From the Desk of Bee Drunken

A bit of earth

2012-01-02T19:52:00.000Z

The seasons have gone by faster than usual this year, my daughter said to me as we were walking down a narrow, mud-slippery lane.

Not quite 14 is my daughter; have enough years gone by for her to utter this commonplace?

But then I reflected: perhaps she doesn’t speak of time at all, in the sense of a seasonal round that seems to speed up with every passing year, but rather of the word that she actually uses. Seasons, not time. The seasons – their expected shape, their accustomed progression -- have blurred. That topsy-turvyness has been a feature all year long.

January now, and winter has still not come properly. Fresh plants, not of this time, are presenting themselves in the garden: a daisy from the summer, a pansy from last spring, patches of grape hyacinth usually associated with late February and spring green shoots everywhere. An inexplicable mound of flat-leaf parsley has self-seeded itself by the porch . . . blown, no doubt, from the nearby pot where it failed to thrive during the cold, wet summer. Spring already, if judging by all that activity underground and not the low, gray sky.

There are some years when it is a relief to turn the page, to buy a blank calendar and pin it to the wall like one’s colours to the mast. I still have enough optimism to expect and hope that this year will be better. That which has been stuck will be forced to shift and change.

This picture has to be decoded, explained.

The green shoots are obvious, what is not so apparent is the quality of the soil itself.

In December, the first “batch” of home-grown compost was spread on our garden. I don’t mind sounding ridiculous here; it was a great satisfaction to me.

This compost took two years to accumulate, in a purpose made bin behind the garage: countless trips with a pail of kitchen scraps, not to mention leaves and grass cuttings from many seasons. Then two years to marinate in its own heat and weight, to break down, to become a dense rich brown. When we lifted the heavy canvas I was thrilled (in the most physical sense of the word) to see what eight seasons had wrought.

Is two years a long time, or a surprisingly short one, for such a transformation?

So often it is our small, consistent efforts that gradually, so gradually, amount to some really worthwhile change. All year I feel like I have been making compost of various kinds, and sometimes the effort has felt rather futile. No doubt I have been nourished all along, even if the more obvious effects have been deferred.

Through a Glass Darkly

2011-11-09T19:51:00.000Z

From the sculpture gallery at Chatsworth

Many bloggers (who I greatly admire) have explained that their blog is a space for counting blessings, for appreciating simple pleasures, for capturing moments of beauty. I completely understand that; this is our chance to show our best side. Many of us prefer to sing a hymn to happiness; most of us prefer to hear that song. But I would just like to say that maybe there is also a need for a hint of disquiet. Just occasionally, a murmur of pain or a streak of ugliness would not go amiss.

I know that I should know better, but sometimes a beautiful blog will make me feel that there are those amongst us who live perfect lives. I don’t mind (well, not too much) that other people’s lives are more aesthetically pleasing and creatively engaged, but what really causes a pang is when other people’s lives seem happier. I know, realistically, that there must be a shadow side to every beautifully lit image, but it is so easy to be beguiled.

A couple of weeks ago, I received the sad news that an old schoolmate had died. Actually, he committed suicide. When I read the obituary, it described a life that seemed perfect in every conceivable way: Happy marriage; healthy children; successful business; great friends; loads of fulfilling hobbies. Perhaps that was all true, but it read like a big whitewash of what was probably a normal human life that had become unendurable for some reason.

I hadn’t seen this man in years, but his death has haunted me. Was he the sort of person who always had to tell you how GREAT everything was? Was he afraid to fail, to be frail?

Last year I read Barbara Ehrenreich's Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World , and I remember thinking that always looking on the bright side can be so downright tyrannical. Surely sadness and struggle are as much a part of life as the brighter, lighter side of the spectrum. A positive attitude won't necessarily cure cancer, calm a surly teenager or lead to a good job offer in a bad economy. What a comfort it is to say, "I feel low; I'm angry and sad," and have someone reply that they feel that way, too, sometimes.

I think that there can be an incredible pressure on women, especially, to focus on the positive, and eliminate the negative. I often feel like a cross between cheerleader and peacekeeper, always ready with the pep talk or soothing word – whichever is required. I know that many women feel this way. If I really want to tell the truth and let it all hang out (emotionally speaking), then I have to find a female friend. As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m feeling a bit drained of buoyant spirits right now. Thank you for your supportive comments; they helped.

Pensive

2011-11-02T14:28:00.001Z

My youngest daughter at Chatsworth

An entire season of months has ebbed, and so many thoughts and experiences have just dried up and blown away . . . rather like the leaves, which are being shed with dispatch now that it is November.

We’ve had big things going on in our family life: huge transitions in the youngest and oldest generations. And I’m here in the middle, feeling battered by it all. My husband has some pressing worries, and last night he twitched for hours until just giving up – long before dawn -- on the attempt to sleep. That sort of sleepless night is more common than not at the moment. I don’t feel that the details are necessarily mine to share; so unsatisfactorily, I offer nothing but a tentative mood, an emotional residue. Even though I’ve experienced only the most kind and sympathetic side of blog-friendship, it’s no use pretending that what I share here can be held in confidence.

Stress has made me selfish and solitary. Certainly the act of blogging is as elastic as you want it to be, but for me, at least, the reciprocity of it is essential. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been in this inward-looking state that hasn’t really lent itself to lots of external exchange. I don’t feel that it is right “to talk,” if I don’t have the time or energy “to listen.” Does this make sense?

Hopefully, I will tunnel out again – and soon.

Chatsworth gardens, Derbyshire

Getting my feet wet

2011-07-29T15:29:00.000+01:00

It seems like about a minute ago that we were plunging into summer . . . and now August is already looming.
So many important experiences have just been waves on the sand: roll on, relentless time.

I've been on a blog vacation -- not by any plan or design, but just because I haven't had the time/space to order my thoughts. Many years ago I had a dream of becoming a journalist, but one of the many flaws of that career plan is that I need time and space to write. I don't "think" well under pressure. I've never been any good at soundbites or punchlines; I can't come up with the first, and I can't remember the second.

My youngest daughter "graduated" from school a few weeks ago. Not many children change schools at age 13, but there is something wonderfully appropriate about 13 as the age of transition. After weeks of farewell dinners and concerts and plays and exhibitions, there was a beautiful ceremony designed just for the "leavers" and their parents. The children chose their favourite hymns and scriptures, including those true and memorable lines from Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under the sun. A simple, powerful truth.

Our move to Oxford has been put off for a year, and maybe longer. All signs have pointed to stay. Although my youngest daughter will be moving there for school, she started digging in her heels at the thought of too much change all at the same time. Meanwhile, we didn't have even a nibble on the house. I have a new job close-by, and Sigmund is still looking for the right opportunity. It took me a few months to accept this change of plan, but I've come around now. I've started making plans for the garden again; it's time to weed and replant. There are holes to fill.

Meanwhile, summer.
We've already done the back-to-school shopping: but the new woolen kilt and leather shoes can be packed away for now. It's time to plant our feet in the surf . . . and let the sand run through our fingers. I'm embracing what's here and now.

Many happy returns

2011-06-17T06:17:00.002+01:00

Today is my oldest daughter’s “golden” birthday:
She is seventeen on the 17th of June.

We moved to England when I was 7 months pregnant with Rebecca, and I remember, so vividly, that last long week of waiting . . . and how the days seemed to be suspended, caught in amber, dragged out into long golden twilight.

I remember feeling really impatient to know what this unknown person was going to be like . . . and the answer was smart, strong, fierce, quick-witted, opinionated, stubborn and charming. She looked like her father; still does, but never more so than the moment she was born. She was quick to walk, to talk, to read. She was impatient and bossy – but with an endearing giggle, and an unexpected tender side. I hardly remember life before her, and I’m amazed at how quickly the years of her childhood have gone by; how clichéd is that?

At this time of year, I’m always really conscious of the fact that we are climbing ever nearer to the summer solstice. Does anyone else feel slightly melancholy when we tip over to the other side -- and the days begin to gradually diminish?

And now, as my oldest daughter nears adulthood, I think about how we are nearing some sort of zenith – but a kind of falling-off point, too. And unlike the seasons, my daughter’s childhood won’t come around again. That funny little person – my little Beccalou, who always had her nose in a book – is just a snapshot now.

In a week, my daughter will be going to Ghana – and who knows how that challenge will change her? Later on this summer, she will experience job internships, university applications, a trip to Cyprus, a long weekend at the Reading Festival. Solo adventures, all. Not unaccompanied, but unaccompanied by me. I’m happy for her, and delighted by her growing confidence and sense of her own powers. There is nothing, at seventeen, but a world of possibility . . . and mothers need to make way and step aside. (But she knows where to find me!)

Happy Birthday, Rebecca! And many happy returns

Best of show

2011-06-02T18:43:00.000+01:00

Despite the intermittent rain, June is bustin' out all over here in our little West Berkshire corner of England.
May is usually my busiest gardening month of the year, but this spring I've been resting on my laurels. Except for a frequent circuit with the watering can, and very occasional weeding, I've let well enough alone . . . and my roses and peonies have rewarded me anyway.

I spent most of May sowing a different kind of seed, and it's kept me so occupied that I've had little time for gardening, blogging or anything else. (Like my generous roses, I hope you will excuse my neglect.)

As a brief explanation: last September, I organised a Book Club for my youngest daughter and her friends. This venture has mushroomed into several new book-related projects which started in April: another Book Club, for 11 year olds this time, and two reading classes. All of a sudden, I've been given free rein to develop what amounts to three different reading lists -- and not just for this spring, but for next year, too. Reading for pleasure, reading for enrichment, reading to encourage more reading: these are my only imperatives.

It's a dream job for me, really. As one of my best friends said yesterday, "You get to read all day and justify it as WORK." Yes; exactly.

But it's a responsibility, too, and I really want to get it right. I've always thought of the age of 11 as one of the golden ages of reading. It's the age of unconscious delight -- of really getting lost in a book. Most readers are outgrowing predictable texts and series books and discovering books with much more emotional and intellectual richness. In England, at least, it's the age before cell phones and social networking -- and thus maybe the last, or at least the best, chance of turning a child into an avid reader.

I've often talked about book-love in this space, and it has been gratifying to realise that my blog-friends are a bookish bunch. I can't resist, then, asking for some recommendations.

What books (classics or contemporary; British or American) did you love best when you were 11, 12 or 13? What books have your children or students loved best?

War stories: The Cazalet Chronicles

2011-05-04T14:53:00.003+01:00

Next week I am taking a group of students to see the theatrical production of War Horse and to visit the Classic War Stories for Children exhibit at the Imperial War Museum. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading the five children’s novels which feature in the exhibit – and it feels like the culmination of a year of reading novels which feature war (especially World War II) as the backdrop. These are war stories, but they don’t concern themselves with warfare or famous battles; rather, they focus in on the privations and struggles of the home-front. I hadn’t planned on this reading theme, but my interest in Persephone novels – Saplings or The Village, for instance – has landed me squarely in the mid- 20th century period which was so dominated by the long years of the war . . . followed by the long fall-out, economically and emotionally, from the war. It is a period that still grips the imagination, and shapes the national character, of Great Britain. For instance, at last week’s Royal Wedding, the balcony scene was as much about the “flyover” (the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight which featured a Lancaster, Hurricane and a Spitfire) as it was about a kiss. How many times have you wedding newshounds (and I admit to being in your company) read about Queen Elizabeth’s “austerity” wedding in 1947? Rather infamously, even a royal princess needed ration coupons to buy the material for her wedding dress.

If the recent wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton has aroused in your interest in England’s finest hour, I would thoroughly recommend the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. The Chronicles are actually four novels – The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off – and none of them are short. But unlike the war, they don’t drag on. Although the first novel might feel a little crowded, as Howard introduces the many voices of her sprawling cast of characters, by the time I got to the final novel I was reading with a sort of absorbed frenzy – and then suffering from withdrawal symptoms. If only there had been another one! I could entirely identify with the person, as recounted in Howard’s memoir Slipstream, who wrote the author and begged her to reveal what was going to happen next.

In her memoir, Howard explains that she wanted to write the novels in order to show how England had changed during the war (p. 434, Slipstream). The device of a family saga is a perfect one for her purpose, because it features three generations of a family – neatly encompassing the cultural shifts of each generation. The wealthy grandparents, whose summer home in Sussex becomes the family base, are Victorian: theirs is a world of comfort and order, made possible by a vast web of loyal domestic help. The next generation, that of the parents, has been blighted – physically and emotionally – by World War I. They are still dutiful to the old traditions, but their lives – especially as represented by their relationships -- are rather frayed at the edges. The youngest generation, represented by three young female cousins, come of age during the war. They don’t exactly raise themselves, but in many senses – some of them quite literal – their parents are absent. By the end of the series, it is obvious that they will have to make their own way in a very changed world. One of three female leads, the character of Louise, has a life which closely parallels that of the author.

Howard has a fine touch with detail, and all through the novels I felt immersed in the complete atmosphere of the world she recreates. If you want lots of domestic detail – to know how what an upper-middle-class family ate, or how the garden looked and smelled – these are the right books for you. Nearly all of the characters are finely rendered, even the more minor ones. As with Upstairs, Downstairs (and the more recent Downton Abbey), the “staff” are emotionally fleshed out. Indeed, one of the most vivid characters in the books – and perhaps my favourite – is that of Miss Milliment, the ancient family governess.

After I finished the Cazalet saga, I read Howard’s memoir and discovered how heavily she had drawn from her own life. I suppose she was following that famous dictum to write what you know, but I also felt like these novels were a life’s work in the very best sense. She wrote them quite late in her own writing life, a decade after the breakdown of her marriage with Kingsley Amis, and they have an emotional authenticity that has been, perhaps, tempered by the detachment wrought by time and plenty of reflection.

I read too much, and too quickly; and much of what I read is lost before too long; however, these novels – and their characters – have really stuck with me. I think of them; some of them have become friends. As I was reading Michael Morpurgo's novel, War Horse, I was reminded of Howard’s work. For those of you don’t know it, War Horse is a story about the relationship between a young English soldier and his horse during World War I. One of the war stories in her novel, which Howard borrowed from real life, concerned her real-life father and his older brother. Apparently they came upon each other, by coincidence, on a country lane in Ypres. They didn’t recognise each other until their horses (brought from home) neighed at each other.

If you've never heard of Elizabeth Jane Howard, or are unfamiliar with her work, you should really do yourself a favour and discover her. Her life has been a long, full one, and it has intersected with many of the most fascinating characters of the past century. Howard's mother, an infamously critical person, was quoted as saying that it was a pity that Howard had nothing to write about. I disagree entirely.

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Bluebell spring

2011-04-28T19:58:00.000+01:00

I didn't get any pictures of Texas bluebonnets this year, so I offer you some English bluebells instead.
They are not at all the same thing, but they do belong in the very small category of blue flowers.
Rarer that you might think.

I have lots of thoughts about my Texas trip (which seems about as substantial as a dream now) . . . the Royal Wedding tea party that my daughter is hosting tomorrow . . . the new class that I am teaching . . . all of the books I have read in the past month . . . and whoopie pies with clotted cream and strawberry jam. These thoughts are Wordsworthian, though -- and I require a bit more tranquility (rather scarce at the moment) to bring them forth.

But how's this for immediacy?
I was in this bluebell wood just an hour ago.
The sun was low in the trees, and there was a fragrant chill in the air -- an indescribable smell -- that is somehow the very essence of English spring.

I never saw bluebells when I was a child, and yet I perfectly understand Anne Bronte's description of them as a fairy gift.

O, that lone flower recalled to me

My happy childhood's hours
When bluebells seemed like fairy gifts
A prize among the flowers.

Somehow, I doubt that the blue markings on this tree mean: "Bluebells! Straight Ahead."
But I prefer to believe that is the case.

Gone to Texas

2011-04-03T22:23:00.001+01:00

Just for fun, I made a Wordle from the writing I've done over the years about the annual trips to my home state of Texas.

The most frequently recurring words?
Texas. drive. bluebonnets. Houston. home. parents. cow.

Seems about right.

(Gone to Texas . . . April 2-20)

Bookshelves

2011-04-01T22:06:00.001+01:00

Are you the sort of person who checks out other people’s bookshelves?

(Do you feel an immediate affinity with those people who love the same books that you do?)

Earlier this week I had dinner in a lovely home. The sitting room had nearly all of the attributes of an attractive, cosy room: a wood-burning fire, soft sofas, interesting pictures, ancient (but good) carpets . . . but sadly, no bookshelves. I noticed it right away, and the absence somehow detracted.

Are you the type who believes that bookshelves are not only useful, but also beautiful?
(Furthermore, would you add this proviso: that the books must be obviously read and enjoyed . . . and not merely decorative?)

I’ve just counted:
Eight of the rooms in our house have bookshelves, and all of those shelves are overflowing.

In the recent de-cluttering drive, I managed (not without some pain and suffering) to take about five bags of books to the charity shop. Sadly, it didn’t make any visible difference to the crowded conditions as most of the discarded books had been stacked on the floor, hidden under the bed or crammed in my daughter’s closet. In our next house, I am hoping for entire walls of bookshelves.

(One commonality I’ve noticed about Oxford houses is that they tend to contain lots of books. Considering the ever-present temptation – there are a lot of bookstores in that small city -- I predict that an increase in my personal book collection is inevitable.)

