lockdown – Julia's books

The end is nigh!

I was all set last week to post a couple of blogs, including a book review of Kiley Reid’s international bestseller Such A Fun Age, a super book which I devoured in a few days. There was no devouring of anything last week, however, as ‘life got in the way’ somewhat. I expect life will get a bit more ‘in the way’ in the coming weeks as Coronavirus restrictions begin to ease. It doesn’t look as if we’ll be packing for holidays any time soon but I can already feel a return to my pre-pandemic busy-ness.

Yesterday, the first anniversary of the start of lockdown in the UK, felt like a sombre and reflective moment for the whole country and there was much radio and television time devoted to thinking about what we have lost in these last twelve months. Interestingly, there was also a lot of space given to people talking about what we have gained – a new sense of perspective and appreciation of others, a re-calibration of wants and needs, a desire to live our lives in a different way. My daughter said at the dinner table the other day that she “misses” the lockdown from last spring, when, for her, the pressure of school was taken away, when we started doing more together as a family, and there was time to walk and appreciate nature more. Plus the weather was lovely, which helped! I know what she means. For me, the days have not been ‘lazy’ by any means, but I will miss all that white space in my diary.

I had my Covid vaccination last week, for which I feel enormous gratitude to scientific endeavour. The ease and smoothness of the process from booking to queuing, to the actual procedure was very humbling and the one bright spot in what has been an otherwise very bleak Covid picture in the UK. I was also deeply aware of my white, western privilege in getting the vaccination and only wish it was being rolled out in other parts of the world that need it just as much as we do. The vaccination left me feeling completely wiped out for a couple of days and my arm is still very sore but it was a small price to pay.

So, that’s my excuse for not posting for over a week. The good thing about being a blogger is that you don’t HAVE to do it (unless it’s also your main income source, of course). I don’t need another thing is my life that I HAVE to do frankly! But I do miss it when I don’t post. The last year has been patchy for me in terms of frequency of posting and I set out at the beginning of this year to be much more disciplined, particularly around my social media (which is a Disaster!), so I am disappointed to have let a week slip by.

*Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay*

I love writing, and I particularly love writing my book reviews; the very act of it, especially when I’m sharing my passion about something I’ve read, is a cathartic and joyful exercise and a little corner of creativity in the midst of life’s more prosaic activity.

So, hello again fellow bloggers and readers, I missed you last week! Let me ask, how do you keep up with the demands of regular blogging? Some of you write fantastically in-depth and thoroughly researched pieces and I am in awe!

September renewal

My daughters have gone back to school, my son will be back at university in a few days’ time and at last life is starting to resemble the one that was suspended so suddenly back in March. How long ago those ‘claps for the NHS’, traffic-free roads and once-a-week-only visits to the supermarket seem. Whilst we are still all somewhat restricted, life has become busy again, and the last few weeks, since we returned from our hastily-aborted trip to the Netherlands (due to the short notice imposition of quarantine rules for that country) have been, I would even go so far as to say, ‘hectic’! There have been all of the usual ‘back to school preparations’ – haircuts, uniform top-ups (including a whole new ‘capsule business-wear wardrobe’ for my new sixth-former!), stationery and book shopping. There has also been the sense of something ending; in many ways, despite the challenges, lockdown has been a precious time, for it is unlikely that we will ever have this much family time together ever again. My teenagers will increasingly separate from us in the years to come, as indeed they should.

I have written here before how one of the surprising aspects for me about lockdown, turned out to be how little I would able to use the time ‘productively’ (whatever that means). At the start, as I rubbed out more and more commitments from my usually busy diary, I thought, ‘great, now I’ll have lots of time to do loads of things’, thinking, of course, about that long overdue re-write of my book, getting some other writing projects off the ground, and, indeed, blogging regularly. Of course, very little of that managed to happen – how did I let all that time go to waste, I have asked myself many times. I didn’t of course – when it comes to judging myself I am chronically glass half-empty. Among my many achievements I built up my running distance to 10k, I maintained a steady supply of toilet rolls (without ANY stockpiling, I might add), I sold a load of now-unused toys on ebay, and, most importantly I kept my family on an even keel and healthy.

I did not do as much reading as I expected, especially in the latter months, but the most frustrating thing was being unable to do any writing. I felt bereft not only of time (I was literally never alone in the house, something I had previously taken for granted), but of access to the computer, of the quiet that I find I need and of the mental energy. Reflecting as I have been on these strange months ‘in limbo’ I realise now that I have been on ‘standby’, in ‘fight or flight’ mode, more focused on survival than I probably ever have been in my entire life. This is not an over-dramatisation – at one point, remember, it seemed the virus might kill hundreds of thousands of us, at random. Food supplies were unable to keep up with demand – some of us stockpiled through selfishness, most did so from fear, I suspect. Plus, none of us knew whether we’d still have our jobs, our lifestyles or be able to keep the roof over our heads at the end of it all, whenever that was likely to be. Is it really any wonder I was unable to be creative?

