Stories that make sense
Today the sky is very blue and the grass is very green and the sunlight is making everything 25% more beautiful than it was before. And compared to yesterday, which was a day of wind and drizzle, it’s at least 200% more beautiful.
This skirt has a deadline: two weeks and a bit from now. There is still quite a lot of hemming to do, in limited sewing time. It’s very tempting, though, to add more decoration. It’s a question of balance.
Sunset on All Saints’ Day, and I find myself singing The golden evening brightens in the west. Although this year We feebly struggle/ They in glory shine seems more like where I’m at, and apart from all the leaves the photo is saying sempiternal though sodden towards sundown three months early.
I’ve been feeling somewhat adrift from the seasons this year. My calendar emptied out after mid June, and you can never quite believe the weather these days. The garden is running wild with most of the fruit unpicked. Suddenly it’s November. But I got out into the golden evening on All Saints’ Day, and that’s something.
But now I’m in my own house, listening to water dripping off the pram onto the floor. The great advantage is that I know where the kettle is here.
Everybody loves the strawberry hat. (They tend to be favourably impressed by the baby, too, but it’s the hat that gets the attention.)
Clocks go back. Not this one, though: it’s not going anywhere, in either direction, until it gets a new battery.
I always used to look forward to the day the clocks go back. I find dark mornings far more difficult than dark evenings. This year, it hadn’t registered in my consciousness in the same way, my schedule being so much less predictable. Ironically, I think it’s going to be helpful in a rather different way, moving all the day’s appointments an hour later while keeping breakfast and dressing the same. We weren’t even late to church this morning.
“Two leeks and a lemon,” I said.
“Is she calling you a lemon?” the man on the market stall said to my baby. Then he said to me, “There’ll be moments you remember. Enjoy them.”
“Enjoy the quiet,” said the woman in the bakery, leaving me to my coffee and my sleeping baby.
And indeed, lately I’ve been drawing inspiration from a mug that claims The secret of enduring is enjoying.
People say it a lot. Enjoy… Enjoy… Usually it seems to be those who became parents a while ago, perhaps regretting their own missed opportunities to enjoy. I think it’s inevitable. Enjoyment is an active thing, and sometimes (often?) you don’t have the energy to be as active as all that. But there are plenty of moments, and enjoying can be as simple as noticing.
I think I need to make my posts shorter still. Short enough to type on my phone with one hand while feeding the baby with the other. Like this one.
Unapologetic (Francis Spufford). I’d always been put off by the subtitle (‘why, despite everything, Christianity still makes surprising emotional sense’) but once I’d picked this up found it much more personal (and more readable) than I’d expected. It’s not Mere Christianity, it’s much swearier and it isn’t seeking to persuade through logic, or to argue (except when it can’t resist the temptation). It wouldn’t be a bad introduction to Christianity.
Run Away Home (Antonia Forest). This is a strange way to finish the Marlows series, except of course I don’t think it was intended as the final volume; she just never wrote anything more. It’s somewhat frustrating, because on the one hand I’d like to see the aftermath (and on the other I’d be watching between my fingers). It’s clearly a response to We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, but the plot runs on a succession of bad decisions as opposed to a series of unfortunate circumstances. One could argue that this makes it stronger (dunno, though: I was muttering ‘stop making excuses and just take the damn ferry!’); it certainly makes everyone less sympathetic. As the late great Susan Hall put it, Commander Walker’s famous telegram would have been just two words long.
I keep picking things up and putting them down again. I’m finding that books have to be a very specific size and weight in order for me to be able to read them. And they have to be reachable from the sofa. So, things that I’ve started or returned to and may yet finish include:
Might have a look at my e-reader to see what I’ve been neglecting.
An awful lot of daytime TV, most of which has been quizzes. I’m starting to get fed up with all of them. I finished what’s currently available of Ghosts (the UK version; might try the US one but I understand it’s basically the same arc and I’m not sure I can tame my embarrassment squick for long enough). Then yesterday I found that ITVx had pulled Sapphire and Steel to the top of the page, presumably as a tribute to David McCallum, so watched quite a bit of that while the plumber was replacing the shower. It’s rather good, the kind of very low budget, very uncanny, almost unclassifiable thing that British TV did so well in the seventies and eighties.
Top of the list, most obvious, there’s the tiny hungry person who’s currently asleep in my lap.
Also, we’re between new moon and full moon, and I never write between new moon and full moon. Well, hardly ever. Well, not much. Not more than a sentence per project per day. Recently, it’s been very much less than that. (This started out as a way to give myself a break and has become something like a discipline. I keep thinking I’ll revisit it, but I haven’t yet.)
Then there’s the news I’ve been waiting for, and, while I could have been writing while waiting, the other factors combined and meant that I wasn’t. It’s good news. I’ll probably say more about it soon. In the meantime, it’s going to be one of those pleasing and harmless secrets, to be carried around and smiled at when I think about it.
Kathleen Jowitt 