Tag: cursillo

Week-end: South Yorkshire edition

kathleenjowitt1 Comment
Looking upwards into a church ceiling where wood and concrete form an eight-pointed star, with the gaps filled with blue, yellow, green and red stained glass

About time I did one of these again…

The good

A trip to Sheffield for the annual Ultreya GB. I missed last year’s, though I hadn’t intended to (in retrospect, my ideas of what would be possible with a small baby were somewhat unrealistic), and it was good to be back. It was quite a different experience: I was very tired (see below) and also I don’t usually spend the event climbing up and down all the available steps in the cathedral. But it all came together for me in the last hymn – a very lively Amazing Grace – with the banners lined up and the baby clapping along in delight.

Some delightful fellow passengers and some railway staff who may in fact have been angels.

The difficult and perplexing

A month’s worth of interrupted sleep has trashed my immune system, the nursery germs have pounced, and I was very wobbly earlier in the week. And I’m not a nice person when I’m ill and tired.

Two hours and forty minutes on a train, each way. The way back was more trying than the way out.

What’s working

Sloggi long pants. Do they make me feel about a hundred and two? Yes, particularly the beige ones. Is it worth it to make bare legs bearable in hot weather? Absolutely. (Yes, I am aware of the Snag ‘chub rub’ shorts. Quite apart from the hideousness of the name, I can’t see that synthetic material next the skin would help in any way, however much I like their tights.)

Reading

Quite a bit! Having read She Who Became The Sun earlier in the summer, I picked up He Who Drowned The World (Shelley Parker-Chan) when it was on offer a few weeks ago. Equally fun (in its extremely dark way); the magical realism has more of an active influence on the plot this time round. I wasn’t convinced it stuck the landing, but the overall experience was sufficiently enjoyable to render that largely irrelevant.

Also on offer recently was Sea of Tranquility (Emily St John Mandel). This was a bit of a disappointment. I read Station Eleven early in 2020 and was very struck by how vivid and alien the post-apocalyptic world was. Sea of Tranquility, by contrast, all seemed extremely twenty-first century in terms of the way that the characters thought and spoke, with the different settings just so much window-dressing. The time travel plot also didn’t work for me; I think the aim was to subvert the usual clichés, but it just felt like a cop-out.

And Kobo also suggested Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks) for 99p, so I decided it was probably time I tried the Culture series.

Yesterday I started One Pair of Feet (Monica Dickens) which is very entertaining so far.

Then today I picked up N or M (Agatha Christie) because it was on the floor. I am less fond of Tommy and Tuppence than I am of most of Christie’s other series detectives, so missed this one on last year’s epic re-read. But I breezed through it and then picked up Postern of Fate to remind myself what happened to the family afterwards.

Writing

Nothing to speak of, though I have been doing a little worldbuilding in my head.

Making

One ridiculously huge baby sock, and now most of one more sensible one. I also converted a little binder into an earring holder (I will try to remember to post pictures of this).

Watching

The Paralympics, on and off. I was pleased to catch Sarah Storey’s umpteenth win, as Channel 4 also showed a decent chunk of the race. (I have found both the BBC and Channel 4 very frustrating in their tendency to show fragments of an event that have a Great British Medal Hope and nothing else. But it’s probably just as well this year, because I’ve had very little telly time.)

Looking at

Ely Photographic Club’s exhibition at Babylon Arts. There were a few pieces there that made me smile, and several that were clearly very technically skilled even if not really my thing. Also, Sheffield cathedral.

Cooking

A very hot vegetable curry: the veg box contained a bag of Padrón peppers, every single one of which was the ‘really quite spicy’ variety, so unsuitable for serving as a main/side dish in the usual way. Not one of my most successful dishes, though I’m pleased with it as a creative response to a problem.

Eating

This year’s fancy Magnum flavours, an impulse buy when they were on offer in Co-op. I’m still not entirely convinced that ice cream and popping candy is a happy combination, but it’s different, I’ll give it that.

Moving

We continue our WalkRuns (being runs that are in fact mostly walks).

Noticing

Loads of dragonflies this year. Or possibly damselflies. They don’t stay still long enough for me to be able to tell the difference.

In the garden

Ripe apples. I’ve pruned all the apple trees bar one. The next job is to take out the dead box (or was it privet?) bushes that got eaten by beetles last year.

Appreciating

Cursillo. It’s totally bonkers, but there is space in there for people to be Christians and also themselves, and that is something I was missing for a long time and something for which I continue to be grateful.

And, needless to say, every night when I get to sleep before midnight and get to wake up after six.

Acquisitions

I found a little makers’ cooperative shop in Sheffield and picked up a fabric patch (to join the several I have still to sew on), a sticker, and a pair of teal stud earrings.

Line of the week

Monica Dickens, weighing up her options:

The Land Army? One saw oneself picking apples in a shady hat, or silhouetted against the skyline with a couple of plough horses, but a second look showed one tugging mangel-wurzels out of the frozen ground at five o’clock on a bitter February morning.

This coming week

The emerging routine is slightly disrupted by a committee meeting, and then at the weekend there’s an exciting sea voyage. And that’s the last excursion for a little while, and that’s probably just as well. I might even update this blog more.

