Happy Easter

Hope you have a happy and safe day.

(And hooray for the secret tulips which have really brightened our previously blue (irises, bluebells, hyacinths) garden.)

The Long Good Friday

If I had grown up in England, I don’t think there is any chance I would have continued to attend Sunday mass until the age of 20, as I did in Brisbane. I’ve only attended a handful of masses here in London, and I’ve never felt the spiritual life and joy I knew in my church in Brisbane. The hymns, for one thing, are so slow in comparison; even the same hymns sung in Australia are sung so slowly that for me they lose a lot of their spirit.

When I was a kid we had one priest, Father Dennis, who looked as I imagined Jesus must have, and was so kind and loving and playful, again as I imagined Jesus then. He had longish black hair and a big bushy black beard, bright laughing blue eyes, and after mass all the kids and young people would gather around him. He was just good to be around. I've never met another priest like him, but the priest who married us had a some of the same playfulness.

Today being Good Friday, I decided to go to the Stations of the Cross, or the ‘Celebration of the Lord’s Passion’ as our local Catholic church, the one the poet and I were married in, calls it. I have fond memories of attending the Stations in our church in Brisbane, a moving service where the priest took the cross to each ‘station’ around the walls of the church and we heard about the different parts of Christ’s journey carrying his cross to Golgotha, where he was crucified and died.

Today was rather different. The church was completely packed out when I arrived at about five minutes to three (the hour Jesus is supposed to have died) and some of us were shepherded to a side room, with a large glass window opening onto the altar.

After the readings and the gospel, after the priest’s homily and some rather drawn out sung prayers and responses, stertorously delivered by one of the priests, (to my mind, sung prayers only really work if the singer has a beautiful or at least tuneful voice, and they’re not very very slow, otherwise they are just as or more effective being spoken) there was the veneration of the cross. After various prayers, the congregation, all fifty-seven thousand of us, were invited to show our respects to the cross, by genuflecting or kissing it. Meanwhile, in our little side room, two little boys raced around an unfurnished space, playing war with imaginary guns and bombs, their parents sitting some distance away, either worshipfully oblivious or pretending not to know them.

I prayed for a while, and the choir sang hymns for a very long time, but then there was an interminable silence where nothing seemed to be happening in the part of the church we could see from our fishbowl window. This was punctuated by a tiny girl whimpering ‘my jeans are hurt-in me mommy,’ over and over. Her mother sat behind me staring straight ahead. Finally the priest brought the Eucharist to the altar.

I made an escape after communion. I’m glad I went, because I wanted to remember what Good Friday is really about. Things have been difficult for me lately and I wanted to be in the company of a sorrow greater than my own – someone who suffered tremendously and was humiliated and killed. Someone who had to believe the promise that his death wouldn’t be final, as in a much smaller way I have to believe that things will get easier. Next time, though, unless I’m in Australia, I’ll just stay home and use my little Stations of the Cross book to pray by myself.

I imagine it’s sacrilege to poke fun at typos in church literature, but this hymn…

His dying crimson like a robe,
spreads o’er his body on the tree;
then I am dead to all the globe,
and all the glove is dead to me.

Poor unloved glove.

Icy

Janetta's icecream (in St Andrews) deserves a post of its own.

Not a patch on D'ella Palma in Rome (and New York, apparently), but rather delicious all the same.

StAnza

A couple of weekends ago the poet and I went to the St Andrews Poetry Festival. It was a working weekend for him, he was reading and taking part in a discussion about the film based on his Chernobyl book, which was show twice and sold out both times. For me, it was a chance to enjoy a six-hour train journey, spent mostly snoozing, reading and watching the countryside wend its way past, while the poet chatted with a couple of women on their way to a hen night in Edinburgh, and then a couple of nights in a very cozy bed and breakfast, with two days wandering from event to meal to icecream (dutch chocolate and walnut & maple, from Janetta's, an experience I'd been advised not to miss) to brisk walk. Walking was necessarily brisk as it was absolutely freezing.

It seems the rest of the UK had fairly hellish, windy, snowy weather that weekend, but we were well-sheltered in St Andrews, and only glimpsed a few little snowflakes on the morning we left.

