Tag: garden

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: hurry up and wait

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A fluffy black and white cat looks down at the camera from the top of a fridge

The good

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…)

The difficult and perplexing

(I said I’d be whingeing about this for months to come:) it’s too hot.

What’s working

The sofa bed. Ice lollies.

Reading

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.

Mending

I was feeling vaguely energetic yesterday, so I did a couple of darns on a couple of Tony’s T-shirts.

Watching

Queen’s, mostly, though I have also been falling asleep in front if it.

Cooking

I was looking forward to veg box peaches, but the texture was really not pleasant. So I’m experimenting making peach shrub.

Eating

A tiramisu gelato. Very nice it was too. And wild strawberries, straight off the plants.

Noticing

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.

In the garden

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.

Appreciating

Sleep.

Acquisitions

French sorrel. A baby changing mat and some anti-scratch mitts. A bird feeder with an anti-squirrel cage.

Hankering

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.)

The cat’s current preferred location

On top of the fridge.

Line of the week

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!

Week-end: imitate the actions of

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
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

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
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: land and sea

kathleenjowitt1 Comment
Two people looking out over the sea at twilight. One is waving and the other has hand outstretched as if to hold a brightly illuminated ship that's passing by.

The good

I’ve had a week off work, and have spent more or less equal parts of it getting things done and taking naps. I had tea with a friend I haven’t seen since before Covid (and met her daughter, who’s getting on for three, for the first time). Went to Brighton to pick up a banner from fabric conservationists, and got to hear about the other things they’d worked on – far more interesting than mine.

The mixed

I’ve spent an awful lot of time on trains this week. This has been good for writing, not to mention getting home, collecting things from Brighton, and seeing a friend, but my lower back is not impressed at all. I have come to a new appreciation of the fact that the seats on Thameslink trains are made of ironing boards, while the Cross Country ones are elderly armchairs that have been sat in by generations of dogs.

The difficult and perplexing

A mild but intensely irritating cold.

What’s working

Summer pyjamas. Reminding myself that not all possible scenarios can happen to one person at one time.

Experimenting with

The idea that this stretch of time (maybe beginning with the pregnancy, maybe beginning back before the pandemic) is new and different from what came before, and I therefore can’t expect everything to work the same way as it previously did. Rather late in the day, but there we go.

Reading

Not much, though I got through half of the latest London Review of Books on the train. Ah, and this Church Times piece: Autism: adventures beyond the neurotypical.

Writing

I finished and submitted a poem! I shall now do my best to forget about it, but I am pleased, because it’s been a very long time. Also another five hundred words or so on Don’t Quit The Day Job.

Watching

The Giro d’Italia, though truthfully I’ve mostly been falling asleep in front of it. (This is testament more to my physical condition than to the quality of the racing, as I’ve been falling asleep in exciting and boring stages alike.) Also videos explaining the various different stages of labour. (There was a balloon. My mother approves.)

Looking at

Garden centres. At the first one we went to today there were an awful lot of slogans (on signs and plaques and doormats and all sorts of things) saying things like Don’t come in if you don’t have gin and Love is a state of temporary insanity curable by marriage. One rather came away with the impression that the typical garden centre shoppers were alcoholics in desperately unhappy relationships, and this was an expected, even desirable state of affairs. Are the normals OK?

Cooking

Not much, though I did come up with the genius idea of dropping frozen gyoza dumplings into packet chicken noodle soup for an ideal sniffle day lunch.

Eating

Tesco have introduced cherry bakewell cookies, which are very tasty if somewhat oversweet.

Playing

Catan, with my mother and youngest brother, with a pause to wave at the ferry containing my eldest brother and his family as it passed the south coast of the Isle of Wight.

In the garden

Everything is extremely green. The copper beeches have put out new leaves. The apple blossom is almost over, and there are small fruits happening on the pears and the plums too. Lemon balm has self-seeded all over the place. This afternoon I pulled up a load of violets and put in some new herbs – tarragon, chervil, lemon verbena, lavender, thyme.

Appreciating

Being married to someone I like. Having a family I like.

Acquisitions

Herbs, as mentioned above. A little metal garden table with two chairs. Books: Wings On My Feet (Sonja Henie); Born to Dance (Margot Fonteyn); Hymns and the Faith (Erik Routley); The Morville Year (Katherine Swift).

