Tag: travel

Week-end: land and sea

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

The good

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

The mixed

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

The difficult and perplexing

A mild but intensely irritating cold.

What’s working

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

Experimenting with

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

Reading

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

Writing

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

Watching

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

Looking at

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

Cooking

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

Eating

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

Playing

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

In the garden

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

Appreciating

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

Acquisitions

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

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

Hankering

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

Line of the week

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

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

Saturday snippet

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

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

This coming week

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

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

Week-end: the last dance

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A small brown lizard on a grey rock surrounded by ivy and other bright green leaves

The good

Wedding! One of my brothers got married yesterday; it was a lovely afternoon in the sunshine by the river. There was a bus jaunt and a ceilidh and dancing to Pa’s 45s at the end of the night (hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart…).

I couldn’t help noticing how much better I was yesterday than at the last ceilidh I attended, thirteen months ago. Back then I was a month out from COVID and managed three dances, with extensive sit-downs between them. This time, seven months pregnant, I did two thirds or more (though my goodness, I was feeling it in my hips all night afterwards).

The mixed

Rail strikes made travel more complicated than it needed to be, though in practice this just meant an extra night in Portsmouth and a relaxed amble to the hovercraft.

The difficult and perplexing

I felt dreadfully flat afterwards. I think this was mostly tiredness, as I’m more cheerful today (also helps to have seen, and had longer conversations with, more of the family over lunch today). But the other part of it was that this was the last big thing before the baby arrives, and suddenly the calendar, which up until now was full of little islands of events and excursions, is all unexplored territory.

What’s working

Letting other people sort themselves out.

Reading

The Third Policeman (Flann O’Brien), which, at two chapters in, is already engagingly weird. Elephants Can Remember (Agatha Christie); I remembered the entire solution, which rather spoils it, though Mrs Oliver is always good value for money.

Writing

Little and not very often. I have a week off so maybe I’ll get some down when I get home. Or maybe I’ll rearrange the study. Or just nap.

Making

Nothing, but I note here that the person who previously owned my frock clearly had exactly the same problem with the neckline, as I found the remains of some stitching just where I was putting a safety pin.

Watching

The Giro d’Italia, though not so much the last few days. Maybe I’ll catch up. Maybe I’ll catch up with Eurovision, too.

Looking at

The delightfully eclectic mix of buildings in Old Portsmouth: eighteenth century pubs and 1960s council houses and the cathedral which has been a church for a very long time but a cathedral only for a century or so all rubbing shoulders. And the end of the A3, which runs out in a narrow street, laid with setts and disused tramlines, at the harbour.

Eating

Things with chips in pubs and various sorts of breakfasts in various different cafés (the Spinnaker at Portsmouth and the Blue Door in Newport were both very good). Wedding cake. And so forth.

Drinking

Warsteiner Fresh (alcohol free) – really not bad at all. And an excellent cup of coffee while we were waiting for the hovercraft at Southsea.

Moving

Dancing. Lots of it. And walking around Ventnor, which takes no little effort.

Noticing

Lizards! I always go looking for lizards when I’m in Ventnor during the summer months, and I spotted three or four when I was walking back from the seafront today. Yesterday I saw four impressively large fish in the river after the wedding ceremony (I do not know what species they might have been).

In the garden

It got a lot of rain last week, and I didn’t do much to it before we went away.

Appreciating

My family, and how we generally get on with each other and like seeing each other (not universally the case, as a conversation with my taxi driver on the way to the station on Thursday morning reminded me). A lift home from Tuesday’s antenatal class, saving me from a prolonged downpour. Having the disposable income to book an extra night in a hotel without having to worry about it. My frock fitting (another week and I think it would have been too tight). Modern technology meaning that I could participate in a discussion that I was at least partly responsible for initiating.

Acquisitions

A charity shop top with a design of leaves and leopards.

Hankering

Nothing, really.

Line of the week

I have a cat on my lap; this feature may follow when I don’t. Or it may not.

Sunday snippet

As above.

This coming week

One day of attacking the contents of my father’s house (I thought I might do some of that this afternoon, but I had a nap in a chair instead), then home to get my own house in order.

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

De Kusttram: the Belgian coastal tramway

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There is one country in the world in which you can travel almost all the way along the coast in a single tram journey. It’s Belgium.

This is made possible by the fact that the Belgian coastline isn’t actually very long. If you were to think of Belgium as a cartoonish stegosaurus with its head facing north-west and its spines interlocking with the Netherlands and Germany and its tail slipping under Luxembourg, only the smooth top of its saurian skull would be up against the sea. You can travel from one end to another in a couple of hours. It doesn’t go quite all the way to the frontier at either end; you could, if you were feeling particularly pedantic, walk the extra bits. We weren’t, so we didn’t.

