Tag: James Bond

A meeting of the Lac Scene Coven

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
A relief map of Switzerland

I’m feeling quite a lot better today. Well enough, in fact, to face with equanimity the prospect of not being entirely well for quite a long time yet. I suppose it makes sense: the first few days, you couldn’t do much more than flop on the sofa even if you wanted to; after that, you have to put significant effort into not doing very much.

To be clear, my operation went well, my wounds seem to be healing, and I’m no longer blown up like a balloon. Everything is as it should be. I am coming to terms with the surgeon’s advice not to do any heavy lifting (i.e. more than 5kg – about a third of the weight of a toddler) for the next four to six months, which came as something of a shock, not having been mentioned before the day of the operation. I am coming to understand that in a few more days I will be feeling fine and having to put significant effort into remembering not to lift anything heavier than 5kg.

In the meantime, I’m playing with the idea of convalescence.

And the last few years have shown us that society does not place any value on recovery time, and so I will need to be aware of external and internal pressure to get better, now, and resist it.

Not for the first time, either. When I caught Covid for the first time in 2022, it took me ages to get better. I didn’t get long Covid, but it was several months before I could go for a walk without needing a lie-down afterwards. It was some time in that spring that I plugged convalescence into an anagram generator, and got back, among other delightful possibilities, lac coven scene. (This is yet another technique I have borrowed from the ever-excellent Havi, who has in fact just been writing about it.)

Back then, it sounded vaguely Arthurian to me, and I decided that I rather liked the idea of going to sleep under a hill until the country needed me. Now, having read the whole Chalet School series one and a half times through in the last eighteen months, it is clearly an exhortation to take a rest cure in a female-dominated environment in Switzerland, to prioritise my health, and to take the time I need to get better.

Lest anyone was in any doubt, I cannot literally go to Switzerland at this moment. It would take a lot of money that I have earmarked for other things and effort that I could better use on recovery. This does not matter. Never going to Switzerland did not stop Elinor M. Brent-Dyer from setting well over half the books there. She travelled via Baedeker instead.

I also don’t have the option of doing nothing any more. I have a toddler. This is where the coven comes in. My mother has been staying this week and has helped me work out a number of strategies (purchase of a little set of plastic steps to facilitate access to highchair; getting down on the floor with the child as an alternative to picking her up… ) More generally, I am just going to have to get used to the idea of getting people to do things for me. It takes a village. Or at least a coven.

I began my virtual stay in Switzerland yesterday, before I’d even remembered about my lac coven scene, by watching Alpine Train at Christmas. Most of my friends who have seen this programme report an immediate desire to take the Bernina Express, but I am too tired to plan train adventures, and just enjoyed watching the snowy mountains go by (and got depressed about the receding glaciers).

What else might I do, in pursuit of not-doing? I could get Switzerland’s Amazing Railways down from the shelf and become very interested in spiral tunnels. I could re-read or re-watch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (nothing like watching James Bond be energetic when you’re not feeling particularly so yourself). I have got stuck on A Chalet Girl from Kenya but, now I can eat fatty foods again, rather fancy something involving ‘featherbeds of whipped cream’, and, indeed, most of the Chalet School diet. But I do find myself moved to revisit whichever Sadlers Wells book it is where Ella has a term at finishing school. I could find more slow travel videos – mountain railways, or steamers on the Alpine lakes (we saw the New Year in watching the P. S. Waverley sailing up the Clyde). Either way, a retreat to the sofa seems indicated. I shall rejoin the coven at the lac scene. See you all later.

Week-end: flop 2: flop harder

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An exuberant aloe vera plant in a pot on a windowsill. The grass outside looks parched but there are streaks of water running down the water butt

I bought the parent (now deceased) of this aloe vera plant in the Haymakers, Cambridge, the day that Boris Johnson prorogued Parliament. Well, ta-ra to him. The plant is doing very happily (its little sibling next it, not so much).

Just a short update this week, for reasons that will become clear…

The good

Rain! After a miserably hot week, it was sheer joy to lie in bed last night listening to the rain on the glass roof of the conservatory. And it’s doing it again now.

The mixed

Well, things could all be a lot worse, that’s all I can say.

