Monthly Re-Caps – Page 2 – June's Jottings

I type up this blog post at midday, at my dining room table, whilst taking a break from thesis writing/research and sorting out resources for my Higher English tutees. There is a light drizzle outside, it’s a bit chilly, and the daffodils are on the verge of bursting their buds and furnishing my flower beds with their lovely bright yellow hue. I can’t believe that tomorrow is March; not that I’m sad about it – I love spring.

February always has been a tough month for me. Our first baby, had it carried to full term, would have been born on or around the 25th of February and so this date – for the past 23 years – has been a tough one to negotiate. To make this date even more emotionally hard is that on the 25th February, 2022, my Mum passed away. The same date. Getting past this first sad anniversary – the last of the firsts – has been tough, but I feel that my family and I are slowly beginning to heal. I miss my Mum ever so much, I called her every single day, but I hold onto the memories we all had – particularly my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in April 2018, the last major event we could celebrate when we were all well and before my Mum’s cancer diagnosis.

So this past week was tough. Then it got tougher. My husband caught Covid from someone on a very busy and stifling bus ride home from work, and then promptly gave it to me – last week, during my already tough week! However, we are both OK now. I tested negative yesterday although I’m still feeling washed out and have a lingering cough (that is different from my normal lingering cough).

House sale preparation

This month I feel I haven’t achieved much. That’s because the two weeks that we were well were spent in painting, putting all of my books into storage, and generally preparing the house for sale (further!). Do you know how long it took me to pack most of my books away? Three solid days! What didn’t help was my humming and hawing as to which books to keep back – in the end I had to be ruthless. Our store-room was floor to ceiling with my boxes of books….this photo only shows some of them! So now my study upstairs is bereft of bookcases and now just houses my desk and the piano. It feels weird not having them about – and the piles of books all over the floor which were a Health and Safety trip hazard. Oh well, the next time I see them, hopefully we will be in our next house. At least I still have my Anthony Trollopes, Dickens, and Powell/PhD books to keep me going.

As well as clearing three-eighths of my book collection out of the house, we had a group of roofers along to replace loose slates and to de-moss our roof. They just about drove the dogs berserk – who are these strange men in our garden, but they worked solidly over three days and now the house roof looks gleamy and clean (well, as gleamy as slate roofs get). So now, the last thing that needs done is the main bathroom refit which, we have been assured, will happen mid-March.

Reading

To be honest, I haven’t had a time to read much beyond that for my PhD. I have started reading two more books (as seen in my Goodreads sidebar) – I love Barbara Pym and I am listening to Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady on Audible. Absolutely loving Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – it’s just very long! I have got to page 511, which I think is about half way through. However, whenever I set myself time to sit and read, the dogs think it is playtime and I get no peace at all until I abandon the book and throw a soft ball about the room for the next hour. C’est la vie.

Music

The airing of the Thomas Tallis hymn ‘If You Loved Me’ went live on Youtube on Valentine’s Day (yeah, that’s not the kind of love that the hymn is talking about, however…..). You can see it here. Now we are working on ‘Baba Yetu’ by Christopher Tin – the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. Absolutely loving practicing this one; I think it will sound amazing when it is all put together.

Music for pleasure-wise, I have been very much into Rachmaninov this past month, especially Piano Concerto number 3. Great to work along to.

TV/ Netflix

Again, I haven’t had much time to indulge myself with time to watch much on the TV screen except for last week, when I had Covid and literally couldn’t do a thing without every muscle aching. So, I watched old re-runs of Neighbours which had just been uploaded onto Freevee. That programme is another of my guilty pleasures; I watched the first episode when I was 14 (when I used to watch it with my Gran and my Mum) and have followed it sporadically since. The storylines are candyfloss and unrealistic but it’s my escape. I’m so glad they are bringing a new series back. When so many things from my youth are now no more, it’s nice to have something that remains, albeit with different characters and weirder storylines.

So, February has been a strange, emotional little month. I’m never sad to see it go – this year is no different. Meteorological spring starts tomorrow – a time to look forward with hope!

Reading

Other than reading extensively for my thesis, and starting my final chapter, I have tried to dig myself out of a reading slump by attacking the pile of books that line the floors in my study. As we are putting the house up for sale in a few weeks’ time, most of my thousands of books will be going into storage, and so I am trying to read as many of the books I want to read most before they disappear until the summer.

In January, I managed to read 7 books (some are pictured in my Goodreads sidebar thingummy to the right of this post). Unusually for me, I only read five books last year – some of them before my Mum passed away and so seven in one month this year is a little victory! I had bought Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible years ago and, like most of my other intended reads, it got put in one of my bookcases and left to mature until last week. The urgency of having to pack things up suddenly hit me, and so I retrieved it and committed myself to reading it when I wasn’t writing or doing other things. My tutees have had 3 weeks off during their Prelims, so it was an excellent time for me to try and see how much of the 600-odd page novel I could get through, before I picked my next one.