Why am I not writing?

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A fluffy black and white cat peers around the corner of a laptop

Why am I not writing?

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.

Why am I not writing?

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.

Why am I not writing?

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.

Why am I not writing?

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.

Why am I not writing?

I just don’t feel like it.

Why am I not writing?

#
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Why am I not writing?

(There is a cat on my keyboard.)

Why am I not writing?

I am writing.

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.

And even if I wasn’t…

… 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.

Week-end: alarums and excursions

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Four houses, all with many small birds perched along the ridges of the roofs

The good

My friend Maggie was ordained priest yesterday. I’d said a while ago not to bother saving me a ticket, because I might well be otherwise engaged, but in the event I wasn’t, so I watched the service on Youtube and then walked up to the cathedral to give her a hug afterwards. (I timed it pretty much perfectly: left the house during the distribution of communion; got there just as the bishop and new priests were coming out to have their photos taken.)

It was really lovely to get out and see people (there were others I knew milling around, because the Church of England is a very small world). It was lovely to get out at all, really.

The mixed

Slow progress is still progress. Midnight alarums and excursions (don’t worry, everything’s fine).

The difficult and perplexing

Really, aside from a mild case of cabin fever, I have nothing to worry about. I’m not dealing terribly well with waiting, but then I never do.

What’s working

Picking one thing to do, doing that, and then having a lie-down.

Reading

I finished the main run of The Comfortable Courtesan stories, got a bit weepy at the end, and decided that I wasn’t quite feeling up to tackling the extended universe.

I also read Along the Way: the journey of a father and son (Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Hope Edelman). My favourable impression of this began with the fact that the ghostwriter is credited in large letters on the cover, and continued more or less all the way through. It’s mostly a memoir of family life, but it goes into a lot of detail on the making of The Way. (Which is what drew me to pick it up in the library discard sale.) I was very surprised to discover that they were shooting The Way in September 2009, which was only a couple of years after I walked the Camino Frances. But then it takes a long time for a film to happen, and I didn’t see it on its first release.

I’ve written before, briefly, about where The Way fails to convey the sheer grinding physicality of the Camino. And it is the physicality that sticks with me: the texture of boots that have been left too close to the fire overnight; walking through period pain so intense that I was sick (never before or since…) I think it’s basically impossible to get across such a three-dimensional (four-dimensional, maybe: time is an important component) experience in a two-dimensional medium. What the film does capture is the power of encounter and relationship; what it skips over is the fleeting nature of most of those encounters.

But Along the Way wasn’t just a book about the film; it was about parenthood, and masculinity (toxic and otherwise), and acting, and the film industry, and faith, and what all of that looks like in practice. And it seemed honest, and it was a very engaging read.

I am not sure that I would walk the Camino again – certainly not in summer, probably not the Camino Frances – and a lot of that is feeling that I’ve had my turn and I need to make space for other people. And, of course, the less generous flipside, which is that there are now too many people on the Camino, and it would no longer be what it was. (Of course it wouldn’t: I’m not twenty-one any more. Or thirty-one. And I seem to do it at major transitions in my life, and the current major transition is one that makes long-distance walking a lot less practical than it was. And the pilgrimage-shaped hole in my life is currently filled with Cursillo. Although I shouldn’t be entirely surprised if I end up doing it again at forty-one, never mind everything that I’ve just said.) And I’m sure The Way had something, though not everything, to do with the increase in traffic. Even so, I came away from this book feeling in greater charity towards the film and towards the Sheen/Estevez clan in general. They seem like a good bunch.

Making

I’ve been sewing two flannels together (very slowly) and will shortly add a popper as a fastening, so that I end up with a pouch that I can fill with ends of soap that have got too small and annoying to be in the soap dish.

Watching

Still almost entirely sports. Eastbourne, last week, and now the Tour and the Giro Donne. (A friend has suggested that we name the impending sprog after whoever wins the day’s stage. I am not sure that we will go with this.)

Looking at

Pictures of London Pride on Instagram. I’m wryly amused that I ignored or turned down four separate offers of wristbands (the bisexuals, the Bond fans, the Christians, and work – not sure this really counts as intersectionality) on the grounds that I might be busy, and then was only very slightly busy. But actually I’ve never particularly wanted to go to London Pride, and the idea of going to London at all is mightily unappealing at present.

Cooking

Roast carrots and parsnips with quinoa, from the Roasting Pan Cookbook. Either the timings in the book are off, or the fan function of our oven is not trustworthy, but an extra ten minutes on the standard oven function and with the foil removed did the trick, and the result was very nice.

Also a new potato, broad bean and feta salad. (Mint, thyme and bayleaves in the cooking water; chopped chervil, parsley and capers in the dressing. Really very good.)

And I think I’ve finally got the knack of yoghurt in the Instant Pot (use full fat milk, boil for an extra five minutes beyond what the pot thinks, incubate for five hours).

The peach shrub is done in theory but in practice needs to mellow more. Still, it has got me to learn how to use the Soda Stream at long last (it’s not at all difficult; I am just not that interested in fizz).