We were staying in Bruges (Brugge, to the locals): a city built for trade and now operating almost entirely for the benefit of the tourists. The Kusttram is, if anything, the opposite. While its website makes some attempt to sell it as a tourist experience, the material on the ground and, above all, the clientele, make it clear that it’s now used pretty much exclusively by the locals.

We started in Knokke, at the Dutch end of the line, bought day passes from a machine, and got onto a waiting tram just as it started to rain. Result. It swung around a turning circle (the middle planted with sunflowers and cosmos) and I caught a sight of some of the older trams hibernating in a shed. I believe they come out sometimes for heritage days. After a brief glimpse into back gardens, we joined the main road along the coast.

A green space with pink cosmos and yellow sunflowers, seen through rain-speckled glass

We ran behind the docks at Zeebrugge, seeing various interesting looking cranes and boring lorries. Then we got into sand dunes. For a long way, the dunes were between us and the sea and mostly blocked the view of it; every now and again there were footpaths with signposts pointing to the strand. The exceptions were the towns: a wide open square at one end of Blankenberge; a marina at the other.

Tony was falling asleep as we approached Oostende, so we got off and found a health food café where we bought a distinctly unhealthy coffee (me) and Diet Coke (him). There was also a market of the sort that sells cheap socks and garish T-shirts, clustered around a bandstand decorated with the names of illustrious composers of bygone centuries. We glanced at this briefly, then, finding that there was quite a wait until the next tram, looked into a sportswear shop.

West of Oostende we finally got to see some beach. The road and the tramway ran on the north side of the dunes here, and there were campsites and wartime fortifications to look at too.

After that there were a lot of high-rise seaside flats, mostly between us and the sea. These were a running theme all the way along. I can’t say I thought much of them. They blocked the view when we were on the tram, and when we got off they made textbook urban canyons and sent the sea breeze hurtling along the streets. Towards the end of the line the flats shrank down to detached houses, and then the buildings gave out altogether and we were into trees.

A crooked photo of a deliberately crooked art nouveau building with sign 'Plopsa Hotel'

The penultimate stop was Plopsaland, which is a name to conjure with. It’s a theme park. From the tram we could see an artfully crooked house and various roller coastery things. It looked quite fun, as theme parks go. And the car park was full, so it’s obviously popular.

A tram waits under a three-arched canopy with bright yellow poles

The way back was an opportunity to stop at all the places that had looked interesting on the way through. Also to get some lunch in central De Panne, which hadn’t looked particularly interesting, but which had looked as if it might sell food. It did. We found various options on the seafront and ended up eating omelette and chips in, whenever the door was opened, a stiff breeze. I realised too late for it to be of much use that we were back in French-speaking Belgium. Our waiter was called Guillaume; it said so on the bill.

A tram runs down the middle of a street lined with boxy blocks of flats

Then we got back on the tram. Niewpoort had looked interesting. The trams stopped under a big glass roof and there were a couple of restaurants I’d noted as possibilities for lunch. We were no longer in need of something to eat, but we wandered a few blocks inland and found that it was a very pleasant little town, mostly built in the 1920s for, one supposes, the obvious reason. There wasn’t much going on at that time of day, though as we approached the main square the bells were ringing cheerfully. Tony went into Carrefour and came away with a commemorative notebook. I never found out what the occasion was. Meanwhile, I ate an apple and tested myself on the flags of EU nations that were flying alongside the tramway.

1920s brick building with stepped Dutch gable, and circular devices in the window frames
Through a tram window are seen tram rails with sand blown up across them, a sign saying 'Dumain Riversijde', and a woman with three dogs walking next the sea

We stopped again in Oostende, this time getting off at few stops before the city began in earnest so that we could walk a little way along the beach. A tall ship was darting about a little way offshore. The beach was a generous sweep of pale sand, scattered with seashells. I thought about paddling, but decided against it. The sea was quite a way out, and the wind was cold.

We hopped back on the next tram and then off again closer to the city centre, walking up toward the casino and through the streets, often coinciding with a couple of women trundling enormous suitcases. It was a pleasant wander through Oostende, looking at fantastic twiddly art nouveau buildings, and ending up at the railway station, where we got back on a tram.

Imposing railway station building with two square towers, one each side of a gently arched central hall, all seen from across a stretch of water with yachts moored.

Our next stop was De Haan, and it was magnificent. We got off at the main stop – which preserves some beautiful cast-iron signs and a fantastic little hut – and walked seawards. The 1930s had gone to town here. The 1930s had built a town here.Stockbroker’s Tudor, but by the beach. Kingston-upon-Sea. My only regret was that it was getting late and so it didn’t make sense to stop for an ice cream.