Also brought many things back from the Isle of Wight. The family christening gown. The toy octopus I gave my father a decade or so ago. Various baby clothes originally made for various babies by various people. A maternity dress originally made by my mother for herself. Another ancestor portrait. A repro HMV record catalogue (this is for Research).

Hankering

We are still considering a larger garden table. (The little one will do very nicely for evening drinks under the pergola, but we want something to put on the lawn and eat dinner off.)

Line of the week

Not something I’ve read this week, but this line from The Painted Garden (Noel Streatfeild) has been going through my head:

Days on land are like beads threaded on a string, big beads, little beads, gay beads for Christmas and birthdays; but days on a ship cannot go on the same string. They are different somehow and feel as if they need a special thread all to themselves.

Saturday snippet

This is from Don’t Quit the Day Job. I am getting to the point.

Nevertheless, unscrupulous institutions – and plenty that think of themselves as scrupulous, too – are entirely to take advantage of their employees’ sense of vocation, to take in general, to take, take, take, until there’s nothing left to give.

This coming week

I reach the end of the dashing around. There’s a trip to Essex tomorrow; then I go back to work, with a couple of days in the office; there’s the last of the antenatal classes, and an appointment with the midwife.

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

Week-end: so you can cycle while you cycle

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
Swans' nest, with one bird on the nest and the other swimming in the ditch below, dabbling its beak in the water. There's also a mallard drake, possibly also on a nest.

The good

We had a weekend at a spa! I had never done this before, having mentally classified it under ‘not for the likes of us’ and also been nervous about getting it all wrong and exposing myself as a total fraud, but the in-laws suggested it as a nice thing to do before the baby appears and we disappear into a mountain of laundry, and I had to admit they had a point. So we booked into Quy Mill, just outside Cambridge, for one of the few free weekends we have this summer.

Anyhow, the conversation somehow moved from ‘haha, we could cycle there!’ to ‘actually, we could cycle there!’ and our successful excursion to an antenatal class in Littleport demonstrated that taking the Bromptons on the train and cycling to our destination was perfectly practical. (I know this in theory, but it had been a while since I’d put it into practice.) So we decided to cycle there. And then the purchase of a cargo bike happened rather faster than we’d anticipated, and suddenly it made sense for Tony to pick that up on the way. Fortunately it is large enough to hold one folded Brompton, so he was able to cycle to pick up the new bike and then cycle onwards on the new bike carrying the old one. (Yo dawg, I heard you liked cycling, so I put a cycle in your cycle so you can cycle while you cycle…)

This made it possibly the most Cambridge spa trip imaginable, even if we hadn’t then cycled over to Anglesey Abbey the next day.

It was very pleasant. There was extremely nice food; I had a lot of stress massaged out of my back; I also had my toenails painted. I went swimming twice. And we avoided most of the coronation hoohah. (I am what you might call a pragmatic monarchist: I can quite see that you need someone to cut the ribbons and all that, but my patience for the breathless commentary had been wearing very, very thin.)

Other good things this week: the political news was encouraging; the antenatal class was very interesting; the garden is flourishing.

The mixed

I generally enjoy thunderstorms, but not when I’m trying to get somewhere. I spent quite a long time sheltering in the underpass beneath the A14, 300 metres from my destination, but also 300 metres from the last lightning strike.

Also I got lost in Fen Ditton. This is becoming a habit and I could really do without it. I think I’d have beat the thunderstorm had it not been for that extra two kilometres.

The difficult and perplexing

I haven’t quite got the hang of ‘winding down’; or, rather, I’m doing OK at the doing less, but not so well at the feeling OK about it.

What’s working

Being outside. Using the Brompton rather than the (heavy) town bike.

Reading

I’m keeping on with Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne). Have reached the twentieth century. No mention of the buses yet but it may yet happen (we have had the taxis of the Marne). Began Towers in the Mist (Elizabeth Goudge) – more appropriate than I’d realised, since the action begins on May day.

Finished Black Gay British Christian Queer (Jarel Robinson-Brown): very good indeed. Also God’s Lovers in an Age of Anxiety (Joan M. Nuth); Julian of Norwich continues to be the best.

Read Miss Marple’s Final Cases and finally ran out of steam with Agatha Christie with Murder is Easy.

Watching

Never Say Never Again was on telly on bank holiday Monday, so I joined in the Licence To Queer watchalong. I think it’s rather underrated, actually, and I much prefer it to the original Thunderball (omits the coercion and a lot of the tedious shark stuff).

