Tag: the comfortable courtesan

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

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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

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

The good

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

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

The mixed

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

The difficult and perplexing

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

What’s working

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Making

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

Watching

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

Looking at

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

Cooking

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

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

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

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

Eating

As above.

Noticing

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

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

In the garden

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

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

Appreciating

People! (Particularly Tony.)

Hankering

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

The cat’s current preferred location

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

Line of the week

Havi on screens and screening:

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

This coming week

Your guess is as good as mine, honestly.

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

Week-end: hurry up and wait

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

The good

I tested negative for Covid on Wednesday, after not having bothered (it wasn’t as if I was going anywhere) since last Friday. This is a great relief. It seems to have knocked me out less than the last bout did, though I’m still falling asleep all the time (mind you, I’ve been doing that for the last nine months…)

The difficult and perplexing

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

What’s working

The sofa bed. Ice lollies.

Reading

Other than finishing off The Chronicles of Count Antonio, I’ve been rereading The Comfortable Courtesan series. I’ve got up to Domestick Disruptions. I’d forgotten how fast everything happens in the beginning: the epistolick mathematickal flirtation, the appearance of Mr F-, the elopement… I think that probably reflects the way that it started out being written a few sentences at a time; but anyway, the contrast with the current story (which I am also keeping up with) is quite interesting.

Mending

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

Watching

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

Cooking

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

Eating

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

Noticing

A great spotted woodpecker! It came up from the other side of the fence, so I saw the head first, then the spotted bit, and finally the red flash and tail. That’s two woodpeckers I’ve seen in the garden now (there was a green one a couple of years ago).

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time sitting under the pergola, and have seen various birds from there. Sparrows. A robin. There’s also a very bold thrush which doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by my wandering right past.

In the garden

Besides birds – the nasturtiums are on the point of flowering; the pink roses are going great guns, as are the Peruvian lilies. I bought some French sorrel from a plant stand outside someone’s house and put that in.

We’re thinking of what we can do with the front garden, which at present is a dismal rectangle of slate chippings. It’s more or less eastward facing and gets a lot of sun; what it won’t reliably get is water, because the water butts and outside tap are all round the back, and I’ve been having enough trouble getting around the back garden with a watering can the last couple of years. I understand that this part of the country is technically a desert; it certainly feels like one today. Also we don’t want anything that grows higher than about four feet, or it’ll block the light to the front window. Thus far my mind is defaulting to tulips, but we also need something for the months of the year that aren’t April. I don’t think I’ve ever had a blank slate (pun not intended) garden before; it’s a little daunting.

Appreciating

Sleep.

Acquisitions

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

Hankering

Looked at some filleting knives but didn’t buy any. And we can’t get the garden table we had our eye on without also getting the chairs, which we don’t want. (The little one we got last month is excellent for the two of us, but won’t be much help when it comes to company, or when company comes to us.)

The cat’s current preferred location

On top of the fridge.

Line of the week

From The Menologium, quoted and translated by Eleanor Parker in Winters in the World:

… It likes then/ to gaze longer upon the earth and to move more slowly/ across the fields of the world, the fairest of lights/ and of all created things.

This coming week

More waiting, I expect.

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Ideas for what to do with a small eastward-facing plot? Share them here!

The Reader’s Gazetteer: Q

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You get ten points for putting down this Scrabble tile, because Q is a tricky one.

I don’t think I can give myself Qualling (which we knew only as Q- for the first few years of The Comfortable Courtesan) – while the residence of the Duke of Mulcaster is undoubtedly very fine, I said the other day that I wasn’t going to allow Netherfield Park.

Thank goodness, then, for Thomas Hardy, and Quartershot. True, he only uses it twice. The first time, he’s triangulating another location, and dismisses it as an ‘important military station’, but I’ll take that. Later in the book, we learn that it has a music hall. Jude has been doing some masonry work there.

Quartershot is a beautifully apposite name; better, I think, than the original Aldershot. Not only does ‘quarter-‘ pick up the sense of ‘barracks’, but, echoing ‘quarterstaff’, it doubles the martial allusions. Of course, the ‘-shot’ is a gift.

The last time I was in Aldershot was for a hen party last summer. I spent quite a long time sitting on the wall outside the station after the coffee shops closed, waiting for an AirBnB owner to come down from London to let me in. It was a strange couple of hours, watching the minibuses full of care assistants arrive and depart, wondering if my host was going to arrive before I finished reading One Day, trying not to notice that I was getting chilly. I didn’t go looking for any music halls.

Books mentioned in this post

The Comfortable Courtesan series, L. A. Hall

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V

#indiechallenge – An Honourable Estate (L. A. Hall)

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The blurb

Clorinda has brought about a happier state of affairs in the Earl of N-‘s family, but fears that this may have earned her the Earl’s enmity. The bad poet Mr W- Y-‘s behaviour is becoming increasingly and worryingly erratic. Bets are being laid on the likelihood of Clorinda’s remarriage, and the identity of the groom. There are still a deal of contrivances upon hand.

The author

L. A. Hall is a historian and retired archivist. Short stories by her have appeared in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women and The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women. She regrets to say that she does not own a pet wombatt.

The publisher

Sleepy Wombatt Press is the imprint under which the author releases the stories of Clorinda Cathcart and her circle.

The bookshop

Amazon, which as a general principle I try to avoid. But I did want a prettily bound volume.

The bingo card

This could count as: ‘Book from a series’ or ‘A Women’s Press’. The cast is as diverse as ever, so one could make a case for ‘LGBTQIA’ or ‘Marginalised People’. But I think it’s probably going to end up as ‘Favourite’.

My thoughts

The Comfortable Courtesan series has been my bedtime reading over the last several months, and it only took a little bit of cheating to make the end of one of them fall within the week of the IndieAthon.

As the cover suggests, the wombatt plays second fiddle to the mongoose in this tenth volume of Clorinda’s memoirs. We pick up the action at the point where she has exerted some subtle leverage upon the Earl of Nuttenford to induce him to provide appropriately for his family; the unforeseen consequence of some of her earlier contrivances is that he’s no longer in favour of a marriage between his daughter Lady Anna and the Marquess of Offgrange. Which is unfortunate, because everybody else is very much in favour of it…

And, as the title suggests, marriages, or lack of same, of one sort or another are the main preoccupation of this volume even after Lady Anna’s problems have been sorted out. There’s a shotgun wedding, an attempted abduction, and the aftermath of a too early marriage, as well as the usual glimpses of established relationships: Lady Jane’s unorthodox marriage to Admiral Knighton; the other Lady Bexbury and Captain Penkarding’s household; and of course both sides of Raxdell House, which Clorinda spends most of this volume visiting.

I wouldn’t recommend this book as an introduction to the series, but for longstanding fans it’s another delightful installment of Clorinda’s adventures, with the usual mix of the sensational and the gentle.