Tag: week-end

Week-end: flop 2: flop harder

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

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

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

The good

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

The mixed

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

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

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

The difficult and perplexing

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

What’s working

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

Reading

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

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

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

Writing

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

Watching

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

Appreciating

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

This coming week

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

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

Week-end: 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: time slows

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
Creamy-white rose

The good

Attending the Clausura (closing service) for Ely Cursillo #37. While the church wasn’t packed, people-wise, it was absolutely suffused with joy. It is such a privilege to lead this… movement? group? Community.

And now, winding up and winding down. After a very hectic month, this has been a nice peaceful week. I’m slowing down physically, but this feels appropriate rather than frustrating. Things are taking longer, and that’s fine. Walking thirty-five minutes to a routine ten minute appointment is an opportunity to be out in the sunshine; work tasks are taking as long as they take and the next time they happen it won’t be me doing them. But on the other hand, things that have been hanging over me for ages and which I thought were going to take ages have been tidying themselves up with remarkably little effort. We made a list of things to do this long weekend and got ninety per cent of it done on Friday.

And my concentration seems to be improving. It’s just taking a little effort now to settle down to an activity without trying to do three other things at the same time and check my phone every five minutes.

The mixed

The weather is gorgeous, but I am getting so hot.

The difficult and perplexing

I stubbed my toe on a chair at work. It bled a little at the time, but I thought nothing of it. Now I find that I have split the nail a long way down and half of it is flapping around, or would be if I hadn’t stuck a plaster over it. I have acquired some gauze and micropore tape, with which I hope I will be able to rig up something that will allow it to breathe and heal without catching on things. We’ll see.

What’s working

Immersion in water – whether by putting my feet in a plastic box full of cold water to cool them down, or by putting my entire self into a swimming pool.

Reading

I finished Seven Ages of Paris. Depressing (and, I can’t resist saying, not enough about the buses; though I don’t think that I had known that they parked them at fifty metre intervals down the Champs-Élysées to frustrate a German aerial troop landing: much good that did anybody) and, I feel, not entirely unbiased. But also entertaining and informative, and All Gall now makes much more sense to me. (I often feel that any study of mid-twentieth century history is a process of gradually getting more and more of Flanders and Swann’s references.)

And this piece on Soul Survivor (it’s mostly not about the recent revelations of horrible stuff, which does not feel like something that I have any standing to talk about), which made me feel very much as if I’d dodged a bullet. I never went to Soul Survivor, though two of my brothers did. I can see exactly how, in my late teens, I’d have been vulnerable to getting peer pressured into having a significant pseudo faith experience. Even at the advanced age of 37 I found I had a lot of Doing Faith Wrong monsters on the loose this week.

Mending

Sewed a button back on.

Watching

Still the Giro d’Italia. My goodness, that time trial! I think, that if there had to be a dropped chain in there somewhere, this was the most satisfying way for it to work out. But all the same, argh.

Today is Licence to Queer’s Donate Another Day. I have places to be this morning (specifically, church, and not Our Lady of Smolensk) so I got ahead by watching GoldenEye last night. It’s my favourite of the Brosnan Bonds (and Brosnan is my Bond): such fun, and Natalya is great. Anyway, everyone else kicked off at ten today, and Tomorrow Never Dies starts at one, so join in if you like Bond, and chuck a tenner at Unicef.

Cooking

Yesterday I gutted and scaled and filleted a fish (a sea bream, to be precise) for the first time. I failed to get some of the flesh along the top side, but I think I’d do better with a proper filleting knife. Maybe I’ll get one. Made stock from the head and bones: risotto tomorrow.

Then I put a slice of prosciutto on top, sprinkled it with breadcrumbs, parsley, and parmesan cheese, and cooked it alongside roast courgette, pepper and onion (recipe from The Hairy Dieters). It was extremely tasty.