I have been watching the Giro d’Italia with Tony. And we managed to turn on the telly at exactly the right moment to hear the new Vivats in I Was Glad (and then to be irritated by the commentators talking over the rest of it and confirm our decision not to watch any more coronation stuff).

Looking at

The Last Supper, a set of sculptures by Silvy Weatherall, at the cathedral. These are abstract busts made from broken crockery stuck together with gold, kintsugi style. While I could see what she was getting at, I failed to get beyond my initial reaction – which was ‘Doctor Who monsters’.

Cooking

‘Asian-style aromatic pork’ from one of the slow cooker books – OK but not particularly exciting.

Eating

Quy Mill did very nicely by us. I was particularly impressed by the slow-cooked lamb and the (remarkably light) sticky toffee pudding. Last night we went to the White Hart in Fulbourn, and I had a Mediterranean vegetable pizza.

Moving

Cycling – nothing further than 8km, but quite a few short journeys. (It’s rather galling to have someone on the exact same bike whoosh past you, but I don’t think he was seven months pregnant…) And swimming.

Noticing

Nesting swans on Ditton Meadows (when I rode past on Friday evening, the one that wasn’t in charge of the nest was blocking half the cycle path; today, it was swimming in the ditch). A wagtail at the hotel this morning. Very vocal blackbirds. The same graffiti on the Chesterton railway bridge that’s been there as long as I can remember.

In the garden

Loads of apple blossom, and bees enjoying it. Plenty of wisteria flowering too. The white rose that always flowers first has five buds; the others are beginning to think about it.

Appreciating

A four-day week. A weekend of mild hedonism.

Acquisitions

I have mentioned the cargo bike – not that I shall be riding it for another couple of months. A couple of small fripperies in the shop at Anglesey Abbey.

Hankering

We’re considering some garden furniture – the main problem being that ‘big enough to eat dinner off’ and ‘small enough to fit sensibly under the pergola’ are incompatible specifications. Some thought required…

Line of the week

From the London Review of Books, here’s Sam Rose on Clive Bell:

it’s hard to feel very sorry for a man who insisted on having it all, got more than his fair share, and spent his life increasingly embittered about the little that had been denied him.

This coming week

Another bank holiday, another antenatal class, some travel that’s become rather more complicated than it needed to be, and, most excitingly, a wedding.

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

Week-end: ancestral

kathleenjowitt1 Comment
Head and front half of large eel made from tie-dye fabric with several pairs of human legs visible beneath

The good and the mixed

Spending time with family (and the friends who might as well be family). We buried Pa’s ashes in the family plot, as he’d always wanted, on the most beautiful April day with the bluebells coming out and a cherry tree in blossom, and had a long late lunch afterwards.

Then there was a theatre trip with the brothers – of which more later.

And it was a good week. But everything felt like a dreadful rush, somehow. (Bolting a meal at Wagamama and dashing to the theatre is fast becoming a tradition for me and my eldest brother…) I didn’t speak to many people for as long as I’d have liked, and I have a nagging sense of having missed opportunities. Part of it, of course, is being tired (partly because it’s a lot of rushing around, partly because I am just tired all the time these days) and therefore not being able to engage as fully as I might otherwise; and part of it is pure practicalities: it’s difficult to talk to people when they’re at the opposite end of the table from you, and of course you can’t talk in the theatre.

The difficult and perplexing

I could really have done without skinning my knees again. I suppose there’s a certain symmetry in bookending my week with sticking plasters.

What’s working

Naps. Naps continue to improve everything.

Reading

I finished Wildfire at Midnight. Hmm. Personally I’d have murdered some other characters, but there we go. It’s a very compelling read. Then I finished Bad to the Bone. This was excellent: a five-minutes-into-the-future (at least, at the time of publication), quasi-surreal account by an anonymous narrator of a doping(ish) scandal in the professional cycling peloton. The prose was excellent and, while the mechanics were far-fetched, the racing felt incredibly real. I feel that it could have tried to answer a few more questions, though.

Yesterday I had a ‘lounge in bed’ sort of a day, and read a lot of Agatha Christie: A Murder is Announced (very good, but I remembered too many of the twists from last time for it to be surprising), Ordeal by Innocence (not one of her best, and very of-its-time in the way it thinks about adoption), and Appointment with Death (OK, but not brilliant).

