Tag: personal

Week-end: little to tell (which doesn’t really help)

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Elaborate appliqué panel depicting the Garden of Eden

The good

Out and about. It is very good to not have Covid any more. It is also fun to have the use of a car.

The mixed

People are thinking of me! Which is lovely. But they all want to know how I am doing. Which is difficult, because there is very little to tell, and I tend to find that a problem shared is a problem doubled because I then feel that I have to deal with their feeling bad for me on top of the feeling bad myself. For this reason I am mostly hiding, at least from people I know.

The difficult and perplexing

Heat + waiting + hearing about other people’s relevant and irrelevant experiences and opinions = getting stressed and scared

Also, heat = dehydration = a horrible headache that had me worrying all night about pre-eclampsia. And eventually being very sick.

Also, something has been eating my legs and I don’t know whether it’s mosquitoes getting in at night or whether there are still fleas in the sofa.

What’s working

Airplane mode. Except I do need to know when the midwife wants to see me, so that’s not an option today…

And having a good cry or three. And yawning.

Reading

Continuing with Clorinda’s circle, because they are good friends and, while many distressing things happen, they mostly do so off-screen and also I already know about them all.

This morning I started Beryl: in search of Britain’s greatest athlete (Jeremy Wilson): very good so far.

Writing

I did a bit of work on Don’t Quit The Day Job but have mostly Not Been In The Mood (must try taking laptop into the garden; half the trouble is that my study is too hot).

Making

I finished the two-flannels-and-a-popper thing and can now use the very very ends of bars of soap.

Watching

Some Wimbledon. Some Tour de France. Some Giro Donne. But my concentration is not great at the moment and I am finding it difficult to get engaged, so not very much of any of them these last few days.

Looking at

Threads Through Creation (twelve panels of silk appliqué representing the Genesis creation stories) at Ely Cathedral. Medieval art and Mediterranean embroidery at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. Local history at Ely Museum.

Also, Ben’s Yard, which is a new shopping village between Ely and Soham. Rather underwhelming so far, although the climbing frame (in the shape of Ely Cathedral) is magnificent.

Cooking

Baked gnocchi from the Roasting Tin book (I have concluded that our oven runs ten degrees cooler than advertisted).

Eating

A Fitzbillies Chelsea bun. A dismal chickpea curry at the pub (I suspect the efficacy of curry is a myth, but it’s a good excuse, if the curry is good – which this wasn’t).

Playing

I got PomoFarm on the grounds that it’s four quid and worth a shot. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s working for me. (I’m not sure whether the pomodoro method itself works for me.)

Noticing

A tiny door (there are a few around Cambridge) made to look like that of No. 10 Downing Street, with purple tentacles emerging from around the edge. (Well, it would explain a lot…)

In the garden

I have started work on the front garden. Two passion flowers to grow up the railings, one rosemary plant, and six lavender plants (Lidl were doing boxes of three for four quid). That row will be finished by bringing one of the bay trees round to the front, but it’s going to take more, stronger people (I can barely manage a watering can at the moment), possibly with a trolley of some sort. The good thing about the horrible slate chippings is that they’re on top of plastic sheeting which can be pulled up a bit at a time.

In the back garden, the runner beans are just beginning to flower; so are the tomatoes; and one of the chilli plants has produced a flower. I have forgotten which chilli was which, which may have been a mistake.

Appreciating

The cat’s been very sociable these last couple of days. It’s been nice.

Acquisitions

Plants, as detailed above. Also a new lampshade for the sitting room, in what turned out to be a perfect match for the barszcz coloured wall. This means that we can replace the hideous ribbon-and-plastic-crystal one in my study/the nursery with the boring but inoffensive lilac one we previous haddown there.

In the Emmaus charity shop: a large reel of black yarn which I intend to use for darning; a cafetière (sometimes one needs to provide more than one person at a time with decent coffee); and a paperback copy of Madam, Will You Talk?

And, in hankerings fulfilled (well, almost), a garden table (currentlyh in bits) and a filleting knife. I must go and buy another fish somewhere.

Hankering

Really I just want this baby to show up.

Line of the week

I remember loving this line (from ‘Had we never loved sae kindly, we had ne’er been broken-hearted’ in A Man of Independent Mind) the first time round, too.

O my dear, says Clorinda with a tearful laugh, sure ’tis no matter upon which one may make mathematical calculations of degrees of infelicity.

Sunday snippet

Mostly I’ve been moving things around, but this bit’s new:

And sure, the Tour de France is never going to be an option for me, for any number of reasons. But I could quite easily get to a standard where the London to Brighton ride was a realistic proposition. I’d just need to put the miles in. It’s exactly the same principle with writing, and with a much smaller chance of road rash.

