When this is all over

I'm finding that life at the moment is made immeasurably better by thinking about what I'll do when things get back to normal.  Nothing too big, nothing silly, just something positive to look forward to. What are you planning to do when life returns to normal? Or our own personal versions of normal!

I'm planning...

A big long walk in the countryside

A trip to Ikea to buy lampshades. We've owned this house for nearly a year, we need some damn lampshades. No, I don't want to order online, I want to browse and eat meatballs.

Painting "my" room. I need paint. Paint is not being delivered. This will have to wait till we're all out and about again

A visit to a garden centre AND a farm shop. Truly, these are wild and crazy plans

Planning our holiday next year: Paris to Bordeaux where a friend of ours lives. Can.Not.Wait

Those are my feet, as I contemplated possible wall colours. 

Tray of seedlings on top of the wardrobe... 

Good things this week? Both Ed O'Brien and Laura Marling have released albums of thoughtfulness and grace. The Hive online bookshop has both supplied me with books I'd like to read and donated a percentage to the local(ish) independent bookshop of my choice. I managed to score some rhubarb for a crumble and some asparagus for a pasta with goats cheese. The boyfriend had a fit of unaccustomed energy and defrosted the freezer. I now have a hose long enough to water the entire allotment without the need for trudging to the tap and back with a medium sized watering can. There are seedlings everywhere. 

March Reading

Yes, I know we are very much not in March any more, but given that it took me two weeks to realise that I hadn't changed the calendar over, I think a little time slippage can be forgiven. 

March was full of really chewy subject matter in my reading. I'd been after a copy of The Five for a long time but I have an aversion to hardbacks (they're too heavy to read in the bath!), so had to wait a whole year for the paperback version. Totally worth the wait. Utterly brilliant: soundly researched, compellingly told. I finished the book both heartbroken for those poor women and furious that their story has been so manipulated by those with a ghoulish and/or financial interest in Ripper mythology.

Continued the feminist theme with Difficult Women. A disclaimer: Helen Lewis grew up in my city and I wanted her to come give a talk at the museum (oh happy days of event planning before the virus!), so I broke my No Hardback rule for her. So damn glad I did. She thoroughly rejects the idea that difficult women should be airbrushed out of history: their achievements should be celebrated with a full and comprehensive understanding of their characters As A WHOLE, not simplified to anodyne goodness. Real women, interesting women, are complicated and yes, dammit, difficult. 

Then to complete the trio, a rereading of Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson. Read it years ago and, because she grew up not far from where my Nan did, I can hear her mother in my head. Luckily I get to close the book and not have years of psychotherapy afterward. Astonishing what a person can achieve despite their upbringing. 

Wilding was a gorgeous evocation of what can be done to bring back the biodiversity and truly green spaces we need (freely admit to skipping the bits that got too science-y). A Murder of Quality practically flung itself off the shelf at me as the virus began to bite outside and I needed something well written, read before and short to distract me. Le Carre is always good. 

Beatlebone. Hmm. I brought the boyfriend this as he has a massive Beatles obsession. That shouldn't mean I have to read it too but apparently, according to relationship rules, I do (these rules also apply in reverse, so he's currently reading Wilding). Anyway. I did not care for Beatlebone. I did not care for the characters. I did not care about the ending. It will not do. Here endeth my foray into fiction that "takes you to the very edge of the novel form." 

And finally, Calypso. Oh David Sedaris, why are you not my strange uncle? Hilarious and moving. And a relief to find someone so open about his own unsympathetic, borderline unpleasant, personality traits. If you think he's brutal about others, you should hear him talk about himself. And the nonsense the world thrives on. 

Disclaimer: all of the links I've provided are to the Hive website which supports independent bookshops by giving the one you nominate a percentage of the sale. For goodness sake, let's kick Amazon to the damn curb, shall we? I like proper bookshops: they make towns and cities look nice, and they pay their taxes properly. 

And here enedth my lesson. What are you all reading? Or has your concentration, like a good friend of mine's, been completely shot, so you can't. If you can, what genres are you escaping into?

How are we all?

Well my dears, how are we all? It seems I can't move at the moment for news of the virus, advice on how to avoid the virus or tips on how to spend my time during the virus. To paraphrase Hermione, "fear of the virus increases fear of everyone who wants to see me self-improve during the lockdown". 

Toadflax. Only found out this week what it is. Pretty ain't it? Just sitting there

on the wall like it owns the place.  