I had two chances to talk to to Gwyneth Lewis, author of Sunbathing in the Rain, which I read and found immensely helpful earlier this year and thank her for the book, but the first time I didn't want to interrupt her when she was eating and talking with friends, and the second time I was unsure whether the woman bending over a bag outside the 100 Poets reading (definitely very mixed quality there!) was actually here or just had similar hair. Kicking myself now.

Being so close to the poet and reading a reasonable amount of contemporary poetry over the years myself, has given me a fairly critical ear for what works and what doesn't. Regardless of whether I actually like it. There is a lot of underworked, or just not good enough, poetry out there - winning prizes and getting acclaim seemingly only because of the name of the poet - and it's frustrating when despite the quality of his work (and the number of prizes his work has won), the poet doesn't make the 'upper tier' of poetry in this country. More reason to move to Australia, I say!

The secret tulips

They're almost here!

St Anza... literary festival... poetry... geddit?

This weekend the poet and I are going to the St Andrews Literary Festival aka StAnza. He’s doing a couple of readings and the film of his Chernobyl poem will be shown twice, once with a discussion session.

I’ll be wandering around between his events, checking out some of the other events and probably spending too much money on books. Because they can be signed! By the actual authors! I’ll probably be wearing my Fussy tshirt – where better to wear clothing emblazoned with ‘Writing well is the best revenge’ than a literary festival?

I can’t wait for the long train journey – potential rail strikes and people who may have to be reprimanded for iPod abuse notwithstanding – time to read and sleep and gaze out the window at the countryside. Working on the Queensland Rail account in my deep dark Australian advertising past really sucked me into the romance of the rail. Or maybe it’s genetic, my granddad worked on building many of the state’s railways. I’ll be fighting the poet for the seat facing backwards because I believe you really do see more that way. When you’re facing in the direction of travel it all goes by too fast, I like to let the country unravel behind me.

Kids these days

Somehow, starting his first year at school has got my nephew so excited that he's channelling John Travolta. I fear for his social standing with the other 5 year olds. Is he too young for an intervention?

Things the UK hasn’t got right yet #1

When I was at the cinema today to see ‘Freedom Writers’ (pretty good, if you like ‘teacher inspires wayward teens and changes their lives’ films like Dangerous Minds, with a smattering of the Holocaust. Also, when did Hilary Swank become such a babe?), I noticed that there was a new drink on sale:Frozen Fanta.

Great, so the UK’s cinemas finally get slushy-type drinks that aren’t blue, and the best they can come up with is Fanta??

Give me my Frozen Coke!

Note to self

Stop writing blog entries in your head while lazing in bed on Sunday mornings and then not actually typing them and posting them!

And another...

Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses, just waiting to see us just once being beautiful and ourageous. Perhaps everything fearful is basically helplessness that seeks our help.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

As someone who has spent far too much of her life being fearful, this appeals.

I have no idea where I have stored the current volume of the 'quote journal' I've been keeping for about fifteen years. Until I find it, I have random scraps of paper piling up on my desk.

Speaking of piles of paper, I had to move more than a few yesterday when I vaccuumed the entire house*. I think the last time I did such a thorough job may have been just before my mother visited for the wedding. I hate vacuuming. Actually, vacuuming a simple square empty room I quite enjoy, vacuuming a room with minimal furniture I don't mind, but moving everything, including rugs and mats to vaccum underneath is a real pain. Almost but not quite worth the satisfaction afterward. Also, I have a dust allergy, and while this is not a problem anymore since I was 'desensitised' at 17-18, I miss the days of not being allowed to vacuum because it stirs the dust up and aggravates allergies. And oh! I'd almost forgotten being let off housework altogether sometimes because it seriously makes me feel sick. All that bending down and straightening up does me in.

When we were kids, our mother would pretend the vaccuum cleaner was a crocodile, and we would (well, I would, my younger siblings probably scoffed at my immaturity from the safety of the kitchen) jump out of reach onto the lounge (in American/British, the sofa), occasionally dangling little feet daringly close to the fearsome metal creature's maw. I remember the abject terror if Mum raised the sucker end and came after our feet, or if I was just a bit too slow in lifting my ankles and the cold metal pushed into them. Imagination is a wondrous thing.