Oh, yes, Fathers’ Day. When Pa was alive we all ignored it, as he considered it a tacky imported Hallmark holiday and would have been appalled had any of us tried to wish him a happy one of it. Nowadays my feeds are so full of people being sensitive to people for whom it’s a difficult day that it’s… not quite becoming a difficult day, but much more something to trip over. I’m mostly finding it funny, but I do miss him.

Next year I’m actually going to have to remember the date.

The difficult and perplexing

Believe me, I wasn’t planning to spend my last three working days before maternity leave in bed, but here I am. Well, there I was. I’m at the dining table now. Feeling quite a lot better. Still taking things easy.

What’s working

Nap early, nap often. Although a) turning over and b) getting up are both getting more and more uncomfortable. On the hot days, cooking late and eating in the garden.

Reading

If there’s one thing that lying in bed is good for, it’s reading. I have worked my way through:

  • Fashioning James Bond: costume, gender and identity in the world of 007 (Llewella Chapman). This wasn’t quite the book I wanted it to be, though it had some delightful moments. I think I would have preferred less stitch-by-stitch suit description, more of the gender and identity bit of the subtitle, and more gossip. (Eunice Gayson in a dress six sizes too large, cut down and held together with pins, for example. This is the kind of thing I want to know more about.) Also, it was just cruel to describe the costume designs and not provide pictures. I’d love to have seen… all of them, really.
  • The Woman Who Stole My Life (Marian Keyes). I don’t think anything’s ever going to top Rachel’s Holiday for me, and I didn’t entirely buy the central relationship, but this was a fun satire on the publishing world.
  • several short sapphic freebies from a recent Jae-organised giveaway. Blind Date at the Booklover’s Lair (Jae); Bumping Into Her (Lisa Elliot); Off the Rails (Rachel Lacey); The Origins of Heartbreak (Cara Malone). DNF Prelude to Murder (Edale Lane), partly because of the copaganda but mostly because the author seemed incapable of using the word ‘said’. Someone remove that thesaurus, pronto.

At the moment I’m dipping into Slow Time (Waverly Fitzgerald) for a dose of gentle go-with-the-flow.

Writing

Did some on the train on Monday, but it seems like a very long time ago now.

Watching

Cycling (what a sad week it’s been there), a bit of the Trooping of the Colour, and silly quiz shows.

Appreciating

The fact that I can just stop now, and not have to worry about work that I feel that I ought to be doing.

This coming week

Contains our wedding anniversary, the solstice, a whole load of stuff going on at the cathedral that I almost certainly won’t be able to get to, and an appointment with the midwife, but I still have a suspicion that by the end of it I’ll have lost all sense of what a week even is.

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: 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!

December Reflections 14: I said hello to…

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A woman and a man hold up a copy of Double Or Nothing

… Bond fandom (here personified by David of Licence To Queer) in person, at the author talk for Double Or Nothing at the British Library. It was an excellent night with many lovely people. I think I’ve mentioned before that Bond fandom is refreshingly straightforward: we all know our fave is problematic, and that means we can skip straight to the fun part, which is talking about it.

I still feel slightly odd being fannish on main: it probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t fallen into a Twitter conversation. But it’s been a good eighteen months now and nothing too weird has resulted. Actually, I promised myself last year that I was just going to let myself enjoy stuff and be fannish about things. This being the sort of year it’s been, I haven’t really got into anything with any degree of enthusiasm.

Although, thinking about it, that doesn’t necessarily follow. My last significant illness – early 2017 – I fell headfirst into Yuri!!! on Ice and stayed there for a long time. Maybe there’s hope for me yet, even if all the narrative complexity I can cope with at the moment is ‘can this woman get down this hill faster than the previous woman did?’ and rooting for the Italians on the extremely shallow justification that they have the best national anthem.

Anyway, there’s no sense trying to predict it. Last year I fell for Romeo and Juliet like I was fifteen all over again. I certainly didn’t see that coming. All I can really do is wait for whatever the next thing is. And try not to get hype backlash before that pirate thing gets to the BBC. (I am dreadfully susceptible to hype backlash. It’s one of my least favourite things about myself. But if one friend too many enthuses about their New Thing, or if one friend enthuses once too often about the New Thing, I get fed up with it. Not their fault, nor yet the New Thing’s.) In the meantime, there’s no harm in falling back on an old favourite or (double O) seven.