As a natural introvert, this is pretty much my idea of bliss: enforced staying in, no contact except with those I love. I'm happy to wake up at my usual time and, in lieu of my 20 minute walk to work, read for a bit longer. Or start work earlier, so I can knock off similarly and then spend the extra time at the allotment. 

So far I have:

• read an inordinate amount of crime fiction, because I find this soothing
• planted 4 rows of potatoes at the allotment
• sowed many seeds at home, which I regularly stand over, raising my hands, saying "grow my pretties, GROW"
• made cinnamon buns and focaccia
• chatted to family via video call
• invented quizzes to keep people I work with occupied with my nonsense even when I'm not physically there
• weeded the front garden
• started learning Spanish (once started, long abandoned)
• bent myself to a benevolent yoga goddess and practised most days (even if only for 20 mins at a time)
• eaten too much chocolate, crisps and bread but I don't care
• cycled near-empty streets

Rosemary at the allotment. The bees are loving it. 

This really is a time for finding pleasure in the small things and that's always been my forte. I get an intense pleasure from things like clean sheets, cow parsley on the tow path, the smell of bread, proper coffee, cutting my own fringe (been doing it for years now), lying in a patch of sun with a book, listening to the cat purr, watching the crochet blanket grow under my fingers. 

I have so far resisted the temptation to make my own sourdough starter, but that is surely only a matter of days away. And to be fair, sourdough is my favourite type of bread, after soft white sesame seed rolls, which have a long held treasured taste memory for me (my Nan used to toast them and serve them with real butter and marmalade. Eating them now, I'm 8 years old again, swinging my legs at her kitchen table, eager to get out across to the farm opposite for a good long explore).

Picked up a pen and started drawing again - with mixed results. Some of those birds

are quite disturbing. Slow growth of the crochet blanket. 

Podcasts rumble on in the background, under the clatter of my fingers on the laptop keyboard as I work from home. Shedunnit, Backlisted and In Our Time. 

Ah work. I am lucky in that I've not been laid off, my job isn't zero hours and I'm not front-line in the care sector or NHS. That said, it has felt harder than usual. My head hurts by the end of the day and my back is stiff. I've decorated my little "office" and filled it with plants, but still there is something lacking. People. I miss the volunteers and my colleagues, all of whom are now furloughed. There is a sense that I'm what the museum is relying on to see it through, and the responsibility is a little overwhelming. It's also slightly lonely.   

My office. Succulents, flowers from the canal path, 

some research and tea, old tin pen pot resisting attempts 

to make me use a proper pen pot

And I miss my son. He not long moved into his own place and was loving working with adults who have mental and physical disabilities. Yes, he is in the front-line of the care sector, but is treating it all with his usual sanguinity (is that a word? I say yes, spell check says no) and messages all end with his standard "lol" that makes me want to slap a thesaurus in front of him. I find I am better if I don't think about it and just check in with him every couple of days. 

"How are you doing kid x"

"Yeah, good thanks lol"

See what I mean?

So far, I have not:

• started a podcast
• repainted the house
• started a couch to 5k
• become an influencer
• mastered the art of cordon bleu cookery ("sandwich for dinner okay, yeah?" "yeah")
• put all my "content" online - mainly because I have no content
• started any of those challenging books people say are good for lockdown situations. James Joyce, I'm looking at you
• written a blog post about all the things people should be doing or how they could improve themselves during this time.

Life is weird, do what makes you feel good. And you don't need me to tell you what that is. 

Robin with a beak full of flies, sitting cheekily close 

when I took a break

The Good News Roundup

Well, this was going to be a Good News roundup but then events overtook me and, instead of being able to trawl the internet for happy stories, I've been distracted by setting up an office at home, managing the volunteers I work with, trying to keep the museum I work in feeling alive and relevant to a (now totally) digital audience etc etc etc. So. Not much time for trawling. 

The middle section of the elder by the canal side of the allotment fell down.

On the plus side, this gives us a nice handy bench for those important coffee and progress chats.  

I'm deliberately keeping away from the media - we don't watch a news program and I only read the Guardian once a day, just to try and keep some sanity and a sense of proportion. It's so easy to get carried away, hitting refresh, getting into arguments online, checking your temperature in the manner of a fragile Victorian heroine (back of hand against the brow, a weary sigh etc) and fretting that every little niggle in the throat is the start of IT. I'm keeping my anxiety levels low by keeping my exposure to hysterical media low. 

Mind you, we'd have to check for fungi before sitting. I don't imagine these black frilly types, 

nice as they look, would leave your jeans in a good state. 