Eating

As above.

Noticing

Hollyhocks! They seem to be a thing around here; they grow very tall and they are bright and cheerful. Maybe I should grow some.

And, as per picture at the top of this post, rooftops and rooftops of starlings. They are usually around, but not usually in such numbers. We’d had eight or so demolishing a suet cake on the bird feeder earlier in the day, but I wasn’t expecting to see this. This isn’t even all the relevant roofs. I don’t know if you can call it a murmuration if it’s mostly static, but either way, it was quite a sight.

In the garden

Fruit is swelling. (I’m going to have to pull up some of the jungle under the plum trees in order to be able to harvest without being scratched or stung.) Lots of things could do with a trim. There are just a couple of love-in-a-mist flowers that have self-seeded from plants I grew… maybe our first year here?

I have drawn up a plan for the front but am not going to act on it until bending over becomes more comfortable.

Appreciating

People! (Particularly Tony.)

Hankering

I’m missing the old days of LiveJournal, the way it used to be in 2006 or so. Most of the social media sites seem to be becoming unusable in one way or another. I just want to see what the people I like are up to! In such a way that I can find the posts again if I want to look back at them! And without having to look at the same one over and over and over again!

The cat’s current preferred location

On top of the paper trimmer in the conservatory. I am glad she has moved on from the fridge; I can’t feel that having little clumps of black fluff float down into the kitchen was entirely sanitary.

Line of the week

Havi on screens and screening:

Nature abhors a vacuum, and goes wild for a door.

This coming week

Your guess is as good as mine, honestly.

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

Week-end: imitate the actions of

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Fluffy black and white cat flopping on a piece of cardboard (which shows some evidence of her having attacked it with her claws); both forelegs and one hindleg stuck straight out in front of her

I am done. I realised this on Monday when I arrived in the office. I am ready to just sit in the garden now. Or possibly upstairs, with the air conditioner on. I’m imitating the actions of the flopcat. Probably the world number one expert in flop.

The good

Useful appointment with the midwife. The infant is aligned optimally. We shall see what happens next, and when.

Jolly gin-tasting (tonic-drinking, for me) evening with colleagues.

And a blessedly joyful, joyfully blessed Ultreya yesterday to welcome the new members from our most recent Cursillo. People had to keep putting out more chairs! Afterwards we sat in the churchyard and ate our sandwiches and chatted, with swifts (maybe housemartins?) swooping overheard.

The mixed

Excitement and apprehension, wanting to sit down and rest but also to catch up with everyone while I can…

The difficult and perplexing

I’ll probably be saying this every week until September, but I’m so hot. It did rain a little bit this morning, but the forecast thunderstorms didn’t materialise.

What’s working

The air conditioner, which we have had since about February, but which as of yesterday afternoon is installed and functioning.

And the cargo bike, in which one can transport quite remarkable quantities of stuff. I am looking forward to being able to ride the thing myself.

And filling a washing up bowl with cold water and sticking my feet in it.

Reading

Keeping on with The Third Policeman, which continues to be utterly bizarre and really quite charming. Nearly there with The Chronicles of Count Antonio, who is no match for a bargain basement Milady de Winter (spoiler: he gets away with this due to her turning very feeble).

A couple of lovely blog posts: this, on food and fellowship, and this, on compassion and clarity and miracles.

Out loud: the second lesson this morning, which was the apostle Paul at his most snide.

Writing

Keeping on with Don’t Quit The Day Job, which, ironically enough, has proved impossible to finish while doing the day job. We’ll see if maternity leave can sort it out. (There is quite a large section on when you can’t bloody well write – oh, I read a good blog post on that this week, too.)

Watching

I returned to Detectorists, but mostly I’ve been watching the Critérium du Dauphiné. Mountains, and people working harder than me.

Cooking

An Instant Pot risotto variation with broad beans and spring greens. Not bad, though it needed something to give it a bit more zing. Maybe lemon juice? Also, I have decided that life is too short to double-pod broad beans.

Today, lamb in dill sauce from Slow Cooking Just For Yourself. The sauce refused to thicken despite the use of both cornflour and egg yolk, but it was very tasty nonetheless.

Eating

What I should have done was pretend to be vegetarian when I signed up for the (not) gin tasting, as the keynote edible offering was a charcuterie selection which mostly looked off-limits to me. But I did quite nicely on crisps and nibbles and leftover vegetarian bits.

Today, for lunch: a Krakower bacon and cheese sausage from the German sausage cart at the market, followed by a pomegranate gelato on the way home. Not bad at all.

This evening I took my lamb in dill sauce out into the garden and ate it off our new blue metal table. I did feel a bit like Shirley Valentine drinking her wine alone at the edge of the sea, but it was very pleasant.

Moving

People seem to be impressed that I’m still cycling. Look, once I’ve got up the hill (and I gave up trying to ride up Back Hill several months ago) the rest is easy.

Noticing

Swifts, I said, and there was a dragonfly briefly hovering outside the church yesterday morning. A spotted brown butterfly and a few little blue ones. And a large woodpigeon landing on a very slender birch bough, which swayed most entertainingly.