I was reassured last week, watching a live-streamed interview with Hilary Mantel and Angie Cruz ahead of the announcement of the Women’s Fiction Prize winner, when Hilary described reading as ‘a creative act’ for a writer. Indeed it is. I read much slower than I used to, because I read differently now. So perhaps I have not been as creatively unproductive these last few months as I thought. Perhaps it is all just waiting to burst through.

September is always an important month for me; that seems counter-intuitive given that, in nature, it is the time of things dying off and nights closing in, preparing for hibernation, the big sleep. For me, it feels like the opposite. It is when I feel most alive. Last year, that was derailed – it is very nearly one full year ago that my mother died – so this year I feel even more energised and determined to push through and express myself more fully than I have been able for some time.

So, here’s to September, to creative and spiritual recovery. Let’s hope we keep our health and our sanity if we find ourselves in a second spike, a resurgence, or whatever we want to call it. Please stay healthy all and I hope you too are in thriving mode again.

Feeling lucky to have such a wealth of great television

A the beginning of lockdown it seemed there was no end to challenges published on social media as most of us stared into an abyss of being confined in our homes for an indeterminate period. Whether it was fitness, craft, cooking, or reading, there was a challenge for everyone. For others, just staying alive and/or sane was enough of a challenge, and for many, of course, endless unfilled days were a luxury they could only dream of; health and care workers, key workers in supermarkets and delivery drivers all found their work was busier than ever. I got sucked in too, thinking that I was suddenly going to have lots of time on my hands to do all sorts of jobs I had not got around to doing for months, as well as reading more (SO much more!), being really creative, sorting out my garden, etc, etc. The reality was somewhat different. I, and many others, had not factored in the emotional toll of this period we called lockdown; it was not like a staycation AT ALL, it was really stressful! I was relatively lucky: some people were worried about dying and others were painfully lonely, some were locked up with abusive partners, others confined in an apartment with young, bored children who needed home-schooling. I only had a working from home husband and three teenagers to contend with. But still, I found it difficult to settle to very much at all.

I have posted on here before about how valuable I found the streaming of National Theatre Live performances, the Hay Festival channel, and the BBC Glastonbury channel was great (if anyone has ever wondered whether the TV license fee is worth it I hope their question has been answered well and truly in the affirmative these last few months). I have also been watching a lot more television than ever before and it has been such a treat. I finally watched the amazingly incredible His Dark Materials in full – Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua was simply the stand-out performance and she’s only 15! Season two is coming soon – the trailer alone is thrilling. I also enjoyed Normal People, the much-acclaimed adaptation of Sally Rooney’s much-acclaimed novel. I loved the book and was so excited to watch the television series. I thought it was very faithful to the book, and the acting performances (again from two very young actors) were outstanding, but it did not move me as much as the book. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or the book was just too good? I have also watched a couple of the new versions of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. They are brilliant! There are twelve to watch altogether and every one of them will be fantastic I am sure as the casting is extremely high calibre.

Despite all this ‘extra time on my hands’ there are a few things I still have not got around to that are on my must-watch list: Noughts and Crosses, the series based on the Malorie Blackman novels, and My Brilliant Friend, the Italian adaptation of the first novel in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series, which is now available on YouTube! I can’t wait to watch it, as it’s one of the best things I’ve read in the last few years. I also haven’t even started on the epic series The Luminaries yet, which has been screening on Sunday evenings on BBC1 for the last few weeks. It has finished now and its slot has been swiftly taken by A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth’s epic novel from 1993, and still one of my all-time favourite books. Since I read Gone Girl in January I’ve also been wanting to watch the film – that’s another one on the list.

So, lockdown has not been the reading/film-watching/sewing/baking/decorating/ exercising bonanza that I thought it would be. Maybe in six months I’ll be asking myself what on earth I did with all that ‘spare’ time. Maybe I’ll just say to myself that I kept my family safe and well, I helped some people, I walked a lot, I kept my head together (ish) and I did enough.

NAMASTE

om-1281790_1920 — (Image by Benjamin Balazs on Pixabay)

What are your reflections on your life in lockdown?

Hello again!