I'm also not pushing myself to feel like I have to have written a novel, learned to draw like Michelangelo, inspired a whole new internet trend, become super-yoga bendy, repainted the whole house, sculpted the new centrepiece for the Venice Biennale etc etc etc. It is okay not to have done any of those things. It is okay to have managed just one blog post (here it is!), a couple of hours at the allotment and the occasional bike ride. 

Providing I get through this with an intact relationship, my family and my own sanity, I will be happy. It is nice not to feel so tired after work that I don't want to cook. It is nice to cycle through almost deserted streets (although when this is all done, I'm having a word with the damn saddle manufacturer). It is nice to do a spot of yoga now and then. It is nice to dig and chat on the allotment at the end of the day. It is nice to plant seeds. It is nice to plan our Paris-Bordeaux trip for next year. It is nice to have more time to read in bed in the morning. 

I will take your nice and raise you. 

See, holiday planning for next year. Paris to Bordeaux by train, baby. 

These are posted to the wall in front of my temporary desk and bringing

some sanity. Plus hope. Hope is good. 

Just two links to good news this week, because I'm finding that focusing my mental energy on farming and ecology is more of a help than focusing it on the lack of flour in my local shop.

Ecology is a feminist issue. Why taking a feminine approach to the current world crisis may be the approach that stops our house from burning.

Urban areas can be farms too! I love the idea that once bleak and divided places can be made communal, productive and a force for good. 

Keep yourselves well and sane. Remember to get dressed properly, eat what you feel like, move around a little. Remember to be kind. 

Reading for Healing

Because sometimes you don't need your downtime to be challenging, especially at the start of the year. You need comedy, nourishment, things to make you smile or a chance to catch up with an author you've enjoyed previously.

January, in an attempt to stave off the winter blues (it worked only while reading), I hit the Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym pretty hard. Spark is sharp as a knife and comedic with it, her characters never over-egged but perfectly encapsulated in a few telling phrases or actions. From the alternately fastitious and chaotic batchelors to the careless, slightly ruthless, young women fighting for their place and purpose in the world.

Pym is so often overlooked as a "tea and curates" author, producing the sort of books where nothing much happens, spinsters lose their heads over men of cloth and emotions are kept firmly in check. In truth, she can be as sharp as Spark, unpitying and clear-sighted, her characters in the unyeilding crosshairs of her gaze. A sentence will slip in as cleanly as a blade. There is a reason Philip Larkin rated her so highly.

Yes, I was fit enough to take a walk along the canal, and it was good. 

Cockfosters was disappointing. Not as funny and riotous as Helen Simpson's first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed. Now, that's a joyous read.

January Reading: the final chapter of Love of Country by Madeleine Bunting; Cockfosters by Helen Simpson; The Batchelors and Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark; Excellent Women, Jane & Prudence and An Academic Question by Barbara Pym.

More Pym, more comfort, more funny in February as I read my way through the strorms and floods that hit our region. Luckily, we live far enough away from the river to not be affected, and the relentless rain gave a decent excuse to curl up on the sofa and read away. All the way across to America in fact: Armistead Maupin is a big favourite of mine. Funny, irreverent, delighting in shocking the reader but always with heart firmly engaged. 

  Just a pair of feet, standing in front of a major project at work, begging it not to fuck up

Fish Bowl is hilarious: scenes from a city high rise seen by a goldfish falling from a bowl. Touching, thoughtful, well paced and a thorough joy. Thoroughly recommended. 


However, not every book was a joy and I was disappointed in Devil's Day, especially as I had high hopes of it. Hurley's The Loney was utterly brilliant, the tension ratcheted up page by well written page. However, Devil's Day irritated me with the narrator's treatment of his wife. And he was supposed to be the good guy! Finished but was angry for most of it. Doesn't make it a bad book, just makes it an irritating one, like an itchy label inside your top.

February reading: Compton Hodnet by Barbara Pym; Further Tales of the City and Significant Others by Armistead Maupin; The Wild Places by Robert McFarlane; Devil's Day by Andrew Michael Hurley; The Dry by Jane Harper; Fish Bowl by Bradley Somer. 

 Daffys. Just because they pretty. 

And March has started strongly with Wilding by Isabella Tree and the new Ann Cleeves. Currently reading The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. Finding a nice balance between fact and fiction. If only I could find as good a balance on my feet.

Recovering

It is fair to say that, for many people, the first 2 months of 2020 have sucked an enormous amount of donkey butt. Floods, family illnesses, relationship issues forced to the fore by the Christmas break (this is not unusual), worries about pandemics and the general awfulness of the news. It has seemed, like the grey skies, unrelenting and unremitting. 