There are public bookshelves and there are private bookshelves; some more so than others.
I don’t have what I think of as “properly” public bookshelves: nothing leather-bound or colour-coordinated; no first editions; no careful artistic groupings. Sadly, my bookshelves do not reach such lofty heights as would require a ladder. My “best” bookshelves do look more substantial, though. In their ranks you will see my nicer hardbacks, the lovely cloth-bound fairytales that I inherited from my father, the sturdy biographies and histories, and those books of a philosophical nature. My private bookshelves are junkier, and more various. Here lie the paperbacks, but also the most frequently read favourites.

Can a bookshelf be read like a palm, like a face, like a narrative of its own?

The pictured bookshelf is in my study – and in front of the shelf of enduring favourites (my Austens, Brontes, Colwins and Mitfords), you will find stacks of what I have read or written about recently.
There are also cards and curios, pictures and postcards . . . remembrances, really. When I think of the phrase “surrounded by my things,” I immediately think of books.

If you would like to share a glimpse of one of your bookshelves, please contact Malena of The Bookshelf Project. manjamalena@gmail.com

March is . . .

2011-03-21T12:30:00.000Z

Daffodils -- or, botanically speaking, the entire genus of narcissus -- are one of the most delightful things about March in England.

All year long, they lurk under the ground . . .
and by mid-March there are clumps of yellow everywhere.

Very cheering, don't you think?

Meeting Henrietta Garnett at the Albion Beatnik

2011-03-14T16:38:00.008Z

Interior with the Artist's Daughter c.1935-6

Vanessa Bell 1879-1961

When I was 21, I lived on the seedy edge of Bloomsbury – and it was probably not surprising that I became interested in the Bloomsbury Group. I have always been susceptible to what Anne Fadiman calls You-Are-There-Reading: “the practice of reading books in the places they describe.” That year, I was studying Literature between the Wars – and it became, and remains, one of my favourite cultural and literary eras. I read George Orwell and D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot and Yeats; but most importantly, I read all of Virginia Woolf’s novels for the first time. My best friend lived in a tiny room just down the hall from mine, and we spent almost all of our time reading, writing and discussing books. Living, in other words, what we liked to think of as “the life of the mind.” Michelle had the famous picture of Virginia Woolf, as a young girl, on her wall, and I spent many hours contemplating that pure profile.

Two decades later, I am a frequent visitor to Bloomsbury – sometimes to the British Museum, but mostly to the bookshops. Persephone, on Lamb’s Conduit Street, is a frequent destination; and several years ago, I found a card there which features Vanessa Bell’s Interior with the Artist’s Daughter. It is a hugely appealing image to me, perhaps because it captures my ideal landscape: to be reading a book, whilst surrounded by books and the other domestic comforts. The painting has a richness to it, and there is a wealth of detail in it, but there is also something balanced and quiet in the image that speaks to me. I’m not a particular aficionado of Vanessa Bell’s work, but I would very much like to own this painting . . . and maybe more so to dwell in it.

One of the particular pleasures of blogging is serendipity. The connective nature of the Internet is such that a writer can send out tentacles of interest, words and images, and then they can be picked up by like-minded people. Independent bookstores are a particular interest of mine, as anyone who regularly visits this blog will know, and a couple of years ago I wrote about Albion Beatnik in Oxford. From time to time, someone will Google that name and end up visiting my blog. A few weeks ago, a very kind woman wrote to me and asked if I would like to come to Albion Beatnik for a talk to be given by Henrietta Garnett – the granddaughter of Vanessa Bell. Would I? Would I just!

As I was waiting for the talk to begin, I struck up a conversation with a young man called Simon. We spoke about books, of course, and it didn’t take long for me to realise that I had visited his blog, Stuck in a Book, several times. I found him by Googling Persephone/Oxford Book Club; like me, he is interested in women’s writing from the 20th century – particularly the period between and just after the wars. Like me, he began blogging in order to find the bookish companions that he lacked in his “real” life. This is “small world” stuff of the very best kind.

It was hardly a surprise, then, when Henrietta Garnett began her talk by praising the charms of that endangered thing: the independent bookstore. It is no secret that bookstores are finding it harder than ever to survive -- “in these barbaric days,” as Henrietta describes them -- but in some senses that has always been the case . . . just as the future has always looked bleak and frightening to every generation. Henrietta’s own father had a bookshop in the 1920s, and she admitted that his advice was to “never be a bookseller.” But there are people in the world with ink running in their veins, which is one way Henrietta described her own family, and I suppose those people just can’t help it. Running a bookstore might not be a financially sensible thing to do, but there will always be people compelled to do it. (And I, as much as possible, endeavour to help them stay in business.)

Unlike most literary talks, this one seemed to exist merely for the pleasure of bringing people together in this splendid little shop. Most atypically, there was no prominent display of the speaker’s latest book to sell . . . and then be signed. Dennis, the bookstore’s owner, did let me buy a few books, though – and I came away with a biography of Frances Partridge (Henrietta’s mother-in-law), a journal collection of Partridge’s from World War II, and a beautiful book called The London Scene, which contained six essays on “London Life” by Virginia Woolf. Henrietta Garnett generously signed all of these for me, and I particularly appreciate her inscription of the Woolf essays. On the flyleaf there is a quotation from Mrs. Dalloway which reads:

“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway,

“Really it’s better than walking in the country.”

Henrietta then wrote: Well; I suspect so in Owlight Twilight & any other night and So might V.W. have thought about Kitty Lushington . . .

How wonderfully elliptical! What riches to decode there, although it didn’t take me long to discover that Kitty Lushington was the real-life inspiration for the Clarissa Dalloway character.

One of the old-fashioned touches of Albion Beatnik is that they still wrap their books in plain paper. My little stack was covered in a dark William Morris green paper, and then decorated by a label that featured the famous words of Jack Kerouac: The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are made to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . and on and on. How appropriate, I thought. For Henrietta Garnett, and that huge tribe of interconnected and interrelated people who are her family, are surely those sorts of people: the ones who “never yawn or say a commonplace thing.”

When Henrietta came out to her stage, she did a little dance for us – and it seemed both theatrical and natural at the same time. She was very slender, with straight dark hair and the fine features that are always described as “carved” in certain writing.

She seemed a bit shy, but more than capable of putting impertinence in its place – much like her Aunt Virginia, I thought.

Henrietta Garnett

who would pose "for sixpence"

for Vanessa Bell, her grandmother

She spoke – rather elliptically here, too – of many of the members of her famous family. She described her “spindly Strachey relations” – with their “brittle bones,” and “high-pitched voices” -- as living in a “spindly house in Gordon Square.” Best of all, she referred to their propensity for asking “corkscrew questions” which showed that they were still interested in the “business of living.”

There was a great sense of being from another age, although Henrietta actually came of age during the 1960s. She mentioned that her father had been born in 1892, the late Victorian era, and that she had grown up in a huge cold house in Huntingdon, outside of Cambridge. It was described by someone as “nobly grammatical in a Puritan landscape.” In the winter, the windows froze from the inside. (I later asked her what she had slept in as a child in the that frigid bedroom, because I am always interested in that sort of detail. She just replied “naked,” with a raised and dismissive eyebrow. Do you suppose she was teasing?) Despite these discomforts, though, she described a childhood home filled beautiful furniture and paintings, and lots of books, and flowing wine and homemade cider. There was a wind-up gramophone, and the dance music of the 1920s was often played. Maybe it’s fanciful of me, but she had a look of the 1920s flapper to me. Henrietta claimed to have never been educated, much, except from the extensive library belonging to her father. I immediately thought of Jane Austen and the Mitford girls, who were also educated predominately from a home library – and being in constant company with good thinkers and talkers.

One of my favourite descriptions from Henrietta’s talk was of the intellectual atmosphere at Charleston – the home of Vanessa and Clive Bell and Duncan Grant, and of course her own mother Angelica. She spoke of “delicious dinners,” “the smell of toast and turpentine,” and the quality of conversation which swooped and soared from subject to subject, without any inhibition whatsoever.” She spoke of the great fun, always, and lots of “cackling” -- how absurdity was never far from the surface, no matter how serious the speaker or the subject.

At a small supper, with just the six of us, she invited us to “ask her something intimate” – but her tone seemed provocative more than sincere, and I suppose we were all too shy to take advantage of the offer. When so many of the secrets of one’s family life are a part of 20th century legend, I would guess that a person needs to develop a good front as protection. She said many interesting things in conversation, but they were always snippets . . . and never a line of thought or narrative. At one point we discussed the importance of friendship, and Henrietta threw out the question of whether or not former lovers could become friends. (Not in most cases, seemed to be the table’s consensus. She took the opposite view, but then gave a very unconvincing example to defend it.)

She reminded us of the Dorothy Parker quotation: Bloomsbury paints in circles, lives in squares, and loves in triangles. Henrietta’s own life was deeply affected by two of the most famous triangles, but she barely alluded to them. If you are interested in learning more, the obituary of Frances Partridge touches on several of the salient points. But none of this was mentioned, by Henrietta – or by any of the audience. She did say, by way of introduction, that as a child she could only think of her unusual family life as completely normal. She didn’t mention when her consciousness of the extraordinariness of her family began to emerge, but she did allude to the “the intellectual soap opera” which belongs to anyone interested in literary history. One can only imagine how it feels to be part of such a storied family. At one point she mentioned how she hated being compared to people, as she had been subjected to that all of her life. She also told me that she had spent more of her life outside of England, than in it, and I wonder how much a part the heavy Bloomsbury legacy played in that decision.

Henrietta is a tactile person, and frequently clasped my hand as we were chatting. I couldn’t help but think: I am touching the hand that has touched so many of the great figures of the age. It felt, in a literal sense, like reaching back into the last century. It felt like touching the pages of a beloved novel that has suddenly come alive. “You have small hands,” she said to me. And one cannot help but feel rather small next to such an interesting, vivid person.

As Mrs. Dalloway so famously said: What a lark! What a plunge!

If you are interested in attending a talk at the Albion Beatnik bookstore:

Paul Edwards, leading authority on Wyndham Lewis, will be giving a talk at

The Albion Beatnik Walton Street Oxford

24th March 6.00pm

Bucklebury (the unofficial tour)

2011-03-08T19:27:00.001Z

This way to Bucklebury: the little Berkshire village where Kate Middleton's family lives.

The avenue of oak trees were planted for Queen Elizabeth I's visit,

quite a few centuries ago.

I don't think I've ever mentioned it, but we happen to live a couple of miles away from Bucklebury -- the village that a certain princess-to-be has put on the front page. Although I've yet to see any tour buses, our local newspaper assures us that Kate Middleton tours have commenced. For the many of you who might find it inconvenient to travel, (not to mention those who lack quite such fervent interest), I humbly offer up a modest tour of my own.

Of course she has been the royal girlfriend for years, but last week the usually low-key locals were abuzz about wedding invitations. I gave a birthday lunch last week, and most of my friends knew at least one person who will be watching the ceremony in person -- instead of on the television, like the other several billion of us.

Ryan, who is possibly the world's chattiest postman, received one of the coveted invitations -- and the news spread like wildfire, several days before the national news picked it up. I was collecting my youngest daughter from a sleepover in Bucklebury, and I heard it from a friend, who had just heard it from the favoured man himself.

There is never more than one degree of separation in any small village, and even though Ryan is not my postman, I've met him several times. One of my dearest friends used to live at the bottom of a track that runs off Bucklebury Common, and Ryan made it a habit to stop for a cup of tea and natter most days. He is the most singularly cheerful person you can imagine -- whatever the weather -- and he has probably set records for the length of time it takes him to make his rounds, as he seems to be friends with everyone on his delivery route.

Another invitee was Martin, the local butcher. I met him once at a friend's barbecue; unsurprisingly, he provided the meat. Bucklebury is the kind of village where many people still go to a butcher for their Sunday roast. I noticed that his signboard advertises "venison" and I couldn't help but wonder if the meat comes directly from the local deer, which are plentiful -- not to mention hazardous to drivers and pesky to gardeners. Deer stalking may be common, but camera stalking certainly isn't. I felt terribly conspicuous taking pictures by the side of the road. So far, this rural village seems as quiet as ever.

Kate Middleton's family lives just off "the Common" -- 344 hectares of land which has been owned by the same family since 1540. Until the 20th century, the villagers had open grazing rights. These days, it is more woodland than field, but 139 "commoners" have rights of "firebote" (to collect fallen dead wood for the fire) and "hedgebote" (the right to cut wood for fencing or hedging). Everyone has the right to use the many footpaths, and at any time of day you will see a variety of dog-walkers. It is not a law that you have to own either a black labrador or a Jack Russell terrier, at least as far as I know, but it does seem to be the accepted practice.

Peach's is the local newsagent . . . what Americans would call a "convenience store," but without the coffee pots, fountain drinks and bait. Unlike an American convenience store, it also doubles a post office. You can buy your milk and bread and newpapers there, not to mention a hundred other odd and unexpected things. In a much larger version of this picture, I can just see that the little boy is holding a comic (maybe the Beano?) and a KitKat. Truly, it is a prosaic place. All of the local children, including my own -- when they are playing with their Bucklebury friends -- have walked up to Peach's to get some sweets.

The proprietors of Peach's were also invited to the wedding, and collectors of wedding-related trivia may be interested in Prince William's snacking habits. According to Mrs. Shingadia, the Prince particularly likes Haribo (do you think he likes Starmix?) and mint Vienettas. I assume he doesn't bother with Lotto tickets, though.

The road from Bucklebury to Stanford Dingley is narrow and windy and definitely not bus width.

Nevertheless, I've read that The Old Boot Inn (more commonly referred to as "the Boot") is on the tourist circuit.

A couple of years ago, we were eating dinner at The Boot and Kate and her father were there as well. No one seemed to give them a second glance, but I was terribly aware of them. Not so my oblivious husband . . . who spoke to her at the bar, and never even realised who she was! When we heard that she and Prince William were engaged, my daughter said, "Just think, Daddy. One day you can say that you've spoken to the Queen."

As I was taking this picture, John, the pub's owner, came out of the front door. He said hello to me, quite graciously, but I was totally mortified. I must have looked like a Daily Mail photographer in my long wool coat and sunglasses. I felt like quite the stalker, with my Nikon camera trained on his humble establishment.

(I definitely don't have the temperament to be paparrazi.)

I guess that he will get used to the extra publicity, though, as he has also been invited to the royal wedding.

I wonder if he will rush back for this Royal Wedding Party?

I doubt we will be attending, but it would be fun to see who wins the Best Royal Wedding Hat contest.

Just-spring

2011-02-25T00:23:00.000Z

According to the BBC weather website,

we've had 30-40% less sunshine

than usual

in January and February.

I would say that it has felt 40% grayer;

yes, at least that.

Cheers for a day of "sunny intervals."

Cheers for snowdrops

and purple crocuses.

Is it purple prose to say

that English spring is paved with flowers?

Here comes the first wave.

At Welford Park,

the snowdrops are nearly as dense

as the drifts of snow

for which they are named.

I've been coming here every February

for years.

And never, never has the sun shone.

It's usually quite a shivery experience,

cold hands and chapped cheeks,

but today we took tea outside.

The many visitors,

mostly old and young,

did mostly obey the dictates

to keep off the grass.

But there were a few rule-breakers.

Keen photographers will do anything

to capture their prey.

Wellies are an absolute must,

as the mud to grass ratio

(not to mention the temperature)

does not favor bare feet just yet.

I did hear this, though:

Mom, can I take off my coat?

It's still February, of course

and the sun is a big tease

because rain will be back tomorrow.

But just for today, it is Just-spring

and the world is not just muddy,

but mudluscious

For those who could not resist

fresh spring green

and the year's first warmth

there was one grassy verge.

I wonder which child

first had the notion

to roll down it?

I was almost tempted, too,

to try my forwards roll.

Long forgotten skills:

Let's dust them off

and bring them out

for spring.

In two more weeks

there will be an explosion of daffodils --

always a more reliable source of yellow

than the sun, in spring.

Dwellings

2011-02-17T18:41:00.001Z

from the Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Last summer, I took a picture of this small treehouse:

described, by its Japanese creator, as Beetle's House.

The charred pine exterior of this elevated teahouse

resembles the tough, blackened shell of a beetle.

Tomorrow, we sign the papers that will put The Barn on the market. After five blissfully settled years, we will somehow gather our things and move them . . . again. I immediately have a visual image as I write those words: Just how large would a two-arm's span need to be in order to gather up all of our multitudinous belongings? The size of a small English county, surely.

Last night I had the first (of what will probably be many) "moving" nightmares.

Eleven years ago we bought The Barn. My husband likes to say I cried, (because it was so ugly and needed so much work); I don't remember actually crying, but I'm sure that I wanted to. What hideous rows we used to have in front of the architect. And even before, before the decision had been made: when I said, "but it's so ugly" and Sigmund said, "yes, but it's a lot of house for the money."

After a year of work, the house became a place that I wanted to live in -- but even as we moved into it, there was rumbling about a new job, another move.

And so we moved, back to Texas -- but we kept the house, for five long years, and never really expecting to live in it again.

Five years again, (and six houses in the meantime), we moved back to The Barn . . . and the refiguring and refashioning began again. This time, I concentrated on creating a garden. We moved the garage around, and so many square feet of gravel became herbaceous borders. Grass was dug up to make herb beds. Roses were planted. You know that Joni Mitchell song about paving Paradise and putting in a parking lot? Well, we did it the other way around.

