anyresemblance

The joy of achieving one of your goals by 10am on a Saturday

It was blistering hot yesterday and today continues in the same vein.  Charlie and I walked up Red Hill this morning.  There were lots of New Years Resolutionists out and about.  I have no doubt that within a month we'll be back to the usual quiet route but we did get our 5km in even if we haven't achieved the step goal for the day yet.  I am listening to Robert P Parker's Spenser.  The reader on this one is Michael Prichard who is good.  I really like Joe Mantegna in the later ones, don't hate the couple that Burt Reynolds has done and loathe David Dukes.   The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in the series and what's not to like about a private eye who quotes Herbert Marcuse, can identify the predicative nominative and cooks Coquille Saint Jacques?

My other favourite read over Christmas were the Joy of Tidying.  Maybe it gets lost in translation but it reads totally bonkers.  It does, however have a kernel of clever insights that you should only surround yourself with things that give you joy; that if you dislike something gifted to you, it is ok to get rid of it as the moment of joy was in the act of giving; and that spending a fortune on storage solutions does not declutter your life.  I thought this insight from the Times was spot on:

salute Kondo for her recognition of something quietly profound: that mess is often about unhappiness, and that the right kind of tidying can be a kind of psychotherapy for the home as well as for the people in it

I also like India Knight's latest but thoroughly disagree with her assessment on running.  I read out the passage on using technology to expand your horizons and keep in touch with friends to lunarover over the phone. 

Yesterday, I made totally dreadful mini-banoffee pies from Jamie's 30 minute meals.  I think I burnt the caramel but they tasted vile.  I did better on the tiny chopped salad and lamb cutlets with thyme and a dollop of shop bought hummus (I really like the one by pilpel as it is super tahini-ish and smooth).  

The raven haired sleuth

I got a stache of books from Amazon today including the newly recommended to me Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. I read it this afternoon and evening and I highly, highly recommend it. It combines all my favourite feisty heroine sleuth, between the wars, below the stairs stuff. Nancy Drew meets Mma Ramotswe. Very thoughtfully written with a character with a lot of potential for interesting situations. I have the next one in the series also which is tomorrow's treat. I got my wires crossed on return of my children today - plans were constantly changing since their father was supposed to be going to NZ next week. I was expecting their return from Cooma and watching the clock tick by. The route is out of mobile range and I getting more and more worried. Eventually I discovered they were still there and I just lost it with their father on the phone. I was crying hysterically on the phone since i had rehearsed every possibility of death on that road and I still feel angry that he hadn't called me to say they were staying there - even if he believed they were staying with him tonight. He seemed genuinely sorry but it reminded me again of how oblivious he often is to the feelings of others. I may be sideswiped by the amount of medication I have taken in the last 24 hours. I am on a new regime for treating my migraines. I think I have been underdosing pain in early stages which then leads to muscular tension and the whole of my back and neck seizing up. The new medication seems pretty effective but none of it addresses why they arise in the first place. I recognise some triggers but others - like tiredness and stress - are harder to manage. I did go to an excellent Pilates session at 7:30 am and then had a massage. Took my filthy car to the car wash which oddly also eased my headache. I don't think I am Martha Stewart but I do get stressed by clutter and mess so it was nice to drive around in a clean car. This afternoon I made the meatloaf from here via small hands. I got to tell you it is divine and perfect food for a cold night but I have the feeling it will also be great cold and may feature in summer buffets.

Desert (Island) Books

I found a box of papers on the weekend that I handed over to the children's father as I thought they were all his. He brought back a few files which were mine. I didn't even know I still had them nor that I had transported them through three countries and eight house moves. One was full of letters from friends in Libya, a stack of the postcards I wrote about last month (including some snippets I had forgotten like No democracy without popular congresses and Partners not wage workers ) and a stamped form authorising me to remove personal property from the country on departure.

List of Educational Books, personal property of anyresemblance, English Dept, Faculty of Education, Al-Fatah University, to be taken out of Libya on exit, July 1984. Madhur Jaffrey, Eastern Vegetarian Cookery George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder Jane Austen, Persuasion Claudia Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food Anthony Hutt, Islamic Architecture ed. Elizabeth Hardwick, A Susan Sontag Reader Clifford Quick, Cystitis Greil Marcus, Mystery Train Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions John Buchan, Greenmantle

Susan Sontag! What was I thinking? I think I knew I would have limited reading material and I would be forced to read this but I don't think I got past the introduction. In fact, the first four were what sustained me, along with Agatha Christie mysteries from the British Council library - before it closed and I was forced to read censored copies of the Economist or Good Housekeeping. I read very quickly (yesterday, for example, I read Jenny Siler's Flashback and Nick Hornsby's 31 Songs - neither of which are hard going but are about 300 pages). But I do re-read a lot of my books. With the benefit of hindsight, this would be my revised desert island reading list. I'm assuming the rule that Shakespeare and the Bible (or spiritual text of your choice is already there). I'm also assuming rescue at some stage; I can't imagine a life where there are no new writers or books to discover. Jane Austen, Persuasion Alexander McCall Smith, The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency Elizabeth David, An omlette and a glass of wine PG Wodehouse, all the jeeves and wooster series Dorothy L Sayers, The Nine Tailors John Buchan, The 39 Steps Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong Charles Dickens, Hard Times Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials I'm not saying these are my favourite books in the whole world, but they are books which I read for a sense of the familiar. Now, what strikes me about this list is how very English it all is, and a kind of golden age Englishness, even Mma Ramotswe, rooted as she is in Botswana is resonant of those women sleuths of the 30s. Which is just what I want to sustain me on a desert island. Or when I'm stuck at home ill.