Mending

Some things that have been waiting for a very long time – Tony’s dressing gown, a fancy T-shirt, the collar of my Apollo blueprint dress.

Watching

Sweeney Todd – subtitled The Victorian Melodrama, and sub-subtitled NOT the musical by Stephen Sondheim (Opera della Luna). This took the script of the original 1847 production and added – as seems to have been consistent with period practice – background music from a small orchestra. The music came from various (higher-brow) composers of the era, including my great-great-great-grandfather Julius Benedict. Hence our going to see it: I may never hear Benedict’s music performed live by professionals again. Of course, the problem with its being so very obscure is that I couldn’t distinguish it from that of the other composers (though I did recognise Home Sweet Home – Bishop – and When Other Lips – Balfe). But anyway, it all sounded great, and the orchestra also did sterling service making the sound effects.

Quite apart from family pride, it was extremely enjoyable as a piece of theatre – a proper old-fashioned hiss-the-villain fun, with a small and talented company playing a very large cast. The theatre (Wilton’s Music Hall, in the East End) is a fantastic building.

And today Tony and I went to watch the eel parade, which is one of those delightfully specific local celebrations. The eel was constructed along the lines of Chinese New Year dragons, and followed by: representatives of the Royal British Legion; a samba band; a couple of dance schools; and Brownies/Guides/Rainbows. And one enterprising youngster had a smaller papier maché eel. Very much like Remembrance Day, except for all the ways in which it wasn’t.

Looking at

St Swithun’s, Martyr Worthy, which is a delightful little church with a Norman door. According to the lay reader who took the ceremony for us, it’s still regularly used and there is a decent variety of services. There’s a monument to someone from Sir John Moore’s company – Pa was always interested in the retreat from Coruña and I wonder if that was where that started.

I was interested to see that the visitors’ book was chock full of people walking St James’ Way, which seems to have really taken off since I did it in 2015. (For starters, I don’t think the church was open then, or I’d have looked in; these days it has a sello.)

Cooking

Not much this week, as I’ve mostly been out, but I did rösti with purple sprouting broccoli and fried eggs yesterday. Pretty good.

Eating

Scampi and chips in Winchester; ramen with vegetable gyoza at Wagamama; Scotch egg from the market today.

Noticing

A bush with blue flowers and loads of bees. From the train, several deer. In a charity shop in Sutton, several James Bond tie-in model cars.

In the garden

I did quite a lot this afternoon: trimmed a couple of bushes, sowed sweet pea and nasturtium seeds, watered the pear trees, pulled up some weeds. I also repotted the agave and aloe veras. Our predecessors’ compost bin has obligingly produced a load of compost (I’m not sure I looked into it at all last year). The wisteria is looking likely to produce more flowers than we’ve ever had here; the lily-of-the-valley is beginning to flower, and I think the peony may not be dead after all.

Appreciating

Sunshine. Small towns. The way you don’t need to explain family to family.

Acquisitions

Two parcels today: a new bra and Run Away Home.

Hankering

I was rather taken by a lampshade with a print of eels. I shall continue to think about it. It would certainly be an improvement on the ribbon-and-plastic-bead monstrosity that’s currently in my study.

Line of the week

There were several candidates from Bad to the Bone.

Their nerves are running on ninety seven per cent adrenalin, their fuses so short that if they were off their bikes and a leaf fell on their head they’d beat it to a pulp; and then somewhere inside someone’s head the little glass capsule shatters, the acid snaps the spring, muscles convulse, tyres lash tarmac and they’re on their own, elbows overlapping, bikes barrelling through forty five degrees beneath them as they screw them left and right, arms heaving, feet whipping, riding inside the arc of each other’s elbows, trying to get down the inside, through the gap that opens and closes three times a second, round the outside of a guy who’s going nearly as much across the road as along it because he’s got his head down between his knees because that way he can concentrate exclusively on pulling the bars off his machine without distraction.

This coming week

Bank holiday. Antenatal class. Midwife appointment. And we are going to a spa.

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

Week-end: I think the cover was blue

kathleenjowitt3 Comments
White pear blossom and young green leaves against a red brick wall

The good

It’s been an excellent week. I have slept a lot; I got a load of cat-herding and yak-shaving done on Monday and Tuesday and am now much less stressed about all the things that were formerly stressing me; I had a long phone conversation with one friend and went out for tea with two others. I logged into my work email once to see what the news was, and I liked it. I had my hair cut and I liked the result.