Photo by Antony Lowbridge-Ellis

December Reflections 11: best decision of 2022, and Week-end

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A blanket and a cushion in the corner of a sofa

I think it’s a bit early to call the best decision of 2022. I don’t know how a lot of them are going to work out. Although I can say that I’m glad to have made them, rather than vaguely hoping that they’ll sort themselves out without any input from me.

In the meantime, I can report that taking a nap has pretty much always turned out to be a good move.

The good

Lunch with friends today. Hadn’t seen them in ages and it was very good to catch up.

The mixed

Yesterday I took a long walk around Ely delivering Christmas cards. It was absolutely beautiful in the frosty sunlight – at one point I turned a corner and saw the cathedral all lit up in rose gold – but it really brought home how tired I’m getting, because I had to sit on a bench for a long time before I felt up to walking the last twenty minutes home, and then I was falling asleep on the sofa and had to take a nap.

The difficult and perplexing

Things got a bit much for me at work. I’ve been feeling like rather a fraud lately – largely down to the fatigue and the accompanying lack of focus.

What’s working

Thermal leggings. Double socks.

Reading

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire (Rosamund Hodge) – a fantasy take on Romeo and Juliet with zombies and blood magic. Enough has been changed to keep me guessing, and the generally gothic atmosphere fits beautifully.

And today, Licence To Queer’s Queer Re-view of Skyfall – long and fascinating. (Also it quotes me, which is gratifying, particularly since I’m about to delete the ‘Writing’ heading in this post, on account of I haven’t done any.)

Watching

Gloriana (Benjamin Britten) – English National Opera. This was billed as a ‘concert performance’, which in practice meant that the chorus was on a stepped platform and the principals moved and acted and sang in front of them. This worked reasonably well, although I think the big set pieces suffered from a lack of movement – particularly the dance at Whitehall, where the so-called volta wouldn’t have raised so much as a ladylike glow.

I found it sad and moving and, as I said on Thursday, very listenable. I can see why it was a flop in 1953, though, and I wonder what on earth Britten was thinking. It’s not a coronation piece. You really need an audience who’s watched Glenda Jackson demythologise Good Queen Bess.

Anyway, it’s probably the only time I’ll ever get to see it, and for that reason alone I’m glad I did. (And Willard White was in it, singing two bit parts. Easily the biggest opera name I’ve seen live.)

Otherwise, winter sports. Having tracked biathlon down to Eurovision Sports Live (it’s all but disappeared from Eurosport) I’ve had that on in the background while I’ve been doing various tasks, and it’s been the Grand Prix Final this weekend.

Looking at

Forgot to mention last week: I looked into St Mary’s, Ely, to see what it looks like post-refurbishment. I was impressed – it feels much lighter and airier, there’s more that can be done with the space, and the more interesting features are showcased rather than hidden away.

Cooking

A thing out of Jack Monroe’s tin can book involving chickpeas and spinach, except I used cannellini beans and leftover cabbage. Worked fine.

Eating

Delicious turkey lunch cooked by the friends we were visiting, and most excellent mince pies made by the friend who gave us a lift there. We have good friends.

Moving

Long Christmas-card-delivering walk, as mentioned above.

Appreciating

An extremely productive Friday. And an instant freezer meal for when I hit the wall at seven o’clock.

Acquisitions

I did very well in Oxfam and picked up an omnibus of Joan Aiken’s Armitage stories and a couple of the Bagthorpes series.

In internet shopping: one pair of teal corduroy trousers, one pair of burgundy corduroy dungarees, one box of perfume samples.

Line of the week

From Queer Re-View: Skyfall:

And even when the story is over, many of us perpetuate the fantasy in a multitude of ways: playing the film soundtracks allows us to enact our lives as spies, even when we’re just commuting to work; we can pretend we’re experiencing the luxurious existence of an agent on a generous expense account by making cocktails at the weekends in our kitchens; we can literally walk in Bond’s shoes (or a pair that look like them if we can’t afford Crockett & Jones).

This coming week

Is going to be very cold (by UK standards) and I’m glad to be mostly working from home.