However, vaccuming is not quite so much fun when there's only me and the fish safe in his glass box and a poet absorbed in his work who's liable to brain me if I go near his study. And then there's the stairs. Bane of my vacuum-wielding life. Usually I give up and relegate them to 'next time', picking up any obvious bits of fluff to assuage my conscience but yesterday I took a deep breath, attached the tiny little vacuum head to the end of the hose and painstakingly vacuumed each furry green surface of every bloody stair. All the while balancing the body of the vacuum cleaner against my legs as it threatened to drag me down the stairs because the cord is too short to go all the way upstairs if plugged in downstairs.

Between times, the poet occasionally runs his hand several times over the carpet and triumphantly comes up with a tangled swirl of girl-hair that seems to be unpickupable by vaccum. I on the other hand take pains never to run my hands over the carpet, as what I don't know can't make me feel guilty.

* I lie. I didn't vaccum the spare room. But seriously, there's like a square foot of rarely trodden bare carpet in there.

Wise words

But you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Dreamtalk

This morning I was lying drowsing, having just woken from a dream, when the poet started to talk in his sleep. The words I caught coming from his mouth were sentences from the dream I'd just had! Of course, the actual words have been completely erased from my memory, but wow.

p.s. I can heartily recommend being married to a poet on Valentine's Day.

Save our hospital

My local hospital, Chase Farm, has been threatened for some time with cuts and closures of various services, the most frightening of which is the potential closure of the Accident and Emergency department. This would mean that in an emergency, people would have to go to North Middlesex Hospital or Barnet Hospital. Chase Farm is far easier for me to get to by public transport, far quicker in an ambulance (which I've had to do twice thanks to ovarian cysts) whereas North Middlesex is already overstretched, and I don't even know where Barnet Hospital is!

Purely selfishly, I want A&E to stay, and judging by the public outcry so do lots of other people. If you happen to live in Enfield or its environs, and Chase Farm Hospital is one you use or might potentially need to use, please sign the petition at http://www.handsoffourhospital.org/canwe.php

(Cristina, this means you! ;) )

Baggage

I have this little green rucksack I take everywhere with me. And I do mean pretty much everywhere.

Originally it was the 'day pack' belonging to the big backpack that was my leaving gift from the advertising agency I worked for in Brisbane, when I was made redundant and decided to try my luck in London. It zips onto the front of the backpack for travelling and then detaches for day use. I still have the backpack too, with the Australian flag I sewed onto the pocket for easy identification and patriotism, languishing in a cupboard in the spare room with blankets and pillows. I never actually went backpacking, but it served as my suitcase for a couple of months while I travelled (with my mother! on coach tours!) around Britain and Europe before settling in London.

But this rucksack. It's so handy. It accomodates my bottle of water, my book(s), my journal, my umbrella (woe betide the fool who goes anywhere in the UK without an umbrella), an emergency stash of pills and herbal remedies, pens, a hairbrush, handcream and other things besides. I take it to work, to the library, grocery shopping, to the movies, pretty much everywhere. It carries books as happily as it does apples and grapes.

I love backpacks. My shoulders start to scream in pain if either of them is singled out for load-bearing responsibilities, but they're happy to share the weight using a backpack. My green bag has a largish pocket at the front which is perfect for keeping a few small essentials, and a wonderful open pocket at the back which lies snug against my back - ideal for magazines or maps or plastic bags or anything flat which needs to be got at quickly. I can't imagine a bag more suited to carrying around my daily life.

I need to get a new one, I know, a smarter one, one that's more business like, less...... green. But I am so loathe to get rid of it. That's why when the zip broke I pinned it together and somehow made it work again. Why when it broke again I just re-zipped it every time (every day) it came apart. Why I ignore the fact that the lining has almost completely flaked off and leaves traces of itself on any clothing I might carry in it (probably because when the bag gets a bit grubby (as is normal for anything that travels on the tube) I throw it in the washing machine). Why I finally, last week, sewed up the zip partway so it had more strength.

