Stories that make sense
I am not much of a one for stealing my partner’s clothes, but we did swap dressing gowns several years ago. I like this one, because it’s a practical colour and I don’t overheat in it. I can just put it on over the top of whatever I’m wearing and attain, and remain at, a comfortable temperature.
… I’m not a terribly snuggly sort of person. Can you tell?
I’m not using this book this Advent; it felt like time for a rest after two years on the run. Next year I might go back to it.
I love this.
I love the thing itself. My best friend embroidered it for my husband a few years ago. I love the fact that she took him up on a throwaway comment and actually embroidered Maxwell’s equations in blackwork. I love the way that it subverts the cutesy and the pious overtones that one generally finds in samplers.
I love the way that this manages to capture the friendly respect that both religion and science command in this household. After all, one of us grew up attending the church where Russell Stannard is a lay reader. (It wasn’t me. I’m jealous.)
I love the way that religion and science collide in this, and the way that neither of them quite manages to convey the essence of what light is. And once again, it seems, I’m talking about the inadequacy of all sorts of ways of representing things.
I am beginning to suspect that one of the challenges of 2017 is going to be moving beyond metaphor. But how, then, can one possibly talk about anything? Let’s say, then, of recognising metaphors for what they are.
I’d been hoping, of course, for one of those perfect days that we had at the end of November, for a blue sky and a still river, for reflections as in a mirror. No such luck. Low clouds, ruffled water, a blurred picture.
Yesterday I sang at a wedding. Now we see puzzling reflections in a mirror (or, if you prefer the King James version, Now we see in a glass darkly); then we shall see face to face.
Perhaps it’s as well to remember that the image is not, after all, the reality.
Five years ago, I was writing to December prompts for the first time, though I seem to have done a whole heap at once. This was Reverb 11.
Five years ago, I was beginning to come to terms with some things that I now accept as the price of admission for being who I am. That I’m not at my most energetic, creative or enthusiastic at this time of year. That winter will always be difficult. That uninterrupted good health is not, after all, something to be expected as a right.
Five years ago, my diary was much more colourful than it is today. This is actually one of the less exuberant pages: elsewhere there are stickers, collage, glittery pens, all sorts. I think the reason I’m not doing that so much at the moment is the fact that the chest of drawers wherein I keep all that gubbins is no longer in the same room as my diary; these days it’s much easier to write in black fountain pen, the book resting on my knees, with my feet up on the sofa.
And I was just learning the use of fandoms that take a while to get through. I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo and watching early Doctor Who. The book was probably a little less battered five years ago.
I don’t have many secrets these days. My biggest one was my writing habit, and that’s well and truly out in the open now.
So here’s the opening of A Spoke In The Wheel, which I’ve been keeping pretty quiet.
This hasn’t been a year for huge decisions. The most obviously significant one was deciding to go for what’s now my current job; and yes, that was a good decision. It must have been at some point this year that it flipped from ‘not my scene’ to ‘obvious next step’. All I know is, by the time the job advertisement appeared, the decision had made itself.
The purple fabric in the background is my interview dress. Rather like the interview itself, I had to talk myself into it, and then was glad I did. (I note that 75% of my new dresses this year have come with pockets. It’s been a good year for dresses.)
The best decision, however, the decision that made the most immediate difference, was going on holiday to Lyme Regis back in April. I was very tired and very stressed, and a couple of days with a stiff sea breeze, a hilly stretch of coast path, and an excuse to read Persuasion, made things very much better very quickly.
And it left me with an obsession with ammonites that shows no sign of letting up, and has been very useful in ways that I can’t quite explain.
I didn’t know what to photograph for this prompt. Everything has a texture, I thought: how to choose one particular object, or one particular object’s texture?
Then I noticed what I was wearing.
This is my favourite scarf. It came from a charity shop, and is possibly the best quid I ever spent. I like it because it is so uncompromisingly bright. It has a bit of a Ballets Russes vibe, with that orange butted up against the purple and black; indeed, today I was wearing it with a short, full black dress, opaque magenta tights, and black suede ballet flats. (Appear to have been possessed by a Babysitters’ Club narrator for a moment there. Sorry about that.)
But the textures are almost as much fun as the colours. The velvet; the silk; the gentle prickle of the sequins.
These were the last three CDs I bought. They’re part of the soundtrack of 2016, but not all of it. Abba, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel… I saw Billy Joel live this year, a Christmas present from my middle brother, and a fantastic night. (It clashed with the Last Night of the Proms. Billy Joel played Rule Britannia, whence he found his way to Ode to Joy and finally into My Life. It was epic.)
What’s missing? Things I’ve sung, for a start. With work choir, Take That’s Shine; Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine; David Bowie’s Life on Mars?; a song called Together we are strong by our conductor.The biggest audience of my life was at national delegate conference in June. I have no way of knowing numbers, but it would have been somewhere between five hundred and fifteen hundred. A lot of people, anyway.
For church choir, Elgar’s Ave Maris Stella; Rubbra’s Missa Sant’ Dominici; Poulenc’s Quem vidistis pastores; Howells’ Magnificat in G (we haven’t got to the Nunc Dimittis yet)… the most difficult ones turn out to be the most memorable, though I would be hard put to it to hum some of them. My one solo this year was in the quartet in Stanford’s Te Deum in B flat.
I was aiming to find a reliable top F and top G this year, but haven’t managed that. That’s a goal for 2017. I continue to try to teach myself the piano. Drink to me only with thine eyes and The Rose of Tralee have been much heard around these parts, very slowly and with some swearing.
As always, I get to know music best from the inside; if I can play something, if I can sing it, I can appreciate it, far more easily than if I just listen.
Kathleen Jowitt 