The mixed

April showers! Only one of them seriously inconvenienced me, though, and I got a lift home.

A visit from a hedgehog! (I was very glad to see the hedgehog, and it’s certainly good news that it’s got through hibernation, but it shouldn’t have been in the garage.)

I’m still slightly despairing about the state of the study. And I would have liked to have got more writing done.

The difficult and perplexing

Honestly, it’s mostly been good. Woke up too early this morning. That’s about it.

What’s working

Setting deadlines (for other people). Just doing things. And, on occasion, not doing things.

Reading

I was very zonked on Wednesday morning, so collapsed first on the bed and then on the sofa with After the Funeral (Agatha Christie). (My copy has a cover consisting of stills from the – very loose, by the looks of it – adaptation Murder at the Gallop, starring Margaret Rutherford. It looks bizarre.) Yesterday I read through all of the Heartstopper webcomic (Alice Oseman) that currently exists. I shall now do my best to forget about it for six months, as I know from bitter experience that waiting eagerly to read three panels once a fortnight (or whatever) is the quickest way for me to fall out of love with a canon. (It happened most spectacularly with Check, Please!, though I think Heartstopper is more coherent in tone and certainly less eyebrow-raising in its attitude to coming out. All the same, I’m not going to take the risk.) Anyway, I read the Nick and Charlie novella today and that ties things up nicely.

Writing

I wrote 700 words of what’s probably going to turn out to be a blog post on wanting things. I moved some things around in and made some additions to Don’t Quit The Day Job. And I typed up a bit of Your Household’s Rancour that I’d apparently forgotten about. As I said above, I’d have liked to have got more done. Pa used to swear that he couldn’t write if he didn’t smoke, and I’m half-tempted to wonder if I’d concentrate better if I were back on the coffee. (But I have rather gone off coffee.)

Most definitely not writing: The Long Lent, which would be the Stancester gang versus early Covid. I am not sure that anybody wants to read about early Covid. And it would mostly be about Will, and I’m not sure that anybody wants to read about Will, either. It doesn’t have much of a plot. It occurred to me that it doesn’t have to be a full-length novel. All the same, I found myself rereading a lot of The Real World when I was awake too early this morning, and trying to work out what jobs people would have been doing by 2020, and then at lunchtime I was looking for the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, which I think would form a sort of structure. I couldn’t find it. I’m sure it has a blue cover.

But anyway, I have two novels on the go, another one to expand from a short story, and the workbook that is in theory my principal project. I’m not convinced that this isn’t a ploy by some twisty part of my brain to stop me finishing anything.

Watching

I finally got through the world figure skating championships. I was glad I left the ice dance until last; it just got better and better and better through the last couple of groups.

Cooking

Indian masala carrots with coconut lentils.

Eating

Leftover bigos for lunch through the first half of the week. (It was OK, but it really needed belly pork; the meat was a bit dry.) Pizza, with various meat products, on Wednesday night. (Apparently my blood pressure is a bit low, which may explain my recent preoccupation with ham sandwiches.) Easter chocolate. Yesterday I got some rum and raisin fudge from the fudge shop: a rare treat.

Moving

Swimming. My new bathing suit arrived and seems perfectly satisfactory.

Noticing

As mentioned above, a hedgehog in the garage. (I was not, in fact, the first person to notice it; it triggered the motion sensor and Tony saw it. But I was the person to see it in its prickly reality and, protected by a pair of gardening gloves, get it out.)

There have been a lot of goldfinches around lately. Robins and blackbirds, very vocal. And one of our resident woodpigeons has discovered that it can sit in a bush and eat from the seed feeder just above it, which looks most comical, like a student doing a yard of ale.

In the garden

The tulips are most definitely out and it’s all got a lot brighter. The pear blossom gets more luxuriant by the day. I chopped some dead bits off the palm tree (it’s not a real palm tree, but I can’t remember the name of it). I’m not convinced it liked the cold weather earlier this year. Can’t blame it.

Appreciating

Friends who have been in my life for getting on for twenty years. A week to do more or less exactly what I wanted.

Acquisitions

Theatre tickets! We are going to see Opera della Luna’s Sweeney Todd. It is not often that you get to hear your great-great-great-grandfather’s music done live by pros (well, depends on who your great-great-great-grandfather was, I suppose, but mine has slipped into obscurity). I am very excited about this.