An improbably gabled station building with 'Coq sur Mer' written on the roof. A tram is pulling up.
A large mock half-timbered building against clear blue sky in evening light

I looked with envious eyes upon someone who had brought a pizza box on the tram with them, and the rest of the journey was taken up with thoughts of dinner. Night was falling when we reached the end of the line. It took longer than we’d expected to find somewhere to eat in Knokke, if only because I wasn’t in the mood for giant lumps of meat. We did in fact end up at somewhere that called itself a grill, but they served me a huge dish of seafood pasta, and very nice it was too.

And that, apart from the train back to Bruges, was the end of the day.

Why do this? Well, obviously the main reason to do this is because you can. ‘The only reason’, my neighbour said when I told him where we’d been, but I think that’s a little unfair. There are other coastlines traversable by public transport with far better views (the bus around Land’s End, for example). But why not? It’s a cheap day out, you get a unique snapshot of a nation in a few hours, and it makes a change from the boat trips around the Bruges canals. (To be clear, we also took a boat trip around the Bruges canals.) You could even paddle.

Week-end: jiggety-jig

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
A group of small islands seen across a city from the top of a hill on a sunny day

The good

I very much enjoyed our last couple of days in France – exploring more of Avignon (including the covered market) on foot and by tram, and then visiting Marseille. The latter was very sunny and very windy. We took a bus a little way along the coast so that we could look at the Chateau d’If from the shore. Of course I now need to reread The Count of Monte Cristo, but then I always do.

Also, an extremely positive and useful vision and planning day with my Cursillo committee.

The mixed

I wouldn’t have chosen to take a rail replacement bus at 7.20am – but looking back to see the towers and walls of Avignon sharp against a hazy gold sunrise, and then driving through Tarascon and Beaucaire as it brightened into a clear sunshiny day, with the old walls basking in the light, made it worth it.

Got caught up with work and didn’t make it to Evensong on Thursday. But I learned today that Candlemas was not marked at Evensong on Thursday, so I have in fact been saved disappointment (and other people have objected).

The difficult and perplexing

Dealing with a jam containment failure on the TGV. My fault. Probably.

Not sure I will ever catch up on my emails. Oh well.

What’s working

The lectio divina on community from Fifty Ways To Pray. Embracing the idea that sometimes all choices are good (and therefore that dithering over where to eat lunch is a waste of time).

Reading

At Nîmes station I found a machine that dispensed short stories at the touch of a button. So I pressed the button and received a copy of Fleur Sauvage by Thierry Covolo on a long thin strip of paper.

Since getting back I’ve been pretty tired and have fallen back on Persuasion retellings from the AO3. May reread Persusasion proper. Some good blog posts, too: The Holiest Feast Day of Do-Overs from The Fluent Self, and Admiral Cloudberg was on particularly good form capturing the horrifying inevitability of Carnage on the Autobahn: the crash of Paninternational flight 112.

Watching

The European figure skating championships. I have to say it’s nice to be able to watch the final group in the women’s competition without constantly wondering whether it’s making me complicit in child abuse.

Looking at

More Provençal crib scenes, not to mention the churches that contained them – Ste Marie Majeure and Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille. I liked them both, flamboyant nineteenth century edifices that they are. Notre Dame de la Garde in particular is quite remarkable. It’s right at the top of the hill (we took the bus up) and even when you’re inside you can hear the wind howling around. It’s more or less wallpapered with votive plaques and representations of Our Lady’s miraculous interventions, including several model boats and aircraft. But particular kudos to Ste Marie Majeure for having an actually convincing flock of sheep in one of its crib scenes.

Cooking

I made jam tarts for Candlemas. (I forget now where I read about this tradition, and it may be a complete myth. Still, at worst I get jam tarts.)

Eating

More delicious French food, including cromesqui (a sort of deep-fried potato ball) and entremets (a cake made of chocolate mousse). Things I’d actually heard of included salmon and poached egg.

Noticing

Cats sitting on the roof of a hire van in a suburb of Avignon. A deer sneaking across the path ahead of me when I went for a walk on Thursday. A bus in Nîmes that thought it was a tram.

Appreciating

Warm blanket, fluffy cat. Bed.

Acquisitions

More badges for the camp blanket (still missing Avignon). Interesting flavoured salt, and truffled olive paste, from the covered market.

Hankering

So much unsuitable cheese. And the wine, too. (We did bring some back for purposes of future celebration.)

Line of the week

From No More Delay: a call to General Synod by Charlie Bell.

The minute we bless same-sex couples, people’s prejudice will be challenged by real, living people, right in front of them, living ordinary, faithful, loving, honest lives of love and faith, to coin a phrase.

