I’m brimming with words, this morning, but I’m also inapanicbecauseshortoftime for the next fortnight or so. This, I find, makes it difficult to slow down enough to consider what I write; and frustrated because I need my ideas to appear fully formed and perfect because I haven’t got time to tinker, revamp, etc. Ah well, let’s just see how this goes.

‘The past’ because I’ve been thinking about the past in different kinds of ways, recently. I miss my study often, acutely. I miss the idea of my study, and I miss having a room of my own which I can arrange as I please, where I can keep and access my books, where I can pace the floor or listen to the radio without disturbing other people; and, probably most importantly, which has a door I can close on other people’s noise; I miss all a personal study stands for, and sometimes I miss living alone.

Then too, we’ve just booked a long weekend in Liverpool, and in March will be staying just around the corner from the flat I had in L8 for years, not far from Lark Lane. I feel oddly excited at seeing certain places again: Sefton Park, where I walked daily with my dog; the Inner Temple in L1, where I worked for a year. I’d like too, to visit the Everyman Theatre again, and if it’s still possible, the Bistro there, scene of many strange, funny, intellectual conversations, and the odd, awkward departmental gathering. I shall be sad to find the Cafe Berlin has disappeared – it’s where I and the best friend I shall ever have held our Last Liverpool Party, just before I moved north. I’m also looking forward to just walking along streets I know well. I’m worried though, that it’ll all be massively uninteresting for Himself, and worried also about meeting people I ought to contact while in the area, but actually don’t really want to, because I can’t bear the thought of lurching through conversations which have no heart. and I’m worried because I’ll have to leave my dog in kennels and she’s really too old for this.

I was up and out very early, today, taking Himself to the station to catch a train for Dundee, as he’s going to the funeral of a friend, this morning. The friend died last Tuesday. He had cancer. Although I didn’t know him very well, having met him only two or three times, I’ve been knocked off balance by his death. He was kind; and he somehow managed to make people feel important. We were ‘dancing partners’ at parties, and I shall – I do – miss him.

And more on the past, because I finished reading The Spaewife for the third time, on Friday, and I am grappling with Galt on history. Was he, I wonder, thinking about the way, when writing historical fiction (or theoretical history), certain events are fixed, and so events and states of affairs prior to these fixed points seem to be ordained? Is that where Providence comes in? I also found a review of The Spaewife by Scott, in which he refers to the difference between his historical fiction and that of others, which I think might prove useful although I need to read it again. I’m now reading The Omen. Short and compelling – and I need to finish it this morning.

Which thought brings me back to the present.

February

February already. I hope the rest of the  winter passes as quickly as January did as I’m very tired of the cold and the long dark nights. 

I’m having a day at home today. I did the same yesterday. One could quite justifiably regard it a postponed weekend, since last weekend was busy and Monday was frantic.  I lounged around all day yesterday, finishing a novel I’d been reading for several weeks: Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved; and picking up another I was part way through – A.N. Wilson, The Lampitt Papers, which I started so long ago that I can’t remember when that was, and which I plan to finish today.  I’ve been re-reading Galt’s The Spaewife for work, for the last couple of weeks. The book just gets richer and richer, which is both wonderful and alarming; the latter because I’d like to  be able to ‘get a line on it’ at some stage very soon, but it seems that, each time I pick it up, I notice something else worth mentioning about it, so instead of developing a line, I’m creating something resembling a stook of hay.

On Monday, I had my hair cut by someone new. It’s not a flattering cut as it’s both too short and rather severe, making me look like a bespectacled Joan of Arc. It was, I think, the only way the new girl could achieve what I’d asked for, namely the removal of as much evidence as possible of the previous hairdresser.   The previous hairdresser, who’d taken me over after the one I’d seen for some time left, and to whom I’d given two chances, had introduced into my hair what he referred to as ‘movement’.  This appeared to necessitate my vision being obscured by a thick shock of fringe  whenever I tilted my head forward (to read, to put the lead on the dog, to tie my shoelaces, to check toast under the grill), and the kind of layering I associate most closely with growing a style out.  I reached my wits’ end when putting together a flat pack set of shelves: hammering in tacks which vanish behind one’s fringe with every tap is so far from satisfactory that I’d phoned the salon to make an appointment before I’d completed constructing first shelf.  Since I am now a movement-free zone, I’ll probably be very pleased with the cut in about 6 weeks.  For now, I’m concentrating on the pleasure of being able to read without first needing to recreate the Forth Road Bridge in hairgrips; avoiding mirrors; and ignoring the temptation to wear a woolly hat 24/7.

I miss this

My hands in sunshine, mitten free.

I'm downsizing, but I have to keep my fountain pen

my fountain pen
It's written homework, university assignments, exam papers and a thesis; shopping lists, journals, stories and postcards; birthday cards and love letters; letters of sympathy; good news, bad news and reams of gossip;it's signed cheques and contracts and letters of resignation and - once - an autograph book.