Hankering

I still have my eye on the teapot dress, but there’s no point buying it yet. As it is, I’ve been trying on various dresses in my wardrobe and doing calculations along the lines of if I expand by one centimetre every week and the wedding is in a month was it worth paying a tenner for a dress that was a size too big in January and how much extra time do I have to allow to go shopping in Portsmouth and what on earth do I do about a bra?

Line of the week

From After the Funeral:

It was a nice painting of white satin and pearls. The human being round whom they were draped and clasped was not nearly so impressive.

Saturday snippet

From Don’t Quit the Day Job

The challenge is remaining in that [writer’s] mindset when I’m back in London and the phone’s ringing and I have five spreadsheets to convert into a report. Writing on the commute helps. So does reading in my lunch break. I also like to wear one or other of the pieces of jewellery that I associate with my writing identity. (A current favourite is a pair of earrings featuring glass beads in the shape of coffee beans.)

This coming week

Back at work. In fact, it’s a perfectly normal week before things start getting absolutely ridiculous next Saturday, and remain so for the subsequent month.

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

Week-end: harrowing of/hell/of the North

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Purply-blue grape hyacinths growing in grass next to a bush with bright green new growth

The good

Easter! Alleluia! I can’t help comparing with last year and seeing how much more with it I am now than I was then. Granted, every excursion outside the house demands a nap later in the day, but I am, for example, quite capable of doing the Walk of Witness followed by the Three Hours – rather than reclining on the sofa watching the liturgy on YouTube. And it was particularly good to make it to the Easter Vigil last night and find some friends who were there to support confirmation candidates from their parishes.

And this is only the beginning of a week’s holiday (not that I am going anywhere).

The mixed

It hit me this week that the bulk of the big comms projects is… done. Of the three major documents that needed revising and redesigning, one’s done and published, one’s at the printers’ now, and one’s there but for some tiny edits. Oh, there are plenty of small bits to tidy up, and the comms only accounted for half of the stuff I want to get wrapped up before I go on maternity leave, but I’m noticing that I’m transitioning into a ‘before I go on maternity leave’ mindset, and that’s a little disconcerting. It’s all coming up rather fast.

This morning, the cat ate a rose leaf, made some alarming noises, brought the rose leaf (but nothing else) back up again, and was wandering around with it caught in her fluffy tail. I have now removed it.

The difficult and perplexing

I am wobbling a bit about whether I will ever finish a book ever again. That’s something to get my head around this week.

Also missing the family somewhat – they were all here last year! – but will be seeing them all pretty soon.

Also [way TMI, so I won’t tell you].

What’s working

Naps, still.

Reading

Different books for different circumstances. Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne) on the train: rather tediously blokey in parts, but I am learning more French history than the very vague outline I previously had. She Gets The Girl (Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick) at lunchtime in the office: that rather tedious combination of characters who are more than usually aware of their own shortcomings but apparently incapable of acting on that knowledge. I think this is a Thing in YA, which is where this book probably wants to sit. That aside, it’s interesting to read a campus novel set in the United States and be surprised at the very different norms (how many students have cars, for example, and the assumption that having a roommate is the default).

But really this week’s book has been The Man Born To Be King (Dorothy L. Sayers), a cycle of radio plays she wrote in the early 1940s. I meant to skip straight to the plays, but ended up reading all of the introductions too. I’d read the whole lot before, at university, and revisiting it was amused to note how much it’s shaped my understanding of the Incarnation, and my thinking about the inherent corruptibility of any institution you care to name (really, it’s all I’ve been writing about ever since…). What’s particularly interesting to me is the way she talks about the work that has to go in to turn the curated collections of sayings and happenings that make up the Gospels into what the twentieth century would recognise as a coherent narrative. (Although I don’t think this is entirely missing from the Gospels themselves: I noticed a couple of Christmases back the different, but both extremely relatable, from a writerly point of view, devices that Matthew and Luke employ to get the Holy Family to where they think they ought to be.) The plays themselves feel sometimes very dated and often extremely powerful. I think Sayers makes Judas more complicated than he really needs to be; I dislike the conflation of Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene and the woman who was a sinner; and I’m not sure you’d do the same thing with Nicodemus today; but overall it works.