Just now, a spider – fortunately before it crawled inside my dress.

In the garden

We spent last Sunday afternoon getting rid of the annoying willow tree. (I like willows, in their place – which is not our tiny back garden. I don’t know what the previous owners, or the ones before them, were thinking.) This gives more space to a sad morello cherry tree, some raspberry canes, and a couple of self-seeded hollies. My current thinking is that I’ll let the big one of those stay and take the other one out, but we’ll see.

I’m having to be rather more cautious with watering than I’ve been in previous years, because even with the watering can only half-full I can feel my back complaining, but most things seem to be surviving so far. There is one rose on each of the three bushes. My favourite is still the white one, but I do appreciate the way the pink one is so unashamedly out there, being a rose. And the peony, far from being dead, has flowered! Only one flower, and I think it will stay that way, but it’s a proper bright pink cheerful blowsy peony and I am very pleased with it.

Appreciating

The outpouring of love and encouragement and support from the Cursillo community. Tony, who is willing to cart all sorts of paraphernalia around for me and set up air conditioners while I’m snoozing on the sofa. I have excellent people in my life.

Acquisitions

A bottle of gin. For future reference, you might say.

Line of the week

From Havi’s piece on Loving Clarity:

I love Loving-Kindness for its poetic feel, and I love it as the translation to an impossible-to-translate feeling, something warmer than Mercy, sweeter than Grace, kinder than kindness, an enhanced kindness.

Sunday snippet

All my books are really written for myself, but this bit in particular is me writing what I need to read:

And I think that what it comes back to is this: writing is not easy. It won’t just happen, particularly not in a time-environment that’s crowded with other projects and priorities. Therefore, you have to choose to make it happen, over and over, word by word. Sometimes the choice is easy; sometimes it disappears entirely. You won’t always choose writing – and that may be because you want to meet up with a friend you haven’t seen in years, or it may be because you’re too tired for anything but a pizza and whatever happens to be on telly. You don’t have to choose writing all the time. You only have to choose it often enough.

This coming week

… is my last week at work! It contains one session in which I attempt to train some colleagues on the use of the learning management system, one regular training session, further efforts at clearing my desk, and some frivolities. At least, that’s the theory. We’re already well on the way into the great unknown.

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

Week-end: time slows

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Creamy-white rose

The good

Attending the Clausura (closing service) for Ely Cursillo #37. While the church wasn’t packed, people-wise, it was absolutely suffused with joy. It is such a privilege to lead this… movement? group? Community.

And now, winding up and winding down. After a very hectic month, this has been a nice peaceful week. I’m slowing down physically, but this feels appropriate rather than frustrating. Things are taking longer, and that’s fine. Walking thirty-five minutes to a routine ten minute appointment is an opportunity to be out in the sunshine; work tasks are taking as long as they take and the next time they happen it won’t be me doing them. But on the other hand, things that have been hanging over me for ages and which I thought were going to take ages have been tidying themselves up with remarkably little effort. We made a list of things to do this long weekend and got ninety per cent of it done on Friday.

And my concentration seems to be improving. It’s just taking a little effort now to settle down to an activity without trying to do three other things at the same time and check my phone every five minutes.

The mixed

The weather is gorgeous, but I am getting so hot.

The difficult and perplexing

I stubbed my toe on a chair at work. It bled a little at the time, but I thought nothing of it. Now I find that I have split the nail a long way down and half of it is flapping around, or would be if I hadn’t stuck a plaster over it. I have acquired some gauze and micropore tape, with which I hope I will be able to rig up something that will allow it to breathe and heal without catching on things. We’ll see.

What’s working

Immersion in water – whether by putting my feet in a plastic box full of cold water to cool them down, or by putting my entire self into a swimming pool.

Reading

I finished Seven Ages of Paris. Depressing (and, I can’t resist saying, not enough about the buses; though I don’t think that I had known that they parked them at fifty metre intervals down the Champs-Élysées to frustrate a German aerial troop landing: much good that did anybody) and, I feel, not entirely unbiased. But also entertaining and informative, and All Gall now makes much more sense to me. (I often feel that any study of mid-twentieth century history is a process of gradually getting more and more of Flanders and Swann’s references.)

And this piece on Soul Survivor (it’s mostly not about the recent revelations of horrible stuff, which does not feel like something that I have any standing to talk about), which made me feel very much as if I’d dodged a bullet. I never went to Soul Survivor, though two of my brothers did. I can see exactly how, in my late teens, I’d have been vulnerable to getting peer pressured into having a significant pseudo faith experience. Even at the advanced age of 37 I found I had a lot of Doing Faith Wrong monsters on the loose this week.

Mending

Sewed a button back on.

Watching

Still the Giro d’Italia. My goodness, that time trial! I think, that if there had to be a dropped chain in there somewhere, this was the most satisfying way for it to work out. But all the same, argh.

Today is Licence to Queer’s Donate Another Day. I have places to be this morning (specifically, church, and not Our Lady of Smolensk) so I got ahead by watching GoldenEye last night. It’s my favourite of the Brosnan Bonds (and Brosnan is my Bond): such fun, and Natalya is great. Anyway, everyone else kicked off at ten today, and Tomorrow Never Dies starts at one, so join in if you like Bond, and chuck a tenner at Unicef.

