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A winter tradition

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An assortment of towers and spires seen beyond the top of a high yellow brick wall against a clear blue sky

I always take the first week of December as annual leave, and I always tell people that I don’t plan to do very much with it. Well, not two years ago, when I was on maternity leave, obviously, and last year it was the last week of November, but before that I had a long-standing tradition of taking the first week of December as annual leave, and this year I reinstated it.

The theory is that I get a bit of breathing space with which to start my new year. I observe at least the beginning of Advent in a meaningful way. I take some time to look back at the past year and forward to the next one. I do some writing, perhaps. I get a break from the enforced cheeriness of secular office Christmas (this is less dire than it used to be before the pandemic). I take long walks. I contemplate vast clear skies. And yes, I do a bit of shopping and go to the post office at a time of day when the queue isn’t out the door.

That’s the theory.

I’d forgotten that what actually happens is that I get ill. Whatever stinking cold is making the rounds, the moment I take my early December break, it hits me. Cough, headache, runny nose, nosebleeds, any combination of the above.

This year there’s been an earache and a sticky eye as well. Apparently there’s something absolutely miserable going around, and since it’s lasting a fortnight (so says my neighbour) I probably have another week to go.

(Last year, by way of variation, I was fine during my week off, but then had an unpleasant gallbladder flare-up the week after. The year before that, who knows, I had a five-month-old baby and I can’tremember. The year before that I was pregnant and still in the “constantly exhausted” stage. Before that I might have dodged it with the help of the pandemic restrictions. But before Covid it was definitely a thing.)

I’m particularly annoyed this year because this happened when I took three days off in September, too. But I was tired, and I knew that I was tired. I suppose it’s been a hell of a year, and that’s all there is to it.

So I’m trying to let this be a time of patience, as I suppose is only fitting. If I’m not feeling up to trimming the hearth and setting the table, I can still look east, believing that Love the Guest doesn’t mind the cat hair on the cushions or the toys on the floor. (That carol has been in my head a lot recently; I was meaning to write a post about it. Not this week, though.) I’m trying to accept the experience of being ill, even if I can’t enjoy it, rather than wishing I was somewhere, somebody, else. I’m trying to keep my temper. I’m trying not to worry too much about the next few weeks, and mostly managing it, because I just don’t seem to have the energy.

Next year, then, I might remember that my body seems to need rest as much as my mind needs to process and review. I might make myself a list of things that are gentle and restful but still feel appropriate to the season. I might be prepared for the first week or so to be utter chaos, and to trust that there’s meaning in the chaos too, there’s help for my helplessness, there’s space for everything I need to do, and grace for everything I don’t get to. And this year I’ll try to live that.

Margaret Jowitt, 1955-2025

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Black and white photo of a woman and toddler seated in the back of a parked van

My mother died at the end of April. It was a shock and not a surprise: we knew she hadn’t been well, but we weren’t expecting this. (This, it turns out, was a pulmonary embolism, the sort of thing you can’t expect, and not the thing we were actually worrying about. I think it makes it easier, but it’s quite hard enough.)

There’s a great gap now, in the world of childbirth rights and maternity services reform, and in our lives.

Equinox

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A bee rests on a lavender head, on which only a few flowers are still blooming

It felt rather appropriate to be sitting in the conservatory yesterday, looking out at the roses still just about blooming and ripe apples on the trees, drinking the tea that came with this season’s Ffern perfume, and embroidering a reindeer into a baby hat. Today we rotated the mattress. It’s not exactly a ritual; it’s just that we’re more likely to remember to do it if we link it with the solstices and equinoxes.

I tend to mark the changing of the seasons by the cross-quarter days (I find it less depressing that way) so for me, autumn began at Lammas, at the beginning of August. That doesn’t mean that the half-way point isn’t important, though. It still looks very green outside, but when I look a second time there are a few red and orange leaves, and tonight there’s a patter of rain on the conservatory roof, and the promise of more.

on a personal level

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A freight train crosses the back of the picture on a grey day; in front of it, a narrowboat is moored on a river.

Drink red wine from a tumbler.

Add three spoonfuls of sugar to black coffee.

Write a sentence longer than most people’s paragraphs.