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

December Reflections 3: best book of 2022

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'Double or Nothing' by Kim Sherwood, 'Wanderlust' by Rebecca Solnit', and 'Art and Lies' by Jeanette Winterson

I haven’t had much brain for reading this year. This stack could just as well have been made up of Agatha Christie and K. J. Charles books, if you interpret ‘best’ as ‘most readable’, and why not? Although since all the K. J. Charleses are on my Kobo it wouldn’t have made such a pretty picture. Also on my Kobo is Light Perpetual (Francis Spufford), which was the first work of litfic I managed to read after Pa died, and I could see how it was put together, which suggested that my writing brain hadn’t entirely deserted me either, and which possibly was my best book of 2022. Maybe Sisters of the Vast Black, too.

Anyway. Double Or Nothing was a really interesting development of the Bond tradition. Wanderlust was history and politics and walking and some really gorgeous prose. Art and Lies was hazy and beautiful and I’m still not entirely sure I really followed it but it doesn’t matter. I could make a case for any of those three being the best of the year, although of course Double Or Nothing was the only one actually published this year.

I Did Not Finish Hamnet, because Magrat!Anne Hathaway was just too much for me. I also gave up on The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper, which was just too twee. The most disappointing book that I finished was The Embroidered Sunset, because WTF was that ending?

Week-end will follow tomorrow. I have a cab in ten minutes.

Week-end: sudden standstill

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Model San Francisco cable car, with box, in front of a window through which can be seen the sea

The mixed

I’m doing this on my pone so it’s all going in tgether. I am on the Isle of Wight. (This piture shows Ventnor, not San Francisco.) I was meant to be watching the Tour of Britain, which was meant to be crossing the Island and coming through Ventnor tomorrow. However, the Queen died (and that’s quite a thing to get one’s head around in itself) and so it’s cancelled. So it’s turned into a regular Island-weekend-with-family, which is very good in itself, but it would have been even more fun to watch the cycling together.

And because regular Island weekends with family tend to mean clearing my father’s house, we’ve been doing that, and it’s slow going. Yesterday I was close to despairing. Today I took a load of shelves to bits and felt better. But yes, it’s not an easy process. Often aggravating. Occasionally poignant. Sometimes hilarious. We found a little card on which was recorded my first visit to a pub. I was less than a month old. And I have to say that should I have need of a 1950s model San Francisco cable car (this will become relevant later), I have a far greater than average chance of finding one.

Plus the trains have been awful and I’ve been knackered.

What’s working

Pumping up the tyres on my bike. Made it much easier to get up the hill, even with a holdall, a satchel, and a tote bag with a cork yoga block.

Reading

Madame Clorinda is back! Not that she’s been Madame Clorinda for a long time, of course, but she’s been brightening my mornings.

Started The Embroidered Sunset (Joan Aiken) with an online readalong.

Finished Double or Nothing: very good, twisty, introduces some engaging new characters and had me looking forward to seeing more of them.

I also read, and loved, Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Malinda Lo), and I would rave about it if I weren’t typing in this hideous mobile interface. Amazing sense of time and place. Let the cable car speak for how much I liked it.

Making

Up against it with this patchwork thing.

Watching

The Tour of Britain, or what there was of it.

Cooking

Beef olives, for the first time ever, and baked figs.

Listening to

Jeremy Wilson talking about Beryl Burton at Ventnor Exchange. Very difficult to stop Beryl Burton, even when all other cycling stops.

Playing

Scrabble, with my mother. I won, largely because I drew J, Q, Z and K.

Appreciating

The full moon over the sea.

Acquisitions

Beryl. Will also be taking some things home from my father’s house…

Hankering

Various dresses on the Joanie site. I don’t really need any new dresses.

Line of the week

From Last Night at the Telegraph Club:

The door was propped open, and inside she saw Shirley’s baby-blue party dress on a hanger hooked over the edge of a locker door, like the shell of a girl floating in midair.

This coming week

Back to the writing. An early bus and an early hovercraft. And a nice quiet Saturday, I hope.

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

Week-end: doubly literary

kathleenjowitt1 Comment
Hardback copy of 'Double or Nothing' by Kim Sherwood, paperback copy of 'CATS: Cycling Across Time and Space' edited by Elly Blue, small metal cat with crystal eyes

The good

On Thursday night I went to the launch (or at least the second night of it – it seemed to be a multi-day event) of Double Or Nothing at the British Library. So did a lot of James Bond fandom. I got to meet David of Licence To Queer in person for the first time, and some of the other LtQ contributors and other denizens of Bond Twitter. Bond fandom is great. We are all well aware that our fave is problematic as all get out, and that saves a lot of time and bad feeling and lets us get on with the actually interesting conversations. And these conversations were very interesting indeed. In one of the non-Bond-related ones it turned out that two of us had stories in the same small press feline feminist cycling anthology. (What are the odds? Double or nothing on that one if you dare. There are only eleven pieces in the thing!) So I ended up feeling even more literary than I’d expected to.