Cooking

Yesterday I gutted and scaled and filleted a fish (a sea bream, to be precise) for the first time. I failed to get some of the flesh along the top side, but I think I’d do better with a proper filleting knife. Maybe I’ll get one. Made stock from the head and bones: risotto tomorrow.

Then I put a slice of prosciutto on top, sprinkled it with breadcrumbs, parsley, and parmesan cheese, and cooked it alongside roast courgette, pepper and onion (recipe from The Hairy Dieters). It was extremely tasty.

Eating

See above. Also (for I am not on a diet, hairy or otherwise) yellow-stickered Waitrose cream buns. I am getting massively hungry at the moment.

Moving

Swimming. Pilates (this happens every week, but usually on a Tuesday, so I’ve forgotten about it by the time I get to this post. This week’s session was yesterday).

Noticing

Three small deer (one fawn, and presumably two parents) on the path behind our house. Muntjacs, maybe? I’m not very good at deer.

A train in GWR livery at Cambridge station – rather a long way from home, one would have said.

In the garden

I weeded one raised bed and put in three tomato plants. The other one didn’t need so much in the way of weeding; I put runner beans in it. And I found space for five cosmos plants around the garden.

The first rose is blooming. I think this bush is my favourite, aside from its habit of trying to revert to the rootstock; it has a lovely, faintly lemonish, scent.

Appreciating

Time. Focus. Other people’s gardens.

Acquisitions

I finally gave in and ordered three frocks from Joanie. One of them looks more like a tablecloth than I’d anticipated; one will do very nicely for the autumn; and one is fabulous and I’m wearing it now. (I don’t think I mind looking like a tablecloth, but the dress in question doesn’t fit. Yet. I think I’m just getting to the end of the phase where taking my usual size and ensuring it has a very full skirt is working. Still, only another month or so to go…)

From plant stalls outside people’s houses: two chilli pepper plants (one cayenne, one Hungarian something or other); three tomato plants (one Garnet, one Roma, one I’ve forgotten); and a honeysuckle.

Hankering

Well, a filleting knife, now.

Line of the week

From Rosemary Hill’s piece Consulting the Furniture in the last London Review of Books. (It is about time I went back to Kettle’s Yard. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I am on maternity leave…

Kettle’s Yard’s particular kind of austere elegance suits Cambridge and its Puritan, parliamentary history. It could never have happened in Oxford.

This coming week

Bank holiday. A committee meeting. Some family coming to see us. And, I hope, I’ll get the study sorted.

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

Week-end: Euston, we have a problem

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Bookshelf with copies of: 'Bicycles and Broomsticks: Fantastical Feminist Stories about Witches on Bikes' (ed. Elly Blue); 'Free to be Me: An LGBTQ+ journal of love, pride and finding your inner rainbow'; 'All the things she said: everything I know about modern lesbian and bi culture' (Daisy Jones); 'I will not be erased: our stories about growing upas people of colour' (gal-dem)

The good

Cherry blossom. Mozart. Seeing a book with one of my stories in on a real shelf in a real bookshop. The fact that I do not have to deal with any of the difficult stuff on my own.

The mixed

Chaired a meeting yesterday. It seemed to go OK – at least, other people keep telling me so – but I am feeling very flattened.

The difficult and perplexing

This has really not been a good week in terms of physical and mental health. I’ve been feeling gloomy and depressed, lonely, and tired. On Friday night I tripped over a paving stone (I assume) on the Euston Road and scraped my left knee and twisted my right ankle, both very painfully, and had the usual crowd of concerned bystanders asking ‘Are you all right?’ one after another when I wasn’t at all sure and none of them had anything actually constructive to offer. And of course when one is pregnant there is a whole load of worry about potentially having hurt the baby on top of the consciousness that I’m going to be a dreadful liability when I’m a little old lady. (Baby is flailing around happily, so far as I can tell.) Today I was tired and headachey.

What’s working

Remembering to pump up my bicycle tyres. I also wrote down all the projects I theoretically have on hand, from the review of Ely Cursillo’s printed publications to clearing my father’s house to three novels and producing a baby. I’m not sure that I can say this worked, as such, as very few of them are much forrarder as a result, but it did put it all into perspective and made me feel better about the fact that they aren’t all done yesterday. I genuinely do have an awful lot going on.

Reading

Got caught up on Wildfire at Midnight. Started Bad To The Bone (James Waddington). Gave up on several articles because they were just too depressing (this says more about me than it does about them). Today I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Writing

A little bit on Starcrossers.

Watching

I finished Our Flag Means Death; it is good fun.

Listening to

Ely Choral Society singing the Mozart Requiem and Haydn’s Salve Regina. (The latter was a little awkward because nobody in the audience seemed to have heard it before, and we didn’t know when to clap. But I very much enjoyed the concert overall.)

More Maintenance Phase, mostly for company on lone WFH days.

Cooking

Chicken drumsticks glazed with honey/mustard/curry powder.