In June, (although certainly not in February), it looks something like this:

Best to sell a house in June, but better to leave it in January.

We have created this little paradise, and the house encases us and our things nearly perfectly, but it is not in the right place . . . and it never has been. I've never really liked where we lived; it's never felt quite right to me. I've never felt quite right in it.

In almost twenty years, we've never moved just because we wanted to; such decisions have always been a job-driven and imperative. I guess that's true of most people.

But now we live in a place where we have no jobs, and soon we will have absolutely no reason to be tethered to it anymore. Familiarity, yes; and after five years, some friends; and a garden that still hasn't matured. But we've decided that what basically amounts to inertia (a comfortable inertia, true) is not quite enough reason to stay.

Everyone asks me why we are moving to Oxford -- a place of notoriously high house prices.

Because my daughter is going to school there (the most obvious reason).

Because our teenagers need a town, and more scope for independence -- and we are tired of driving them everywhere. And speaking of cars, we don't want to be so dependent on them anymore.

Because I want to ride a bicycle.

Because I want cinemas, and museums, and bookstores, and parks and cafes and concerts and something to do on rainy days. Because there are so very many rainy days in England.

I've been looking at houses in Oxford for more than a year. I know the offerings by heart; I can tell you which houses have been on the market since last summer and why. (Any really nice house will hardly surface on a property website; and if it does, it will disappear in a week.) I realise that we may have to rent for a year, so we (too) can pounce as cash-in-hand buyers. I realise that, no matter what, I won't have a house as capacious as this one. (The dining room furniture will definitely have to go. And where will we put all of the wedding china, and the crystal glasses that my husband loves?) Compromises will have to be made. But still, I want a bicycle -- with a wicker basket in front to put the shopping in. I want to know bookish people, because I've never really fit in with the horsey/shooting types who vote Conservative no matter what.

I want this move, but I'm a veteran when it comes to moving and I don't underestimate the cost of upheaval.

It would all be so much easier if we could just fit into a little treehouse . . . or like the beetle, take our house with us.

This is not a snow story

2011-02-06T16:42:00.003Z

Definite signs of life in the February garden:

poppy leaves, dwarf iris, grape hyacinth

witchhazel, viburnum, primrose

azalea buds, tulip shoots, snowdrops
(click on them twice to enlarge)

It's one of those bleakish, windy days despised by people with fine (ie, "difficult") hair.

Wintry and dull, still, but there are definitely signs of burgeoning green life in the garden. This is the compensation for English winter, with its long string of gray days. The damp earth, hardly ever frozen, is so fertile -- even in February.

For the past couple of weeks, I feel like I have been making all sorts of preparations for what is to come:

New passports and endless forms have been filled out for my oldest daughter's trip to Africa.

The house is being touched up for its launch on the spring housing market.

My youngest daughter has been prepped, for countless hours, for her scholarship exams this month.

And every day, sending out feelers about new jobs and work studies and a new house.

We're laying the groundwork, but time still has that suspended "waiting" quality to it.

I've been asking advice (from all and sundry) about how to keep the muntjac deer away from my tulips.

Our gardener suggested putting a radio set on a low volume into the beds.

Apparently the deer have keen hearing and shy away from human noise.

Do you think this will work?

(Sigmund is highly doubtful,

but that is his reflexive position on many questions.)

It's terrible to be between books

2011-01-19T19:17:00.001Z

On January 6, as I was dismantling the Christmas tree, I was also listening to Bookclub on Radio 4.

The recent Booker Prize winner, Howard Jacobson, was talking about one of his novels -- and to tell the truth, I was listening half-heartedly until he got on to the topic of failure and its relationship to readers and writers. He started off by saying, quite reasonably, that he was only interested in writing about failure because success didn't make for very interesting characters or plots. But then, quite startlingly, he flung out the idea that we are writers -- and readers, even -- because we are failures at life.

Did I imagine that the collective intake of breath from his live audience turned into a sort of hissing . . .?

Maybe I remember it wrongly, but I do recall that he start "explaining" (backpeddling, in fact) rapidly.

Apparently what he really meant is that we are readers (and failures at life) because we want the world to be another (different and better) place. Writers (and also readers) have gone into the imagination to remake and relive the world.

I have been ruminating on this assertion, especially because I find myself hiding out in books at this time of year. Do I read more when I am depressed? Well, yes. But then I always have a book on the go, whether happy or sad, and my involvement in it has more to do with its own intrinsic interest (I will venture to say) than my own emotional state. Do I actually want to remake the world through reading? No, I don't think so. Relive the world? Well, of course; I appreciate the access to all of those other worlds I would otherwise be ignorant and deprived of.

This time last year I made a resolution to keep better track of what I read. (Like any avid reader, sometimes I consume books so rapidly that I can barely remember the plot -- much less character names -- by the following month.) My dear blog-friend Relyn recommended goodreads -- and although it took me a while to get started, and to be consistent with my recording, I have come to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate it.

I was looking through the list of books I read last year, and I started thinking about how some books create such a compelling world that it is always a bit of a wrench to leave that place. In most cases, it's not that I would want to live there -- even if I could; but rather, that I have been so thoroughly immersed in that imaginative design that it becomes, for a time, more real than the "real world." I think that I know the characters; I'm swept up into the plot; and yes, I feel a sense of loss when the words run out and I turn the final page. Do I prefer books to real life? (Does it make me a failure to admit that is sometimes the case?)

On goodreads, the reader gives each book a starred rating -- from one stars to five (the rather cheesy "it was amazing" rating). The books on the following list weren't always a FIVE, and I wouldn't claim that they were perfect books and that anyone would love them, but they were the books that transported me to a fictional world that felt quite, quite real. I was a tiny bit bereft when I finished them.

The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple

The Group, by Mary McCarthy

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst,

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey

The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman

Any Human Heart, William Boyd

It strikes me, looking at this list, that I'm partial to a reading experience that begins with The . . .

I leave you with some borrowed words from another delightful book that begins with The:

The Love Letter, by Cathleen Schine

"I need something to read," a man said to Helen.

Her attention shifted to him instantly and completely.

"It's terrible to be between books," she said.

And Johnny marveled at the tenderness of her voice. It suddenly seemed

terrible to him, too, to be between books, though he was

often between books for months and had never really noticed it before.
"It's so disorienting, isn't it? Helen was saying.

"Like a divorce. An amicable one, but still."

Slouching towards 2011

2011-01-13T12:00:00.001Z

For the past two weeks, my daughter has been working on a sculpture inspired by Winter.
She started with dead tree branches, and a sketchbook full of assocations, and ended up with something rather spidery and menacing. Here, it looks rather like a large and upright praying mantis.

I'm not phobic about creepy, crawly things, but I do have an uncomfortable relationship with January.
This year it seems to be particularly bad, although -- as one of my friends tactfully told me -- "you are never very good in January.

We had an excessively sociable December, and maybe part of what I'm experiencing is a natural burn-out.
Winter is the time for renewal, as we all know, but I do hate the diminishment of my natural energies and enthusiasm. I've had no energy for resolutions this year; and no desire for anything other than sleeping, reading and -- while the fleeting pleasure lasted -- watching episodes of Downton Abbey. It's not that I'm lying prone on the sofa, and in fact I've had some hurry-scurry days, but still I feel like I'm just going through the motions . . . waiting, somehow, for things to begin.

It doesn't help that dusk seems to come at 3 pm, and the sky is a mass of smothering weeping cloud. I do love England, my adopted country, but my native Texan self does suffer at this time of year.

Still, getting to the point of being able to write about it, is probably a sign that I'm beginning to emerge from the worst of my annual winter funk. Here is a poem, which I dedicate to my fellow SAD sufferers, by the wonderful Linda Pastan.

SAD

Is is seasonal affective disorder

I suffer from? This special lamp

I bought doesn't help at all,

but I do light up whenever

the sun itself appears. you say

the blossoms are most themselves

on a cloudy day, as if contrast

is what flowers are about.

But I feel as swollen with useless tears

as the clouds must be with rain,

projecting their shadows

over fields that are simply waiting

to blaze back to green.

The world is always going to pieces,

and we're all growing rapidly

towards our deaths, even the children.

But just one hit of sun,

one almost lethal shot

of pure, yellow light

(like the hand of some saint

I don't even believe in

touching my face)

and I'll forget the whole broken world,

forget the impermanence of beauty.

I'll simply catch on fire from

a single spoke of sun.

With a single exception, everyone in my family has a January birthday. When I am in a wintery mood, (see the beginning of the second stanza), that seems like an exceptionally grim thing. Please forgive me; I'm having a morbid moment. The forecast is nothing but rain, rain, rain, but hopefully I will be myself again soon.

January: I can't wait to see the back of you.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-24T17:33:00.000Z

Warmest wishes

from our house to yours

this holiday season.

with love

and thanks for your friendship,

Bee x

Happy Birthday, Jane

2010-12-16T23:43:00.001Z

Today was the anniversary of Jane Austen's birthday, maybe you've heard?

At Jane Austen's House, we honoured the day with an open house:

mince pies, cups of tea and free admission.

For the past 18 months, I've spent most of my Thursdays in Chawton, Hampshire -- talking about Jane, thinking about Jane, and of course, reading about all things Austen. Having said that, I'm not one of the dedicated miniaturists in life. I don't read the six books over and over, as some of her fans do. I'm much more likely to read a novel that's been obviously influenced by the Austen style or plot-lines. (The Three Weissmans of Westport comes immediately to mind.) There is one novel that I do read almost every year, though, and that's Persuasion.

It is not unusual for Austen lovers to nominate a favourite novel, and by a long chalk the front-runners are Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. I like and admire P & P, but without hesitation I would choose Persuasion as one of my desert island books. I recently read an interview with Nigella Lawson and she named the following as her all-time favourite books: Persuasion (listed first), any Nancy Mitford, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I didn't really need any other reason to adore Nigella Lawson, but discovering that we have the same short-list of favourite books did make me feel that extra bit of kinship to her. (I would argue that being influenced and formed by the same body of books does create a sororal bond.)

Not everyone is similarly persuaded, though. A friend recently asked for a recommendation for her Book Club and I encouraged her to choose Persuasion.

Her feedback was not, to put it delicately, enthusiastic.

I can't remember the particulars of what she said . . . probably because I was too busy refuting them, both in mind and mouth . . . but I do recall that she didn't care for Anne Elliot, the heroine. Something about "wimpy;" something about wanting to shake her and why didn't she take more control of her life.

I immediately went into my professor mode, trying to explain the aristocratic confines of life for an on-the-shelf and not-quite-rich-enough woman like Anne. There is no denying, though, that Anne has a certain passive quality. I'm quite susceptible to characters who are good and kind, but a little prone to being pushed around -- but not everyone shares that taste, I realise.

Some biographers believe that Anne Elliot was partly based on Jane's sister Cassandra, who had her own experience of "loving longest, when existence or hope is gone." (Cassandra's fiance died, and apparently she long carried a torch for him. At any rate, she never married -- nor even seemed to contemplate marriage.) If so, the dénouement of Persuasian -- in which two lovers, long separated, are reunited -- was the ultimate in wish-fulfillment. Although it is not the most obviously romantic of Austen's novels, with its slightly melancholy and autumnal tone, I think it is the most profoundly romantic. It is the novel for every shy girl (or wallflower woman) who thinks someone will come along and see her for what she really is. Don't we all want to be loved for our intrinsic qualities? In a world that admires surface gloss more than ever, the idea of being seen and recognized and chosen is still heart-thrilling.

Why not seize the pleasure at once?

How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation.

(from Emma)

I long to be the sort of person who seizes the pleasure at once, but I have the feeling that I am too often caught planning and worrying and second-guessing myself . . . definitely more of an Anne Elliot. Happily, Jane Austen -- who only wrote six completed novels -- provides more than one kind of heroine.

frozen

2010-12-14T23:33:00.000Z

We live on the edge of a forest, and in the winter we sometimes get what I think of as frozen fog.

A thick mist seems to rise from the ground, and if it's cold enough, it encases every leaf and blade of grass and hedgerow twig in silvery ice. The effect is magical.

This year, the big freeze came before the oak trees had shed their leaves and we've had a rare display of bronze mixed in with the more usual shades of pewter-gray.

Last week I had spent the morning shopping for a party . . . (I utter the word "Costco" only so you may appreciate the contrast) . . . and on the drive back home I was arrested by the sight of these ghostly trees. Although it was only mid-afternoon, the dusk was purplish-dark already. It was as if Winter had cast a spell of enchantment and all of the world was frozen in its tracks.

I'm not immune to winter's charms, but sometimes I have to be reminded that chief amongst them is that deep blanketing silence that is not experienced at any other time of the year.

I've had two solid weeks of almost unceasing activity, and way too many evenings which have ended in morning -- surely not a good thing at the darkest time of the year -- but funnily enough, I think that it is these few quiet moments that will stay with me:

my daughter's purely sung solo (in candlelit darkness) at the Christmas concert tonight,

and the world stilled and silenced by frozen fog.

Launching Christmas

2010-12-08T12:31:00.000Z

So how's it going . . . all of you Santa's helpers out there?

Do you have lift-off on the Christmas preparations . . .

the cards

the presents

the concerts

the parties

the baking

the decorating

Or are you struggling to breathe in the de-oxygenated atmosphere?

My brain feels like it is in perpetual orbit

around Christmas Planet.

Only my lists keep me anchored

to the solid (but icy!) ground.

Cold season

2010-11-30T00:46:00.000Z

There is a nasty Two Week Cold that is making the rounds in England. And it's really cold here, too; unseasonably, record-breakingly cold. The one thing is not supposed to have anything to do with the other, and yet why did ancient language-makers decide that the one word would suffice for both conditions?

More than two weeks ago, when I first got sick, I was reading a charming book called Period Piece -- written by Gwen Raverat, who was Charles Darwin's granddaughter. One of my favourite chapters is called Aunt Etty, and it covers, among other topics, the Darwinian tendency to the "cult of bad health." Raverat describes how a young Aunt Etty, who was suffering from a "low fever," is advised to take her breakfast in bed. As a precautionary measure, perhaps, she never got up to breakfast again in all her life. Aunt Etty's attention to health, both her own and that of everyone in her orbit, is scientifically precise. Raverat remembers how her aunt's personal maid would put a silk handkerchief over one foot if it felt slightly colder than the other.

Truly, it made me feel that hypochondria (not to mention persistent ill health) was a luxury of a bygone age and class -- one that enjoyed the ministrations of lots of servants. Certainly we have the Internet now, which contributes greatly to the pleasures of self-diagnosis, but for sheer wallowing in illness there is nothing like the Victorian Age in which Aunt Etty lived. Whether slightly sick, or well and truly sick, most of us just have to soldier through these days. But if you have the chance, and are feeling slightly off-colour, do read Period Piece and see how illness used to be done.

As my Two Week Cold persists into a third week, I sorrowfully acknowledge that I could have been a bit more Aunt Etty-like in my dedication to my own health. There should have been more cups of warm broth, more shawls, and definitely more mornings in bed -- and far fewer shopping trips, houseguests, long sweaty walks, transatlantic flights, temperature extremes and opportunities for sleep deprivation. I'm sure it doesn't do the sinuses (not to mention one's ears) any good to be assaulted by 87 degrees in Texas on one day -- and freezing temperatures in England on the next. And as I can't seem to stop coughing, I'm sure the person next to me on the plane would have appreciated if I had been wearing the Aunt Etty patented anti-cold mask.

And when there colds about she often wore a kind of gas-mask of her own invention.

It was an ordinary wire kitchen-strainer, stuffed with antiseptic cotton-wool,

and tied on like a snout, with elastic over her ears.

In this she would receive her visitors and discuss politics in a hollow voice

out of her eucalyptus-scented seclusion,

oblivious of the fact that they might be struggling with fits of laughter.

(from Period Piece, by Gwen Raverat)

Overlearning

2010-11-12T20:35:00.000Z

Several afternoons a week, I tutor struggling readers.

I’ve worked with one little boy for three years now – and in a progress that has been halting, and at times excruciatingly frustrating, he has slowly, slowly learned the alphabet and basic phonics and a small memory store of “sight” words. Just in the last month or so, he has come close to being able to string enough words together that it is almost reading. (Lots of qualifiers here, still.) Every week, his painful efforts force me to really notice and think about what a mysterious and huge undertaking it is to learn the English written language.

I can’t really remember that lightbulb moment when letters became sounds and sounds became words . . . because for such a very long time, reading has been as natural as breathing to me. And yet, when I am in the act of explaining reading strategies – and okay, that’s another word which doesn’t follow the rule or the pattern – I have to acknowledge that reading is nothing if not laboured.

For instance:

Ow sounds like mouse, but not like flow – which has the same spelling pattern.
Through sounds the same as threw and thru – but not a word like trough, which has the same spelling pattern, and hardly looks any different . . . especially for a little guy who likes to look at the first letter and then guess all of the rest (because the letters are dancing around).

For goodness sake, even the word READ has two different pronunciations. You’ve got to know the context first, but you can't rely on it entirely. (Isn’t that true of everything?)

Some of us learn to read quite easily, while others – more than you might think – have to overlearn every little thing to reach that magical mastery called automaticity. Automaticity: where there is no gap between the seeing/recognizing/processing/understanding/doing.

I’ve been thinking about overlearning a lot this week.

What have I had to learn, over and over again, and yet I still don’t have that absolute understanding – that mastery? I keep coming up short, and making the same mistakes, time after time.

