Stories that make sense
Everyone else seems to have been talking about January going on forever, but that wasn’t my experience. In fact, it just seems to have disappeared. Between recovering from surgery and recovering from a cold, with a party in the middle, I haven’t been waiting for January to be over so much as for myself to be well enough to enjoy things regardless of the calendar.
I shall not complain. The days are getting longer, the snowdrops are out, and everyone suddenly seems much more cheerful.
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).
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.
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].
Naps, still.
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.
Nothing to speak of.
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.
Messing around with stamps and embossing powder for some cards.
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.)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spring! Paschal triumph, paschal joy! Friends both on and offline. Cat pictures. And the real cat.
I have ordered a maternity swimsuit.
Much as last week, I think.
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.
As noted, I barely wrote anything, so you get a few lines of angst about whether I am in fact capable of writing anything…
- I’m very tired.
- It’s Holy Week.
- And Paris-Roubaix. I think.
- I am worried that I have forgotten how to finish things.
- [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]
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
I have returned to Our Flag Means Death, and have very nearly finished it. But now it’s the world figure skating championships.
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.
Mostly the above, with rye bread and seeded sourdough. Yesterday I went to my favourite falafel stand for lunch, though.
Cowslips! Primroses! More daffodils! Two goldfinches in the plum tree! Another hare!
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.
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.)
I got a load of bamboo socks off the local free group to see if they’re worth the darning. Initial signs are promising.
There is a dress that I very much like the look of on the Joanie site. And I still want a bigger darning loom.
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.
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.
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!
Generally encouraging outcome from Monday’s appointment. All seems more or less as it should be.
The days are getting longer, and the mornings are getting lighter, and there are crocuses and winter aconites and pussy willow and one brave daffodil.
I am not much less tired than I was. It is meant to be passing off by now!
Protein, particularly at breakfast. I had cottage cheese on my toast and was amazed by the way I didn’t need to head straight to the canteen for a sausage sandwich upon arrival at work. Now I am investigating protein-rich snacks.
And I’m really enjoying being in the garden.
Different configurations of pillows. (Tonight: three under my head and one under my top knee. We’ll see how that goes.)
Notes on ‘Camp’ (Susan Sontag), mostly to see if I had enough brain for theory. On the whole, yes, although I think Sontag is one of the more accessible critics anyway.
I have found several interesting blogs to add to my RSS feed reader. Some of them have not been updated in a while, but the great thing about RSS is that if they are it will show up.
Continuing with These Violent Delights and Death in Cyprus. And I did reread Persuasion, as I’ve been threatening for a few weeks.
Apparently the book that wants to be written is the book about writing a book when you have a job. So I’m going with that. I’m accumulating a lot of longhand that needs typing up, though I’m not sure when that’s going to happen.
I also saw a call for submissions I liked the look of and wrote a first draft of a poem, which hasn’t happened for a long time. Really not sure if it’s any good or not.
Continuing to catch up on: Four Continents; Alpine skiing world championships; biathlon world championships.
Well, I meant to visit the exhibition on Alexander the Great at the British Library, but I’ve missed it. A combination of meetings running into lunchtime, not being able to remember my password to the online booking system, and general disorganisation.
Not a huge amount: a pleasantly stodgy cheese and broccoli pasta bake earlier in the week, and then stuffed peppers (couscous and tomato with harissa) with grilled halloumi yesterday. That was extremely nice.
Since we were both in Cambridge on Monday, we went to the Haymakers in Chesterton, which used to be our designated local, and had pizza. Mine was a Capricciosa – artichokes, ham, olives, and probably other tasty things I’ve forgotten (it says mushrooms on the menu, but I asked for them to be left off).
I wish to note that I managed to get my bike all the way up Back Hill without having to get off to push it for the first time in ages. (I often feel that I could do it more often if I only tried a little harder, but by that time in the evening I’m usually short on willpower as well as energy.)
Attempted an escape room with colleagues; we failed miserably but had fun.
A hare, lolloping across a frosty field.
The loveliest thing happened yesterday: I was getting the washing in, and three small long-tailed tits came and started pecking away at the suet block, maybe a metre and a half away from me, tops. I waited to get the last few things down from the line until they’d finished.
I finished pruning the last apple tree and had a go at taming the wisteria. Maybe tomorrow I’ll look up what I need to do to plum trees, other than get the vines out of them.
I’m beginning to think about what I want to plant this year. Tarragon, certainly. Maybe I’ll finally manage to keep some parsley alive.
Increased light and warmth. The return of the idea-generating bit of my brain.
Tickets to a couple of events at the Church Times Faith and Literature festival. I had no idea this was happening until I looked on Winchester Cathedral’s website to see when Evensong was going to be next weekend, since I’m going there for something completely different. The programme is slightly frustrating, in that there are several things I’d like to hear all on at the same time, but since this was an entirely unexpected opportunity I’m not going to complain too much. I just hope I’ll have the energy for it. (Also wish to note that it didn’t even occur to me until several hours later to consider myself a failure for not having made enough of a name as a faithful litterata to have been invited. A couple of years ago it might really have got to me.)
Two cookery books: The Roasting Tin (this might have been last week) and The Pressure Cooker Cookbook. And a recipe binder in the Paperchase closing down sale.
More food containers.
Well, I still have the rest of the cupboard to organise.
I really liked this blog post by K. J. Charles.
We see holiness—wonderful things—everywhere, if we only look. Because life is everywhere, although time passes, and babies age, and people and things and ways go and are forgotten. No, not ‘though’. Because the tide is always going out.
For the writing a book book:
This is one of those irritating inner voices that is never satisfied. It will move the goalposts to the other end of town if you give it a chance. You? Writing a book? Don’t be ridiculous. That’s for people with… You can fill in your own blanks.
More travelling than is really ideal, but not much I can do about that.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here! Or recommend me protein-rich snacks (I don’t like milky drinks, though).
Kathleen Jowitt 