Eating

Friday was going to be a takeaway night even before I did my lower limbs in; I had some very nice fried sea bass in a lemon/chilli/cashew nut sauce from one of the two Thai places.

This afternoon I walked into town to go to a shop which turned out not to be open on Sundays; so I made up for it with a cornet of cassata siciliana (candied fruits) from the gelato shop instead.

Noticing

The cherries are doing their thing (well, it is still Eastertide, so they are only a little late). I keep seeing goldfinches.

In the garden

Things are blooming away with very little help from me. This includes a load of dandelions, but at least they’re cheerful.

Appreciating

The people who do things. I am not, after all, making all of this – any of this – happen by myself.

Acquisitions

I have a new mouthguard to keep me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. I also get a very accurate model of my lower teeth. I am not entirely sure what to do with this, but it’s quite impressive, particularly since it was created by the dentist waving a camera round my mouth. For the moment I’ve put it in the bathroom cabinet, from which it will no doubt fall and scare me at the worst possible moment.

When I went to pick it up I popped into Gay’s The Word, and came away with Tales of the City and Illness as Metaphor.

Hankering

I have reached a state of dissatisfaction with most of my shoes (this before I fell over, too) but don’t really know what I want to replace any of them with.

Line of the week

From this article from The Road Book:

If you didn’t see it, well, after 267km of a typical Amstel route – apparently based on the trajectory of a very angry fly trapped against a small window – the final was clearly boiling down to a sprint between Julian Alaphilippe and Jakob Fuglsang.

Sunday snippet

I’m enjoying the chance to let Starcrossers have some breathing space, and to put in some backstory and worldbuilding that there just wasn’t space for when it was going to be a short story. Though I’m not sure yet which of those this bit’s going to be:

Alone in my quarters, I let myself think of the one who could no longer be named. This was an infringement in itself. I ought to have forgotten her already. That, I’d been told as a child, would ease the pain. It was the only way.

This coming week

A lot of dashing around, mostly family-related. And then (whisper it) absolutely nothing over the bank holiday weekend.

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

Week-end: riding the wave

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A stylised fish carved into dark wood

The good

A really good writing week! Not only did I write several pages (yet to be typed up) on Don’t Quit The Day Job, I dipped into The Rassendyll Kidnapping, pushed it up above 60,000 words just because it was so close, and decided that maybe it had some possibilities after all. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to keep riding this wave, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Yesterday was the Cursillo Quiet Day, which happened very satisfactorily without my having to do very much about it at all. I spent a while sitting on a bench in the churchyard in the sunshine and it was lovely.

The mixed

Tiredness, naps, walks or not, yada yada.

The difficult and perplexing

Winter’s last (one hopes) gasp. I missed Friday’s blizzard, but all that really means is that I cycled to the station through cold and heavy rain before it turned to snow.

Worrying about various things over which I have limited or no control. It doesn’t help, of course.

What’s working

Deciding the evening before what I’ll be writing the next day. Tomorrow I’m going to do another exercise for each of the underpopulated chapters. This is falling apart a little bit because I didn’t type up last week’s work yesterday; I suspect that if I had I’d have something more strategic. But never mind.

Experimenting with

Taking a shower or bath in the evening rather than in the morning. The theory is that it’ll wake me up after work and make my mornings less crowded.

And, if doing anything at all is going to result in my needing a nap, scheduling in the nap and doing the thing. Less depressing than not doing the things.

Thinking about

Negative capability, and the ability to sit with unanswered questions.

Reading

I keep forgetting to report on my Sunday reading. I finished Intimate Jesus (read disconcertingly like a ship manifesto, for those who are familiar with fandom terms: Angel argues with some vehemence that of course Jesus had a sexuality and of course he never did anything with it); the part that will remain with me is the image of St John the Evangelist removing himself from a bath house due to the presence of a heretic therein. Now I’m reading Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer (Jarel Robinson-Brown), which is excellent, and alternately making me think and making go, ‘yes, exactly!’ It is very refreshing to read something that isn’t just another dissection of the clobber texts.

Writing

See The Good, above.

Mending

Darned one pair of tights and part of a worn bit of a sock. Then the cat jumped into my tea (not very warm by that point) and got tea leaves over everything.

Looking at

St John the Baptist, Somersham. The friendly little fish at the top of this post is decorating the font cover.

Cooking

Cauliflower and parsnip royal korma: a recipe I’ve made several times before, but which seemed to work out better than most previous attempts. I made up the korma spice from this recipe, which worked very well (though I really wouldn’t call it ‘American’ cuisine…).

Eating

A very nice bit of roast lamb. Some very old barszcz from the freezer (I am trying to use up things from the freezer…)

Moving

Full-length morning walks on both my work-from-home days this week.

In the garden

One of the tulips appears to be developing a bud.

Appreciating

Sunshine, both inside and outside a church. Being with other people, but quietly.

Wanting

To have both time and energy when I’m at home.

Line of the week

This is from a 2011 Hidden Europe article on Birmingham’s number 11 bus route.

George and Richard Cadbury – brothers, philanthropists and chocolatiers – knew the ingredients of human happiness: Tudor beams, indoor toilets, decent plumbing, education, the village green and chocolate.