Eating

See above. Also (for I am not on a diet, hairy or otherwise) yellow-stickered Waitrose cream buns. I am getting massively hungry at the moment.

Moving

Swimming. Pilates (this happens every week, but usually on a Tuesday, so I’ve forgotten about it by the time I get to this post. This week’s session was yesterday).

Noticing

Three small deer (one fawn, and presumably two parents) on the path behind our house. Muntjacs, maybe? I’m not very good at deer.

A train in GWR livery at Cambridge station – rather a long way from home, one would have said.

In the garden

I weeded one raised bed and put in three tomato plants. The other one didn’t need so much in the way of weeding; I put runner beans in it. And I found space for five cosmos plants around the garden.

The first rose is blooming. I think this bush is my favourite, aside from its habit of trying to revert to the rootstock; it has a lovely, faintly lemonish, scent.

Appreciating

Time. Focus. Other people’s gardens.

Acquisitions

I finally gave in and ordered three frocks from Joanie. One of them looks more like a tablecloth than I’d anticipated; one will do very nicely for the autumn; and one is fabulous and I’m wearing it now. (I don’t think I mind looking like a tablecloth, but the dress in question doesn’t fit. Yet. I think I’m just getting to the end of the phase where taking my usual size and ensuring it has a very full skirt is working. Still, only another month or so to go…)

From plant stalls outside people’s houses: two chilli pepper plants (one cayenne, one Hungarian something or other); three tomato plants (one Garnet, one Roma, one I’ve forgotten); and a honeysuckle.

Hankering

Well, a filleting knife, now.

Line of the week

From Rosemary Hill’s piece Consulting the Furniture in the last London Review of Books. (It is about time I went back to Kettle’s Yard. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I am on maternity leave…

Kettle’s Yard’s particular kind of austere elegance suits Cambridge and its Puritan, parliamentary history. It could never have happened in Oxford.

This coming week

Bank holiday. A committee meeting. Some family coming to see us. And, I hope, I’ll get the study sorted.

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

Week-end: 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: so you can cycle while you cycle

kathleenjowitt2 Comments
Swans' nest, with one bird on the nest and the other swimming in the ditch below, dabbling its beak in the water. There's also a mallard drake, possibly also on a nest.

The good

We had a weekend at a spa! I had never done this before, having mentally classified it under ‘not for the likes of us’ and also been nervous about getting it all wrong and exposing myself as a total fraud, but the in-laws suggested it as a nice thing to do before the baby appears and we disappear into a mountain of laundry, and I had to admit they had a point. So we booked into Quy Mill, just outside Cambridge, for one of the few free weekends we have this summer.

Anyhow, the conversation somehow moved from ‘haha, we could cycle there!’ to ‘actually, we could cycle there!’ and our successful excursion to an antenatal class in Littleport demonstrated that taking the Bromptons on the train and cycling to our destination was perfectly practical. (I know this in theory, but it had been a while since I’d put it into practice.) So we decided to cycle there. And then the purchase of a cargo bike happened rather faster than we’d anticipated, and suddenly it made sense for Tony to pick that up on the way. Fortunately it is large enough to hold one folded Brompton, so he was able to cycle to pick up the new bike and then cycle onwards on the new bike carrying the old one. (Yo dawg, I heard you liked cycling, so I put a cycle in your cycle so you can cycle while you cycle…)

This made it possibly the most Cambridge spa trip imaginable, even if we hadn’t then cycled over to Anglesey Abbey the next day.

It was very pleasant. There was extremely nice food; I had a lot of stress massaged out of my back; I also had my toenails painted. I went swimming twice. And we avoided most of the coronation hoohah. (I am what you might call a pragmatic monarchist: I can quite see that you need someone to cut the ribbons and all that, but my patience for the breathless commentary had been wearing very, very thin.)

Other good things this week: the political news was encouraging; the antenatal class was very interesting; the garden is flourishing.