Here’s a few life lessons that come to mind:

Impatience never helps the process.

It is pointless to speculate too much about the future.

Procrastination rarely (if ever) makes the task easier.

It is fruitless to force a conversation with someone when you know he (mostly he) is not in the right frame-of-mind for the conversation.

Emails and phone calls that aren’t answered promptly will probably never be answered at all.

If you go to bed late you are going to be tired and grumpy the next day.

Too much sugar, especially in the form of raw cookie dough, is never a good idea.

It is not necessary to voice every thought that comes into your head.

Is it a sign?

2010-11-11T07:25:00.001Z

Almost every day, no matter the weather

I walk the same walk

down the busy farm road we live on.

Me -- the trucks, the cars, the horses, and the odd bicycle.

I've had to jump in the hedgerow

more than once.

I can be amazingly, embarrassingly unobservant

but in five years

I've never noticed so much variety

in the hedgerows.

Doesn't lots of berries mean

a harsh winter to come?

Or is that

just another old wive's tale?

A page from the book of autumn

2010-11-08T11:08:00.000Z

Like discarded pages

from the book

of autumn, the leaves

come trembling down.

Today is the first truly Novemberish day: wet and wild.

The leaves are surrendering, not just the odd individual flutter

but whole regiments of them, felled by the great gusts of wind.

All of that October gold transmogrified

into sodden piles of brown muck.

I drive gingerly through the forest

that leads to my daughter's school.

Tires slip; windshield wipers scrape.

I take out porridge, still warm, for the chickens

because I feel ridiculously guilty about the discomforts

of their outdoor living space.

There is a great temptation to just go back to bed.

Cheers for hissing radiators, thick duvets

and the cappuccino that my husband

(still in his thick bathrobe)

is making for me right now.

Open your arms

to the dying colors,

to the fragile

beauties

of November.

Deep in the heart

of buried acorns,

nothing is lost.

(italicized words belong to Linda Pastan,

from Queen of a Rainy Country;

Family Roundabout

2010-10-31T01:42:00.006+01:00

Autumn. Around it comes, round again.
I took a long walk this morning -- because the sun was shining, because the children were otherwise occupied -- and I remember thinking this is the tipping point.
This is the day when everything is at its burnished, glowing peak.
In a week, maybe two if we don't get too much tearing wind, it will all fall down.
The darkness will close in on both sides: another Bonfire Night, another Thanksgiving, another Christmas, another New Year's. Feasts and festivities for compensation.

I've been reading a novel called Family Roundabout -- and I keep thinking about the aptness of the title.
Not just because I am the family chauffeur; and round and round I go. Although there is that aspect of it, especially during half-term week -- when I have driven to Malvern, London, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading in so many days.
But also because I am the fulcrum of family life, and I feel like everyone else is a lever. I am the circular and circumscribed, and everyone else is an exit -- leading to a separate road.
For this week, at least, I have embraced the busy roundabout of family life. When it is going full-tilt, I feel necessary . . . (although there are a thousand conflicted thoughts behind that admission).

Will tomorrow (already today) be the last Halloween party of my daughter's childhood?
Will we still be in this house next year, when autumn rolls round again?
I am craving change -- and lots of it is coming (jobs, schools, home) whether I want it or not.

And yet; there is something so comforting about the roundaboutness of things.

Freedom

2010-10-06T11:28:00.000+01:00

Remnants of the Berlin Wall
currently being overtaken by graffiti and greenery
(creative and natural freedom run amok)

I was 21 when the Berlin Wall came down – was aggressively pulled down, really. All through my childhood and adolescence it had been the symbol of the Cold War and a physical embodiment of the lack of freedom for all of those on the wrong side. Those poor, trapped victims of Communism; we felt so sorry for them, we were so ecstatic about liberating them. (Even if we participated in spirit, only.)

Last November, during the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the BBC interviewed many former East Berliners and I was (perhaps naively) surprised to hear that some of them regretted the scope of their new “freedoms.” Many of them talked about the loss of job security, others lamented the proliferation of crime. Freedom definitely had, and does have, its downside. If nothing else, it comes with its own costs and compromises. Freedom seemed such a black and white concept when I was 21; is it so very middle-aged of me to think of it as greyer territory now? On one hand, we tie ourselves into absurd knots to protect civil liberties; on the other, we surrender all kinds of privacy and autonomy in the hope that it will somehow keep us safe.

Ah, the innocence of being 21. It is an age perfectly poised between adult freedoms (lots of them) and adult responsibilities (not so many, particularly if you are a senior in college). There is really only big question when you are 21 and that is what kind of person am I going to be? (All other questions, like what am I going to do to make a living?, can be collapsed into that one.)

Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel – Freedom -- never explicitly deals with the question of freedom, and yet the idea of it permeates every aspect of the novel. Instead of the Berlin Wall, this novel has the Twin Towers falling down – one destruction so positive, the other so negative. It is a novel that feels more personal than political, but the political circumstances of the past decade are always there in the background – and to this reader, at least, it felt like there was a comprehensive intelligence and understanding at work. I was in awe of the detail and the scope, (no wonder Franzen keeps getting compared to the great 19th century novelists), but the narrative never gets diverted from the relationships which are its core.

There are four main characters: an environmental lawyer/activist, a stay-at-home mother, a musician and a college student. Each of them has to deal with the question what kind of person am I going to be? over and over again. (That old expression “in between a rock and a hard place” comes to mind.) Two of the characters are primarily concerned with being “good,” and two of them are primarily concerned with being autonomous, but in the in-between there is a world of emotional and moral possibility. Surely there is no freer person than a white, well-educated, wealthy, Western man, but in the person of Walter Berglund (arguably the heart of the novel) there could be no one more weighed down by expectations, obligations and compromises.

Before I read this novel, I knew little more about Jonathan Franzen than that he wrote a novel called The Corrections (which sounded rather ominous), and that he declined the “opportunity” to be an Oprah novel. His media reputation is of someone who takes himself rather seriously, and I suppose I expected a novel that was weighty – but in a portentous way. Despite the hype – Time magazine cover, cultural zeitgeist, President Obama’s choice of vacation book – it really was that most satisfying of experiences: just a darn good read.

A Franzenian footnote: On Monday I was in London, and the Tube was mostly shut down due to striking. During my train journey home, I read that Jonathan Franzen had accidentally wandered into the Tube shut-down when his chauffeured car hadn’t shown up. There was something about the congruence of me and Jonathan Franzen – both affected by the strike; both out walking the London streets – that just amused me. Without a doubt, the freedom of workers to strike adversely affects the freedom of commuters to get around the crowded city. And yet, compared to the sardine tin of the Tube, it really did feel liberating to stride down Oxford Street!

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@Barrie Summy

And we laughed and laughed

2010-09-24T15:36:00.000+01:00

The other night at school pick-up, a knot of mothers were idly chatting when I threw the conversational grenade of Eat Pray Love in the mix. Strangely enough, (at least to me), I was the only woman in the group who had read this culture-dominating memoir. But as I explained the concept – a kind of self-seeking journey, not to mention sabbatical from one’s established life – all of the women started chatting excitedly. One woman, in particular, recounted a solo trip from the previous year when she was “no one’s mother, wife, daughter or employee.” She then reeled off a list of qualities that seemed to surface when she was liberated from her usual roles and responsibilities. “I was WITTY,” she emphasized – all dramatic big eyes and self-deprecating laugh.

It stuck in my mind, maybe because the one overriding memory from my Blog-camping weekend in Berlin is the laughter, the constant laughter. It was the kind of bodily laughter that inhibits speech and makes your sides ache. I don’t know if a lot of wit was involved, at least on my part, but certainly I was silly, irreverent and raunchy – qualities that don’t get a lot of play in my “normal” life.

Is laughter what happens when you take six intelligent women and liberate them from the responsibility of feeding people three times a day? Was it glorious alchemy, or just the heady oxygen of having more space to breathe freely? I’d like to think it was more than the shot of ouzo that Julochka coerced me into imbibing after I had already, ahem, had enough. “What are you going to remember?” is her motto.

As autumn descends like one great gray wet blanket, I’ve been musing on why there is too little laughter in my daily routine. What is there about normal life that smothers it?

September apples

2010-09-14T11:19:00.000+01:00

There must be an explanation

scientific, or otherwise,

for why the apple tree

gnarled and bent and elderly

brings forth an edible harvest

every other year only,

and sometimes one in three.

Do some living things

keep their own schedule

for resting and renewal?

Or does the fruit depend

on some other equation:

like January frost

plus April showers

when June is hot and dry.

Last year's apples weren't worth picking

but this fall there's a bumper crop.

Every branch is weighed down so

even when the birds claim their share

there is more than enough fruit

to fill every jar I own

with sweet September applesauce.

Normal Time

2010-09-10T17:10:00.000+01:00

At the beginning of the summer, I read Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs -- or rather, I gulped it down. Chabon's meditations on parenthood elicited many moments of delighted recognition, but none more so than his description of Normal Time. Normal Time, as Chabon defines it, is the yearning for "time to spare, of time in plenty."

Time not just for work and reflection and unhurried lovemaking but for all kinds of fine and tiny things.

One of the things that Chabon is going to do in the coming of Normal Time is "print out the digital photos and reorganize the albums." (I couldn't help wonder how many people have that resolution.) Certainly I have been resolving and planning to organize my photographs since 1999 -- which is the last time I recall making a big push in that area. Okay, yes, I've done the occasional album -- but still, there are stacks of photographs everywhere, and I need to do a serious cull of the digital files.

All summer long, when solitary moments have been as scarce as hen's teeth, I've thought longingly of that time when the children would return to school and routine would be re-established and there would Normal Time aplenty. In August, I even got the photo albums out and started making ambitious plans for various collages: of favorite holidays, of all the Christmas cards, of the girls when they were babies. Oh yes, I had big, grand, retrospective plans.

On Sunday, we took our oldest daughter to boarding school; early Monday morning, my youngest daughter left for a week-long field trip and my husband went away on a business trip. All of a sudden, after frantic weeks of preparing for these events, I was completely my own -- with loads of free, uncommitted time. And here's the rub: I've realized that there is a problem with Normal Time. Time, with no children in it, just isn't normal to me. For 16 years, my life has been dominated by mothering and that's the groove that I'm used to. In fact, it's been approximately 16 years since I last remember feeling so uncomfortable with my own company. Then, I was in a brand-new country (England) with a brand-new baby, and after two weeks of a full house, my family left and my husband went on a business trip . . . and rather suddenly, I was alone with a newborn. I felt lonely and bewildered and distinctly uncomfortable with the new-mother routine. No week was as bad as that first week, but it still took a while to reset the clock of my days.

I can only trust that I will get used to this new version of Normal Time -- and figure out something constructive to do with it. This week I've been rather spendthrift: I finally cleaned the utility room, but I also watched the entire third season of Mad Men. I ironed a stack of shirts and sheets, I read The Group, I sent off some overdue packages and letters . . . but I definitely fell short on reflective activities, and I didn't even crack open those photo albums. Maybe next week.

Steering a new course
The last day of summer: punting in Oxford

Wales

2010-08-23T14:20:00.000+01:00

Curves ahead

For years now, my husband has been saying "We need to take Mum back to Wales."

My mother-in-law's family came from a small village in western Wales and during the war years she and her sister lived there.

I've always imagined a dramatic evacuation from London: waving good-bye to her parents at the train station, along with the other millions of city children who were sent to the countryside in 1939.

As it turned out, the "real" story was a bit different. Apparently, the family was already in Wales when war broke out. My mother-in-law was thrilled at the turn of events, as it meant she would be able to go to the fair.

"Yes, we had a marvellous war," giggled my mother-in-law's childhood friend as we discussed those years.

My children and I had never been to Wales. I don't know what we had expected, really -- something gray and wet, I suppose. Something old-fashioned and fusty and dull.

The dramatic cliffs, the huge expanse of Irish Sea, the blue sky: it was all such a surprise.

Setting out

The week in Wales was on the calendar for the middle of August.
As far as my oldest daughter was concerned, it was a black hole in her hectic social life. She dreaded it and complained about it with the full force of adolescent hyperbole.
The thought of sentimental journeys, of a visit to the past, is anathema to her. She wants only to live in the present. The future is a bit frightening, and the past just seems irrelevant.

Over the stile

My children's great-grandfather and great-great grandparents are buried in the village of Cilgerran. We visited their graves. My mother-in-law doesn't know how deeply rooted her family in Wales; like her granddaughter, she has never been that interested in the past. It gave me a chill, though, to think that my children are part of this place. It is there, somewhere, in their DNA.

To my fanciful eyes, Cilgerran was a bit of a Brigadoon. For a hundred years, and maybe more, it's hardly changed. There is Aunt Mary's house, but someone replaced the old door. There's the Teifi River, where we used to fish. There's the ruins of the old Norman castle, where we used to play.

We climbed the steep path from the river to the castle, and I worried that it was a bit much for my mother-in-law. I scolded my husband about it, but he defended himself by saying that she knew the climb was challenging. I wonder, though, if it is difficult to remember that you are 80 when you visit one of your childhood places. In any case, she declined to join us for our walks on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.

There is no escape route

My girls are good walkers. Even when they were really young, I forced them to trek across Boston, Amsterdam and Den Haag -- because I like to see things by foot. These experiences have become part of our family lore.

We walked every day we were in Wales, but one day we hiked the 10 miles from our cottage in Moylegrove to the Newport Sands Beach. It was a sunny day, but you could feel -- in the wind -- that a storm was approaching. On the top of the cliffs, the wind was fierce.

The sign, above, reads: This is a remote, rugged and challenging stretch of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Please keep to the path. Avoid the cliff edge.

Stay on the path

Rather worryingly, it warns: On this stretch there are no escape routes or exit points.

Once you start down the path, you have no choice but to keep going. I couldn't help but think that, like much of life, it's better that you don't know how hard it's going to be.

Avoid the cliff edge

It's a trick of perspective, but in this picture the girls seem so far away. I let them get a bit ahead of me -- and there they are, tiny figures on the edge of the cliff.

After what seems like a summer of too much togetherness, they will be off -- on their own -- in only two weeks. The oldest daughter is off to boarding school, and the youngest daughter is going to Dartmoor for a geography field trip.

Rise and Fall

There's almost no cell phone coverage, or Internet access, in this part of Wales. My husband complained that he got better coverage in Angola. He and my oldest daughter walked around, cell phones held aloft, trying to find a signal.

Before cars, before trains, there were ships -- and then, this rugged coast was well-connected. I read that Newport, where our walk ended, supplied the herring for Queen Elizabeth I's Navy.

These cliffs are actually part of the Preseli Mountains -- the source of the blue slate, or "bluestones" that make up Stonehenge.

This bit of coastline, near Cardigan Bay, is one of the only places in the UK where you can find dolphins and seals. Sadly, we didn't spot any . . . although we kept looking for them. Even without dolphins, there was more than enough to marvel over. She might not admit to it, not now, but even my teenage daughter wasn't immune to the magic of this place.

Resting (and reflecting)

barefoot in the park

2010-07-29T22:08:00.001+01:00

Summer, in London, can be heavenly – or hellish.

Into my collection of memories goes one of each:

Heavenly: a day spent in Regent’s Park with one of my dearest friends. The roses – all 30,000 of them – at their peak. Al fresco lunch at the Garden Café.

Hellish: shopping for a black suit with a sullen teenager. Tense negotiations over hemlines, the backwash of the summer sales, the cattle-car Tube.

All of that density of humid humanity is just too much for city streets . . . better to spread it out over the 410 acres of Regent’s Park.

Summer is bare feet in the grass – but also standing in line to buy new school shoes.

Summer is a stroll through a rose garden – but also the dutiful trip to the dentist.

Summer is all about hanging out with your friends – but also that bored week at home when everyone else seems to be on vacation.

Give me the summer blues . . . but only if they are delphiniums.

simple things

2010-07-16T12:33:00.000+01:00

Forget school, and scratchy woolen uniforms, and the alarm clock going off too early.
Here there is only the pleasure of simple things:

soft, slouchy clothes to wear
and bare feet,
sometimes rubbed down by sand

iced tea by the pool
and cold watermelon, a triangle held in the hand
with juice running down to your elbow

we eat with the appetite of birds, or babies,
little and often,
every meal an outdoor picnic

The sky is cloudless blue every day,
no threat of rain to chase us inside
and interrupt our sun-worship

We give thanks for dependable breezes
and other cooling things:
pool and sea and ice lollies

Not to mention chilled white wine
sangria, the local specialty
and cold beer, of course

And the very best thing?
(besides friends to share the fun
and a laughing, teasing father)

Lots of good books
and plenty of time to read them.

Sending out happiest high-summer birthday greetings to Christina . . .
who has made an art of simple things.

One fine day

2010-07-08T21:30:00.003+01:00

Another sunny day.

For weeks now, I've opened the heavy bedroom curtains to brilliant sun. This is our fourth summer in England, but the first time we've enjoyed such a long streak of fine, cloudless days. My flimsy cotton dresses have been dragged out of the back of the closet; usually, they only get an airing when we holiday in warm places.

I love the heat of a proper good summer, but the gardener in me acknowledges that the ground could use a good soaking. Nearly every night, I'm outside watering the borders until the light begins to ebb and I can feel the damp chill rising from the earth.

Three summers ago, when we planted the new border and the rose/herb beds, it rained and rained. High summer is not, typically, the best time to put in new plants, but the weather conspired with my impatience. Only the lavender, which hates being water-logged, really suffered.