There was the usual OH DLS NO for the usual reasons. It’s fascinating, in an infuriating kind of way, how the gratuitous offensiveness seems to come from a place of affection. (I’m thinking here of the way she talks about her characterisation of Matthew – I’m not going to quote it – but Matthew comes across as one of the most likeable characters in the whole thing and I think that’s deliberate.)

I attempted The City of God but, while I think I probably do have the brain for St Augustine, I don’t have the brain for a four hundred year old translation. Can anyone recommend a newer one? I dislike Oxford World Classics for their irritating habit of filling the text with asterisks, but am otherwise open-minded.

Writing

Nothing to speak of.

Listening to

Podcasts – not usually my thing, but when I have a repetitive task I quite like having something on to occupy the other half of my brain. The Ffern podcast is a favourite; I’ve also been enjoying Maintenance Phase lately.

Making

Messing around with stamps and embossing powder for some cards.

Mending

Darned the elbows of a pyjama top, a couple of holes in the legs of the trousers, and most of a pair of socks. (I have only really started getting holes in my pyjama trousers since we acquired a cat. Funny, that.)

Watching

Paris-Roubaix Femmes. I do have mixed feelings about filling the hole of Holy Saturday with televised sport but did it anyway. But what a race!

Cooking

Pasta with vegetable-heavy (though not vegetarian) sauces: first this one, then this one.

In between writing this I’m getting bigos going for tonight. I’m not quite sure when bigos became an Easter tradition (and we didn’t have it last year, because of feeding my mostly-vegetarian family) but it is one now.

Eating

Hot cross buns, of course. I also got a Simnel cake (too tired to cook one) and had the first slice after the Vigil last night.

Noticing

The blackbirds have become very vocal lately; the robins, slightly less so. On Friday there was a right old to-do on the green, with two herring gulls perched on somebody’s roof and shrieking away, a black cat a long way up a tree, but not near enough to get at the crow in the same tree, and a load of black-headed gulls watching the show.

In the garden

The tulips are most definitely blooming now; the apple trees are just beginning to come into leaf; the pear trees are doing leaves and blossom together, starting at the top. A bush that I thought was dead is also producing leaves. There is no sign of the peony, alas.

I’m enjoying seeing other people’s pictures of the progress of spring – internet friends in Japan (some resident, some visiting) sharing the cherry blossom; closer to home, many variations of daffodils, and blossom, and birds – and comparing with my garden.

There is plenty going on in my pot of herbs, though I didn’t label anything so will have to wait until it all gets bigger to find out what’s what. I don’t think the tarragon’s going to come up but the beans and the cosmos seem happy enough.

Appreciating

Spring! Paschal triumph, paschal joy! Friends both on and offline. Cat pictures. And the real cat.

Acquisitions

I have ordered a maternity swimsuit.

Hankering

Much as last week, I think.

Line of the week

DLS in snark mode:

Sacred personages, living in a far-off land and time, using dignified rhythms of speech, making from time to time restrained gestures symbolic of brutality. They mocked and railed on Him and smote Him, they scourged and crucified Him. Well, they were people very remote from ourselves, and no doubt it was all done in the noblest and most beautiful manner. We should not like to think otherwise.

Sunday snippet

As noted, I barely wrote anything, so you get a few lines of angst about whether I am in fact capable of writing anything…

  1. I’m very tired.
  2. It’s Holy Week.
  3. And Paris-Roubaix. I think.
  4. I am worried that I have forgotten how to finish things.
  5. [The memory of picking an apple from a tree, how you simply hold it gently and lift it and it comes away in your hand]

This coming week

Sleep. Various appointments (haircut; midwife). General life admin. Maybe test the new swimsuit when it arrives. Get the study into some sort of order so that it can become something else entirely when the time comes.

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

Week-end: YELLOW CROWN IMPERIALS (and crimson roses)

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
Yellow bell-shaped flowers in flat light

Absolutely everything is going under ‘mixed’ this week.

The mixed

My manager retired yesterday. I’m going to miss her. She’s been my manager for ten years of the thirteen I’ve worked for the union, three at the beginning and then seven after we ended up in the same team again, and she’s been supportive and encouraging ever since I was a temp who couldn’t say boo to a goose.

Anyway, that meant a team meal out on Tuesday, and a party last night. I caught up with some people I haven’t seen in years, and I danced. I haven’t danced that much since… probably before the pandemic. My feet were complaining on the walk to the station last night, and I’ve spent most of today doing absolutely nothing.

What’s working

Allowing for nap time.