The mixed

I generally enjoy thunderstorms, but not when I’m trying to get somewhere. I spent quite a long time sheltering in the underpass beneath the A14, 300 metres from my destination, but also 300 metres from the last lightning strike.

Also I got lost in Fen Ditton. This is becoming a habit and I could really do without it. I think I’d have beat the thunderstorm had it not been for that extra two kilometres.

The difficult and perplexing

I haven’t quite got the hang of ‘winding down’; or, rather, I’m doing OK at the doing less, but not so well at the feeling OK about it.

What’s working

Being outside. Using the Brompton rather than the (heavy) town bike.

Reading

I’m keeping on with Seven Ages of Paris (Alistair Horne). Have reached the twentieth century. No mention of the buses yet but it may yet happen (we have had the taxis of the Marne). Began Towers in the Mist (Elizabeth Goudge) – more appropriate than I’d realised, since the action begins on May day.

Finished Black Gay British Christian Queer (Jarel Robinson-Brown): very good indeed. Also God’s Lovers in an Age of Anxiety (Joan M. Nuth); Julian of Norwich continues to be the best.

Read Miss Marple’s Final Cases and finally ran out of steam with Agatha Christie with Murder is Easy.

Watching

Never Say Never Again was on telly on bank holiday Monday, so I joined in the Licence To Queer watchalong. I think it’s rather underrated, actually, and I much prefer it to the original Thunderball (omits the coercion and a lot of the tedious shark stuff).

I have been watching the Giro d’Italia with Tony. And we managed to turn on the telly at exactly the right moment to hear the new Vivats in I Was Glad (and then to be irritated by the commentators talking over the rest of it and confirm our decision not to watch any more coronation stuff).

Looking at

The Last Supper, a set of sculptures by Silvy Weatherall, at the cathedral. These are abstract busts made from broken crockery stuck together with gold, kintsugi style. While I could see what she was getting at, I failed to get beyond my initial reaction – which was ‘Doctor Who monsters’.

Cooking

‘Asian-style aromatic pork’ from one of the slow cooker books – OK but not particularly exciting.

Eating

Quy Mill did very nicely by us. I was particularly impressed by the slow-cooked lamb and the (remarkably light) sticky toffee pudding. Last night we went to the White Hart in Fulbourn, and I had a Mediterranean vegetable pizza.

Moving

Cycling – nothing further than 8km, but quite a few short journeys. (It’s rather galling to have someone on the exact same bike whoosh past you, but I don’t think he was seven months pregnant…) And swimming.

Noticing

Nesting swans on Ditton Meadows (when I rode past on Friday evening, the one that wasn’t in charge of the nest was blocking half the cycle path; today, it was swimming in the ditch). A wagtail at the hotel this morning. Very vocal blackbirds. The same graffiti on the Chesterton railway bridge that’s been there as long as I can remember.

In the garden

Loads of apple blossom, and bees enjoying it. Plenty of wisteria flowering too. The white rose that always flowers first has five buds; the others are beginning to think about it.

Appreciating

A four-day week. A weekend of mild hedonism.

Acquisitions

I have mentioned the cargo bike – not that I shall be riding it for another couple of months. A couple of small fripperies in the shop at Anglesey Abbey.

Hankering

We’re considering some garden furniture – the main problem being that ‘big enough to eat dinner off’ and ‘small enough to fit sensibly under the pergola’ are incompatible specifications. Some thought required…

Line of the week

From the London Review of Books, here’s Sam Rose on Clive Bell:

it’s hard to feel very sorry for a man who insisted on having it all, got more than his fair share, and spent his life increasingly embittered about the little that had been denied him.

This coming week

Another bank holiday, another antenatal class, some travel that’s become rather more complicated than it needed to be, and, most excitingly, a wedding.

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

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: 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: fasting

kathleenjowitt4 Comments
A large model cow, painted lilac and decorated with hearts in the colours of various Pride flags and words associated with LGBTQ+ identities, standing on a rainy pavement.

