Stories that make sense
Cat, in this case. Although we’re not entirely sure. You’d think that a cat would be more interested in, for example, chicken. Not that I’m complaining. She’s warm and purry (having been asleep on top of that pile of chaos for most of the day, she’s now on my lap) and cheap to feed.
I have about one hour in every day in which I have both hands free, and writing has been coming a long way down the list of things I could do in it. And it’s never the same hour for very long: I don’t seem to be able to adjust to the ever-changing routine quickly enough to get much done. Sometimes I see the moment and grab it, but not often.
So much of my life at the moment is focused on the baby, dependent on the baby. That’s why I’m not writing much here. I don’t want her to embark on life to find that the internet already knows all about her. This time is private.
It just doesn’t seem very important at the moment. There’s nothing in particular that needs to be written by me, now. No idea has yet grabbed me by the throat and insisted I write it.
My creative energy is going on other things. Smocking. Cursillo. What to do with a bus that’s a bookshop when it doesn’t have books in it.
I just don’t feel like it.
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(There is a cat on my keyboard.)
I am writing.
Little by little. More and more, week by week. Even when I wasn’t writing at all, I was writing. I’ve kept my diary up to date all this past year, and never had to catch up more than a week at a time. Even when I had to write in very large letters to fill a day, or just stick in a picture instead. I’ve written reports. I’ve written letters – fewer than I’d have liked, but some. I’ve even opened up some of my pre-baby projects and added a line here and a line there. There hasn’t been one big bam! I’m writing again! moment – or, rather, there have been several, but they haven’t released an exciting new flood of words. More an occasional dribble.
But I’m writing.
… that would be fine. There’s more to me than writing, more than I know about yet. And, while writing is one of the most important ways in which I find out about myself, it isn’t the only way. This last year – these last four years – has been a time of huge transition for me, in many different dimensions. I’m still emerging.
Who knows, I might write about that.
I’m still here, still not getting more than about ten minutes at a time in which to get things done, and mostly having to spend those ten minuteses on things that aren’t writing. I do have a vague plan for a return to blogging, but in the meantime, here’s a cat picture.
… Three months pregnant (I would have said it was more, but the maths works out, and it’s true that we were only just starting to tell people) and with a lap full of cats. I spent a lot of last Christmas Eve making vegan pierogi. This year we’re getting it out of a packet (not vegan).
I do try to be honest about my life on here, while also doing my best to respect the privacy of my nearest and dearest, and also assuming that nobody wants to see, for example, the nappy bucket. (Though the reusable nappies, which get about half of the use, are rather jolly, it’s true. Nevertheless.)
Anyway, under these layers of cat proofing is a rather lovely Victorian inlaid wood table, and that’s real life around here. Gorgeous stuff, if only you could see it.
This box has now been removed, filled, taped up, and addressed, and will shortly be posted. Poor cat. I’m sure we’ll find her something else to sit on and scratch up.
But it’s difficult to hem a garment that’s underneath a cat. She’s very cosy on my cosy jacket. (Charity shop find, several years ago, and it’s improved every winter since.)
I know the skirt looks like it’s hemmed. There’s quite a lot that you can’t see that still needs doing.
Whoosh. Suddenly it’s six weeks later and we’re rounding off August with a blue moon. It seemed like a good moment to pick things up again over here.
The baby is delightful, and gets more interesting by the day. It’s lovely, too, seeing others’ reactions. So many people are genuinely pleased to see her, friends and strangers and the guy I know by sight but whose name is a mystery.
We have succeeded in getting out of the house. Several times. There was my birthday; there was Pride; there was the Cursillo study day (labyrinths); there was a barbecue at my aunt’s; there were at least three church services.
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I would say the same thing at times that are not three in the morning. It’s the being on duty all the time.
It’s the first time in years I haven’t been in Ventnor for Fringe week. (I did have a weird feeling last year that It Was All Going To Be Different, though I hadn’t guessed how or why.) I lived it vicariously on the Instagram hashtag.
Hormones. I spent the first month crying about pretty much everything. (Child is not feeding. Child will not stop feeding. Child is small and utterly dependent on me. I wish Pa could have seen her…) Plus, of course, the lack of sleep.
Having my mother to stay. Coke (the fizzy sort). Keeping in touch with other adults over the internet. A sausage-shaped cushion thing that ties on behind my back. Remembering that this is my only job at the moment.
Also, let me stop a moment to extol the Really Useful Boxes. Because they are. Quite apart from storing baby clothes and nappies and toys, I’ve been using them as footstools, for handwashing, and for catching and evicting a huge spider. And the cat likes sitting on them.
A couple of ‘how on earth do I do this motherhood thing’ books: What Mothers Do (especially when it looks like nothing) (Naomi Stadlen); The Gentle Sleep Book (Sarah Ockwell-Smith). Both useful in confirming that I wasn’t missing something obvious, it really is this intense, and there’s only so much you can do before you just decide that this is the way things are and you’re going to go with it; both, I think, pushing back against the Gina Ford school of babyraising (which seems to have fallen out of favour among the professionals, at least in our neck of the woods). Of the two, the Stadlen is the keeper.