The moral compass

We've been reading Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, for about a year. We read the first two books very quickly but blame harry potter for the delay in getting to the 3rd, the Amber Spyglass. It's a very satisfying read. I guess you would describe it as children's fantasy but it's much richer than the more usual good/bad, right/wrong that characterises much children's fiction in this genre. There are many layers of ambiguity, the "bad" characters have much about them that is attractive and the "good" characters make some bad choices. My daughter was born in Oxford so identifies strongly with Lyra, the lead female character. Lyra lies constantly but a strong theme in this last book is truth telling, nonetheless, I liked the chapter heading of tonight which is a quote from Blake "a truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent". We talked about malice and using "truth" as a weapon. I like also his description of the intense love between two male angels. This provoked a discussion on what love was and how angels and men could love. It was good to explore differnet ideas of love than the romantic ones we watch a lot on television. (See also the fabulous NZ writer, Elizabeth Knox, whose book the Vintner's Luck also describes the love between a man and a male angel). In an interview, Pullman describes the return of Balthamos, one of the angels, as like Robert Vaughan in the Magnificent Seven. I love that scene in the movie - in fact I love the whole movie. But the character my daughter loves most is Iorek Byrnison, the armoured bear. She told me when she feels lonely and afraid she imagines that Iorek is there to protect her.

Slacker

I hereby do solemnly swear to stop whining and get on with it. I'm back at work today. There's one more week of school holidays left but the children are with their father for the duration. Despite my moaning, we ended up having a good time. Friday we made furniture for the doll's house out of salt water dough. I'm not sure the finely crafted Edwardian house is quite the match for the funky bright painted sofas, television and beds the kids made but I think they look great. Saturday we drove down to the beach. We have a beach house which is a haven of peace and tranquility. I love to wake and hear the waves crashing on the rocks or the noisy kookaburras yakking in the early hours. Unfortunately, I reckon the divorce settlement is likely to see my share of it go but I'm philosophical about it - I've had some happy times there and the kids will probably always have it. I've also had the worst Christmas of my life there which precipitated my decision to separate so there's a lot to deal with in that house. I was doing a mental inventory of what things I might want to stake a claim on - most of the furniture is the sort of cast offs you want in a holiday house - but I definitely want the rug I bought and carried back from Kairouan in Tunisia. I was going to travel to Libya but you couldn't get a visa in the UK so instead I flew to Tunis and planned to cross from there. I waited 8 hours in Tunis airport for my girlfriend and her husband to collect me - they'd been stopped at the Libyan border. We drove to Kairouan - the 4th holiest city in Islam after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem- which is also reknowned for its rug making. I was determined to buy a rug and found this one in the bazaar. We went through the usual ritual of mint tea, pleasantries and gentle bargaining in fractured english and french before handing over my credit card for the purchase. We left carrying the rug. An hour later the man from the rug shop came running up behind us. "Madam, Madam - your credit card limit has been exceeded and we can not process the payment". I look embarassed and then he said "We'll process it again next month - just make sure you get the limit down by then". And he let me take the rug with me with no other collateral. So much for cheating the foreign traveller... It rained while we were at the beach but we're equipped with jigsaw puzzles and scrabble. It's a very old scrabble set bought for me by my then boyfriend when I was convalescing from some long forgotten illness. The box still has scribbled inside old scores of long scrabble tournaments between myself and E. I played scrabble in London last August with the lovely A and was horrified to find myself beaten for the first time in years by her. Of course, the fact that she has given up drinking and I had got through a bottle of wine might have had something to do with it. Just wait for the rematch now I'm practically teetotal. It's not that I'm competitive or anything. Yesterday was Australia Day which was ... nothing much. I can't get into this - Anzac Day seems a so much more potent national day. Still, it was an extra day off work which was good. We watched Freaky Friday on dvd which the kids liked a lot. They love Lindsay Lohan since the Parent Trap . Amidst all this PG viewing we also saw the dreadful Honey - please make it stop now - and Spy Kids 3d but in the case of the latter, since I have virtually no sight in my left eye, it was Spy Kids 2d in grey and white. I was disappointed since it had none of the verve and inventiveness of the first two. Still, it was worth it to see Ricardo Montalban and about 30 seconds of Antonio Banderas who I've loved since Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down. I also finished reading Anything She Can Do, I can Do Better by Rachael Oakes-Ashe which is about the myth of female competiveness. I liked her "skipping theory" about the girls swinging the rope for the girl skipping - they have to hope she trips up to get their chance in the spotlight. But a promising start was just lost for me in the cosmo-style anecdotes and gratingly, jaunty style. So now I'm halfway thorugh Henning Mankell's Firewall. It's my first taste of this gloomy Swedish policeman but I'm enjoying his struggles with his car breaking down, wondering if he'll ever find someone to have sex with again and his ill health as well as the mystery that is facing him.