The good

Daffodils. Birds. Loads of writing. The satisfaction of getting shot of some stuff that was cluttering up the place.

The mixed

My short story got rejected. But it was for exactly the reason I expected: it’s way too long and really it wants to be a novel. And the editor really liked it apart from the fact that it was way too long. So. I now find myself with several projects that are well on the way to being something substantial, and I probably need to prioritise.

The difficult and perplexing

Fasting glucose tolerance test. No food from 10pm on Thursday night, train to Cambridge, blood test, glucose drink, hour’s wait, blood test, hour’s wait, blood test. Not my idea of a fun Friday morning, and I felt a bit skew-whiff all the rest of the day. Now we wait to see if I have gestational diabetes. I really hope not.

Train delays at the most inconvenient moment possible. And a decision that was going to result in awkward questions whichever way it went.

What’s working

Early nights. Bathing/showering in the evenings. Saying what I’m not prepared to do.

Reading

Last week I remembered to report my Sunday reading and forgot about the weekdays, in which I finished Death in Cyprus. It was rather an unsatisfactory read: I wanted to slap pretty much everybody; it was incredibly cruel to the older, unattractive character; and the resolution pulled an element out of (so far as I could see) absolutely nowhere. I think Death in Berlin was better.

Still persevering with These Violent Delights.

And I got through most of the latest London Review of Books in between blood tests.

Writing

More on Don’t Quit The Day Job. It’s quite easy writing: at the moment I’m just expounding on my own writing process in an extremely self-indulgent fashion. I’ve only just got all my longhand typed up this evening. What I must do on Monday is rearrange things to fit the new structure.

Thinking about

The myth of the heroic intervention. This came up three times in two days and I think it probably needs a post.

Making

I have the house to myself at the moment and have taken advantage of that fact and got out the sewing machine to do some American-style patchwork. I think my original plan was somewhat overambitious but I’m having fun with the modified pattern.

Mending

Darning a pair of socks, very slowly.

Looking at

An exhibition about the history of Addenbrooke’s after my fasting glucose test.

Cooking

Soup! I adore soup and it is a thousand times less faff in the pressure cooker. I made one with cauliflower and parmesan on Thursday and one with red lentils and Swiss chard this evening.

Eating

The above, plus various things excavated from the freezer. Having got the yoghurt to work last week, I’ve been adding apple sauce, plums, etc. And I made the remains of some roast pork into a sort of stew.

Moving

I managed what used to be my usual walk without having to sit down at least once this week! And I have been getting out for it every morning I’ve been working from home.

Noticing

Robins all over the place, sitting in trees and announcing their presence. Blackbirds, too, and (I think) a bullfinch. And I don’t know whether the decorated cow (whose name, I learned from the information sheet, is Moosha P. Cambridge) has only just arrived outside Sessions House, or if I haven’t been that far along the road, but either way I only noticed her today. Isn’t she magnificent?

In the garden

Got my act together and removed some compost from the Hotbin (the top end was steaming away very happily). Also, not exactly the garden, but I sowed some herb seeds in a pot in the conservatory. Maybe this is the year I get fresh parsley to survive…

Appreciating

Increased energy levels. Soup. Refilling a jar with ground coriander for 32p.

Acquisitions

A bird feeder, the sort made of square mesh to hold peanuts, with a cage around it to keep squirrels out. On getting it home I discovered that we do not in fact have any peanuts. I was sure we did. Never mind. I also got some herb seeds and a nice terracotta pot with multiple holes (see In the garden).

Line of the week

From Theirs and No One Else’s (Nicholas Spice) in the London Review of Books:

There’s a performance of the Prelude to Lohengrin, conducted by Claudio Abbado towards the end of his life, where the orchestra moves like water weed in the current of a river or grassland in a breeze.

Saturday snippet

I wrote and I kept going, wrote and gave up, wrote and wrote and despaired and regained hope and started writing again.