This year the lavender is thriving . . . it must think it got transplanted to Provence.

For the first time, we aren't plagued by the black spot on the rose leaves. But the trade-off is that the roses bloom and quickly brown and shrivel. They come apart like an explosion of confetti when you touch them. Last Thursday, when I was at Jane Austen's House, every gust of wind blew a shower of rose petals through the front door. I kept looking for the phantom June wedding.

I suppose we are all influenced by seasonal rhythm and ritual more than we realize. I still expect SUMMER to begin on that last weekend of May. It feels strange to fret, in July, with early morning alarm bells, piano exams and school bags. The high point of the summer has passed, and yet here we are -- still limping along, trying to adhere to a routine that has lost its relevance. I'm sure that by the end of August I will long for routine again, but just now I'd like to lay in the grass and listen to the hum of insects.

The raspberry canes are bursting with fruit that no one has time to pick.

We need to spend a day in our pajamas . . . or bathing suits. It seems a shame to run the sprinklers without some tow-headed child running through them.

Only one more day 'till summer vacation.

Diary of a Provincial Lady

2010-06-21T16:40:00.000+01:00

Recommended reading: The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield. Although it was written in 1930, any woman who feels harried, ineffectual and even occasionally ridiculous, will find much to identify with – and laugh at – here. So in the spirit and style of the inimitable Delafield, I offer up a few highlights from the past week of my life. An affectionate homage . . . from a 21st century provincial lady.

June 12. – Sports Day once again. We arrive late and miss youngest daughter’s first and best event: hurdles. Daughter’s face is as thunderous and chilly as the weather. Discover that daughter has no other events until after lunch, so we meander around the fields, dodging dogs and engaging in conversation about the weather with various acquaintances. Universal consensus that weather is not as bad as last year, but not as nice as the year before that. Congratulate myself on getting clothes right: am wearing pastel linen, as a nod to June, with a trench coat for warmth. (End up not taking off trench coat for the entire day; might as well have worn jeans and a fleece.)

Feel intensely jealous of better-organized sorts who have brought flasks of coffee. Speak at length to woman with five children who has attended fifteen Sports Days in a row. Feel profoundly glad to have only two children. Feel intensely jealous of better-equipped sorts who have brought attractive deck chairs. Eat my hog roast sandwich and strawberries and cream standing up. Experience intense back ache by 4 pm – and more than six hours of continuous standing.

Commisserate with daughter, after humiliations at the high jump. Of course she feels herself to be the cynosure of every eye. Attempt to convince daughter that no one really notices or remembers these things. Cannot help but feel that sporty parents with equally sporty offspring derive more enjoyment from this sort of event. Decline to participate in Mother’s Race. Help clear up empty bottles (beer, wine and champagne) from the Leavers’ Tent and marvel at the English constitution. A couple of weak Pimm’s are enough to do me in.

Take two ibuprofen the minute I arrive home and fall asleep, fully clothed, at 6 pm. Later rouse myself to make some popcorn and watch South Pacific with youngest daughter. Am impressed, chiefly, by the smallness of Mitzi Gaynor’s waist. (Query: What happened to the small waist? Not just mine, but everyone’s?) Cannot help but think that the film was not nearly as good as I remembered. 1950s production values and acting style have aged badly.

Later in the week I learn, from walking partner, that many of the parents at the Sports Day attended a 50th birthday party in a Moroccan-style marquee later that evening. Listen, raptly, to descriptions of costumes – particularly the unsuccessful ones. (Agree that the post-40 bosom requires support.) Marvel again at the superior English constitution.

June 14. – Visit senior school in Oxford with youngest daughter. (After Sports Day, youngest daughter gets a three-day break from school.) Ponder the conundrum of private education. Realize that neither child has attended a full week of school since mid-March. Consider that oldest daughter, who is on study leave for her GCSE exams, sports the tan of a person who lives in the Caribbean.

Accompanied by two impossibly gorgeous and self-confident 13 year olds, we view the playing fields, science classrooms, art studios and theatre of the school in Oxford. Admire the large Wind in the Willows themed mural in the dining hall. (Remember that Kenneth Grahame is alum of the school.) Wonder aloud if youngest child will go in for rowing. Youngest child expresses doubts as to the likelihood of this event. (Query: Why is that all school tours consist of the same constituent parts, and yet leave such different impressions?)

After school tour, youngest daughter and I – weak with hunger – walk to Mamma Mia pizza place. Feel most keenly that pizza place in walking distance of school is huge asset. Youngest daughter wants to attend school in Oxford. Feel most keenly that entire family should move to Oxford.

June 15. – Oldest daughter finishes Greek exam by 10 am and needs to be picked up from school. Youngest daughter cannot rest easy until we visit the pet store and purchase some hamsters. Remainder of day occupied by visitations to various pet emporiums.

Mem: parental weakening on pet issue can quickly lead to full-scale capitulation. On Saturday, oldest daughter wins a goldfish from some carnival game at the Marlow Regatta. Permission to bring home goldfish is grudgingly granted. According to some complicated sibling equation, youngest daughter requires hamsters in order to square up the laws of fairness. Mother is final arbiter of fairness; justice must be served. Weak mother is worn down after 48 hours of dedicated pleading and nagging.

Visit to pet shop involves significant expenditure. Internet research has not accounted for items like toys and special snacks. Purchase of hamsters requires visit to aquarium. Single fish is lonely; more fish are required. Also, plants. Unexpected expenditure incurred. Husband not informed of expanding pet menagerie. Children remind mother that fish, hamsters, chickens and a cat don’t really count. Only dogs, which are still denied to children, are proper pets.

June 16. – Email from husband, which didn’t look important, turns out to be invitation to opera.

Apparently we are last-minute guests for corporate entertainment with company that husband does no business with. Would have been prudent to Google company and attempt to learn something about hosts. Instead, spend morning driving children (and camping paraphernalia) around Berkshire countryside. Husband arrives home at 3 pm to find undressed wife, who is shaving her legs and wondering why she is not a person who keeps an up-to-date pedicure. Cocktails begin at 4 pm in Hampshire. Feel dismay at lack of appropriate opera wardrobe; finally resort to silk blouse, old skirt and ubiquitous pashmina.

Marvel at Russian, Korean, French, Greek and Norwegian fellow guests – all of whom speak perfect English. Despite the lack of language barrier, though, conversation is predictably stilted. Having dispatched the topic of the weather, I attempt to engage a French woman in conversation about differences between English and French culture. Although French woman’s children have spent their entire lives in London, apparently they are inviolably French. Suspect that I have managed to inadvertently insult French woman. Resolve to stick to weather in future conversations with corporate wives. Also manage to disagree on opera – which has a preposterous plot, something to do with three oranges. Husband and I enjoy dissecting guests on long drive home; suspect that one man has rented partner for the night.

June 17. – Endure yet another school visit with youngest daughter. Although she assures me that “there is less than a one percent chance” that she will want to attend this school, we sacrifice the better part of a day in the pursuit of thoroughness. Arrive at school having not received the letter that prospective students should wear their own clothes. Name tag is misspelled. None of this bodes well. Return to school late, having been lost in the town’s one-way system. (Miss tea and cake; do not miss making polite conversation with other prospective parents.) Sat-nav proves bloody useless; only find school, in the end, by doing the opposite to what the sat-nav suggests. Feel sure that inability to find school is a sign.

Oldest daughter’s 16th birthday. Oldest daughter thrilled that no GCSE exams fall on her birthday. Oldest daughter thrilled to be left home alone with friend-who-is–a-boy.

The birthday girl has requested chicken pot pie and red velvet cake for her birthday meal. Reflect that it would have been better to start labour-intensive birthday meal before 6 pm. Unsurprisingly, we do not manage to eat before 9 pm. Husband opens bottle of champagne. Newly christened 16-year-old quaffs champagne like an old pro, which raises questions in the maternal mind. Cannot help but remember the hot day in June when oldest daughter came into the world. Reflect that sixteen years is a long time -- which has suddenly gone by very quickly.

June blooms

2010-06-10T23:18:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, I attended the high school graduation of someone very dear to me -- someone I have watched grow from a chubby little cherub to a poised and beautiful young woman. She was the first baby in my circle of friends, and thus I am experiencing -- for the first time -- that particular generational changing-of-the-guard.

It is true that the graduate's mother and I dominated the dance floor all night long, but even though there is much life in us yet (it is to be hoped), that freshness -- what used to be described as "bloom" -- will not come again. As pleased as I am for my young friend, I cannot help but feel a pang of envy for all of the choices and opportunities still open to her.

It's not that I regret the road I took, but I want the road-not-taken as well. Is it possible to be satisfied and grateful . . . and yet a little bit greedy, too?

May: hymn of light, colour and leaf

2010-05-31T06:29:00.001+01:00

May, in England, is extravagantly beautiful.

The garden is at its most demanding, but also its most rewarding. A lesson in this?
Weeding, watering, feeding, and tweaking could take up every hour of the day, but on a sunny day those jobs are a pleasure.

May makes a person want to wax lyrical.
Adam Nicolson, the heir to Sissinghurst -- one of the most famous gardens in the world -- wrote this:

This is a damp, lush country. The late winters are grey and depressing. The spring is often a disappointment. But then in May, the condition of our life in these islands becomes heavenly. "When I die," Monty Don wrote in The Ivington Diaries, published last year, "I shall go to May. It will be green, actually the colour green in all its thousand shining faces. Every moment will be like the arc of a diver breaking the waters of a green lake, a shifting, growing hymn of light, colour and leaf."

And yes, the world is so green . . . but full of other colours, too.
Lilac, wisteria, peony, allium, bluebell: these are the May palette.

And horses kiss in a green, green field full of buttercups and white-blossomed May trees.

Shakespeare and Company

2010-05-28T23:03:00.000+01:00

While the book doth live

and we have wits to read

and praise to give

Thou art alive still

Shakespeare and Company: Is there a more storied bookstore in the world?

If you go to Notre Dame, and what tourist doesn't, it is just across the river on the Left Bank . . . so close to the Seine that a "well-thrown apple core will easily reach river water," says Jeremy Mercer, in Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs.

When I was 21, and visiting Paris for my first grown-up time, I read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. In that memoir to his Parisian salad days, Hemingway describes Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company -- the gathering place for the literati of the time. Beach, an American expatriate, was hosting her version of the Parisian salon -- with a capitalistic twist, aptly. She became known for her friendships, for her encouragement of writers and for the frequent readings sponsored by the bookstore. Like her friend Gertrude Stein, she was a lesbian -- and Paris created a space for her to be truly herself. As Stein said, America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

When mainstream publishers wouldn't touch James Joyce's Ulysses, Sylvia Beach bankrolled its publication. Although the novel didn't make her any money, it did add luster to the legendary bookstore. A biography of James Joyce graces one of the window displays and is one of many reminders of the bookstore's rich history.

The second World War closed the bookstore's doors for a decade, but in 1951 another American, George Whitman, bought some of Beach's book collection and opened a bookstore -- same name, different location -- with her approval. Whitman kept many of the traditions -- readings, a gathering place for expatriates, the promotion of starving writers -- and then he added to them, just as he kept adding to the bookstore. Although Beach created a "home" at her bookstore, Whitman actually allowed the writers and wanna-be writers to sleep over.

Jeremy Mercer's memoir is an intriguing glimpse into the life of the bookstore, fifty years after Whitman opened the current location on 37 rue de la Bucherie. Mercer describes a constant parade of book lovers, camping out amidst the stacks. It must be one of the most unique youth hostels: room, and occasional board, in exchange for a few hours of work in the bookstore. One of the few things that Whitman asks of his residents is that they attempt to read a book a day.

I've often fantasized about living in a bookstore, but I will readily admit that for all its charms, Shakespeare and Company is probably too bohemian for my taste. As of the year 2000, when Mercer was living in the bookstore, there was no heat and little in the way of facilities or privacy. (Mercer describes, humorously and horrifyingly, how residents managed to wash themselves and scrounge up meals.) Although an English poet managed to bunk in the antiquarian room for more than five years, most of the residents are just passing through.

Whitman started a tradition of having his temporary residents submit their "biographies." Mercer describes it as "an archive of sociological wonders . . . a vast survey of the great drifters of the past forty years." I wonder if the best bits will be compiled into a book someday? Although Whitman's daughter now runs the store, a bit of his biography is still posted outside the store -- almost like a manifesto.

Of course, I had to buy some books while I was there.

I looked over the impressive selection of fiction, but in the end I settled for two books about the experience of living in Paris. True Pleasures, by an Australian writer called Lucinda Holdforth, is a memoir of Parisian women -- not all of them French -- who have been inspired by and associated with the city. Colette, Josephine and Madame de Staël are here, and so are Nancy Mitford, Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein. Her themes are intriguing: "On Grown-Up Women" and "But Women Are Politics . . .". As Stein said, It's not what Paris gave you but what it didn't take away from you that was important.

I read this book weeks after I left Paris -- when I was sick in bed, in fact -- but it brought Paris flooding back to me. The author stays in the same area of the Marais that I did, and she visits Shakespeare and Company . . . which brings the journey full-circle in a satisfying way. But then I have no doubt that all English speaking book lovers eventually find themselves there.

The other book that I bought from Shakespeare and Company was The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham. Wadham, a British woman just a bit older than me, marries a Parisian and attempts to immerse herself in French family and culture . . . which is a very different thing to just admiring and appreciating the abridged tourist version of things. It's a strange measure of how long I've lived in England, now, but I felt a strong identification with Wadham's point-of-view.

In Wadham's view, the French admire the English, while the English tend to despise the French. On the other hand, the French despise the Americans, who -- in their innocence -- admire the French. By the way, Wadham also attempts to explain why the French are so rude; although I didn't really find them so. Indeed, I found it charming how all of the waiters described themselves as "désolée" when they couldn't provide me with a table . . . even though my French accent is atrocious.

There is no frigate like a book, said Emily Dickinson, but at Shakespeare and Company you are more likely to travel by train. Or are those old cinema seats?

The young American man who rang up my book purchases asked me if I wanted the special stamp in my books . . . I guess it's the Shakespeare and Company passport.

Luxembourg Gardens

2010-05-12T22:48:00.000+01:00

Although I grew up in a smallish town, and now live in the countryside, I like to think of myself as a "city" person -- by inclination, if not location. Whenever I entertain fantasies of moving to London, my husband and children respond with varying degrees of horror: House prices! Noise! Filth! Crime! Traffic!

But wouldn't you miss the countryside and your garden, my friends say, with all of the scepticism of country converts. Well, yes; but mostly no. This morning, as I weeded and fed my many rose bushes -- a thankless and thorny task -- I thought longingly of Queen Mary's Rose Gardens in Regent's Park. I was there just a week ago, admiring the vigour and health of hundreds and hundreds of shrub roses. Unlike my straggling, deer-chewed specimens, these bushes are beautiful -- and they aren't even blooming yet.

Frankly, I don't need ownership of rose bushes to delight in them. In fact, it may be the other way around. I am content to wander through a public garden and enjoy the fruits of someone else's labour -- not to mention taking in the sights of people out and about. A park is a great place to be alone, or to walk with friends. It allows for all of the pleasures of anonymity, and yet there is something companionable about it, too.

On the first fine day of spring, when the pale city-dwellers throng the park, the feeling of solidarity is almost palpable. A park exists for no other reason than the human need for leisure -- and the emotional/physical benefits of fresh air.

These boys had flung down their backpacks in order to play football at the gates of Luxembourg Gardens. I don't know if it was a lunch-time break, or if they were playing hooky just because the sun was shining. Remember when running and kicking a ball was pure pleasure?

In the wilder, "English garden" section of the park, the older generation take the sun with their daily dose of news. The bright yellow forsythia was in bloom, and drifts of narcissus were just emerging.

When I was in Paris at the end of March, the forecast was for rain: one solid string of dark clouds. Most fortuitously, on the day we planned to visit the Luxembourg Gardens, there was an unexpected break in the gloomy forecast.

Just out of sight of these three are Jenni and I, sharing a jambon baguette and a quiche lorraine. Lunch from the boulangerie is a veritable bargain . . . and you can splurge your savings on some ice cream, later.

Do you think these French gentleman rendezvous daily for boules?

It was warmer on that late March day than it is now, in early May. If you double-click on the picture, you can see a coat-rack -- where some of the men have hung up their jackets.

Although my love for city parks is genuine, I will confess that I wanted to visit Luxembourg Gardens because of a book. Several years ago, I read Adam Gopnik's brilliant tribute to Parisian expat life: Paris to the Moon.

Gopnik writes this: There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see and see it, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it.

I'm both kinds of traveler, but I went to the Luxembourg Gardens in a sort of emotional homage to Adam Gopnik and his young son . . . who spent many hours riding the carousel in the park. Adam and Luke Auden's visits to the Luxembourg Gardens become the emotional timeline of this wide-ranging book -- which covers philosophy, history, politics, family and cultural differences. When the Gopnik family first arrives in Paris, Luke Auden is just a toddler -- only fit to ride in one of the "safe" inner chariots, with his father as protector. By the time they leave Paris, five years later, he is a confident boy -- reaching out for brass rings.

Unlike many things in life, the carousel in Luxembourg Gardens was just as Gopnik described it. I could almost see the cautious baby face of Luke Auden in this young girl. Unsure about the experience, she kept looking for her mother. Meanwhile, on a horse nearby, an older girl crowed with satisfaction each time she managed to pick off a brass ring with her little stick. Childhood pleasures and progress are so welcomely predictable.