The mixed

One of these days I’ll manage to find the balance between the things I want to do, the things I need to do, and accounting for my limited capacity. None of the days this week was that day.

Today was Ultreya GB, the gathering of Cursillos from across the UK, hosted by London and Southwark Cursillos, beginning at St Paul’s and ending up at Southwark cathedral. It was a great day, and I was very proud to carry the banner for Ely, but I was tired when I left this morning and am very tired indeed now.

The difficult and perplexing

Monday was grim. At one point I said, ‘There is nothing that I want to do, and everything that I should do is BORING.’ Then I sulked in bed for an hour or so, then did some things. The most memorable one was paying the council tax.

What’s working

Making sure I eat something every three hours. Though this is a bit double-edged, as I’m really noticing when I fail to do that now.

Reading

I finished Wanderlust. And (presciently, it now appears) CATS: Cycling Across Time and Space. Began Double or Nothing, obviously. And Havi’s new post.

Writing

Half a blog post on my pet cover copy peeves. You might get the whole thing next week.

Making

Good progress on the secret patchwork, in spite of the cat’s best efforts.

Watching

Only Connect is back on! And so is Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Looking at

Some lovely pieces by Ely Guild of Woodturners, who had an exhibition at the Lamb over the bank holiday weekend.

Cooking

Orchard fruit (i.e. apple, pear and greengage) crumble.

Eating

Crumble. Good for pudding and breakfast. Beef rendang from Borough Market this lunchtime.

Moving

I took the road bike out for the first time since I had it serviced in the summer. It turns out that hauling a town bike up Back Hill twice a week has made tackling the Coveney hill on a road bike a mere triviality by comparison. Maybe I should start logging my commute on Strava. Or not.

Noticing

I saw Hodge the cat when we arrived at Southwark cathedral, but he scarpered pretty quickly.

In the garden

The roses have returned for a second round. The vine has produced a load of very small pippy bitter grapes. I can’t face attempting home winemaking, so it’s a free for all for the birds. We continue to get tomatoes and French beans and greengages.

Appreciating

The little leather bag I got in Heidelberg. Into this I can fit my phone, my ridiculous bunch of keys, and a cereal bar, and it buckles under the saddle of my bike. I was hoping it would go over the handlebars, but the straps aren’t quite long enough. Never mind. It does very nicely under the saddle.

Planning

Christmas. Expedition to Belgium. Expedition to the South of France. Keeping some weekends free for Pete’s sake.

Acquisitions

A nice metal mop bucket to replace the plastic horror from Tesco that I’ve been cursing for the last seven years. (Every time you squeeze the mop out in the strainer thingy and then try removing the mop, the strainer comes with it. It’s infuriating.) Double or Nothing.

Hankering

There was a rather lovely carved stone nativity set in the gift shop at Southwark cathedral. But it was more than I would want to spend on a nativity set, and I might be at the point where my Playmobil one has become the correct one and doesn’t need replacing.

Line of the week

Oh, Babette, you cool kid sprawling in your honest cotton-shirted grime, boy, I never had a chance. I wasn’t from your neighborhood, where everything had pockets: coarse pants, softball gloves, subway corners, airshafts between women’s bars, where delis sat at the edge of high-rises feeding siren music to the pavement. All-night groceries with strong meats, girly calendars, an angry wilderness of empty lots and broken family hearts.

This is from a story called ‘Tank Top Tomboy’ in an anthology called 52 Pickup by Bonnie Morris and E. B. Casey. Honestly, I don’t know why I was still reading this, because most of the stories are dire. The last one had a romantic interest with ‘ebony pools’. And then suddenly I run up against this. Sheer poetry. Will I finish the book now? Probably. Will I be disappointed? Inevitably.

This coming week

Tour of Britain! Some in-person training. And I could really do with an early night or three.

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

That or the priesthood: new post at Licence To Queer

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

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

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

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

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

That or the priesthood: Bond’s queer calling