This coming week

I have vague ambitions to Get The House Sorted Out and Get Those Things Drafted and also to Do Some More Patchwork. I also have an appointment to see the midwife and, as mentioned above, should get the results of my glucose test.

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

Week-end: riding the wave

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A stylised fish carved into dark wood

The good

A really good writing week! Not only did I write several pages (yet to be typed up) on Don’t Quit The Day Job, I dipped into The Rassendyll Kidnapping, pushed it up above 60,000 words just because it was so close, and decided that maybe it had some possibilities after all. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to keep riding this wave, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Yesterday was the Cursillo Quiet Day, which happened very satisfactorily without my having to do very much about it at all. I spent a while sitting on a bench in the churchyard in the sunshine and it was lovely.

The mixed

Tiredness, naps, walks or not, yada yada.

The difficult and perplexing

Winter’s last (one hopes) gasp. I missed Friday’s blizzard, but all that really means is that I cycled to the station through cold and heavy rain before it turned to snow.

Worrying about various things over which I have limited or no control. It doesn’t help, of course.

What’s working

Deciding the evening before what I’ll be writing the next day. Tomorrow I’m going to do another exercise for each of the underpopulated chapters. This is falling apart a little bit because I didn’t type up last week’s work yesterday; I suspect that if I had I’d have something more strategic. But never mind.

Experimenting with

Taking a shower or bath in the evening rather than in the morning. The theory is that it’ll wake me up after work and make my mornings less crowded.

And, if doing anything at all is going to result in my needing a nap, scheduling in the nap and doing the thing. Less depressing than not doing the things.

Thinking about

Negative capability, and the ability to sit with unanswered questions.

Reading

I keep forgetting to report on my Sunday reading. I finished Intimate Jesus (read disconcertingly like a ship manifesto, for those who are familiar with fandom terms: Angel argues with some vehemence that of course Jesus had a sexuality and of course he never did anything with it); the part that will remain with me is the image of St John the Evangelist removing himself from a bath house due to the presence of a heretic therein. Now I’m reading Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer (Jarel Robinson-Brown), which is excellent, and alternately making me think and making go, ‘yes, exactly!’ It is very refreshing to read something that isn’t just another dissection of the clobber texts.

Writing

See The Good, above.

Mending

Darned one pair of tights and part of a worn bit of a sock. Then the cat jumped into my tea (not very warm by that point) and got tea leaves over everything.

Looking at

St John the Baptist, Somersham. The friendly little fish at the top of this post is decorating the font cover.

Cooking

Cauliflower and parsnip royal korma: a recipe I’ve made several times before, but which seemed to work out better than most previous attempts. I made up the korma spice from this recipe, which worked very well (though I really wouldn’t call it ‘American’ cuisine…).

Eating

A very nice bit of roast lamb. Some very old barszcz from the freezer (I am trying to use up things from the freezer…)

Moving

Full-length morning walks on both my work-from-home days this week.

In the garden

One of the tulips appears to be developing a bud.

Appreciating

Sunshine, both inside and outside a church. Being with other people, but quietly.

Wanting

To have both time and energy when I’m at home.

Line of the week

This is from a 2011 Hidden Europe article on Birmingham’s number 11 bus route.

George and Richard Cadbury – brothers, philanthropists and chocolatiers – knew the ingredients of human happiness: Tudor beams, indoor toilets, decent plumbing, education, the village green and chocolate.

Sunday snippet

From Don’t Quit The Day Job:

You may feel that daydreaming about all this stuff will guarantee that it’s never going to happen. Very natural. But honestly, unless you’re one of the very, very lucky, very, very few, you’re going to be back at your desk, till, or steering wheel tomorrow morning even if you do find yourself achieving something you can legitimately be very proud of.

This coming week

Two days in the office, one evening meeting, two days working from home and then a fasting glucose test. Not looking forward to that last one.

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