Gopnik describes the children's playground as a "designated bacchanal," and I thought of that rather fanciful description again when I saw statues of Pan and Baudelaire amongst various queens of France and Marie de Medicis. A park is an outlet for controlled chaos.

''There, there is only order and beauty,

Luxury, quietness, and pleasure.''

(Charles Baudelaire)

Parisian Life

2010-05-03T01:24:00.000+01:00

It's been a month, now, since I was in Paris.
How dream-like it seems now. But isn't that the way with most breaks from real life?
I left for Texas less than 24 hours later, and have never really had time to process either the pictures or the memories from that trip. Thank goodness that one (the pictures) leads to the other . . . because I only have to look at the face of this funny little dog to remember that Sunday morning at Le Marché des Enfants Rouge. He hopped up to the counter, eyes bright and senses alert to all of the gustatory pleasures of the market. Watching the denizens of Marais going about their Sunday business made me feel like I could almost slip into the skin of a true Parisienne.

I'd rather have a good baguette than all of the croissants, pain au chocolat, and dull, dry toast in the world.

Fromage, anyone? I could eat Salade Chevre Chaude for nearly every meal.

These pink parrot tulips were a shock of color in the city of gray stone and spring gray skies.

(Postscript on a tulip: I couldn't wait to get home from my travels and see the tulips flowering in my own English garden. Sadly, the deer couldn't resist them. Only one pale green tulip escaped their voracious greed.)

The rather prosaic sight of a family walking in the rain. And yet, what a grand backdrop!
So much to look at on the street, but the eye is drawn upwards, too.

The sheer scope of Paris -- its historic sweep -- makes a person feel rather small.

Tourists are tiny dots of colour -- so minute, compared to even the Rose Window in Notre Dame.

Ours was a pedestrian adventure.
Maybe next time we will cruise down the Seine.

In the pursuit of falafel, near the Rue de Rosiers, we spotted this musician.
The lines are really long on a Sunday . . . so it's nice that entertainment is provided.

I can't remember what this guy was playing. What I DO remember is that he jumped up and demanded a euro from me after I snapped his picture. I obliged him, of course.

Putting on the Ritz near the Hôtel de Ville .
I was completely captivated by this charming performer.
She favored sensible shoes -- quite unlike some of the funky fashions we saw in the nearby shops.

The Marais is fab for window-shopping.
We didn't bother with the museums. We were too busy watching the entertainment on the streets.

Teenagers huddled in packs outside of their lycées. Apparently, they use their breaks to work on their smoking skills.
Variations on the student uniform include black, stripes and plaid.
Bikes and backpacks are the student accouterments everywhere, I guess.

Even the cool grown-up kids wear black and sit outside . . so they can light up.
This homme is quintessentially Parisian to my eyes.

Happy Birthday, Jenni!
Even though she was the guest of honour, she got stuck holding both umbrellas more than once.
(And she was a jolly good sport about it.)

The Café Charlot was our "local." We were only in Paris for a few days, but we managed to drink there often enough to compare the café crème to the chocolate chaud. Oh, and I may have had a Kir there as well . . . but not for breakfast.

My idea of bliss.

Rosebud

2010-04-28T19:09:00.000+01:00

We arrived in Texas on March 31, just after the azaleas peaked, and left at the end of April . . . when the roses were blooming.

The yellow rose of Texas aside, I don’t really associate roses with Texas. But that’s my own bias, rooted in the fact that I didn’t really fall in love with them until I moved to England. Actually, there are plenty of roses in Texas – even if stereotypes are more likely to conjure up tumbleweeds.

One afternoon, when the children were at the Museum of Natural Science, I sort of “stumbled” upon the extensive rose gardens which flank the Houston Garden Center. (I was looking for a parking space, and the Garden Center is across the street from the Museum.) Surely, in more than ten years of living in Houston, I had managed to see the roses in bloom; but if I did, then I don’t recall it. Was I always too busy? Always driving around in my car, always pinned down to a schedule? In many ways, Houston is not a place where it is easy to stop and smell the roses.

Unlike the pastel multi-petalled English roses in my garden, these roses were bold and brash hybrid teas. These are not subtle roses; the blooms are huge, and the colours are vivid and richly saturated. One golden yellow rose was named Strike It Rich – appropriate for a state whose fortunes were transformed by the discovery of “black gold.” Houston is not really a subtle town. Hermann Park may be a green oasis in its center, but the city is ringed by miles of vast motorways and the cars are all huge. You can’t help but notice that the place is fiercely devoted to consumerism. The first thing we do when we get to Houston is eat Mexican food. The second thing? Go shopping.

My annual trip to Texas is a touchstone for me. I reconnect to my Texas roots -- family and friends, tastes and twang. Roses are different in Texas; I can't help wonder if I am, too. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the many ways that “you can’t go home again,” and that remains true. Still, we try, and every visit is devoted to doing as many of the old things and visiting as many of the old places as possible.

At my parents’ house, in the country, there are certain rituals: fishing, playing in the creek, having a cook-out in the fire circle, going for long cedar-scented walks, playing chicken foot dominoes and visiting the drive-thru Sonic for slushes. My children still love these rituals, and still insist on them . . . but for the first time, perhaps, my mother and I were aware of the shadow of change on the horizon. Even my youngest daughter, who loves to be outside – and enjoyed many happy hours creating a habitat for the turtle she fished out of the creek – also spent hours checking in on Facebook. Growing up is the nature of things; but in some nostalgic way, I want our visits to Texas to always stay the same. Ironic, really, as Texas doesn’t stand still – not even for its homesick expatriates.

Two years ago, I wrote this: Houston is always, always changing. As my friend Laura said, (borrowing from that genius Joni Mitchell), "they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot." If Houston is about anything, it is about the future. It is about constant construction and the need to widen yet another freeway. Every year, new places spring up while others are torn down. Yes, I know this happens everywhere . . . but in Houston it seems to happen in double-time. In the past year or two, Upper Kirby, where I used to play tennis, has been turned into a block of high-rises.

Speaking of parking lots, one of my favourite haunts – the Buffalo Grille on Bissonnet – is being torn down because the new HEB grocery store wants to exercise their parking lot rights. (Houston is famous for its lack of zoning laws, but apparently there are a few caveats.) I have been eating pancakes and BLT sandwiches at the Buffalo Grille since I was a student at Rice University, and so have many other people – but no; apparently this beloved institution has to find a new place to live.

Another Houston institution which is closing its doors is the old Five and Dime Store in West University Village. I doubt that there are many Inner-Loopers who haven’t visited this venerable place, but there is no denying that some of its stock seemed to be as old and dusty as the store itself. It was a place that, in the words of Nanci Griffith, made a person want to fill up her suitcase with unnecessary plastic objects. The children and I took one last turn around those old checkerboard linoleum floors and couldn’t resist buying a few unnecessary things: a puzzle, some sewing elastic, a plastic pool toy and a wooden yo-yo – the really good old-fashioned kind. The place is still brimful of junk and treasures; apparently, when the store closes its doors in June, any left-over stock will be offered to the old dime store in Fredericksburg. At least in Texas, that store will be the very last of its kind.

Childhood can’t last forever, whether it’s your own – or your children’s. My oldest daughter’s friends have all started driving now and everyone is talking about college.

Maybe it is because we were there for nearly a month, unexpectedly grounded by the volcano in Iceland, but for the first time we left Texas without looking back. For the first time since we’ve been going back to Texas, I drove to the airport without the children crying and carrying on. My oldest daughter tuned the satellite radio to BBC’s Radio 1; she couldn’t wait to fly home and be reunited with her English friends.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. I keep telling myself that.

Grounded

2010-04-18T15:19:00.000+01:00

After three weeks of travelling, I was meant to be flying home today.

However, there is a huge cloud of volcanic ash hovering over the UK and it looks like I will be grounded in Texas a little while longer. Hopefully, the tulips won't be finished before I get home.

School and work will have to wait, and so will my younger daughter's appointment to get a retainer. Thank goodness my older daughter had the ~~foolhardy notion~~ foresight to bring an entire suitcase of GCSE books and materials. Meanwhile, we have the great big silver lining of more time with Texas friends, more Mexican food, and more sun. As we wait, we may have to adopt a semblance of "normal" life -- meaning, time for homework, homecooked meals, and hopefully, a return to the blogworld.

Women's Writing

2010-03-19T18:54:00.000Z

a view from Persephone Bookshore
Lamb's Conduit Street, London

Yesterday, when I was at Jane Austen's House, I got into a long conversation about women's writing with one of our American visitors. (It isn't unusual for a Jane-specific enthusiasm to lead to other bookish topics.) By serendipitous good fortune, this American was spending a week in Bloomsbury -- the once-home of Virginia Woolf and so many other writers, and still the heart of literary London.

I was delighted to enlighten this kindred spirit about one of my favorite London places: Persephone, the bookshop and printing press which specializes in "rediscovered" 20th century women's writing. Although anyone may travel there by website, if you are going to be in Bloomsbury or thereabouts you might as well visit the charming bookstore in person.

I wonder how many of Persephone's customers have been drawn there by womanly word-or-mouth? Sarah in Oxford told Elizabeth, and Elizabeth in New York told me, and I have told all of my bookish friends about this special place. It isn't meant to be a best-kept secret, but I'm often surprised by how many of Persephone's most obvious customers aren't aware of its existence. The induction of an Oregonian is one thing, but some of my fellow Austenians hadn't known about it either.

I often marvel that the minute village of Chawton, Hampshire has become an homage to, not to mention resting place of, so much important women's writing. Just down the road from Jane Austen's House is Chawton House -- which contains a library of rare works published between 1600 and 1800. Although the Chawton House Library is well-known to academic scholars in the field, it is a best-kept secret that anyone may make an appointment to visit this unique collection. There is a monthly reading group, too, for anyone who cares to discuss Mary Wollstonecraft or other "foremothers" of English literature.

Chawton House Library
Chawton, Hampshire

Last autumn, I went to see an exhibition called Rooms Of Our Own: The Female Academy at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge. Most of the featured historical texts, including a play called The Female Academy written by Margaret Cavendish in 1662, were borrowed from the Chawton House Library. (It amused me, at the time, to think that I had driven all the way to Cambridge to discover something from just down the road. Last week, I visited the Chawton House Library for the first time . . . but not the last!)

Lucy Cavendish College was established in 1965 as a women's college for students over 21, and our guide for the day was a perfect example of the college's aims. At the age of 40, this 60ish woman had embarked on her first university degree. Her first career, as a wife and mother, gradually developed into a second career as a student, and then an academic scholar. At the age when most people are contemplating retirement, this inspirational woman was writing a book on Rosamund Lehmann -- a notable 20th century British writer. (Our guide had also written a preface for one of the Persephone novels.)

The Female Academy exhibit featured two reconstructed rooms: one of them was Virginia Woolf's writing study, that celebrated "room of one's own." The other was a typical student's room from the 1960s -- not much more than a single bed, a simple desk, a lamp, and a pile of books. Both rooms tugged at my heart and reminded me of my own student's room -- when I studied English literature at a university in London in the 1980s. There has never been a year, before or since, that could match it for a truly enraptured immersion in reading and writing.

I have so many other distractions now, but there are still some places which remind me of the pleasures of a shelf of unread books and a comfortable chair and the well-lit silence to read by.

Jane Austen's House
Chawton House Library
Lucy Cavendish College
Persephone Bookstore

A sad lack of jocund company

2010-03-17T18:49:00.000Z

(seen in last night's Evening Standard)

Bloomin' disaster at daffodil festival

For the first time in 40 years

not a single daffodil has bloomed in time

for Britains' biggest daffodil festival this weekend.

More than 10,000 people usually visit

the Hertfordshire village of Thriplow

to admire its displays.

For Elizabeth:

Yes, we have no daffodils.

I've yet to hear anyone quote Wordsworth.

Those green shoots are still stubbornly closed.

It's the middle of March, and the only daffodils to be found are the ones on my new teapot.

We still have Paris

2010-03-10T22:09:00.002Z

Some years ago, my friend Jenni and I decided that we would go to Paris for her 50th birthday.

How far away that prospect seemed . . . how distant was the horizon of 50.

Despite all of those years of talking about Paris, we find ourselves just two weeks away from our Eurostar reservations . . . and with no real plans.

All day long I have been trawling through websites, looking at places to eat and sleep. But when you only have a few days in Paris, you really want it to count, right? How to find those really special places off the tourist-track? Jenni and I have both been to Paris, several times in fact, and we no longer need to wait our turn to climb the Eiffel Tower. What else could be waiting in Paris for us?

Any suggestions, bloggy friends?

Merci

Home Safe

2010-03-03T14:17:00.002Z

Elizabeth Berg is a favorite writer of so many women, but for some reason I've been late to join the appreciation society. I've read a few of her books -- and liked them; even liked them a lot -- but it wasn't until Home Safe that I experienced the sort of fervor which made me want to run straight over to the library and check out everything on the shelves. (I actually did that yesterday; and what I couldn't find, I ordered off of Amazon.)

I think that Berg should probably be declared the literary patron saint of middle-aged woman. This begs the question: Can a person use the term middle-aged without sounding the teensiest bit derogatory? The other week I referred to one of my friends as middle-aged, and she took offense -- even though she is 48. I myself am not offended by the description, but perhaps that is because, as my teenaged daughter is fond of telling me, I like "being an old person." I like baking, and gardening, and talking about the weather, and listening to classical music. I am middle-aged: sandwiched between my mother's generation and my daughters'. Most of us are middle-aged, really; youth is actually a short stretch, and so is old age that will admit itself as such. Middle-age is fertile ground, full of changes and transitions and growth -- no matter how stodgy and dowdy the term might sound.

The protagonist of Home Safe is a writer named Helen whose life has just become seriously unstuck, just as she thought she would be entering a serene state of semi-retirement. She is also suffering from writer's block, just to add insult to injury. Helen is losing the biggest safety nets of her life -- husband, father, career, identity as a mother -- and she is forced to create a new scaffolding for herself. At the age of 59 she has to grow up, or "step up" as her best friend Midge describes it.

Berg begins this novel with an interesting premise: What if you were given your retirement fantasy? Sometimes, especially when his work isn't going well, my husband likes to speculate about his retirement. I, too, enjoy playing that game of What Shall We Do? Do we want a wide life, or a deep one? Do we want to know many places casually, or one place profoundly? Dream house in the country, or an apartment in the city? Do we want to put down roots, or travel light? Of course, fantasies don't have to worry about trade-offs or compromises. And sometimes we really don't get to choose -- at least not in the way that we expect to. After all, how many aphorisms are there that express the foolishness of making plans?

Man plans, God laughs.

One of Berg's gifts is that she doesn't gloss over the difficulties or losses of life, but there is still a sense of optimism and hopefulness. Her novels are easy to read, but never superficial or dumb. I share many of Helen's foibles, and perhaps that is why I so identified with her. Although I wouldn't have made the same choices, perhaps, I always felt like the novel played out in a way that was emotionally honest and true.

Berg's writing is like slipping into a warm, scented bath. Frankly, a middle-aged body can appreciate that.

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@Barrie Summy

Cultivating patience

2010-03-02T10:01:00.001Z

miraculous green shoots

I was an impatient child.

I can remember waiting at the train station with my grandfather – waiting because we had come too early, way too early. (My grandfather was not a man to cut it fine, to race the clock, to risk being late.) I remember wanting to cry, such was my frustration, and then actually crying . . . for no other reason than that I could not stand the limbo of waiting.

I suppose that motherhood helps cultivate the quality of patience. All of that waiting, all of that forced stillness -- as you let a child learn to dress herself, or sound out the letters of a word, or eat a meal with a clumsy knife and fork and a dreamy disinterest in the plate’s contents. And that’s not to mention piano scales, or ballet practice, or all those many hours waiting in a car for someone else to finish. But still, I am childishly impatient – and I have learned to always carry a book, so that I can be entertained – so that I can escape.

I once bought a card that featured a cantankerous elderly woman. She said, “Lord, give me patience. And can you hurry it up.”

My favourite exercise has always been walking – but always outside; never on a treadmill. I want to breathe the fresh air, and observe the landscape as it changes, but most of all I want the sensation of movement. I want to feel that I am going somewhere.

This winter, for the first time since we have lived in England, there have been long stretches (weeks, months) where the weather has been too bad to go outside. Unable to walk, I’ve had to look for some other form of mental/physical exercise; and I’ve discovered an unexpected affinity for yoga – that practice associated with stillness, and concentration, and patience.

Necessary parenthetical caveat: (But having said that, I started with yoga on the Wii – which encourages the rather un-yoga-like competitive aspect. Although the various beeps are helpful for correcting one’s form, and getting a score for each pose is wonderfully motivating, I don’t think the desire to beat your teenaged daughter’s scores are wholly within the yogic spirit.)

Last Friday, for the first time, I graduated (transcended?) to a real yoga class. For 90 minutes, we breathed, we stretched, and we held our poses in silence. I had a more or less empty mind for once, hearing only the crackling of the wood-burning stove and the howling of the wind outside. The time passed quickly . . . or maybe not quickly, but it passed without my being conscious of counting it, or minding it, or ticking it away. I don’t remember thinking, not even once, that I wanted it to end so that I could move on to something else.