It’s been a while since my last post. I’m normally pretty organised when it comes to planning my blog posts, and fairly diligent about posting regularly. School holidays and busy work periods can make things tricky but generally I’m a committed and regular blogger. I imagined that during this period of global lockdown due to Covid-19, I would have much more time to post regularly. That did not quite happen, of course, what with having the whole family at home all the time, and doing much more cooking and cleaning than I do normally (‘help’ sometimes creates more work!). I was getting on okay though, appreciating the facts of our situation: we were all together, we were well, our income was fairly secure, we had a roof over our heads, those basics were in place and so all was good.

After Easter, though, I noticed a real dip in my mood. I cannot really explain it because nothing specific happened. A few things upset or angered me – the ever-increasing death tolls on the nightly news, the increasingly grave news about the economy, the anxiety about how countries with weaker health systems than ours would cope (some of them rather better than the UK it turns out), events I had booked for the coming months were gradually cancelled. I also find myself getting irrationally cross about people who seemed to believe that the measures designed to protect us all didn’t actually apply to them. But, those things didn’t seem to explain the more general malaise I found myself experiencing. I struggled for motivation. Even with at least a million things I could have been doing I felt at a loose end. And when I heard the stories on the television of people who had lost loved ones to the virus, I found the complicated grief I felt about my mother’s death last Autumn, resurfaced in ways I had not expected. Some days I felt relief that she wasn’t here to experience or be worried about getting the disease (she would certainly have died had she got it as she was very unwell), but at the same time I felt, selfishly, like screaming, hey what about the rest of us who lost people recently, NOT due to Covid-19. It was all very complicated.

I even found it difficult to read. I wasn’t able to focus. I bought Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light at the start of the lockdown, thinking that long weeks of no socialising would give me plenty of opportunity to work my way through the hefty tome. Alas not. I have not even picked it up yet.

Thankfully, I can feel my mojo starting to return this last week or so, just as suddenly and as inexplicably as it went away. To what do I credit this change of mood? The following:

Marian Keyes – Grown Ups to be precise. It was my book club’s choice the last time we met in person and although it was probably not a book I would have picked up it was the most perfect tonic, especially as I listened to it on audio, with Marian’s wonderful narration.

Vincent Van Gogh – many years ago my husband bought me a 1000 piece Photomosaic jigsaw puzzle of a Van Gogh self-portrait. If you’ve never seen these, they are very clever, the larger image is made up of hundreds of tiny little photos, fiendishly difficult, but completely addictive. I had never done that jigsaw, but seemed to decide that ‘now’ was the time. Many dinners were burned or delayed as I found it difficult to drag myself away from it. We had to eat round it as it sat at the end of the dining table, a fortnight-long work in progress. There was one near-disaster when the cat, in a last desperate attempt to get my attention to feed him, leapt up on the dining table and almost sent several hundred carefully colour-organised pieces crashing to the ground. Lucky for him, only a few pieces fell and Ziggy the cat lives to fight another day!

VVG

Withdrawal from social media – I’m not a big social media user, but I dabble.I found I really couldn’t take much Facebook though and Twitter was a total no-go – way too much anger and too many chronically-opinionated people.
And finally, free arts online – more than anything I am missing the arts (hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious). The audience with Hilary Mantel I had booked for April was cancelled, as was West Side Story at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, the Hay Festival, the Thom Yorke gig in Manchester next month as well as various performances my kids were involved with and a couple of work trips to London with exhibitions to be taken in. Thank goodness for the National Theatre’s weekly NT Live recordings, the virtual tours of museums around the world, and Radiohead classic concerts on YouTube.

It hasn’t been all play, of course, I only dabbled with all of the above. I got a bit sick of hearing lifestyle-y type people saying how bored they were and were looking for things to do. I have felt busier than ever, my work has been emotionally quite demanding, and it’s never good hearing from over-achievers in those circumstances.

So, like most people, I am muddling along, looking forward to some normal things and trying to make the best of the situation. And hopefully getting back to an even keel on the blogging front.

I hope you are all doing okay.

The art of re-reading – “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf

I’m not a big re-reader; I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of books that I still desire to read so the thought of going back to something I’ve already ticked off the list can feel like a waste of time! I still haven’t quite accepted that I probably don’t have enough years left in my life to get through all the books I will want to read (perhaps not even the books in my TBR pile!). The joy of reading, though, is not about who can read the most, who has the most impressive library or can quote most extensively from their bookish knowledge. It is about the individual and the solitary pleasure of getting lost in a story. And you can do that in the same book many times over, if it’s good enough and if you love it enough. Re-reading gives a pleasure all of its own.