The Balloonists: the history of the first aeronauts by L. T. C. Rolt. Rolt was most famously the author of Red for Danger, the absolute classic of disaster analysis. There’s a certain amount of disaster in this (as you’d expect given the quantity of hydrogen used in the early days of ballooning) but it’s by no means the whole story. The whole story is very interesting and engagingly told.
Feeling in need of something trashy I reread Glittering Images (Susan Howatch) and began Glamorous Powers before deciding that really I wanted to read about scandalous bishops more than psychic manpain. So I have abandoned Starbridge and moved on to Lindford (Acts and Omissions, Catherine Fox).
Nothing to speak of in terms of new words on new pages, but I should have some news on an older project soon.
I’m planning a full skirt in olive green with lilypad patches. Need to do some maths and obtain the olive green…
A lot of daytime TV. I’m particularly enjoying The Repair Shop at the moment; I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of years about physical objects and sentimental value, about what things mean and how good it is when something can keep on doing the job it was made to do.
I’ve also returned to Ghosts, and this time managed to get past the second-hand embarrassment of the early episodes and into the kinder, more constructive stories of season 2.
Before that there was the world athletics championships; before that there was the super combined world cycling championships; before that there was the Tour de France.
Pretty cars gathered outside the cathedral. Some gorgeous work by Ely Guild of Woodturners (who, if any of them are reading this, ought all to be charging twice as much for their pieces as they currently do).
Is pretty much impossible with a baby. I did manage to pickle some plums (and regret leaving the jars in the conservatory in the hottest month of the year) and, several weeks after that, make the topping of a crumble.
A lot of ready meals. The charming snackpot that Tony assembles and brings me before he goes to bed and leaves me to the night shift (this evening’s contained two sorts of pretzels, dried apricots, crystallised ginger, a chocolate digestive biscuit, and three Mikado sticks.) And a reuben sandwich at the last (and, for me, only) Foodie Friday market of the year.
A little bit of walking.
Whatever will keep me from falling asleep with a baby on my lap. Minesweeper, mostly.
Dragonflies. Or are they damselflies? I’m not sure what the difference is. Butterflies. Sunflowers. Hollyhocks.
Chaos in the back (it is, infuriatingly, a really good year for fruit, and I’m not managing to get out to pick it, and if I were I wouldn’t get round to doing anything with it). Progress at the front, where we have much less in the way of slate chippings and much more in the way of lavender and thyme.
All the people who have come to see us, sent messages, cards and presents, and generally provided solidarity in a massive life change. The Rosie Birth Centre and the community midwifery team.
Leaving aside all the baby gifts, or we’d be here all night: a lovely turned elm bowl from the woodturners’ exhibition; a couple more Joanie dresses; a whole load of plants (Norfolk Herbs: very reasonable); more fabric patches than I actually needed; some Pride tat.
I haven’t been to the seaside this year other than incidentally, and I’d really like to. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though.
L. T. C. Rolt on the develoment of the dirigible:
Unholy marriages were consummated – most of them only on paper, fortunately – between the balloon, the kite, the ornithopter and the helicopter.
In the conservatory, either on top of a large cardboard box, or on the windowsill for optimum garden surveillance.
How has your summer been? Have you also given up on Twitter, or were you never on it in the first place? What’s your social medium of choice these days?
I tested negative for Covid on Wednesday, after not having bothered (it wasn’t as if I was going anywhere) since last Friday. This is a great relief. It seems to have knocked me out less than the last bout did, though I’m still falling asleep all the time (mind you, I’ve been doing that for the last nine months…)
(I said I’d be whingeing about this for months to come:) it’s too hot.
The sofa bed. Ice lollies.
Other than finishing off The Chronicles of Count Antonio, I’ve been rereading The Comfortable Courtesan series. I’ve got up to Domestick Disruptions. I’d forgotten how fast everything happens in the beginning: the epistolick mathematickal flirtation, the appearance of Mr F-, the elopement… I think that probably reflects the way that it started out being written a few sentences at a time; but anyway, the contrast with the current story (which I am also keeping up with) is quite interesting.
I was feeling vaguely energetic yesterday, so I did a couple of darns on a couple of Tony’s T-shirts.
Queen’s, mostly, though I have also been falling asleep in front if it.
I was looking forward to veg box peaches, but the texture was really not pleasant. So I’m experimenting making peach shrub.
A tiramisu gelato. Very nice it was too. And wild strawberries, straight off the plants.
A great spotted woodpecker! It came up from the other side of the fence, so I saw the head first, then the spotted bit, and finally the red flash and tail. That’s two woodpeckers I’ve seen in the garden now (there was a green one a couple of years ago).
I’ve been spending quite a lot of time sitting under the pergola, and have seen various birds from there. Sparrows. A robin. There’s also a very bold thrush which doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by my wandering right past.
Besides birds – the nasturtiums are on the point of flowering; the pink roses are going great guns, as are the Peruvian lilies. I bought some French sorrel from a plant stand outside someone’s house and put that in.