This coming week

I intend to hide, mostly. How many how are you? questions can I avoid?

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

Week-end: alarums and excursions

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

The good

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

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

The mixed

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

The difficult and perplexing

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

What’s working

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Making

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

Watching

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

Looking at

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

Cooking

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

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

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

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

Eating

As above.

Noticing

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

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

In the garden

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

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

Appreciating

People! (Particularly Tony.)

Hankering

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

The cat’s current preferred location

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

Line of the week

Havi on screens and screening:

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

This coming week

Your guess is as good as mine, honestly.

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

Week-end: imitate the actions of

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: the last month of Before

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A fluffy black and white cat sits on a flag striped blue, purple and pink. Various clutter in the background.

The good

Well, here we are in June. This may be baby month. Or it may not. In theory it’s going to be a lot quieter than May, but I’ve made plans for four work social things in my last two weeks, so…

Anyway, things are shifting; progress in sorting the house out is happening (gradually); I can’t say that I feel in any way ready, but it seems plausible that I will be able to cope. A long Zoom call with a friend yesterday. And we’ve just (well, several hours ago; I have had a nap since) had a very nice lunch out with family.

The photo, by the way, is more evidence of attempted tidying up (it gets worse before it gets better) than a deliberate celebration of Pride Month (our local Pride is, I have just discovered, on 29 July this year, which is some consolation for missing Ventnor Fringe) but it seemed appropriate.

The mixed

Lest I forget I am an introvert… an extremely productive and positive committee meeting on Wednesday evening left me staring at the wall for a long time afterwards. And then I was training on Thursday morning.

The difficult and perplexing

Being brought up short by my physical limitations. On Thursday evening I did what used to be my regular morning walk – twenty-five minutes up the hill, twenty-five minutes back. I had to sit down on almost every bench on the way back, and my lower back was complaining all night.

Experimenting with

A return to old-school internetting: a solid block of time on the computer, and when it’s off, it’s off. If I so chose, I could avoid looking at Twitter for a whole year. I might very well so choose.

What’s working

Snacks.

Reading

The Chronicles of Count Antonio (Anthony Hope). This is Hope in overwritten historical pastiche mode (as opposed to satirical contemporary mode) and it’s a little wearing; also, Count Antonio is even more ridiculously honourable than Rudolf Rassendyll and wouldn’t last five minutes in actual medieval Italy; still, it’s fun.

Writing

Starts Monday.

Watching

The remaining three Brosnan!Bond films, along with Licence to Queer and friends. Excellent fun, even if I wasn’t partaking in the cocktails (hey, a mint and lemon balm tea is vaguely similar to a mojito…)

Cooking

Risotto with peppers and smoked trout. Chakchouka. Omelettes.

Eating

Everything. I’ve been so hungry this week.

Moving

Walking. Too much, apparently.

Noticing

I think we had a goldfinch in the copper beech. We definitely had a pair of wood pigeons getting it on in a most conspicuous location, on top of our neighbour’s garage. I saw many excellent dogs when I was out on my walk.

In the garden

Planted the honeysuckle. Many, many things need cutting back. The arum lilies are blooming.

Appreciating

The weather. It’s sunny, but not too hot. I am grateful for this. (It has also been grey, but that hasn’t been too hot either.)

Acquisitions

Various packages have been arriving, but I don’t bear prime responsibility for any of them.

Line of the week

From this blog post:

We have to write a 2000 word essay about this treaty and its implications for ecosystem based management, and I’m only struggling a little because I just don’t think I have 2000 words worth of thoughts; all I have so far is: woof. also Yikes. And that’s just not essay length.

Saturday snippet

A little bit from Starcrossers:

I made a point of smiling very pleasantly at the newser who’d exposed my most recent peccadillo, and posed for a picture.

This coming week

Two office days, during which I really must do something about my desk, two pre-maternity meet-ups with colleagues, more training, a long appointment with the midwife, and the Cursillo Welcome Back. Which was for quite a long time the very last thing in my diary for Before.

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: Euston, we have a problem

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

The good

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

The mixed

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

The difficult and perplexing

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

What’s working

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

Reading

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

Writing

A little bit on Starcrossers.

Watching

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

Listening to

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

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

Cooking

Chicken drumsticks glazed with honey/mustard/curry powder.