I finished it on Monday, taking only just short of a week to read it. Beforehand, I knew nothing about the history of the Congo and so I found this text very enlightening historically as well as very lyrical descriptively. Doing a surface review, it was an enjoyable read if a tad long. I think it would have been better being about 200 pages slimmer than it is. However, it was nice to spend a cold and dark January reading about the hot Congo, albeit including the much more primitive living arrangements the characters had to endure.

I’ve now rescued another book from one of my many storage boxes: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark. It’s another novel I bought years ago but it started calling me asking me to spare it from ‘the box’. It’s also another biggie; it’s over 1,000 pages long. I’m about one-fifth of the way into it and am LOVING it so far. It’s my treat for when I manage to write a decent amount of my chapter!

House-selling Prep

This feels like running through custard with lead boots on. Man, are we hoarders? I don’t know if the attic will ever get cleared. Plus we still have rooms to paint, a new bathroom to be installed (after them cancelling our start of January fitting), and some roof work to be done (again, the company have been ‘kicking the can down the road’ with us since October). The storage boxes have arrived, and we are starting to pack some of our clutter away so that when we can access the storage facility in a couple of weeks, we can shove them on the van and be done with them. As mentioned above, I need about 50 boxes alone for my books (I am obviously keeping my PhD books, and my nicely bound ones) but trying to choose which ones to keep with me is like trying to choose which of your children you want to banish for 3 months. It is a nightmare. A nightmare, I tell you!

Now, I must remember NOT to pack my Anthony Powell books away. Nor my textbooks/ articles files……..

PhD

I have been chipping away at this and the final chapter is taking shape. I’ve found a few little nuggets from my reading, so am hoping that they make sense in the finished chapter. I’m aiming to have this chapter done in the autumn (taking into account our house move etc) and then it’s just the final editing to do. Although at times I can see my thesis far enough, I’m still really enjoying it and am thankful that the uni have given me this chance to follow my dream – even though I suspect I will be wayyyyy too old to pursue my dream job of being an academic/lecturer when I finish. I’m glowering at 2017 me who was certain that she would get this done in 4 years. Hah! Well, I guess with events over the next couple of years, that wasn’t likely to happen. I’m keeping on going anyway. I’m just grateful that my supervisor has the patience of a saint.

TV/Netflix

I don’t actually watch very much TV but this January I was absolutely hooked on The Traitors. It’s a psychological reality show where, within a group of strangers, three of them are allocated the role of traitor (these traitors ‘murder’ a ‘faithful’ contestant every night) and the others (the ‘faithful’) have to try and work out who the traitors are. I ended up watching the UK and the US versions – it was that good. The series’ are still available on BBC iPlayer.

As far as Netflix goes, it was Gilmore Girls all the way. This has been my favourite show since the 2000s and Lorelai is one of my fictional heroines. When I’m having an unproductive writing day, or am having a blue day as I’m missing my Mum, a couple of episodes of GG goes on Netflix and the world is a better place again. I’ve already watched every single episode of every single series (and the re-union) several times but, like ‘Friends’, they are worth a re-watch over and over again. Even more gratifying is getting my daughter hooked on it too; we sometimes share watch-parties, me in my home and my daughter in her flat in Dundee. I want to live in Stars Hollow. Even if it is just a stage set (the same one that was used for the town in the original – and best – ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’). I need a Luke’s where soup-bowlfuls of coffee are served all the time. Nowhere here sells coffee in massive mugs. Big letdown.

I have also been watching Suits, as I have done for years. It’s quite compelling. And the US version of The Office, which I love. But nothing tops Gilmore Girls. Sorry, not sorry.

Music

Photo by Elviss Railijs Bitu0101ns on Pexels.com

Music I have enjoyed over the past month has included a bit of Magnum. I have no idea why, in January and February, I end up playing Magnum and Pink Floyd more than at any other time of year. I guess I see them as ‘winter bands’. Odd – that’s the synaesthesia again. Best song, by far, by Magnum has to be ‘On a Storyteller’s Night’. That whole album is pretty darn good, mind you. I’ve also been re-visiting my love of Dire Straits. They don’t make bands like them any more!

Additionally, I always have some ambient music playing when I’m thesis-writing, and have been enjoying albums by Karl Jenkins (my utter favourite), Mythos, Lesiem, and Mehdi a lot. Chill out synth music with lyrics in another tongue – made up or not – which doesn’t distract me from my work. Perfect.

Interesting article:

Here’s a thing I read that I found interesting: There is a saying “you are only as old as you feel”. But, is that actual chronological age, or biological age? Aren’t they the same, you ask? Well, according to this article in the National Geographic, they could differ vastly. Knowledge of the biological age of someone could be “worth a thousand blood tests” in health promotion and disease prevention. How is biological age ascertained? By 3D imaging. It sounds expensive (a basic xray is fairly costly, alone) but the potential benefits to be gleaned from this in the future, particularly in relation to medical diagnoses and treatments (such as those for cancer which, according to the article, can cause premature ageing) are profound. Will it ever take off in our cash-strapped NHS (if, indeed, the NHS still exists in decades’ time), or would it likely be a procedure only accessible to the wealthy? One wonders.

Onward to February, my least favourite of months for many reasons. At least it’s the shortest!