We’re thinking of what we can do with the front garden, which at present is a dismal rectangle of slate chippings. It’s more or less eastward facing and gets a lot of sun; what it won’t reliably get is water, because the water butts and outside tap are all round the back, and I’ve been having enough trouble getting around the back garden with a watering can the last couple of years. I understand that this part of the country is technically a desert; it certainly feels like one today. Also we don’t want anything that grows higher than about four feet, or it’ll block the light to the front window. Thus far my mind is defaulting to tulips, but we also need something for the months of the year that aren’t April. I don’t think I’ve ever had a blank slate (pun not intended) garden before; it’s a little daunting.
Sleep.
French sorrel. A baby changing mat and some anti-scratch mitts. A bird feeder with an anti-squirrel cage.
Looked at some filleting knives but didn’t buy any. And we can’t get the garden table we had our eye on without also getting the chairs, which we don’t want. (The little one we got last month is excellent for the two of us, but won’t be much help when it comes to company, or when company comes to us.)
On top of the fridge.
From The Menologium, quoted and translated by Eleanor Parker in Winters in the World:
… It likes then/ to gaze longer upon the earth and to move more slowly/ across the fields of the world, the fairest of lights/ and of all created things.
This coming week
More waiting, I expect.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Ideas for what to do with a small eastward-facing plot? Share them here!
The animal I know that’s currently spending as much time as I am asleep on the sofa is the cat, so there we go. Since having Covid in March I’ve been much more conscious of my body’s needs and desires; the thing is; it usually seems to want a nap, particularly at the moment. The next challenge is to roll with this as gracefully as the cat does. I am hopeful that I will have more energy come next year, but I would also like to continue to know what I want and need and to act on that.
Tony’s work Christmas do last night; excellent fun. Let us hope that nobody has caught Covid. Last weekend, reading at both the morning service and the Advent Procession, at which I also served. Also, a very pleasant few days with family on the Isle of Wight. The sun came out on the last day and it was absolutely glorious.
Going through boxes of family papers – letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and so forth. It’s fascinating; it’s a chance to get to know relations I barely knew or never met at all; and it’s surprisingly tiring. I more or less gave up for the day when I found my great-aunt Kathleen’s note of what she wanted all her siblings and friends to have after she died (which she did, aged 13 or so, in 1917).
Cold. Cold and tired. I don’t seem to have many suitable winter clothes at the moment and I’m not sure whether I ever did.
Honestly? Napping.
I demolished Paris Daillencourt Is About To Crumble on the train south on Monday and then regretted it, the way one might regret a slightly-too-large cream cake. It was a bit issueficcy for my taste, though I did appreciate the section where Tariq explains that it is perfectly possible to be a person of faith who is also queer. (This, in my experience, is a conversation that often does have to be had in words of one syllable.) Then I read Poirot Investigates (short stories; Hastings particularly insufferable) and Truly Madly Guilty (Liane Moriarty) when I was on the Isle of Wight. I enjoyed that one; I think it’s the most psychologically plausible of Moriarty’s books that I’ve read so far, even if it isn’t so conventionally suspenseful.
Absolutely nothing (apart from these blog posts, obviously). I spent the train journey home looking out of the window and not feeling remotely guilty about it. I’m sure my brain will come back sooner or later and in the meantime I’m not going to worry about it.
I took the tacking stitches out of the secret patchwork (the papers are staying in, for support). Pictures coming up in a few days.
A couple of bands at the party last night – one dressed as Game of Thrones characters and doing an eclectic variety of covers (Take On Me, I Wanna Be Like You, Proud Mary…) and the other, The Captain’s Beard, dressed as pirates and doing folk rock, generally Irish or seafaring. Extremely good fun.
Winter vegetable stew with cheesy dumplings. I cheated magnificently with the vegetable component – found a yellow-stickered bag of pre-prepped casserole veg in Tesco and chucked it into the pan with some oil while I made the dumplings. Worked very nicely.
There were some very nice canapés last night. Beef with horseradish sour cream. Cauliflower and beetroot. Tomato and feta.
Rummikub and Scrabble with my mother. We weren’t terribly impressed by Rummikub.
An excessive (even for the Isle of Wight) quantity of roadworks. A waxing moon flirting with the clouds. Christmas decorations (today I saw that our opposite neighbours have hung big silver baubles in the bare trees outside their house).
Family, the connectedness of it, and the opportunity to know a little more of who and where I come from. Tony’s employer’s extravagant hospitality. Live music.
I came home with a little packet of green beads my mother had been saving for me.
Some sort of leg covering that keeps my legs warm, that I can cycle in, that fits me comfortably around the abdomen… I have never found trousers that fit me sensibly, and most of the time this isn’t a problem because I live in skirts instead, but at this time of year it doesn’t quite cut it. /goes off to look at woolly tights on Snag.
I’ve been looking at Polish Cooking (Marianna Olszewska Heberle), trying to work out how much of the traditionally meatfree Christmas Eve dinner can be fully veganised. She has this to say about carol singers:
If they sing in front of your house and you don’t give them food or vodka, they might pull your sleigh five houses down, or remove your fence gate, all in good humor.
Back to work. I’m hoping to get quite a lot of loose ends tied up before Christmas.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
Kathleen Jowitt 