To The Lighthouse img I had that very experience recently with my book club when we decided to read To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Some of us had read it before (though years earlier) others had not read it at all. But even those of us who had read it before could not remember very much about it! I read it when I was studying for my English degree 30 years ago; I would probably have got through most of Virginia Woolf’s books in a very short space of time, because that was what my degree entailed – reading lots and lots of books very quickly! I always remembered that To The Lighthouse was my favourite, but I could not honestly have told you what happens in it, except that the journey to the eponymous lighthouse was about something desired more than something fulfilled.

Coming to it again, therefore, was a perfect pleasure and I am so glad we chose it. I read it of course, through totally different eyes. I was in my early twenties when I read it first and now I am…somewhat older! I am a mother of three children and so I saw aspects of the novel that I simply could not have understood fully before. By happy coincidence, the current lockdown gave me the opportunity to read it in three long sittings, which this book definitely deserves. I became totally absorbed in the life of the Ramsay household, the inner world of the characters thrown uneasily together in the Skye summer house and the quest for something unattainable.

The other difference was that when I read it all those years ago, I was the student and the reading would have been for a different purpose – to write an essay, spot the references or the autobiographical aspects. This time I read it just for itself.

Re-reading is definitely something I would like to do more of. One of the opportunities this period of lockdown offers is a suspension of all normal routines, time proceeds differently and I feel less boxed-in to my usual routines. I feel we have stepped off the treadmill. We will be desperate to get back on it soon enough, no doubt, especially as the economy teeters, but until then my next re-read is going to be Ulysses. I first read it on a lazy week’s holiday in Spain about twenty years ago (pre-children!) – I think it deserves my time again now!

Are you a re-reader or do you tend mainly to read new titles, like me?

My lockdown plans

read-3644847_1920 — **Lockdown means more reading time!** (Image by FotoReith from Pixabay)

What strange times we live in! When I last posted, about two weeks ago, life was going on as normal, I’d just returned from a short trip to France and I was making plans for the coming weeks, including booking train tickets for work trips to London. Sure, there was talk of the Coronavirus in China, a few cases in Italy, but it didn’t seem like it was going to affect me, it was happening somewhere else. How long ago that now seems!

I didn’t post last week mainly because I was in shock. My elder daughter was due to be taking her GCSEs this summer, indeed, I was also going to invigilate at a local school. When the announcement came that exams had been cancelled, I think it hit me then how serious this was going to be. Suddenly, I feared for elderly relatives and neighbours and spent the week calling them, offering (please!) to help. I was comforting my daughter who seemed to be going through all the stages of a bereavement and, having worked so hard for the last two years, suddenly had no clue what she was meant to be doing with her life now. Plus, I could hardly tear myself away from the rolling news and the numbers dying in Spain and Italy increasing by the hundreds. We had to make rapid plans to get my son home from university (I’d only been to see him the weekend before!) and he was finding his local shops were empty by the time he got there – dinner for him one night was a pack of hot cross buns! I found it difficult to focus on anything.

This week is different – the high anxiety of last week has been replaced by a strange calm. We are all now under one roof, school, activities, hobbies, gym, everything now, has been cancelled, even the occasional Flat White at my coffee shop of choice. Unlike some, I’m not too worried about how I’ll cope with the ‘isolation’ – on the contrary, as an introvert who spends most of her days alone, it may be challenging for me to have everyone else around all the time! I think I will actually enjoy the opportunity to take a guilt-free foot off the gas. I will be giving help and support where I can in my community, but I will also be observing closely the need to keep others outside my household at (double) arms-length.

Whilst I don’t want to start creating lists of jobs for myself, I am better when I’ve got some goals, so here’s what I plan to do with all the found time:

Top of the list is reading, of course. I have been wondering how I was ever going to get to The Mirror and the Light, the third and final part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy….!
Re-read Ulysses – I am not a big re-reader, but I read this when I was much younger so I want to read it again through more mature eyes. This was one of my aims for 2020.
Appreciate my garden, especially if this wonderful spring weather continues.
Breathe – I’ll miss my yoga classes most of all but can practise at home.
Take a virtual museum tour – perhaps the Guggenheim in Bilbao, somewhere I’ve long wanted to visit.
Write – I have been finding it very difficult to get back into the re-writing stage of my book since my mother died, but perhaps this is the impetus I need.
Keep in touch with my relatives.
Make some photobooks – we don’t really print photos any more do we? I’ve made a few family photobooks over the years, but there are a few years missing.
Clear out our files – paperwork, paperwork! My husband and I are terrible hoarders and keep everything, but do we really still need all those invoices from 10+ years ago?!
Pay attention – we can still go out, once a day, for the moment at least, so whilst we still can I will enjoy my neighbourhood, with all its wonderful trees, and enjoy the lack of vehicle and aircraft noise!

I would love to hear what your plans are for ‘lockdown’ – above all, follow all the advice and stay well and safe.

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