There was blossom in February. That was worth stopping the car for. That sounds sarcastic when it wasn't meant to. It REALLY was worth stopping for. 

I haven't been immune to this: an injury to one foot in November led to tendon damage in the other as it tried to compensate. Days when I didn't know which foot to limp on and my knees registered complaints. My gait rendered shuffling and slow. Average standing time of 20 minutes only. Pain so bad I'd get home, sit on the stairs to remove my shoes and then cry. No yoga, no allotmenting, no winter walks to chase the blues away. We've been lucky enough to avoid the flooding but work and the world have flooded us with issues that seemed too big to do anything about. 

Loki and his soft belly fur. And incredibly sharp claws. Fuss at your own risk. 

Luckily, 3 months, 2 doctors, a podiatrist and a physiotherapist later, I've finally received a treatment that worked well enough for me to be able to walk down the stairs this morning without wincing. The sun is warm and benevolent. There is the smell of homemade museli, fresh from a mild baking, scenting the air with delicate cinnamon wafts. I've just spent a couple of minutes finely chopping basil for a goats cheese and basil pasta dish, the punchy green smell of the herb making my mouth water. 

Thor. Even softer belly fur, less intimidating claws. One eye open in case I start crocheting and some wool teasing is to be had.

What else, what else, for the past 2 months? Unpicked my Attic 24 blanket and then started again with a smaller hook and better results. Read books. Found Percy Pigs in unexpected places. Stroked the cats soft angel-hair bellies. Met up with friends. Became a mother-in-law in waiting (the Kid newly engaged). Soft-launched my heritage consultancy. Swam in the calm warm blue waters of my nearest swimming pool 3 mornings a week. Made a dress. Watched the 2 projects I'd launched at work take flight and grow. 

March is good. March feels like plans can be made. March feels hopeful. 

 Percy Pigs, my most favourite sweet, hidden by a very considerate person, in unexpected places. Little smiles after arguments over the dishes.

 
Goats Cheese and Basil Pasta
Take one packet of soft goats cheese (at room temperature) and mush with a fork. 
Add a tablespoon of olive oil - the good stuff - and a few grindings of black pepper to the cheese. 
Finely (or roughly, it's up to you) chop some fresh basil. 
Pause for a moment to fill your nostrils with the smell of it. 
Add to the goats cheese mix. 
Cook your pasta. Drain and keep a little back to add to the mix. 
Put pasta back in the pan and add the goats cheese mush. 
Stir through, adding the pasta water a little at a time, until the appropriate amount of sauciness has been achieved. 
Serve in bowl with chopped cherry tomatoes and a slice of crusty bread to get up the last of the sauce. 
Eat with a good view, a good book or a good companion. 

Optional Extras: 
pine nuts for crunch
garlic for vampire protection
gran padano or parmesan for added cheesiness
 

Whimsy, or Whumsy

If your fingers are anything like mine and instead of hitting the right keys at the right time and in the right order, they are missing them, hitting the wrong ones or splodging 3 down at the same time, so that what should read "green" actually reads "fgrweemn". I feel like Homer in the Simpsons episode where he eats to be fat enough to work from home and then can't work the telephone keypad. "If your fingers are too fat to dial, smash the numbers with the palm of your hand, you terrible, terrible person." Or something. 

Anyway, today is Valentines or Galentines or Palentines or Petentines or just another Friday. However you wish to consider this day (I haven't done Valentines for years and frankly this one freaked me out: what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to buy? Why is he not like normal people and happy to mainline salted caramel? Why did I not fall in love with a woman and thereby have a multitude of sad, cheap shit to chose from in the shops?), I think we all need some whimsy to carry us through the storms predicted this weekend. 

 

And that's just from those who brought Val. Day stuff but didn't get anything in return. 

I'll keep you posted on that one. 

These gorgeous creations are automaton (which I have a soft spot for anyway, much like I do stop-animation films) created by Rowland Emmett, the genius behind the designs for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, an illustrator for Punch and one of those people that I really wish I known and met when he was alive. 

Whimsy, beautiful design, attention to detail and a blatant call on your curiosity, I love these so much, I'd knock down some of my house to get it in. But I'm not allowed to. However, there is a touring exhibition of A Quiet Afternoon in Cloud Cuckoo Valley (see images above). If you go along and have to elbow a middle-aged woman with unruly hair out of the way, that'll be me. Say hi while you're elbowing.