Yesterday I was reading a novel in which a woman, who lives in Chicago, is offered a dream house in California. All winter, I have dreamed of living in California. I’ve longed for blue skies, with an angry, deeply impatient sort of longing. Take the house, I say to the fictional character! Are you crazy? But the woman thinks this: “she probably really does need the seasons, their lessons of birth and rebirth, the rich variety they offer, even when the offering is a freezing day full of howling winds and driving snow.”

Hmmm.

Yesterday, we had that blue sky that I’ve been yearning for. We also had a sun hot enough to encourage me to put on my gardening gloves and dig my spade into the cold, damp earth. I turned over the soil – “airing it,” even as I aired out my own winter-weary body. I felt this deep sense of – well, exultation, really. I just felt so joyful, so grateful, for this most optimistic of all seasons.

And even though I can’t wait to see everything come into full and glorious bloom, I actually felt content to appreciate and admire these first few signs of spring.

miniature iris

enjoy their brief moment,

because they are a favorite snack

of the muntjac deer who often visit

Snowdrops

2010-02-17T22:27:00.002Z

It seems that nearly everyone in the Northern Hemisphere

has had too much snow this winter

(except, perhaps, Vancouver).

In England,

February is a tug-of-war

between winter and spring.

All week long, we've had shafts of sunlight

playing peek-a-boo

with volleys of hail,

and flurries of snow,

and sheets of sleet.

Never mind the frigid temperatures,

spring will eventually get the upper hand.

Snow-like they may be,

but these galanthus

are the first bulbs out of the starting gate.

Autumn leaves,

it's your turn to sink into the earth.

So soon now, the gray of winter

will be replaced by spring green.

February is a pointillist painter,

adding a swathe of yellow aconites

to winter's monochrome palette.

Not the showiest flower,

it's true,

but so refreshing.

I'll race you to half-term

2010-02-12T21:32:00.001Z

Barely have we recovered from the long Christmas holiday and snow days

but it is half-term, already.

Time for the cross-country race.

It's a tradition; and the accretion of years is such

that even the Headmaster can't recall

why February

is the traditional season

to don your shorts

and race around the frozen fields.

Double-click on the pictures

better to see the tiny racing figures

and the flock of sheep.

Do you suppose those sheep

look up from their munching

and wonder, idly,

what the fuss is about?

Might they get the notion

to join in?

And now, we run around the lake

girls in green,

and boys in red.

Unlike the runners,

the bystanders are all bundled up.

Wellies, tweed, a hat and most of all

a dog

are de rigieur.

The perfect examplar

of English country style.

The last bit is all up-hill

and it separates

the sprinters from the stragglers.

You do get a boost from the crowd, though.

It's all over now . . .

except for the jelly doughnut, the hot chocolate

the warm bath

and two loads of sports kit in the wash.

No Impact Man

2010-02-03T13:54:00.000Z

In January, our village in England launched a greening campaign. These scarecrows popped up all over the place -- not to frighten the birds away, but rather to draw attention to the cause. How many of us do have our head in the sand when it comes to climate change?

Our village chose eight actions to focus on, and it asked every household to adopt at least five.

Boil only the amount of water you need.
Turn off lights when you leave a room.
Turn off taps when brushing teeth.
Turn the thermostat down by 1 degree C.
Walk or cycle if the journey is less than a mile.
Turn off all inactive appliances and standbys.
Change 3 light bulbs to low energy.
Reduce each normal shower time by one minute.

Little things, really -- requiring some habit-change but no great (or even minor) deprivation. Our household was already doing all of them, to some extent, although we could improve on shower time and turning off inactive appliances . . . and I still drop my daughter off at the bus-stop every morning. (In this case, the emotional energy required to get her to walk more than a mile up-hill, with a heavy bag, and usually in the rain, isn't worth the CO2 savings.)

However. Although cutting back on any waste is preferable to doing nothing at all, surely, these are still the sort of actions that Colin Beavan describes as "easy environmental half-measures" in his recent book No Impact Man. Buying organic, recycling, using natural cleaning products, driving a hybrid: these may slightly lessen our negative impact on the world, but they won't solve any of the big problems we face.

No Impact Man is an account of one family's attempt to live in New York City for a year with little to no environmental impact.   The book follows a roughly chronological timeline, which follows a sort of learning and living curve: first, living in a way which creates no garbage; then eliminating carbon-producing forms of transportation; then eating only food which is produced within 250 miles of NYC; and finally, turning off the electricity altogether. As he describes the family's adaptation, he also links each element -- diapers, for instance; or eating a piece of pizza -- to the larger cultural and economic climate.

The book is not really a how-to guide, though. Although Bevan does provide many specific examples for living a no-impact life, the book is really more of a philosophical treatise. Bevan is more interested in considering what value, if any, there is to only a few individuals making this kind of radical lifestyle change.  He wants to discover both the negative and positive aspects of going off the grid -- not just the electrical grid, but an entire of way of life based on convenience and consumption.

Although it isn't exclusively an American problem, Beavan is keenly aware that consumerism is so embedded in the typically American way of life that it is pretty much its bedrock. As he phrases it, "to be a good citizen is to be an aggressive consumer."  I remember noticing how much environmental issues got derailed last fall during the economic crisis. We (as people, as a governmental bodies) are interested in the environment only to the point where it doesn't impact jobs or salaries.

Last week my husband was at an energy conference and the panel of speakers admitted that there was no way that the UK could meet their targets for reducing carbon.   We know we need to do it, but it really requires a total overhaul of the way we live now. Technology can only help to a certain extent; meanwhile, resources (clean water, oil) continue to dwindle. "Clean" coal; what a misnomer. Energy security is one issue, but environmentally, coal is a disaster, wind power is exorbitantly expensive and nuclear energy has all sorts of attached hazards.

The BIG problem is that populations continue to grow; the second biggest problem is that people continue to want to maintain (or improve) their standard of living. Also heard at this conference: one expert said that each (first-world) person represents about 3 tons of carbon in usage/waste . . . unless you take into account the stuff that we all use, and then the figure is more like 12 tons. Yes, China is burning up all kinds of natural resources at the moment -- and most of them are being used to create stuff to sell in countries like the UK and the United States.

I was thinking about all of this last weekend when I went to IKEA to buy my daughter an inexpensive desk. Have you been to an IKEA recently? It's an enormous warehouse filled to the brim with overwhelming amounts of "affordable" stuff -- much of it made in China. As I was checking out, I couldn't help but notice two rather ironic signs. One of the signs proudly proclaimed that IKEA was a plastic-bag free space; the other encouraged IKEA shoppers to take public transporation, instead of cars, to the store. At the moment, the IKEA experience seemed to encompass everything that was wrong with our current way of life. The truth is, even if I could have taken a train to IKEA -- and we don't have a line that runs that way -- it would have cost more than the desk to make that journey. Also, when you are going to a store to buy things like sofas and desks, the train is really not ideal. Not using a plastic bag? Well, I take my reusable bags everywhere, but really, that adds up to a small band-aid when it comes to overall waste.

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the load of recyclables sitting by this "scarecrow" made out of recycled material. It's better to recycle than to not recycle, but the real problem -- as Beavan points out -- is that we make so much trash.

One of the interesting things about No Impact Man is that gives Beavan the chance to discover what aspects of modern life really are necessary for a good quality of life. Clean water, for instance; but also a washing machine. A television or a bread machine? Not so much. Beavan does acknowledge that any environmental measure that causes true deprivation or pain is unlikely to adopted by any but the most ascetic few. Living without electricity is not going to appeal to many of us.

It seems really unlikely that our governments are going to solve this problem for us. The recent Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was not notable for its cooperative success. The measures adopted by my village aren't going to fix the environmental problems either -- but that is not to say that they aren't worth doing. Thinking about climate change can make a person feel despondent; the problems are just so huge. Ultimately, No Impact Man is really a book about what it feels like to take personal responsibility for a seemingly insurmountable problem. It was definitely food for thought.

And by the way . . . of all of those energy-saving measures, the most meaningful is to turn down the thermostat. It saves more CO2 than everything else combined.

Click icon for more book review blogs @Barrie Summy

Good night January

2010-01-31T22:17:00.000Z

Goodnight January

goodnight to the old decade
goodnight resolutions made

goodnight gloomy winter skies
goodnight soup and shortcrust pies

goodnight after-Christmas bills
goodnight slipping down the hill

goodnight forecasts always bleak
goodnight birthdays every week

goodnight school-runs in the dark
goodnight snowmen in the park

goodnight frozen garden hose
goodnight flu and stuffed-up nose

goodnight black and shades of gray
good morning to the longer days!

Mother/Daughter Blog Camp

2010-01-21T07:00:00.001Z

I took my daughter to Blog Camp . . . and she (I) created a monster!

Now I "get" blogging, she said.

I want to go to EVERY Blog Camp, she said.

If you want to take a peek at our artistic/social exploits, look here.

Contextualizing

2010-01-19T21:50:00.001Z

three different views

of the same fields,
the same horses,

in one week

Context is everything; context is all.

Is it the weather, the landscape, or both? It's both, of course.

Today was my first "normal" day since December 13th. But how do I define normal?

Normal is taking the kids to school, no snow on the roads, the morning at Jane Austen House, the afternoon at home tutoring, several loads of wash to do, gnocchi with tomato sauce for dinner, lots of emails to catch up with, a new book to begin, a blog to write.

The Christmas holidays, followed by the snow holidays, were threatening to permanently pre-empt my notions of normal life. Can you still call it "normal" if it stops being your default context? A week of Christmas snow is magical; a week of playing-hooky-from-real-life snow is fun; after that, it stops being a novelty and starts being tiresome.

My youngest daughter had precisely one day in school before I whisked her off to Copenhagen for a birthday (her 12th) Blog Camp. For three days, 10 of us talked (and talked), and drank tea, and sewed, and art-journaled. It was too intense to be normal. Even though the sky was gray and the wind was bitter, there was a warm golden glow that can't be entirely explained by those Scandinavian wood-burning fires.

For the first time in years, I have a circle of friends who are younger than I am. Isn't age one of the strangest, most bizarrely contextual states of mind and being? During the Christmas holidays, I watched an Elvis retrospective and re-discovered that he was only 42 when he died. How did 42 get to be such a shockingly young age to die? When I was a child he seemed plenty old -- and so washed-up. Although I'm fairly relaxed about being 43 (and one week old), I still can't help but think: I am now older than Elvis.

We are expecting heavy snow tonight. My oldest daughter has her Physics GCSE tomorrow. If necessary, we will put on our ski clothes and walk miles through the snow to school. It's getting to be our new normal.

Resolution #2

2010-01-07T22:35:00.000Z

My name is Bee, and I am a Luddite.

Yes, it's true. I have been using a mobile phone that I dislike for nearly four years, merely because I cannot bear to learn how to use a new one. My husband had to cajole me into using an Ipod. I still don't know how to program the timing system on our boiler. Frankly, I'm amazed that I ever figured out how to set up a blog.

If I cannot intuitively sort out how to use a piece of machinery/technology, I just give up. Yes, I know that I could read the manual . . . but when confronted with a manual I become impatient, frustrated and semi-illiterate. It drives my tech-savvy husband crazy.

At the moment, my comfort level (pre-Industrial Revolution) is being severely threatened. My generous, generous husband surprised me with a BIG camera -- just as I had begun to master my little point-and-shoot Lumix. Elizabeth told me that her husband refers to these hulky pieces of machinery as toasters. (If only they were as easy to use as toasters.)

Along with the camera, I got a thick manual. And an even thicker Nikon D-90 for Dummies book.

My second resolution for 2010 will be to break a lifetime's (bad) habit and actually read these manuals.

I'm going to learn how to use this big camera; and not just on the P mode (that's programmed auto for the lay-people out there).

I just figured out how to download my first set of Nikon pictures. Well, it's a start.

Resolution #1

2010-01-04T12:27:00.000Z

After the frenzied month of Christmas prep, I do love the voluptuously lazy days between Christmas and New Year's. My family, all of us owls by constitution, revert to the inclinations not possible in the regular workaday world. By that I mean that we stay up until 2 and sleep 'til 10. I think that it is the only time of year that I feel truly rested.

This year's post-Christmas week has been lazier than usual, mostly because we didn't host our annual New Year's Eve sleepover party. Instead, we've watched lots of movies, read lots of books and completed several fiendishly difficult puzzles. This little island of contemplative sloth has given me plenty of time to consider all of the changes of the past decade . . . and to consider the year ahead. I'm not a great one for making new year's resolutions -- well, I do make them, just not with much conviction -- but this year I've decided to make three doable goals and really try to stick to them.

You might infer, from the above picture, that one goal might be to clear off my bedside table. (Of course, being tidier and better organized is a perennial goal, but I'm trying for something more original this year.) My first resolution, then, is to keep a reading journal.

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I have vowed to read with more purpose and direction -- and to take notes. Perhaps it is just the perpetual student in me, or perhaps it has something to do with my leaning inclination to someday finish my PhD, but I feel that too many of the wonderful things that I read just wash over me. My memory is so terribly sketchy; it needs filling out a bit.

These bedside table piles I make are one kind of record, but ultimately, they get dismantled. Since I (mostly) put the books that I've actually read back on the bookshelf, my bedside table is a bit of a halfway home. It tends to represent what I've just finished, or only partially completed . . . or what I intend to read someday. Like geological records, my book piles read top-down. You can tell, from the top entries, what I've been doing this past week. You can also tell, from the bottom of the pile, about my ambitions -- and what I haven't gotten around to yet.

Vintage Conan Doyle: The Adventures and Memories of Sherlock Holmes

Before the turkey leftovers had been vanquished, we were at the cinema -- to see the new Sherlock Holmes. Top hats off to Guy Ritchie, Jude Law and especially Robert Downey Jr! I thought this was a terrifically stylish and entertaining film. Although it had never occurred to me to read one of the Conan Doyle stories, I was so taken with Downey's charismatic performance that it made me want to compare it to the original creation. When the author mentions Sherlock Holmes's "bohemian soul" and cocaine habit, it did make me think that Sherlock Holmeses in the past have played him too staid Victorian. I borrowed this book from the son of one of our friends, and although I enjoyed it, I will probably give it back without finishing it. A few of the stories were enough to get the flavor.

The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

My youngest daughter and I watched this film the other night, and it inspired me to revisit the book -- which I remembered enjoying the first time I read it. (I enjoyed it the second time, too.) If I see a movie of a book, I have to then read the book so I can do a comparison. Strangely enough, though, I don't really mind it when the movie changes details in the book . . . unless it is a bad movie. Some would say that any movie that changes details from the book is, automatically, a bad movie. Two of the characters in the movie meet, while seeing a filmed version of Mansfield Park, and discuss this very issue.

Keats, Andrew Motion

I was so taken with Jane Campion's Bright Star -- which describes Keats' relationship with Fanny Brawne. Apparently, this biography of Keats inspired and informed her film. I thought that Sigmund might buy this for me for Christmas, but he didn't, so I bought it for myself yesterday. I can't wait to read it; a visit to Keats House in Hampstead (and the subsequent blog post) will no doubt follow.

Shakespeare, Bill Bryson

My husband read this a couple of months ago, and it got transferred from his bedside table to mine. Not long after that, Sarah Laurence talked about it in a blog post and I resolved (again) to read it. But it wasn't until I saw Shakespeare in Love a few days ago that I actually picked it up and started reading. First of all, Shakespeare in Love: I had forgotten how much I like this exuberant, delightful film. Writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard do such a clever job of imagining how life might have shaped art. Bryson's book focuses on what is knowable, as opposed to fancy or supposition, but it is also very entertaining.

The Pursuit of Laughter, Diana Mosley

I was in a Mitford phase all during November, and particularly enjoyed Anne de Courcy's biography of Diana Mosley. One of my friends recently gave me this book of collected writings; it is the kind of book that you can easily dip in and out of, just like The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters.

Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh

This novel, which I only half-finished, is also from my recent Mitford phase. Waugh dedicated the book to Diana Guinness (later Mosley) and her then husband, Bryan Guinness. It was meant to be inspired by that whole Bright Young People scene in 1930s London, but frankly, I could find neither plot nor characterization in it. Maybe they are in the second half of the book?

Someone at a Distance, Dorothy Whipple

I finished this book weeks ago; my only explanation for why it is still on my bedside table is the beauty of its cover. I found its depiction of the dissolution of a marriage so moving. On my recent trip to Persephone, I picked up another Whipple book -- The Priory. I need to replace this one with that one.

The Wilder Shore of Love, Lesley Blanch

And now we are getting to the middle of the stack, where books get stuck for weeks and even months. I found this biography of intrepid 19th century women at a second-hand book stall in Norfolk this summer. I read the chapter about Jane Digby, and then I got distracted by something else. I have a hunch that this one should go back on the bookshelf, as the time is not ripe for finishing it.

My Life in France, Julia Child

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I haven't read this one, as my mom sent it from Texas back at the end of the summer when the Julie and Julia film came out. (Speaking of that, I was astounded to discover that none of my English friends were aware of Julia Child. I kept saying that she was the Delia Smith of the United States, only even more iconic.) This one will stay on the bedside table, and it's going in the queue -- but behind The Priory and Keats.

The Story of a Marriage, Andrew Sean Greer

A good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) example of my book greed. I found it on one of Waterstone's 3 for 2 tables and a glance at the plot synopsis confirmed that it seemed like the kind of book I would like. I haven't found out yet, though.