Talk to a railway man.

Quote some dreadful Victorian slush.

Try to persuade the nearest soprano to sing some dreadful Victorian slush.

Photograph some buses.

Tell everyone you prefer trains.

Look at three different maps of the same place, none current.

Take the baby to look at trains.

Take a beermat home with you. Take six beermats home with you. (Or: be pleased that the beermat collection has gone to someone who appreciates it.)

Join the Friends of King Alfred Buses. (I have been meaning to do this for ages and have at least/at last managed to print off the application form.)

Yell ‘Trolloper!’ at the cat. (I didn’t, because it was five in the morning and the rest of the household was more or less asleep, despite the noise of the cat/waste paper battle.)

Read the lesson at Mattins. (I get one opportunity per year. I am on the rota.)

Remember the date. Tell people why it’s meaningful on a personal level. Although probably not in those terms.

(Two years without Pa, six months, nearly, with the little one.)

(Thanks to Havi for the concept of SMOPL.)

Sunday sentence: 10p huha

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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

Week-end: red plush seat season

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Ornate theatre auditorium with a lot of gilt and red plush, seen from high up in the gallery

The good

A serenely joyful Monday. Visiting friends. A night at the opera. Red and yellow trees. Ripe pears. There have been some lovely moments this week. And there is encouraging progress on the Bicycles and Broomsticks Kickstarter.

The mixed

You know, I really could enjoy autumn if only I didn’t have to do so much. And by ‘have to’ I mean ‘want to’, ‘feel obliged to’, and ‘be contractually obliged to’. As it is, I find myself simultaneously getting irritated by the memes about the joy of crunchy leaves and pumpkin spiced lattes, while enjoying the crunchy leaves. (I have never tried a pumpkin spiced latte. I have never tried a plain latte, not being overly fond of milk.)

And! I finally finally finally got up to date with my accounts (I use You Need A Budget). It took an awful lot of coffee, but I did it, and nothing is telling me reproachfully that it was last reconciled nine months ago.

The difficult and perplexing

I’m boring myself here, but I’m tired. I’m beginning to wonder, actually, whether I’m not so far over Covid as I thought I was. But it may still be the time of year, combined with the nasty shock of things actually happening.

What’s working

High drama, sequins, lounging on the sofa, hot baths, soap made with coffee grounds.

Reading

I progressed a little further with The Master and Margarita. The Master has now shown up. In The Fellowship of the Ring we have reached the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil has shown up. In non-fiction, I read the introductory sections of Philip’s Guide To The Night Sky (see Acquisitions) and very much enjoyed the general Sir Patrick Mooreness of the writing. I will return to the seasonal specifics later.

Writing

Some editing on Book Bus Stories. Some connections in Starcrossers, which continues to head north towards ten thousand words. I’m going to finish joining it all up and then see what I can cut. Or throw myself on the editor’s mercy. Maybe both.

Mending

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the darning loom this week. I’ve darned a pyjama top (it’s very obvious that I mostly sleep on my right side), a pair of walking socks, a pair of ordinary socks, two pairs of jeggings, and one of Tony’s merino T-shirts.

Watching

Tosca (English National Opera, London Coliseum). I’d never actually seen Tosca and felt it was about time, and really, when you can get tickets for a tenner and I’m in London anyway, why not? So I did. It was an enjoyable show, very trad production (bicorne hats and all), good singing, understudy (?) Scarpia acquitted himself very well, Tosca herself was great, though I think Caravadossi ran away with it. My formative Tosca is Agatha Christie’s short story Swan Song, so (without spoilers) I’m always slightly surprised when the opera keeps on going for another forty minutes after Vissi d’arte (or Love and Music in this case, as ENO do everything in English). I am glad I did not accidentally leave at the interval.

Although I will say that the ten pound seats are proportionately tiny, front to back, and I was glad it wasn’t a full house and there was space for us to spread out.

Another three episodes of Heartstopper with my friend N, with popcorn and everything. It’s very charming, but my overwhelming reaction is relief that I never have to go to school ever again.

Also, what I need to get me through the dark evenings is a bucketload of sequins, unconvincing musical cuts, and dodgy scoring, and since figure skating doesn’t hit Eurosport until this coming Friday I’ve been watching Strictly Come Dancing.