This coming week

Back in the office. And maybe I’ll decide what to do with the butternut squash and sweet potato that have been hanging around for ages.

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

Week-end: l’on y danse

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The surviving arches of the bridge at Avignon, on a bright winter day)

The good

We are on holiday! We are staying in Avignon and visiting other towns in the vicinity as well. There is a great deal to see and the food is excellent. Also, the sun has mostly been out, and getting more sun was the object of the exercise.

The mixed

There is, inevitably, not enough time to do everything and see anything, and I am compiling a mental list of things we didn’t get round to this time/that were closed for the winter/would have needed a car/etc. So we will just have to come back and take slow trains along the Côte d’Azur/see the Pont du Gard/look for flamingoes in the Camargue.

The difficult and perplexing

It is cold. The place we are staying at is called La Vie de Bohême and my hands are doing the Che manina gelida bit. The mistral is blows straight through me. Just like home, really. But why do all the hand driers in the public lavatories insist on getting in on the act?

What’s working

Trousers over tights. Having a lie-down in the afternoon. Accepting the fact that really any establishment with a menu outside will feed me adequately and will be happy to do so.

Reading

I forgot to mention Winters in the World (Eleanor Parker) – following the cycle of the early mediaeval year and quoting a lot of literature along the way. I’m really enjoying it.

On the e-reader, I have These Violent Delights (Chloe Gong) – Romeo and Juliet, except older and more jaded, in 1920s Shanghai, with monsters and possession (sort of). I’m enjoying the story; the prose tends towards the clumsy (but see below). I’m also continuing with Death in Cyprus and returned to The Master and Margarita (the latter has now shown up). I’m not sure I’m really getting it.

Looking at

Lots of Provençal monuments! We went around the Palais des Papes, and out as far as you can along the famous bridge (there was an exhibition, with quite an interesting film about how they have worked out where the rest of it originally was). This morning in Nîmes we went around the Roman arena and I learned a lot about gladiators, and into the Maison Carrée. This afternoon in Arles we looked at the outside of the Roman arena (two in one day seemed excessive) and through the railings at the theatre.

My favourite thing, though, has been the crib scenes in the churches. The one in the cathedral at Avignon is currently showing a Candlemas scene; the one in Saint-Trophime in Arles is a magnificent multi-level edifice occupying an entire chapel and featuring locals in traditional dress coming to visit the crib. It even has a windmill at the top of the hill.

Eating

I said there’d be pancakes. There have, in fact, been three: one with chilli con carne at My Old Dutch (Chelsea) on Wednesday night; one with ham and Gruyère and an egg on top yesterday lunchtime, and one (‘crêpe Mont Ventoux’) with chestnut and whipped cream and chocolate sauce for pudding yesterday night. That may be enough to be going on with. I have also eaten onion soup (very, very effective when I was tired and cold the night we arrived), lamb stew, and quiche with leeks and bacon. It’s all been delicious.

Moving

Climbing up and down a lot of steps of various antiquity.

Noticing

A set of gallopers with black bulls alongside the usual horses. Young men with a shopping trolley full of puppies (I don’t know why; I hope they meant them no harm). Goats in a garden next the railway. Snow on the ground as we crossed the middle of France on the TGV. Two swans and a cormorant in the Rhône.

Appreciating

Having an apartment to ourselves. The SNCF app (when it’s been working). The friendliness and patience of pretty much everyone we’ve spoken to.

Acquisitions

Badges for my camp blanket (though not, so far, one saying Avignon).

Hankering

I keep passing shops full of soap and hats and shoes, and haven’t gone into any of them. Yet.

Line of the week

One really good one from These Violent Delights:

He was born with pride stitched to his spine.

This coming week

A little longer in France, and then home. I have quite a lot to sort out before next weekend, the beginning of a very busy February.

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

Week-end: Twelfth Night, somehow

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A paper 'stained glass' window shows the Magi offering gifts to the child Jesus and Mary

The good

Lunch out with friends. Sharing good news. A really interesting discussion about John the Baptist.

My brain is coming back! Slowly, but it’s on the way. I have been reading things. I have been writing things. I have been watching things.

The mixed

It’s just as well that I’ve been working from home all week, because I’ve been collapsing into bed as soon as I clock off. I’m a bit worried about how I’m going to cope next week.

The difficult and perplexing

I’m becoming increasingly aware that for my next trick I need to become much better at delegating. But at this stage I’m still very much in the ‘it’ll only take five minutes; might as well do it myself’ phase, and delegating (and chasing the people I’ve delegated to) is also work. Improvement needed.

What’s working

Going for the easy option. Zoom rather than a dash to the South (this is tomorrow but I’m already glad I’m not taking a train to Guildford). Lunch in the pub that is nearest. And so on.