Sunday snippet

From Don’t Quit The Day Job:

You may feel that daydreaming about all this stuff will guarantee that it’s never going to happen. Very natural. But honestly, unless you’re one of the very, very lucky, very, very few, you’re going to be back at your desk, till, or steering wheel tomorrow morning even if you do find yourself achieving something you can legitimately be very proud of.

This coming week

Two days in the office, one evening meeting, two days working from home and then a fasting glucose test. Not looking forward to that last one.

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

Week-end: jiggety-jig

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
A group of small islands seen across a city from the top of a hill on a sunny day

The good

I very much enjoyed our last couple of days in France – exploring more of Avignon (including the covered market) on foot and by tram, and then visiting Marseille. The latter was very sunny and very windy. We took a bus a little way along the coast so that we could look at the Chateau d’If from the shore. Of course I now need to reread The Count of Monte Cristo, but then I always do.

Also, an extremely positive and useful vision and planning day with my Cursillo committee.

The mixed

I wouldn’t have chosen to take a rail replacement bus at 7.20am – but looking back to see the towers and walls of Avignon sharp against a hazy gold sunrise, and then driving through Tarascon and Beaucaire as it brightened into a clear sunshiny day, with the old walls basking in the light, made it worth it.

Got caught up with work and didn’t make it to Evensong on Thursday. But I learned today that Candlemas was not marked at Evensong on Thursday, so I have in fact been saved disappointment (and other people have objected).

The difficult and perplexing

Dealing with a jam containment failure on the TGV. My fault. Probably.

Not sure I will ever catch up on my emails. Oh well.

What’s working

The lectio divina on community from Fifty Ways To Pray. Embracing the idea that sometimes all choices are good (and therefore that dithering over where to eat lunch is a waste of time).

Reading

At Nîmes station I found a machine that dispensed short stories at the touch of a button. So I pressed the button and received a copy of Fleur Sauvage by Thierry Covolo on a long thin strip of paper.

Since getting back I’ve been pretty tired and have fallen back on Persuasion retellings from the AO3. May reread Persusasion proper. Some good blog posts, too: The Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs from The Fluent Self, and Admiral Cloudberg was on particularly good form capturing the horrifying inevitability of Carnage on the Autobahn: the crash of Paninternational flight 112.

Watching

The European figure skating championships. I have to say it’s nice to be able to watch the final group in the women’s competition without constantly wondering whether it’s making me complicit in child abuse.

Looking at

More Provençal crib scenes, not to mention the churches that contained them – Ste Marie Majeure and Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille. I liked them both, flamboyant nineteenth century edifices that they are. Notre Dame de la Garde in particular is quite remarkable. It’s right at the top of the hill (we took the bus up) and even when you’re inside you can hear the wind howling around. It’s more or less wallpapered with votive plaques and representations of Our Lady’s miraculous interventions, including several model boats and aircraft. But particular kudos to Ste Marie Majeure for having an actually convincing flock of sheep in one of its crib scenes.

Cooking

I made jam tarts for Candlemas. (I forget now where I read about this tradition, and it may be a complete myth. Still, at worst I get jam tarts.)

Eating

More delicious French food, including cromesqui (a sort of deep-fried potato ball) and entremets (a cake made of chocolate mousse). Things I’d actually heard of included salmon and poached egg.

Noticing

Cats sitting on the roof of a hire van in a suburb of Avignon. A deer sneaking across the path ahead of me when I went for a walk on Thursday. A bus in Nîmes that thought it was a tram.

Appreciating

Warm blanket, fluffy cat. Bed.

Acquisitions

More badges for the camp blanket (still missing Avignon). Interesting flavoured salt, and truffled olive paste, from the covered market.

Hankering

So much unsuitable cheese. And the wine, too. (We did bring some back for purposes of future celebration.)

Line of the week

From No More Delay: a call to General Synod by Charlie Bell.

The minute we bless same-sex couples, people’s prejudice will be challenged by real, living people, right in front of them, living ordinary, faithful, loving, honest lives of love and faith, to coin a phrase.

This coming week

Back in the office. And maybe I’ll decide what to do with the butternut squash and sweet potato that have been hanging around for ages.

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

December Reflections 9: this was unexpected

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
detail of a wooden cross sculpture formed of overlapping narrow triangles

I didn’t expect to be elected lay director of Ely Cursillo. Certainly not this year. I’d thought, well, maybe in a year or two, when J. steps down, when I’ve got my head around things a bit better…

J. stepped down this year, not long before the AGM, and suddenly it became very clear that I should step up. Two years of irritatedly demanding of God what on earth I was meant to be doing if it wasn’t ordained ministry (wrong question, as it turned out, but that’s another story), ten years of trade union administration, all came into very sharp focus in this moment when it was obvious that somebody needed to keep this thing going, and that I was, in this moment, the only person with the skills and the confidence and the willingness to do it.