Cooking

Bubble and squeak (accompanied by fierce debate as to whether you can really call it that when it isn’t made with leftovers); upside down chocolate pear pudding (experimenting this time with adding ground almonds and more milk than I’d meant to). I’ve just peeled and chopped up all the time-limited apples for apple sauce. I filled a saucepan with apples, resulting in half a saucepan of apple sauce, and there is still most of a bowl of (more durable-looking) apples left.

Eating

Pears. Some of them have been divine. The trouble with pears is that they so often go straight from rock-hard to rotten. I had one on Sunday that was both at once. I cut the rotten end off and sliced up the sharp remainder and ate it with Comté cheese. Very good.

I had a very nice paneer kebab at Le Maison Bab in Covent Garden before the opera. And a cocktail called a Paloma Pomegranate to go with it. Very nice. Very pink.

Playing

Ticket to Ride with N and M (not the Agatha Christie ones), followed by Labyrinth and Funny Bunny with M.

Noticing

How quickly the leaves are changing. And they really are lovely this year.

In the garden

As you might have guessed, apples and pears.

Appreciating

Pure distilled emotion. Lie-ins.

Acquisitions

It is always great fun to explore the charity shops of a town you don’t live in. I did very well, and came away with a knitted top, a Friedrich Hollaender/Marlene Dietrich songbook, the vocal score for Cowardy Custard (never heard of it, but it is a way to acquire a lot of Coward music all at once), Consider Phlebas, Philip’s Guide to the Night Sky as mentioned above, The Woman Who Stole My Life (I do like Marian Keyes), By Royal Command (Charlie Higson made a very entertaining interviewer; I’m interested to see what the Young Bond books are like), The Star of Kazan (to replace an copy with a snot stain – not mine), and all five acts of Mireille. Which I think I have only ever encountered on a pianola roll before now.

Hankering

Well, I was looking at a couple of leather jackets, but neither of them fitted well enough to convince me. This reminded me of my intermittent desire for a proper bomber jacket with a sheepskin or knitted collar. And I was very tempted by a darning loom with twenty-one hooks and a long board (the hooks more than the board, if I’m honest). Plus things I’ve mentioned in previous weeks and may buy now I’ve sorted out my money and payday has arrived.

Line of the week

In the Old Forest:

In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked by fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves.

Saturday snippet

A currently load-bearing bit of Starcrossers:

She used a word I didn’t know. “I suppose you’d call it a guess, though it’s more than that. You’re obviously from the Containment, you enjoy a certain level of rank, though perhaps enjoy isn’t the word, and none of the other Heir’s heirs have a reputation for venturing into Crew territory.” For the first time, she smiled. “And yes, they do also show me the news pieces.”

This coming week

A relatively quiet one at work. I think. I’d like to get the first draft of Starcrossers done and maybe even move on to working out what can come out. A Cursillo event on Saturday, which I am hoping will come together. And there’ll be some figure skating to watch.

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

That or the priesthood: new post at Licence To Queer

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Shelf of books, many of them Pan paperback copies of the James Bond series. A church is visible through the window behind.

I emailed David at Licence To Queer several months ago to see if he’d be interested in a post about the religious imagery in the Bond books and fans and what that means for me, as a bisexual Anglican Bond fan.

It took me so long to rewatch everything and write about it that it got to the point where I thought I might as well hang on for No Time To Die (which, by the way, I recommend wholeheartedly), in case it contradicted all of my points. (It didn’t, really.) So there are a couple of spoilers in there, if that bothers you.

Apart from that, there’s a lot about Bond’s religious background, such as we get of it, and more about Bond’s relationship with MI6, and what that has to say to the Church of England. There’s my own experience of vocation as a queerness (and what The Night Manager had to say to me about vocation). There’s the sublime Bond Responses.

I had a good deal of fun revisiting the Bond canon and writing the post, and I’d like to thank David for the space to explore this somewhat unlikely topic, and for his patience while I disappeared off the face of the earth to write it up.