Becoming Queen, Kate Williams

There is a bit of trend in this list . . . and once again, I admit to being inspired by a film that I've seen. I read this biography of Queen Victoria after seeing the film The Young Victoria. Author Kate Williams also wrote a biography of Emma Hamilton's life, titled England's Mistress. No film of that one, alas.

West From Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is a collection of letters that Wilder wrote to her husband, back home in Missouri, when she was visiting their daughter Rose in San Francisco. I didn't even realize that this small paperback was in my bedside stack until I started dismantling it. Since it is a left-over from my LIW craze from last year, it indicates that my filing system got bogged down. One of the few things that I recall from this book is the surprise that Almanzo called his wife "Bessie." How could Laura be a Bessie? There were probably other interesting things in the book, but I can't recall them . . . and that is why I need to keep a reading journal.

The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Nicola Beauman

I got this from Persephone a few months ago, and it represents a reading goal of mine for the next year: to further acquaint myself with 20th century British female writers. Not only this Elizabeth, but also Elizabeth Bowen and Elizabeth Jane Howard. And Rosamund Lehman. And Barbara Pym. I read in such a scatter-shot way, as is evident from this list. It will be interesting to discover whether or not I can stick with a theme or time period.

The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt

I started this worthy tome, this Booker short-lister, a few months ago -- but I wasn't ready for the reading marathon that it required. It has to sit at the bottom of the stack, because of its substantial size, but its jewel-like cover is wonderful adornment for any bedside table. Dovegreyreader scribbles and Dick have both recommended it, and those votes are enough to make me want to tackle it. Perhaps a trip to the V&A Museum first?

The Bedside Book of the Garden, Dr. D.G. Hessayon

Oh goodness, a Christmas present from last year -- and now we are full-circle again.

Another book to dip in and out of, especially when the garden is covered with frost (as it is this morning), and gardening is more about dreaming than doing.

So, there we have it: a marathon of linkage. But isn't reading also about linkage? And now, for a cup of tea and chapter of Keats.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

2009-12-22T18:30:00.001Z

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year, and I spent the last two hours of dusky daylight walking through a steadily falling snow. Okay Winter, all is forgiven: it was absolutely magical.

Snow causes havoc in England, and all day long I've heard stories of people being stranded in their cars, but we (safe at home) couldn't help but revel in the stuff. My husband, father and I walked deep into the forest -- and every scene was like a Christmas card come to life. I kept fumbling to get my gloves off so that I could take pictures . . . although I missed my favorite scene of the day, when a couple and their glossy dog bounded out of the woods, arms laden with pine boughs.

My father and I sang every song we could think of with "snow" in the lyrics. Over the ground lies a mantle of white . . .

Years ago, (Christmas 1999, to be precise), we also got a big snow right before Christmas. I have a treasured memory of walking down a dark lane, slipping and sliding in the treacherous snow, to arrive at our friends' house. They had a huge open fire, and we sat around it -- drinking mulled wine and eating mince pies. It seemed to encompass most of the wonderful elements of Christmas: the warmth contrasting with the cold, the sharp smell of pine, and the rich taste of brandied fruit. And friends and family, of course. And laughter. And the feeling that time was suspended just a bit, just long enough to enjoy it all.

Chestnuts roasting on a open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

Last night, in a piece of magical symmetry, these same friends came over for dinner. (In the ensuing years, we moved to Texas for five years, and they've moved house, too; but by chance we have ended up in the same village once again.) By dinner-time, the roads were impassable; we live at the bottom of the hill, and they live at the top. They took a footpath that cuts through a farmer's fields, and arrived, bundled and booted and covered with snow. We were waiting, with mulled wine and hot cider and candles lit all over the house. Somehow, I think that I will remember the sight of them at the door -- all of us laughing -- forever.

Today is a quiet day between many days of seasonal socializing. Everyone has retreated to his or her own corner, to read, or watch a film, or catch up with blogging! I took another long snowy walk, this time by myself, and just enjoyed the silence of it all.

I couldn't decide if these boys were trying to build the biggest ball ever (in the deserted football field), or a base layer of a snowman.

In the meadow we can build a snowman . . .

Last night, when I attempted to put my wired-up daughter to bed, I discovered that she was all tucked up under her blankets and quilts . . . and eating a rather large snowball!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Still, still, still

One can hear the falling snow . . .

Enduring the season

2009-12-16T22:15:00.000Z

The Barn on a cold day in December

For weeks now, the world has been unrelentingly gray.
November set a record for rainiest ever, (as if normal English rainful wasn't sufficient enough to depress me). I feel like the cold fog has seeped into my bones and smothered everything light and lively.

So many of you write about how much you love winter -- including the pleasures of slowing down and hibernating a bit. But I find that there are excessive seasonal demands -- except, perhaps, in the garden -- and I just don't have the energy to do it all. I am surrounded by lists (to do, to make, to buy), but I'm feeling awfully listless. Maybe I'm just suffering from S.A.D?

I like a lazy afternoon just as much as the next person, but I want it to feel soothing and restful -- and not just some horrible malaise. I've been reading a lot . . . but more for escapism than for entertainment or enlightenment. I've seen films, I've gone to parties, I've baked dozens of cookies and mailed a stack of cards, but there is something missing. My brain feels dull. I'm always tired, and I feel, a bit, that I'm just going through the motions this year. Is it just me?

So many children have been struck down by viruses and flu-type illnesses that they had to cancel the Christmas concert at my youngest daughter's school. For the first time ever. It's so sad for my parents, really. They are visiting from Texas, and they never get to go to the children's concerts and programs. I was counting on the candlelight and the carols and the unchanging ceremony of it all.

Yesterday, we took advantage of the last child-free day and went to London. I had this notion that visiting the Charles Dickens Museum might help the Christmas spirit along. Also, the Dickens Museum is only a couple of blocks from Persephone -- one of my favorite bookstores. Surely, the combination of the two would kindle my gone-latent enthusiasms?

48 Doughty Street

Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby here.

Somewhat miraculously, we were blessed by a few streaks of weak winter sunshine. (Only an hour away, in West Berkshire, it was sleeting.) Perhaps I would like winter if it were blue and white and crisp at the edges -- instead of gray, damp and muddy. I suppose it is effective, though, for recreating the Victorian London atmosphere.

If you ever visit the museum in winter, make sure to dress warmly. It was almost entirely unheated, which seemed a bit too authentic. Anyway, I'm sure that the Dickens family made good use of the fireplaces which adorned every room. In this century, they seem to be merely decorative.

The desk of Charles Dickens

I've been telling myself that I've been too busy to write, but reading about Dickens' work habits made me acknowledge that the problem has more to do with a lack of motivation. Dickens was amazingly disciplined and prolific. He wrote novels, short stories and journalism . . . not to mention keeping a daily journal and being an enthusiastic correspondent. He managed to churn out A Christms Carol in just a couple of weeks, motivated, in this case, by the financial urgencies of his wife's fifth pregnancy.

He rarely edited his work -- or even plotted it out, to any great extent. In the museum, you can see the original manuscripts with jotted ideas and "key points" listed. And yet, all of those characters lived and breathed on the page. Even without Jim Carrey's help, is there anyone who doesn't understand what it means to be a Scrooge?

One of Dickens' many writing projects was a magazine called Household Words, which ran from 1850 to 1859. In one of the 1850 editions, Dickens wrote a piece describing a decorated Christmas tree -- as popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert two years before. This tree, in the drawing room of the house, is decorated according to that description.

Only your imagination, though, can provide the noise of raucous singing and laughter, the smell of mulled wine and pine, and the warmth of a crackling fire.

A 19th century illustration of the Christmas feast

There were so many illustrations of plum pudding . . . it made me feel bad that we won't be having one this Christmas. For a truly authentic touch, boil yours up in dirty linen.

Those Victorians who didn't possess ovens big enough for turkeys could collect a cooked Christmas dinner from the local bakery. I assume, from the illustration, that they brought in their own plates? It's not a bad idea; especially since I'm not at all sure that my oven is big enough to hold the turkey that I ordered.

We were practically light-headed when we reached Persephone Bookstore, and discovered -- to our great delight -- that we had lucked into an Open House. (I did wonder at the crowds in this usually calm and quiet shop.) There was mulled wine, and a plate of clementines, and the most delicious mince pies. I asked where they got the pies, and one of the helpers steered us toward the best ones and shared that they were from Konditor & Cook. I fancy myself as a mince pie connoisseur, or at least an enthusiast, and these were very, very good. (Apparently they have been named Best Mince Pie in London by The Independent.)

Sipping mulled wine, and picking out a few new books -- you get a price break if you buy three -- really did do wonders for my mood. I felt downright Christmassy, even.

I still can't wait for the dark days to lengthen again, though.

Still-Life at Persephone Bookstore

In cold, dark places . . . I dream of spring. (k.d. lang)

It's Not (Quite) a Wrap

2009-11-30T23:47:00.000Z

I’ve been lost down the rabbit hole of Christmas preparation these past few days . . . or should I say weeks. Yes, I know it’s not even December, but I belong to that set of crazed Christmas groupies who believe that the tree should go up the weekend after Thanksgiving. I’m not as organized as my friend who likes to get her shopping done in the January sales, (does that seem slightly not in the spirit of the thing?), but I do like to have my shopping done by the end of November . . . if at all possible. The less time I have to do a thing, the less pleasure I will take in it. (Christmas cards come to mind, for one example.) Sometimes, during this festive time of the year, a person does have to consciously work at the enjoyment part.

Do you love Christmas or loathe it?

The other week, as I was musing on simple pleasures, I happened to mention my delight in the steadily growing pile of wrapped presents . . . and it seemed to touch a nerve in certain people. Christmas should not feel like a competitive sport, but frankly, it can give a person the sense of being a pathetic straggler in an impossible race.

I openly confess to being a Christmas lover, but I have nothing but empathy for those who loathe it. What’s not to loathe, really? It’s expensive, stressful and emotionally loaded in all kinds of ways. It can also be the time-burning equivalent of a full-time job. The other day I was talking to a friend about various ideas and projects, and she kept repeating this refrain: It will have to wait until after Christmas. She would like to look for a part-time job, but in December she already has one.

I wonder how many people, particularly women, feel like they are the cruise directors on the Christmas Boat? Here's hoping that we can bring that holiday in on time and on budget . . . and keep everyone (not least of all ourselves) happy. At a certain point, does the pleasure in Christmas become mostly vicarious?

De-cluttering

2009-11-23T14:38:00.000Z

For many years, our family moved house on an annual basis. Although moving is an expensive, inconvenient and often distressing experience, it does have one silver lining: it forces a person to get rid of her rubbish.

Having to pack up one’s belongings sharpens the de-cluttering claws. If you have to carry it, or pay for its transportation, treasure really does turn to trash. A certain ruthlessness comes to the fore. I know that by the third day of packing for an international move, I am wresting beloved toys out of my children’s arms (do you really need 50 stuffed animals?) and begging friends and strangers both to help themselves from my pantry.

I love fresh starts, and actually take pleasure in setting up my kitchen or neatly organizing clothing drawers when I first move into a house. However, once a household has been established, I never am in the mood for seasonal cleaning – spring, or otherwise. Thus, even though the daily house maintenance falls to me, it is usually my husband that forces anything that might be described as “a project.”

Last night he said something along the lines of “we are drowning in clutter,” and although I chose to ignore that statement at the time, I started off the day by tackling some of the more annoying and obvious piles. This will be our fourth Christmas in The Barn – a personal best for our itinerant family -- and we are going to have a big crowd. I’m going to need all of the seats at the table, which means reclaiming at least half the space from the pile of newspapers, books, magazines and mail that has taken up semi-permanent residence there.

Although I can get rid of any piece of clothing that I haven’t worn in a year or two, when it comes to the written word, I suffer from a mental delusion. Despite all experience to the contrary, I still believe that someday I’m going to have the time to read this. I’m particularly prone to saving The Guardian Review, the RHS Garden magazine, and anything that has recipes. We have a kitchen chair stacked high with my favorites, in addition to the paper purgatory on the table. (I also have a stack of Reviews in my study, which I am guiltily gazing upon even as I write this.)

This morning I started out with firm resolve, and cleared the kitchen chair in one clean stroke. Then, I made a cup of tea and proceeded to flick through the large stack before it went to the recycling bin – just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything really important or interesting, you know. After an hour, and maybe three sections of Reviews that I never read during the summer, I realized that a more mindlessly efficient process was called for. Without even let myself look at the alluring titles, I started stuffing them into bags.

At that juncture, a friend called; and with the help of this distraction, I was able to completely empty a cabinet of dozens and dozens of cooking magazines – some of which I had been hoarding since the beginning of this decade. I immediately hauled them out to the car so I wouldn’t suffer from clearing remorse – and I’m proud to say that I only retrieved three of them from their shredding fate.

Flush with this success, (although not really flushed, because our house is freezing), I tackled the worst of the bookshelves. Even after careful review, I had to conclude that 99% of my books either (1) haven’t been read or (2) might want to be read again someday. After a great deal of internal debate, and some misgivings (it has to be said), I think that I managed to bag up about 10 books to go the charity shop.

Sadly, I still haven’t made much progress with the pile on the kitchen table. I had a quick look through it, and did throw away various bits of mail, but there are still so many newspapers and magazines of recent vintage there. I can’t quite let go of my belief that I am still going to read them. Someday.

Simple Things

2009-11-16T17:15:00.001Z

the view from my bedroom window

rain and more rain

The lowering gray days of November have been getting me down.

Don't you think that certain words are best suited to an English accent? Horrid, wretched and dismal, for example.

(To be said in best Mitford tones): The horrid weather we've been having is unrelentingly dismal . . . and it's making me feel perfectly wretched.

I thought that I was feeling too glum to rejoice in simple things, but a visit to Christina was a good restorative.

There are always some bright spots, really; even if the lamps do come on by mid-afternoon these days.

My list:

a cup of tea in bed

my winter-weight goosedown duvet

homemade minestrone soup for lunch today

tickets for Jane Campion's latest film Bright Star

half of my Christmas list, already wrapped

a new purple cashmere scarf

narcissus in a teacup

Visit Soul Aperture for more simple things to take pleasure in this November.

For my brother

2009-11-08T13:17:00.001Z

November 8 is my brother’s birthday, and this year, it falls on Remembrance Sunday. Because my brother is currently deployed to Afghanistan, it is particularly poignant that those dates should coincide.

All week long, it seems like Afghanistan has been in the news for tragic reasons – and there have been particularly personal betrayals. I don’t know how distant the war seems to others, but it is never far from my thoughts – although I have never before written about it here. Even the recent horrific events in Fort Hood, Texas are uncomfortably close to home for me; my parents live very near there, and my brother has been stationed there several times.

My brother is a Lt. Colonel, in charge of a large battalion of soldiers. I know his responsibility weighs heavily on him, but he refers, only obliquely, to the terrible mental and emotional stresses of his daily life. I don’t know if his reticence is due to necessities of confidentiality, or the desire to protect his family, or just weariness; perhaps it is a bit of all those things.

Our lives have so little in common now, but we share the same liking for books and games that goes back to earliest childhood. I cannot think of my brother without remembering the marathon games of Monopoly that we played as a child. We would get up early on Sunday mornings to play – always hoping that my parents would oversleep and that we wouldn’t have to go to church. (It rarely happened, but we lived in optimistic expectation.) These days, we play Facebook Scrabble – in the odd moments, once or twice a week, when he can visit an Internet café. He always wins; he always did win.

He likes to read; everyone in our family does. When he was a little boy, he loved the Curious George books by H.A. Rey, and he had a good bit of that curious monkey in him. Like so many young boys, he would pore over the Guinness Book of World Records. I also particularly remember a series of nonfiction books called Tell Me Why that he would read and reread. As he got older, he started to prefer histories – particularly military history. These days, he tells me that he reads lots of thrillers and other “escapist trash.”

As children, we used to construct “ships” by enclosing the sides of the bunk beds with blankets. It was so wonderfully cozy to feel concealed in that space – to lie back on pillows, and read by the light of a lamp. It felt so safe. I doubt that any adult ever feels that safe again, but books can still provide those feelings of an enclosed, complete world far from present realities. As Emily Dickinson wrote: There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away . . .

After much pondering, I decided to send my brother a birthday package of books. What better escape than humor, I thought? When I googled “funniest ever books” the same titles kept recurring, and these are the three I ended up sending to Afghanistan: Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome; Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis, and a P.G. Wodehouse Omnibus. They are all English classics, and although I’ve read them, I don’t think that my brother has done. Although women may read and even like these books, they describe a completely male world. They have some odd similarities, actually: particularly that of the hapless male protagonist who keeps stumbling into scrapes of his own making. There are lots of cups of tea, although it is true that some of them are spilled. Nothing really bad happens, though; foolishness reigns here, never violence or evil.

They make me think of the letter* that Winston Churchill wrote during World War II, when he was confined to bed with illness. He asked for Pride and Prejudice to be read to him, and later commented: What calm lives they had . . . No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic wars. Only manners controlling natural passions as far as they could . . .

I would remind Churchill of this: perhaps Jane Austen knew more about gardens than battlefields, but she also had two brothers in the Navy, and I doubt that the pitched battles between England and France were ever as far out of her mind as her novels might imply.

Happy Birthday, dearest little brother!

* A copy of this letter is in Jane Austen's bedroom at the Jane Austen House in Chawton, Hampshire.