Cursillo is a funny old movement. (Well, actually it’s quite a young movement – 70 years or so.) Most Christians have never heard of it and a lot of those who have heard of it have heard genuinely offputting stories. (Yes, I know. We don’t do that any more.) But my experience – I was one of those who’d never heard of it, and initially wondered if the person who mentioned it to me meant the calculator brand – was positive and transformative. I went on my Cursillo four years ago and found that it was exactly what I needed; it was part of a period of spiritual exploration in which I discovered over and over again that God didn’t want me to be the person I thought I was meant to be; God wants me to be the person I am.

There’s a lot of lay influence (the spiritual director and I work as joint leaders). For me, as someone who’s comparatively well-informed for someone who hasn’t done a theology degree, but who keeps getting directed away from ordained ministry (and feeling very relieved about that), this is hugely important. Being part of a movement that values the laity and demonstrates that by putting us in decision-making positions, that encourages and helps us to develop our prayer life and our learning and to put them into action, has given me a way to be a Christian in a way that I can feel that I can give more of what I have, and not just within Cursillo itself. And that’s a privilege.

Quite apart from the administration side. (This too is a spiritual gift, I am given to understand.) Today I’ve been up and down the hill like a yo-yo, buying stamps, collecting cards, getting bank mandates signed. At home, I’ve been wrestling with LibreOffice Writer’s take on mailmerge and humouring the printer’s request to slide green tabs back and forwards. This is by no means a typical day – in fact it’s a lot of jobs I’d saved up until I had a day to do them in – but it’s one that brought it home to me why I’m doing this stuff. Because I’m good at it.

So no, I didn’t expect to be lay director only four years after hearing about Cursillo. But it makes a surprising amount of sense. Just goes to show: I’m not really the one in charge.

Week-end: in the dark

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A window decorated with an illuminated design showing a family cycling through a wood (silhouettes on pale greens, above) and a person being chased through a wood by some sort of monster (black and orange, below)

The good

Well, after I spent the week worrying feebly about today’s Cursillo event, it went off terrifically. We had to put out more chairs! People turned up who I’d never met! We sang ‘Will your anchor hold?’, which was a favourite of my Pa’s (also at least one person this week told me that ‘The Lord will provide’, which was a common, occasionally infuriatingly so, line of his). And that was my last big commitment before the clocks go back, so I could go home and flop on the sofa. And I did.

The mixed

I got through the week at work without crying in the kitchen, which is good going for this time of year.

On the subject of the work kitchen, it has a new Zip tap (the sort that dispenses quasi-boiling water at the touch of a button). It isn’t terribly well-designed, though: you have to bend your finger at a really weird angle to be able to press down both the safety release and the hot water button.

The difficult and perplexing

I was not made to get up before dawn. Tuesday – a work from home day – I was still in bed perilously close to should-be-at-my-desk time. Office days, I have to leave the house in the dark. I managed it this week, but I hate it. I’d intended to go down to the Isle of Wight this coming weekend, but I have cancelled, and therefore have the Guilt.

What’s working

Putting the next day’s clothes out the night before. And knowing when to call it a day and order pizza.

Reading

I finished The Embroidered Sunset and am rather wishing I hadn’t. What on earth was that ending? In the immortal words of Adam Savage, I reject your reality, Joan Aiken, and substitute my own.

Writing

Some more work on Starcrossers, but I’ve been too tired to do as much as I’d hoped. I did do a little interview for the Bicycles and Broomsticks Kickstarter (five days left!) though.

Watching

Skate America (except for the bits where I fell asleep. Apologies to the first two men in the second group). And, increasingly belatedly, the track cycling world championships.

Also the government imploding, but the less said about that the better. All hail the lettuce.

Currently I have Strictly on in the background. Do none of these people know that it’s a very bad idea to let a Weeping Angel touch you? And that dancing a tango with one would therefore be a very bad idea indeed?

Looking at

Window Wanderland. This is a community art project where people decorate their windows to entertain other people who wander around and look at them. I saw a couple as I cycled home last night (didn’t stop for photos as I was trying to beat the next rain shower) and then went out on a more leisurely walk this evening.

There weren’t as many as last year: I suspect the Return To The Workplace has cut into people’s time and energy. We wouldn’t have had one ourselves if due to terminal inefficiency I hadn’t left last year’s decorations hanging over the banisters all year. They’ve suffered a bit and don’t look nearly as good as any of the others I’ve seen. I particularly liked the one shown at the top of this post, but there was a lovely set of pot plants, a TARDIS, some morris dancers, and something which I initially parsed as a weirdly coloured Slovenian flag but which was of course a tribute to Wonder Woman. I told you I was tired.

Cooking

Not entirely successfully, stuffed peppers.

Noticing

A fox trotting across the road this evening.

In the garden

Well, I took the compost out…

Appreciating

Having an afternoon with nothing to do.

Acquisitions

Some tights arrived. Some of them are purple. Some of them are pink, purple and blue. Some of them are other colours. There’s also a parcel for me at the delivery office.

Line of the week

Anna Turley on Twitter:

Never has so much been owed by so many to tofu.

Saturday snippet

More from Starcrossers:

In the end I chose it because I’d already chosen it, and I wanted a more positive symbol of my choice than the dry bureaucracy of the notice of contamination.

This coming week

Honestly, if I can get through it without crying at work I’ll count it as a success. And then I shall sleep.

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