That or the priesthood: Bond’s queer calling

Why bother/why I bother

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Large sculpture made of arches of wire with thousands of metal fish hanging from them
Your Waves Go Over Me: an installation by Mark Reed at Norwich cathedral

There is plenty wrong with the world at the moment. (There always has been. I tend to find this comforting; you may not.) And much of it is the big stuff, the kind that needs big solutions. Bigger than me.

The actions that I can take are small. There is very little that I can control, and not much more that I can influence in any meaningful way. And yet I keep taking small actions. Not as many, or as often, as I’d like to. But some. Why?

I am one, but I am one of many.

I work for a trade union, so it’s perhaps easier for me to remember this than it is for some others. It does help, working with people who share many of my values and many of my ideals. We don’t always agree on the best way to achieve change, or even what a particular change should look like. It can be a slog: there’s an awful lot to do. But every so often we manage to change something for the better, something we wouldn’t have managed on our own.

My brother tells me that the reason he stopped flying was that I stopped flying. (And the reason that I stopped flying was that I read a news article – well over a decade ago now, since I haven’t flown since 2007 – about some bishop or other giving up flying.) We have more influence than we think we do. Not much more, perhaps. But some.

It can affect the big stuff.

In this category I’d place things like writing to my MP. If it’s just me writing to her, she probably isn’t going to act on it. If tens or hundreds of her constituents do, she’s more likely to. She might still not do it. But at least I’ve made it that little bit more difficult for her to tell herself she’s doing what her constituents want.

Maybe I’d put things like buying fair trade under this header, too. The 30p difference between the fair trade option and the not fair trade option doesn’t make much difference to me, and it probably doesn’t make much difference to the farmer either. But across millions of customers and thousands of farmers it adds up.

It made a difference to that starfish.

Have you heard that story? I came across it when I was just old enough to get the point and just young enough not to find it unbearably cheesy. Some small actions do make a big impact, depending on the perspective you’re looking from.

Picking up three pieces of litter doesn’t do much about the great Pacific garbage patch (which in any case is mostly made of fishing nets, not plastic straws, please stop banning plastic straws), but it can make a path look visibly more attractive; and if I’ve put one can in the bin then that’s one hazard taken out of the way of the local wildlife.

It made a difference to me.

In my office most of the doors are decorated with the sort of quotations that are usually described as ‘inspirational’. (I avoid the word ‘inspirational’ where possible, but it’s probably the appropriate one here.) One of them is from Joan Baez, one of the few artists I have gone out of my way to see live, and it says: Action is the antidote to despair. I mention this one – I remember this one, in contrast to all the other doors in the building – because in my experience it is true. I am very prone to despair. It seems to come along for the ride with depression, whether as cause or symptom I’m not sure. And yet doing something (a tiny something: taking the compost out, telling somebody they’ve dropped their ticket, passing on some unwanted plates to a neighbour who does want them) has a disproportionately cheering effect. Assuming I can get that far in the first place.

It helps me. Does it help anyone or anything else? If I’m honest, if I’m at the point where I’m worrying about that, I’m not actually in a place where I care.

I just do.

Do something (or don’t do something) for long enough, and it shades into sheer habit. My mother has been boycotting Nestlé since the early nineties; consequently, there’s a whole shelf of chocolate bars that I just don’t see. Does that make any difference to Nestlé’s bottom line? Well, no, because I was never their customer to start with. It’s just habit now. It doesn’t really make any difference to me, either. I’ll have a dark Chocolate Orange, if I can find one. (Do they even still make them?)

Because I am a person who does this.

This is where it can get deeply philosophical. How far is what I am determined by what I do?

I don’t always. Up until yesterday, I hadn’t written to my MP about anything for months. For all I know she was wondering if I’ve died or moved away. Now she knows I haven’t. And that I feel strongly enough about the Elections Bill to tell her how strongly I feel about it.

Choosing hope, and choosing hope by taking an action, over and over again, becomes at once a symbolic and a physical act of resistance. It becomes almost a praxis, an observance. For me, it’s an outworking of my religious faith, but I don’t think it has to be. Challenging my natural propensity for gloom changes the world – or, at least, the world I live in. And that’s the only world that I can do anything about.