Reading

Lady B- is back! And I’ve just started Snow Ball (Brigid Brophy): cynical and scintillating.

Writing

Most of an interview for my alma mater, and a little more on the blog about the Belgian Coastal Tramway. Coming soon. I hope.

Mending

I got the darning loom out again and mended holes in: my favourite navy Guernsey jumper; one of Tony’s long-sleeved T-shirts; a pyjama top.

Watching

Charade: a self-consciously silly caper film starring Audrey Hepburn and the Parisian urban transit network. Mostly the Métro, but there was an excellent moment where Cary Grant leapt onto the back of a bus, as is entirely correct. I guessed the solution of the mystery quite early on, but there were plenty of other twists to keep me amused.

Continuing with Detectorists. I also started Our Flag Means Death. I’d been rather put off by hype backlash (a constant weakness of mine) and the earnestness of the fandom discourse, but it turns out to be delightfully silly (as well as Good Queer Rep and, what I hadn’t heard so much about, a clever commentary on the place of pirates in popular culture). I continue to get earwormed by the Horrible Histories Blackbeard song.

Cooking

An extremely bland and comforting tuna pasta bake. And then the thing with pearl barley, chorizo and kale (the only way to make kale interesting that I have yet discovered).

Eating

Today at the pub I had a chickpea curry (forgettable) followed by peach tarte tatin (very nice).

Moving

It feels rather depressing to be noting what used to be my standard morning walk as an incident of record, but there we go.

Playing

This afternoon I was taught to play Bears vs Babies. Rather fun.

In the garden

The squirrel has discovered the peanut feeder. I shall rearrange the feeders and leave the nuts out of it for a bit.

Appreciating

Intelligent theological conversation. Friends. Being able to nap.

Acquisitions

Merino wool long johns in the Mountain Warehouse sale. Will it get cold enough again to wear them? We shall see.

Line of the week

Almost every line of The Snow Ball has been quotable. What about:

He was short, and hollowed out by middle age; and his sporran leapt hectically, leapt breathlessly, up and down, not keeping time with the lighter leaps of his jabot.

Saturday snippet

The beach was a generous sweep of pale sand, scattered with seashells. I thought about paddling, but decided against it. The sea was quite a way out, and the wind was cold.

This coming week

Four days in the office. Will I manage to stay awake? And will I get the hang of the (heretofore unmentioned) Instant Pot? Stay tuned!

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

December Reflections 15: journal/planner

kathleenjowitt4 Comments
spread from a week to view diary with tickets from various German transportation services and attractions stuck in

You get to see the journal. I spilt hot chocolate in my handbag a month or so back and it went all over my Filofax. Anyway, this is far more interesting.

I started keeping an agenda journal in 2017 after seeing the technique on The Soul of Hope, and it’s the only form of diary I’ve managed to keep up with any kind of regularity. I don’t make an entry every day, but to date I have been able to make an entry for every day. It serves as a repository for all the silly bits of paper that are too pretty to throw away and too silly to keep around, it serves as a record of what I’ve been up to and tells me when I last emptied the compost bin, and it’s fun. I’ve never yet got more than a week behind, and if I do find that I just can’t remember a day (or if it was just too boring to record in detail) I fill the gap with stickers.

This spread comes from the week we travelled down the Rhine – a most excellent trip, and one I’m glad to remember. This year’s journal is rather fatter than last year’s, although not so much so as I originally thought before I compared them.

Week-end: lounging

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A fluffy black and white cat sprawls across the top platform of a floor-to-ceiling grey plush cat tree, like a lazy gargoyle

The good

Two days off! And another one on Monday. I have been napping, writing, watching figure skating, planning a holiday and getting my hair cut. It’s much less straggly now, although if I don’t blow dry it then it still curls the wrong way at the bottom. Also the plumber came and replaced the kitchen tap. The new one doesn’t drip. It’s wonderful.

The mixed

I have the time to write. Where is the energy? And the motivation? I’m doing my best to trust that all this napping and skating-watching (and napping while skating-watching, sorry again Roman Sadovsky, though since that free skate turned out to have dropped him out of the medals when I woke up again maybe he’d rather I didn’t watch it) is going to get me to a place where I can write enthusiastically and freely, but that’s advanced practice.

The difficult and perplexing

Still tired.

What’s working

Well, the new kitchen tap. The shower is still temperamental, though cleaning the head with vinegar has helped a little.