Eating

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

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

Noticing

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

In the garden

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

Appreciating

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

Acquisitions

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

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

Hankering

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

Line of the week

From this article from The Road Book:

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

Sunday snippet

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

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

This coming week

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

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

Week-end: 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!

Week-end: happy new year, Lady Day

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Cowslip plant with many small yellow flowers

Up until a few centuries ago today would have been the first day of the year. I believe in celebrating as many new years as possible, so let’s count it. Actually, there have been a couple of anniversaries lately that I only noticed after the fact: three years since we moved into this house (and the country promptly shut down); a year since I caught Covid. It’s quite encouraging to compare where I am now with where I was then, particularly when I’m feeling frustrated about lack of energy.

The good

I do not have gestational diabetes! (Or, presumably, any other sort.) And I went to the dentist yesterday and my teeth and gums are in pretty good shape. So hurrah for health and for things being less complicated than they might be.

Then there was a long phone call with a friend and a streak of energy that lasted most of the week and got a lot of things sorted out. I’m really enjoying the spring flowers, too.

The mixed

Tony was away this week, cycling across the Netherlands. I missed him rather, though the cat was not bad company, and I got more done than I’d expected, and I am a little bit jealous and considering what the next adventure might be (beyond the obvious one).

The difficult and perplexing

The hob has repaid us for cleaning it by refusing to work (or, rather, tripping the breaker every time we turn the circuit back on). We are hoping it will get over itself.

What’s working

Planning meals (though I think this was particularly successful this week just gone because I was cooking for myself and only myself all the time). Telling myself that if other people are worrying about me, then I don’t need to (this was remarkably helpful).

Reading

I finished Michel the Giant (An African in Greenland), coming away with the sense that life in Greenland is not for me, though he seems to have enjoyed himself there. There’s a real feeling of openness and candour about the way he writes, and his sheer determination to get to where he wants to be is impressive. Nearly finished These Violent Delights.

Writing

Mostly updating policies. And I finally got round to uploading my post about the Belgian Coastal Tramway, only six months or so after the event.

Mending

I darned a couple of pairs of socks, and tidied up the cuff on my navy linen summer coat – which has needed doing for a very long time.

Watching

I have returned to Our Flag Means Death, and have very nearly finished it. But now it’s the world figure skating championships.

Cooking

The Instant Pot has been working hard this week, in its pressure cooker and its slow cooker guises. ‘Mediterranean fennel with nutty crumble’ (the ‘crumble’ is in fact croutons) from The Ultimate Slow Cooker Cookbook: the wrong combination of vegetables, I think – the inclusion of carrots meant it had to cook for a long time, too long for the fennel and particularly for the pepper, which became bitter. Black beans from The Pressure Cooker Cookbook – tasty but more faff than I could really be doing with. Lentil and Swiss chard soup (same) – very good.

Eating

Mostly the above, with rye bread and seeded sourdough. Yesterday I went to my favourite falafel stand for lunch, though.

Noticing

Cowslips! Primroses! More daffodils! Two goldfinches in the plum tree! Another hare!

In the garden

The grape hyacinths are out. On Sunday I sowed cat grass and cosmos and tarragon seeds and some elderly beans; the first two of these are sprouting. I also pulled up the old leggy lavender and wallflowers that were sprawling across the path. Then on Tuesday I pulled up the wallflowers that had self-seeded in the cracks in the path and moved them into the vacated space. We’ll see how they do; there are plenty of other wallflowers if these don’t make it.

I accidentally brought a ladybird in with the laundry; unfortunately it flew away while I was trying to get it out of the window and is probably still in the house somewhere.

Appreciating

Having energy! (And, as today, when I don’t have so much, the fact that I can just nap all afternoon and then go to Evensong.)

Acquisitions

I got a load of bamboo socks off the local free group to see if they’re worth the darning. Initial signs are promising.

Hankering

There is a dress that I very much like the look of on the Joanie site. And I still want a bigger darning loom.

Line of the week

Tété-Michel Kpomassie (translated by James Kirkup) on a Greenland sunset:

The purple disc sank little by little below the line of the horizon; for a few moments longer the brindled sky was still painted with wide and luminous streaks, flaming on the face of the waters, turning to violet on the mountain tops, orange or grey above our heads.

Saturday snippet

A tiny, tiny bit from the Romeo and Juliet thing:

The train slid southwards, the carriage rocking gently, into a future they had set up recklessly and joyously. Neither of them quite knew what it might hold, except for each other.

This coming week

My manager is retiring; there are various things planned to mark the occasion. Also I’m going to the opera. Somewhere in between all this I need to finish the Cursillo annual report, but there really is only a very little left to do.

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