Briarley (Aster Glenn Gray)

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Paperback copy of 'Briarley' by Aster Glenn Gray, in a rosebush.

The books that I add to my LGBTQ Christian fiction recommendations don’t usually get their own posts, but this one felt almost as if it was written especially for me. Which is not something that I thought I’d ever say about a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but here we are. (Nothing against fairy tale retellings; it’s just that I haven’t happened to read one since rereading Adèle Géras’ Egerton Hall series, over a decade ago now. I shouldn’t have got rid of my copy. Actually, it occurs to me now that The Tower Room is what introduced me to St John of the Cross, so perhaps there’s a connection after all.)

Anyway, it’s 1940, the father is a country parson and Great War veteran, the daughter is a nurse, and the beast is a dragon. The parson (his name is Edward Harper, but the narrative mostly calls him ‘the parson’) does the rose-stealing thing, but refuses to let the dragon abduct his daughter, on the grounds that a) she has her war work to be doing; b) it’s wrong to punish the daughter for the father’s misdeeds; c) if the dragon needs to be freed from his enchantment by the power of love then it’s the parson’s Christian duty; d) 1 Corinthians 13.

That’s not how you learn to love, not at all. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it does not kidnap –

One thing that I’d forgotten in all my years of not really reading retellings was that what’s interesting is not what the story does, it’s how it does it. It’s the setting; it’s the twists; it’s the characterisation. We all know where we’re going, but the journey might be surprising. In this case it was a very good surprise.

The portrayal of wartime rural England wasn’t bad at all; the enchanted house stuff was all in line with the fairy tale. More to the point, from my point of view, was that there was a real sense of theological literacy, and that was refreshing. I only put books on my recs post if they get to a point where they acknowledge the possible coexistence of Christianity and queerness within one individual, but several of them never get much beyond a superficial (and often borderline antisemitic) rebuttal of Leviticus 18 (“but prawns!!!”). This one felt much more comfortable in its arguments. It helped that one of the main characters had already done the thinking, yes, but it went beyond that. I very much got the sense of faith and/or religion as something in which these characters lived and thought. There’s a throwaway reference to David and Jonathan and a long-running, sophisticated riff on hospitality and the sin of Sodom. (Had OT scholarship got that far by 1940? I’m not sure, but it works in the book, which tends to rely on experience rather than scholarship.) There’s a committed, personal, engaged wrestling with 1 Corinthians 6. And this was true for the minor characters, too: I particularly liked the moment when one of the servants (invisible, not transfigured into household objects, in this version) responds to a “doubting Thomas” reference with, “Ma’am, I haven’t spear wounds you can probe.” Ownership of scripture isn’t restricted to the clergy here. This inhabiting of a common religious inheritance never felt heavy-handed or out of character, but it was always taken seriously.

One thing that was missing was the immersion in the Prayer Book and the Authorized Version, such as you’d find in Streatfeild or Sayers or other mid twentieth century British authors writing about this sort of milieu. This didn’t bother me on the first read (straight through, last night) but struck me when I was thinking about it this morning. The 1 Corinthians 13 bit, for example: really it should have been ‘Charity kidnappeth not.’ But that would have rather undermined the lovely quibble on the different sorts of love (of course the enchantment is picky about the sort of love required to break it) and so I’ll let it off.

Other nitpicks: there was a moment towards the end of the book that didn’t quite sit right with me, but I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t talk about it. Only one out-of-place Americanism (a “gotten”) tripped me up. There was a cricketing detail that felt slightly off, but may well have been plausible for the mid nineteenth century; I have no idea. Finally I was a bit worried about the parson’s poor neglected parishioners, but he did at least feel bad about neglecting his duty (unlike some fictional clergy we could mention), and had a reasonable excuse.

This is a short book – 165 pages in the paperback edition. I would have loved to read more of the parson’s backstory, but at the same time it felt like exactly the right length; we knew as much as we needed to. And it meant that I could finish it at a reasonable hour and might read it all over again tonight; who knows?

Anyway, if you like my stuff and you like dragons you’ll probably like this one. Very much recommended.