Reading

I started The Paris Apartment (Lucy Foley) on the train home from York (did I say that last week?) but haven’t got any further with it. I got slightly irritated by the sheer profusion of unnecessary cliffhangers (oh no! she has been hit by something heavy and sharp! two chapters later, it turns out to have been a cat jumping on her!) but will probably pick it up again on another train journey sooner or later. I’ve been dipping into Atlas of Imagined Places (Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies), which is great fun, even if it’s making me painfully aware of my lamentable lack of pop culture knowledge. This is bound to feature as a Reader’s Gazetteer special when I’ve done a bit more dipping. And, in Sunday afternoon Christian reading, I’ve just begun Intimate Jesus: the sexuality of God incarnate (Andy Angel).

Writing

I finished the first draft of Starcrossers. Hurrah! It’s three and a half thousand words too long and I could easily make it longer. Oh dear. I’m going to let it sit for a month and see what’s to be done about it in December.

I also began a blog post about the Belgian Coastal Tramway, which I’m hopeful you’ll see sometime in the next few weeks.

Making

Return of the mystery patchwork (finally remembered to look in the fabric box in daylight, allowing me to cut out the last six patches and the wadding.

Mending

Darned some different bits of my black jeans. And one of Tony’s T-shirts.

Watching

The Sheffield Grand Prix. One of my friends got tickets to be there in person. I’m very jealous.

I would say, Twitter imploding, but actually I’ve only been following it at a distance. I haven’t really enjoyed being on Twitter since 2016 or so: this may be a prompt to step away. My favourite time on the internet was really round about 2009 or 2010 when LiveJournal was still thriving and Dreamwidth was just taking off so there could be two versions of the exact same post with two equally interesting conversations happening in the comments, and when blogs were still where it was and nobody had yet invented the algorithm. You can probably tell.

Cooking

I made a really good macaroni cheese on Friday. Using actual macaroni helps: it has that lovely squidgy schlick-schlick texture, which you just don’t get with penne. (I usually use penne, but I picked up a packet of macaroni from the side of the path a few weeks ago – I would be disowned if it ever came out that I left good food lying on the ground – and have been working my way through that.)

At the moment I have a turkey carbonnade in the slow cooker. I can’t see that this is any different from an idiosyncratic bolognese sauce, but never mind that. We’ll see how it tastes in a couple of hours. I have made polenta to go with it.

Eating

Our corner shop has become a Co-op and stopped selling plain Bounty bars. Disgraceful. It does, however, sell rather good orange chocolate.

Noticing

A flock of gulls flying overhead in a shallow V-formation.

In the garden

My Japanese anemone is attempting to bloom!

Appreciating

Lie-ins. Naps. Sleep in general, basically.

Acquisitions

Tickets to Avignon (on y danse, on y danse). The idea is that we get a bit of winter sunshine when I really need it, and in the meantime it’s something to look forward to.

And Molke had a sale so I’ve ordered some more bras.

Line of the week

We’ll be taking the TGV to Avignon, but I enjoyed Slow Travel: Europe by Train in the January 2008 issue of Hidden Europe.

We really mourn the passing of Eurostar’s old route into London where the train crept through Brixton on an ancient viaduct, screeched round tight curves past Battersea’s back gardens and trundled through a metroland full of bourgeois comforts: shiny Ebbsfleet will surely never be a match for Penge East, Sydenham Hill or sedate Shortlands.

Sunday snippet

From the end of Starcrossers:

We went beyond the farmland. We went all through the delta down to the sea, and then turned towards the moonrise until we caught sight of the high mountains. Then we returned to the city, Crew and Containment alike talking of where we might go next, and all of us were welcomed into the homes of our new acquaintances, where those who’d stayed at home were eager to hear what we’d seen.

This coming week

Another day off. Two days of tech support. Thursday, an appointment in Ely and a night at the opera in London (the appointment was scheduled two days ago and has stymied my beautiful plans, but I can still do both). And that’s as far ahead as I care to think for the moment.

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

Week-end: the higher the brow the harder they fall

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A stone sill a great height over a city has arrows and town names and distances carved into the it; one of those is '230 - Londen'

The good

The Kickstarter for Bicycles and Broomsticks is live and is nearly half-way funded only a few days in. I have written a story! My story will be published! People will read my story! In a year when I have more writing-imposter syndrome than usual, this is a good feeling.

We had a lovely time in Belgium, with a further two and a half days in Brugge, an hour people-watching in Brussels, and the comparative glamour of Standard Premier class on the Eurostar home.

Today, by contrast (but equally good), I’ve cycled ten minutes up the hill and slightly less down again (eating croissants and discussing questions of theology in the middle), and walked 5km in one hour, and watched Filippo Ganna cycling 57km in one hour, and pottered in the garden, and generally had a nice quiet day.