Reading

Finished These Violent Delights, which ended with some blatant sequel bait. I don’t think I shall search out anything further. It had a fantastic premise but really needed much more editing. (Also, reading it in the current climate it was somewhat galling to have a strike presented as an incident of disaster, though I realise that at least part of that was the appropriately warped worldview of the protagonists.)

Then I moved onto Plain Bad Heroines (emily m. danforth) and finished it in three days. This was what I’d been missing: a slick, confident prose style. It had the kind of assertive narrator my friend Kit calls an Oi Pal; they’re always intruding themselves into the page to point out something they think you should be looking at, or to give their own take on events, or make some kind of sarcastic interjection. In some books this grates, but in this case it worked; it strengthened the sense of being in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. This was mostly fulfilled, with the two timelines (early twentieth century boarding school and present day Hollywood) unfolding in tandem and a delicious sapphical-gothical feeling across both. It faltered a little at the denouement, with what should have been the climax taking place offstage, and (I thought, anyway) an unnecessary diversion into the backstory. I also hadn’t much time for Mary Maclane, the Not Like Other Girls author of the book that drives a lot of the plot. Very readable, though, and I’m glad it’s not wasp season.

And I have started Wildfire at Midnight (Mary Stewart) for the romantic suspense bookclub. Very different, but equally skillful, prose.

Watching

Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) – English National Opera. I knew pretty much nothing about this beyond the fact that it was set in Bruges and based on a book called Bruges-la-Morte, so bought a programme. I do wonder if it’s one that might in fact be better watched unspoiled. So all I shall say is that it’s a very twentieth-century opera; it couldn’t have existed before Freud, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a mental breakdown put on stage in quite the same way. It does have the perennial opera problem of being sold as a timeless tale of love and loss and actually turning out to be about a creepy entitled man, but there we go. The music is gorgeous, and also loud, and you can see why Korngold was so good at film music later in his career.

Looking at

I went to the V and A yesterday and, after pausing to look at a fantastically detailed micromosaic panorama of Rome, went round the exhibition on musicals – costumes, set designs, and an awful lot of LP covers. Plus a long reel of extracts from archive recordings from the last couple of decades, which made for a nice excuse to sit down. Must go back another time to look at the model theatres.

Cooking

Pork chops with cabbage (the cabbage comes out very soggy, but very tasty).

Eating

Italian, mostly. We went to Wildwood with the in-laws on Sunday (bruschetta, chicken and asparagus risotto, panna cotta with a pleasantly tart blackcurrant compote); then Tuesday’s lunch was at Albertini’s (fusilli with tomato, sausage, and greens, followed by tiramisu).

Noticing

Quite a few rabbits out in the fields. And pheasants.

In the garden

The tulips are beginning to show what colour they’re going to be. The plum blossom is out and the apples and pears are on the way. The grape hyacinths have gone a gorgeous deep blue.

In the conservatory, the cosmos seeds have sprouted very satisfactorily; so have some of the beans, and something is going on in the big herb pot, though the tarragon seems to be doing nothing at all. The cat grass has come up and been put into service.

Appreciating

All the excellent people I have in my life.

Deep red roses with dark green leaves; general clutter and a cat's paw just visible around the edges

Acquisitions

Flowers! Along with the pram, which was the official purpose of the visit, the in-laws brought one of those lovely tiny rose plants. It has four crimson blooms and is doing well despite the best efforts of the cat. And at the market on Sunday I bought a yellow crown imperial and planted it in the garden. It wasn’t very impressed by the wind and rain, so I’ve tied it to the trellis for support.

Hankering

I’m still thinking about that teapot dress. It’s occurred to me that a lot of my summer dresses are not going to be much use to me this year.

Line of the week

There were several contenders this week. Here’s one from Plain Bad Heroines:

The night was drunk on the liquor of late spring, on wet grass and pale moon, on air still warm even after the sunset, air now scented by the rain-smacked lilac bushes planted at the back of the theater, their branches so heavy with blooms and moisture that several were bent against the ground.

Saturday snippet

Started adding to Starcrossers again:

[I was still on Crew territory.] Even if I hadn’t known that, I’d have been able to tell from the broad street that gave me nowhere to hide. When I’d ridden through earlier it had been crowded with the booths and stands of the ten-day market, and I’d had to be careful. Now I wished they were back.

This coming week

Holy Week. And getting to church at all will be an improvement on last year.

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