hymn number in another. Music for entrance. Music for exit.

It was immensely helpful. I ended up drafting most of the service, and this document gave me a starting point and an authority; it curtailed, if it didn’t quite avoid, a lot of disagreements; it provided some interesting challenges. We didn’t follow it exactly; we also found a previous version (another photo to pop up in the January 2022 folder) and added some bits from that. But we definitely followed it in spirit.

I have made one of these myself, but it was a good decade ago and I think it’s got lost, anyway. So I’m planning to do a new version this year. I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but you never know.

Morbid? Perhaps. Self-centred? Undoubtedly, but far more helpful than being self-effacing. Even if one doesn’t want a big fuss, one’s executors aren’t necessarily going to know what “not a big fuss” looks like, and, while good funeral directors, and, I’m sure, celebrants from all traditions, will have helpful suggestions, they’re going to be at least somewhat generic, at which point you’ve just moved the question on from “what would they have wanted?” to “would they really have wanted that?” And that’s not an easy question when you’re grieving. A plain statement of preferences in black and white can be one last, immensely helpful and comforting, gift. I’d recommend everybody does one, if they can face it, and saves their family and friends a lot of grief, in the informal sense – and perhaps in the formal sense, too.

Winter requirements satisfied

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Cathedral silhouette against a pale blue sky, framed by a telegraph pole and wire

Saturday was ridiculously beautiful, and also ridiculously busy. It concentrated almost all the busyness for the month of January into one day. I went to a Cursillo training day in the morning (I’m not on the staff this time; I was just showing up to show support) and a party in the afternoon, and in between I practised two duets and made a chilli.

It was also really quite cold. This beautiful hazy morning sharpened and brightened, and the grass was hard and lumpy underfoot, and while we were singing and playing and dancing the fog rolled in and when we left we couldn’t see further than about twenty feet.

And it turns out that what I really needed in order to feel satisfied that winter has happened properly was a) a cold snap; and b) an exuberant party. Which this was. I sang Rossini (sure, it was the Cats’ Duet, but it’s not easy) and danced a Horse’s Brawl. It was great. I went back to work today (from the dining table) and it felt entirely appropriate. The festive season is concluded in style and I am now happy to get on with the rest of the year.

It’s good to walk

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A row of bare trees in front of a house, some with silver bark and some with yellow

Another cold day, but clear and sunlit, and all the trunks and branches of the trees glowing – the silver on the birches, the golden lichen on the hazels and oaks, and the moon between them. I walked – not as far as yesterday, but further than I’ve managed on other days – and kept going further than I strictly needed to because it was too beautiful to stop so soon. It’s so good to be able to do that again.

Thinking of big skies

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Grey road, grey sky, bare trees, green field, band of pale pink at the horizon

I took a slightly longer walk today, long enough for my legs to stop feeling wobbly and then start feeling wobbly again. I came out from the corridor of trees and stopped at the road for longer than I usually would, noticing the pull of the flat land beyond the A10. It was cold, and there was no sun so it felt colder, and I would have liked to cross the main road and walk out under the grey sky towards the band of pale pink. Instead, I carried on, noticing how very cold it was, how very bare the trees, how very spiky their twigs. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to feel this weak forever, that this wasn’t COVID or pregnancy, that it was going to be a matter of days rather than months. Thought that I ought to pump up the tyres of my road bike for when I should be ready to cross the road, but not yet. Then, in the trees, birdsong: I guessed it was a robin, and then looked up, and up, and saw it at the very top.

Return of the writing brain

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Sky, winter sunlight, and bare branches are reflected in a puddle on a tarmac path

My writing brain started up good and proper yesterday. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s having managed to post here every day for a month and more. Maybe it was having a day in which I’d promised myself I’d do no work and only minimal Cursillo admin. Maybe it’s because it’s almost eighteen months since the baby was born and that’s just how long it takes for a brain to get going again. Maybe it’s because I did some actual proper singing and it unblocked some metaphorical tubes. Or maybe I’d just knitted some arbitrary length of combined sock. Who knows.

Anyway, in the morning I found myself rereading some things I’d written. I fixed an plot hole in one of them. And I found myself thinking more and more about the project I was working on up until, well, a little more than eighteen months ago. Actually, it’s been bouncing around in my head for the last few days, but yesterday it started demanding my attention. And now it’s telling me I need to read the book on the Dance Band Era, and get hold of a wind-up gramophone and play the 78s, and rescue all the rest of the dance band 78s, and read I don’t know, who survived the First World War and wrote about it? Siegfried Sassoon, read Siegfried Sassoon, and oh yes, definitely David Blaize, and probably pick up that First World War history that I got about as far as 1915 in, and find out about twilight sleep and would an upper middle class woman be expected to breastfeed in 1924, and work out a better name for my hero (he is called Julian at the moment, which is a bit misleading)… And probably reread Romeo and Juliet just for the hell of it except that’s probably not the best use of my limited time, or rewatch it, except goodness knows I never get three straight hours free these days. And I would say read Surprised by Joy if I hadn’t just read it and concluded that, while I’m very pleased for C. S. Lewis that he got out an environment that was making him miserable, it would have been useful for me if he’d stayed on and could have written about what it was like being at school and watching form by form carted off to war, knowing your time was coming. (And good grief I don’t think his Professor Kirkpatrick as written would have let him get away with the logical fallacies in Mere Christianity, but that’s not remotely relevant.)

I started getting lines writing themselves again. I found myself wanting to reread what’s already there to make sure I hadn’t written them already, or written something that they would contradict. The cogs were turning, turning, getting up to speed. The writing brain was well and truly running. It kept me up mapping what fandom (such as there is) calls the Montacrew onto early twentieth century public school dynamics (let the reader understand). And then the toddler woke up and insisted on a really, really long feed.

You recall that I am meant to be resting and recovering. So yes, today was a washout (although I did some more singing practice and am feeling a lot better about my impending performance – and finished reading Touch Not The Cat, which is very slightly relevant.) So no, I haven’t actually added any new words to this project yet. But I’m so very glad to see it again.

Epiphany

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Pale mauve cyclamen flowers and variegated green leaves, shiny with rain, growing in wet ground.

The earth tips back and the light reaches back out to the north, stretches, spreads over us. The sun stays past four o’clock, just a little bit more than eight hours now. The solstice marked the turning point; now I begin to notice.

It’s cold, though. I walked out earlier, just a little way. My loose silky trousers, practical for a healing abdomen, are not so practical for a January walk; I am grateful for my brother’s long-ago recommendation of long-john base layers. I realised, half-way out, that my mind was singing me the enquiry of the Three Kings, the steady four-four of Mendelssohn’s setting keeping pace with my footsteps. Say, where is he born the king of Judea, for we have seen – for we have seen – have seen his star – have see-een his star and are co-ome to ado-ore him – have see-een his star and are co-ome to adore him… These Magi are walking, I think; it isn’t the swaying three-four camel-gait of We Three Kings. Too late, too slow, looking in the wrong place, but getting there in the end.

I caught a glimpse of the cathedral between two houses (you can see it from most places, if you look hard enough) and the flag on the west tower was streaming straight out in a rectangle, like a child’s drawing. The moon, just shy of a quarter, winked through a window of cloud and went away again. I turned, left it at my left shoulder, and turned back towards the sun, and into the wind.

In the garden, the cyclamen have bloomed: sturdy stems, delicate mauve flowers shaped like fantastic head-dresses springing from a rolled band, more outlandish than you’d see in any nativity play. I planted them under the most troublesome of the apple trees, hoping to introduce a little colour against that gloomy fence if nothing else. Suddenly, I’m vindicated.