The mixed

Home trains. We got off the Eurostar to find that nothing was running to Ely, so we got on a slow train to Cambridge, then discovered that the next train to Ely was in fact running. And on Tuesday I miscalculated my tickets and had to buy a single to go with my super off-peak which I’d left it too late to use. Plus the fact that as things turned out I didn’t really need to go to London on Tuesday after all, except by the time I knew that I’d booked tickets to something I actually did rather want to go and see, so…

But! The Ely-King’s Lynn line is finally fixed, and the timetable restored, so I can get a train straight through to work in the morning, and I have two through trains per hour in the evening. Which is all marvellous.

The difficult and perplexing

My RSS reader came up with an error for Cate’s Cates this week. Catherine was a joyous, kind, witty, and eclectic internet presence; she died very unexpectedly earlier this year; and now a little more of what was left is gone.

Being eaten alive by mosquitoes in our room at Brugge. The bites are fading now, but at one point I had three on my right cheekbone. Fortunately the place also had a very flattering mirror and I could pretend it was a tripartite beauty spot, a mark of distinction, rather than untimely acne. The ones on my arms and feet were really itchy, though.

And I continue to be a zombie outside daylight hours.

What’s working

Well, not doing things outside daylight hours, but that gets increasingly difficult. I’m not even doing terribly well during the daylight hours, though Radio 3 is helping.

Promising myself I’d do an hour of admin and then stop (and setting a Forest Focus tree to enforce both).

Snag tights (the only snag, ha, is that all my other tights are infuriatingly ill-fitting by comparison). I was particularly pleased by the white-fishnets-over-black-opaques combination.

Reading

Very intellectual this week. I had put The Master and Margarita on my e-reader some time ago, and began that on the Eurostar home; I’m about a quarter of the page count and two decapitations in. Then I finished Art and Lies yesterday. Very good, impressionistic, visual, disquieting. (Note: all the content notes.) I couldn’t quite face going back to The Master and Margarita and more potential decapitations, so I started Sisters of the Vast Black (Lina Rather) which is delightful so far. (Nuns! IN SPAAACE!) Last night I was feeling too exhausted for anything new at all, so put on my pyjamas and lounged on the sofa with The Fellowship of the Ring (and the cat on my lap). I’m pretty sure I fell asleep like that.

Sewing

I got five badges (see Acquisitions, below) onto my camp blanket despite the best efforts of the cat.

Watching

Today, Filippo Ganna’s Hour Record, the end of the Lombardia, and highlights from the Singapore Grand Prix. At other points in the week, the keyboard finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and quite a lot of quiz shows from BBC iPlayer.

Looking at

Art in the Groeningen Museum in Brugge. I will never now be able to unsee The Judgement of Cambyses. There was some Bosch in there too, about which all I can say is ‘it was smaller than I expected’. But there were also things that I remember and enjoyed looking at: St Luke Drawing The Virgin Mary, for example, where the poor Madonna is trying to feed the baby Jesus, who is distracted by St Luke in the way that babies are. And a couple of really striking late nineteenth-century landscapes.

Then on Tuesday I went to see the Fashioning Masculinities exhibition at the V and A. A few of my friends had been to this and enthused. And it’s closing soon, and I can’t get to the V and A and back in a lunchtime (I’ve tried), so I thought that since I had to go to London to pick up my laptop, I might as well make an afternoon of it. And a fascinating afternoon it was. Although in some ways it was just as interesting looking at the other exhibition-goers; some of them were dressed very strikingly indeed.

Cooking

Caldo verde, sort of, and an attempted Black Forest sponge pudding from the remains of a chocolate tray bake and the end of a jar of cherry jam. I think I might have done better to bash the cake up more and mix in a little milk. But it was perfectly edible.

Eating

The most delectable waffle I have ever tasted. It was most beautifully light and it came with cream, ice cream, and kirsch-soaked cherries. I ordered a pot of coffee alongside it and that came with a macaron and a hard almond biscuit. This was at a café in Brugge called Carpe Diem.

We also ate some mussels and shrimp croquettes, and I had a thing called Croque Boum Boum for lunch on our last day (it’s a toasted cheese and ham sandwich with bolognese sauce on the top), but it’s that waffle that I’ll remember.

Drinking

Beer. I am a bit thrown by the way Belgian menus don’t tend to include the alcohol percentage, and tended to stick with known quantities for that reason. I did, however, risk a Tripel Karmeliet knowing that it was going to be pretty deadly.

And a lot of coffee.

Moving

I climbed the belfry at Brugge. Over three hundred steps. On the whole I prefer the one at Ghent, which has dragons, but I’m glad to have done it. I ended up at the top when the carillon was going for the hour, which was quite a thing. Couldn’t help but think of The Nine Tailors…

Noticing

Golden sunlight and long shadows, and the sharpness of the demarcation. A tiny two-spotted ladybird landing on my hand. The stars, when I went out to pick some rosemary last night.