Briarley

Stay at Home book tag

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Joanna Victoria tagged me for this meme (yes, in internet years I’m ancient, I cut my HTML teeth on LiveJournal, I call it a meme), which began with Princess of Paperback on Youtube, a couple of days ago.

Lying in bed – a book you read in one day

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I only picked this up to check something for my next Reader’s Gazetteer post (it’ll be coming up under P for Paggleham) and then bang! that was the rest of Sunday afternoon gone. Nobody would tell someone to begin the Lord Peter Wimsey series with Busman’s Honeymoon, but it was the first one that I picked up, having run out of Agatha Christie, in my mid teens. Hadn’t a clue what was going on for most of it, but I loved it.

Snacking – a book that is a ‘guilty pleasure’ read

I’m with Joanne Harris here – there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure read.

(I’m always tempted to name a book by one of those dreary Great White Middle-Aged Men novelists in this category, but nobody would believe me.)

I don’t think that snacking is a guilty pleasure, either.

Netflix – a series that you want to start

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(Apologies, by the way, for the way that my ebook reader makes book covers look so dull. I’ve done my best with a German tablecloth here.)

Working my way through fictional lands for the Reader’s Gazetteer, I’ve noticed that my focus has been very Eurocentric. I was intrigued, therefore, to come across a series set in, or featuring characters from, a fictional African country named Thesolo. I’m not a great reader of romances, but the Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole does look intriguing.

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And, while I’ve read a lot by L. M. Montgomery, I haven’t read her ‘Pat’ series, despite having had a copy from someone on BookCrossing years ago.

This one would also work for the next prompt:

Deep clean – a book that has been on your TBR for ages

*hollow laughter*

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I thought that this looked absolutely delightful, and bought it, and have never got round to reading it. As the name suggests, Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal is a diary by a young girl from the period in the nineteenth century when the Alps were just becoming a desirable holiday destination.

Animal Crossing – a book you bought recently because of the hype

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Well, there’s certainly been a lot of hype around The Flat Share – which is a fun take on the old Cox and Box ‘two people share a living space but never meet’ story – though I probably wouldn’t have bought it as soon as I did had it not been a pick for one of my book clubs.

But I’ve been playing Animal Crossing on and off since university – more or less as long as I’ve been on the internet, in fact – we played it in the same way some other student households watched Teletubbies.

So instead I’m going for a ‘childhood classic I only got round to in adulthood’:

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There were plenty of school stories in the house when we were growing up, but we missed Antonia Forest’s Marlows series. I think I probably appreciate them more now than I would have then: ‘school story’ is only half the story, and the eclectic, often experimental, mix of genres, and the bleak verging on cynical worldview, would probably have put me off when I was younger.

(I haven’t been on Animal Crossing since early December, by the way, and my village will be full of weeds and my house will be full of cockroaches. And my hair will be a mess.)

Productivity – a book you learned from or had an impact on you

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I’d heard of Bird by Bird a while ago, but had been putting off reading it as I feared it was going to be twee and wholesome, and I have to be in a very specific mood to put up with being exhorted to let me creativity flower or whatever.

Now I’m actually reading it I find it’s not like that at all: it’s deliciously bracing and down to earth. Some of the lessons in there I’ve already worked out by trial and error. Some of them I hadn’t got round to putting into words. Either way, though, I’m enjoying Anne Lamott’s company, and will be looking out for her books that aren’t about writing, too.

Facetime – a book you were given

I cannot bring myself to write ‘gifted’ as a verb. Sorry.

Anyway, nobody’s tried to give us any books since we moved, which is probably a good thing, but I did win a BookCrossing sweepstake:

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Self-care – what is one thing you have done recently to look after yourself?

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I’ve been setting my alarm for 7.15am (when I go back to commuting to London it’ll be over an hour earlier than that, but let’s not think about that) so that I can get in a walk before breakfast and morning prayer. And I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible in the garden, slowing down, paying attention, doing very little.

Bonus – an upcoming release you are looking forward to

I am, as always, out of the loop on what’s new, and massively behind on reading what’s recent. But I do have my eye on Joanne Harris’ Ten Things About Writing.

 

My new ‘self-isolation reading club’ badge is from _erisapple_. I never tag other people, but if you like the look of this then consider yourself tagged.