I tell myself I'm being environmentally sound, reusing rather than replacing, mending and making do. But it's more than that - in some way it's a talisman, a symbol of my survival in this cold and often unfriendly city, of almost nine years of living here. It's one of the only things I brought from Australia with me and still use. I think it's got a few more years in it.

Reading

(nicked from Confessions of an Author)

Miles Kington in How Many Books Are You Reading At The Moment? reckons we're all reading about 10 books at once these days, and challenges us to go and look at the tottering piles on our bedside tables. He has a point. He says:

'Go to your bedside table and honestly tell me what books are there. All of them. Not just the books you would like people to think you were reading'

ok...

• Just started Cell by Stephen King today. Always good to read something that justifies my decision not to get a mobile phone. I've had a bad cold and King is a great convalescent read.
• Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie. The story of Tenzin Palmo,a British Buddhist nun. Inspirational, her example has taught me a lot about mindfulness and has unearthed a slight yearning towards Buddhism. I originally bought this book a few years ago when it was mentioned in another book written by an Australian journalist (Holy Cow!)
  
• Philosophy in 30 Days by Dominique Janicaud. Dipping into this one occasionally.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Started this some years back and recently rescued it from my bookshelf. Haven't actually opened it again yet.
• Sunstroke and other stories by Tessa Hadley. I've read some good reviews of this collection and am always on the look out for good short stories. Our library didn't have any of her books on the shelves and I'm impatient so treated myself to the paperback. This is the book I'm carrying everywhere in my backpack, usually along with at least one other.
  
• Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You by Richard O'Connor. Have been reading this sporadically over the last several months. Mostly when depressed. Not sure it holds the miracle answer promised by the title, but it's sound stuff.
• More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel. I think this is my third reading. I find her writing strangely comforting, especially when I'm not feeling so happy myself.

I've just finished reading Sylvia Brownrigg's The Delivery Room. Achingly beautiful. And any book which involves psychotherapy can usually pique my interest.

Foodies alert

Confused about what to eat for a healthy body and life? Conflicting advice from doctors and food companies and nutritionists?

We finally have the definitive answer:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Now you can't say you haven't been told.

Snow day

I cleverly managed to take two days annual leave to coincide with the second and biggest snowfall in London this year. Hooray for lying in bed and watching fat flakes fall.

I'm perturbed by the fact that our goldfish will never know what it is like to be warm, being a cold water creature who would die if his water increased much in temperature. But never to know the feeling of cosiness? How terribly sad.

So many posts I have part-composed in my head, so slack since NaPoBloMo. Have faith in me.

Sneezing

Sneezes are the best thing ever when I’m feeling anxious. Or sick. Except, you know, if the sneezes are chain-sneezes, non-stop and exhausting. That’s not fun for anyone.

I could have really done without an hour’s worth of police helicopter flying above our back gardens at 4.30 this morning.

Today was probably the official most depressing day of the year, given that the official day was Monday 23rd last year. Glad that’s out of the way. Onward and upward.

Conservatory days

Yesterday and today have been my idea of perfect winter days - clear blue sky with a few wind-whipped thin clouds, bright sunshine. Ideal for walking in the park, and sitting down on a bench to read. Except the cold seeps through all my layers until after a few chapters I'm chilled to the bone and have to get up.

This is where a conservatory would come in handy. Nice glass walls and roof to let in the bright and keep out the cold. An armchair instead of a wooden bench. Easy access to herbal tea and necessary sweet things. Will have to work on the poet. I wonder whether the council would let me build a conservatory in the middle of the park.

Spring is hastening. The little clump of purple crocus has budded in the centre of our lawn, and walking through St Pancras park on the way to work, there are eager splashes of yellow and white already open.

Watching

Small boy and mother, suburban London street:

“So you want a dog then?”

“Yes.”

“What colour?”

The colour of friendship, of scrabbling paws late at night, of a floppy ear to lift and whisper into, of never being alone. The colour of breathless chasing and tug-of-war with a slimy rope, of sticks and parks and balls and mud, of cold footpads and warm paws, of hugging and wrestling and dog hair all over. Of slobbering and cold noses and a heavy warmth at the end of the bed.

The colour of always having someone to talk to.