In the garden

Apples, loads of them. Pears, quite a few of them. Today I pruned one of the apple trees and cut a load of wisteria and the vine back.

Appreciating

The fluffiness of the cat. The honesty and curiosity of the Way of Breakfast group. A weekend in which I don’t have to do anything much.

Acquisitions

I was very pleased to find cloth badges for Oostende, Wenduine, De Haan, and Littoral Belge at a flea market stall in Brugge. Then, in a souvenir shop, I found a Brugge badge that I preferred to the one that I’d already got, so I bought that one. Anybody want a Brugge badge?

Picked up Susan Sontag’s Notes On Camp from the V and A.

Hankering

More Snag tights. And I am still thinking about jeans. (Both my pairs of jeggings have worn through, too.)

Line of the week

I said last week that it ought to be Art and Lies. This week it is, although it was hard to find a single best line; so much of it is short, bright, fragments that don’t look like so much on their own, but cumulatively are utterly dazzling. However:

The crescent curve of the train mows the houses as it passes, the houses disappear behind the moon metal blade of the silver train.

This coming week

I have finally got all the ducks lined up in a row for a work project that’s needed doing for a long time. On Monday I’m beginning another writing stint. Saturday we’re going to see friends. I want to have the energy to enjoy all those things in their different ways.

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

Week-end: don’t Knokke it

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A tram showing destination 'Knokke' passes a station built with a steep roof and text 'Coq Sur Mer'

The good

I have fulfilled a reasonably long-held ambition and travelled almost the entire length of the Belgian coastline by tram. (Belgium is as far as I am aware the only country where this is possible). This is part of a most welcome long weekend away. I’ll write more about it when I’m back.

The mixed

I really do like tutoring, and I had the opportunity to do some this week. But my goodness, it doesn’t half take it out of me, and I spent the evening swaying gently to and fro and conversing in monosyllables.

The difficult and perplexing

Tired. Tired all the time. Really feeling it at the moment, particularly when I encounter too many people and too much noise, and had an embarrassing tearful delayed introvert meltdown in the high street on Sunday.

Plus, of course, The News.

What’s working

A warm bath. With a bright green jasmine-scented bath room. Also the WordPress app is a great improvement on trying to do this in the mobile browser.

Reading

Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson. Not sure what’s going on but I’m enjoying it.

Mending

I started darning a sock but didn’t get very far.

Watching

I forgot to mention Dune last week. I didn’t fall asleep, which is an improvement on all my previous experiences watching any adaptation of Dune (Tony’s university tendency to start showing it at eleven at night after a bottle of wine really didn’t help here) but it’s still somewhat slow. This week, I managed to watch the end of the women’s world championship road race (really cheered me up on my miserable Sunday afternoon) and the beginning of the men’s.

Looking at

The Gold exhibition at the British Library. Some beautiful manuscripts there. I was charmed by a beetle in a gold margin, and spent some time looking at golden cross-hatching on a picture of Our Lady.

Plus bits of Brugge from a boat, and bits of the North Sea from a tram.

Eating

I’ve just had some excellent spaghetti with seafood. Yesterday I had Flemish beef stew. No waffles yet; this feels like an omission. And on Thursday night we went for sushi in London. Very tasty. I’m not sure I’d ever tried green tea ice cream or sesame ice cream or indeed chestnut ice cream before now.

Noticing

Some gorgeous Art Deco and Art Nouveau architecture (in among some dismal high-rise seaside flats). A lot of dogs.

Appreciating

Our attic bedroom across the road from Brugge cathedral. Continental coffee. I like being able to order plain ‘coffee’ (or koffie, café, Kaffee, etc) and receiving something really nice, no further questions.

Public transport. I travelled from one end of a country to another in two hours for €7.50.

Acquisitions

I got a Brugge badge for my camp blanket. Spent far too much money on books in Ely cathedral shop on Sunday. (One was something I’d intended to buy in August, but still…) And ordered and received some new underwear from Molke.

Hankering

As I notice a hole at the edge of the last patch but one on my black jeans, I once again consider acquiring a pair without elastane, and possibly with an expensive brand name…

Line of the week

Ought to be from Art and Lies, but I didn’t bring it with me. Have a line from Cyclist magazine instead:

I could stand here all morning, lost in a sea of beauty, the mountains tugging at the very fibres of my soul. But yet I am man, I have simple needs, and it doesn’t take too much talk of coffee and cake at the bottom of this descent to lure me from my reverie.

This coming week

I return home, go to London both more and less than in an ideal world I would, and probably do some laundry.

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