Against Her Better Judgment

Things I learnt about giving birth

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sat, 02 Sep 2017 08:07:00 +0000

Fate has a dark sense of humour, and she is not to be tempted. Put a haircut and afternoon tea at Claridge's in the diary, and Fate'll guarantee your little darling arrives a week early (what's that about first ones always being late?). The night before you go into labour, watch Lyanna Stark haemorrhage and die after childbirth before turning to your husband, telling him not to let that happen to you and, well... she'll do her best.

The whole thing is a surreally out of body experience. I can recommend having a few contractions in the confectionary aisle of your local supermarket to really liven up a Monday morning. Side note: if you can't stomach actual food while you're vomiting your way through labour at home, a few periodic handfuls of Haribo work a treat.

Until it's very much an in-body experience. And then it hurts. Dur. And not just in the ways you're fearfully expecting. There's the inability to lay on your back for overwhelming, daggers-like agony. The cracking sensations through the hips as your pelvis comes apart. The weirdly inappropriate leg cramp. The resulting carpal tunnel in the wrists. And that's on top of you know, pushing a human out of your bits. Oh, your poor bits.

There's such a thing as too much information. Knowing just how the nice consultant performed your emergency procedure will leave you feeling like nothing so much as a veterinary patient, rather than a (supremely battered and bruised) human one. And definitely don't make manic, panicked pre-anaesthetic small talk about the drinking habits of university medics.

Creativity is key. You've not known relief until you've come face to face with a nurse brandishing a surgical glove filled to the fingertips with ice chips and wrapped in a pillowcase - iterations of which you spend the next week, er, sitting on.

Give in to your vanity. End up enjoying the hospitality of the NHS for a prolonged period post birth and you'll be unreasonably glad of pedicured toes when you spend hours staring at them out of sexy compression socks, and you'll thank the Instagods you had the foresight to have your eyelashes tinted when the visiting family and friends point cameras as your anaemically wan face.

But say goodbye to your dignity. At this point, I've lost track of the number of people who've peered at my stitched-up bits, held conversations about medical treatment whilst I've been hooked up to the human equivalent of a milking machine, and the less said about water births, the better.

There's bugger all point in planning. You can do everything in your power to make sure your new sprog won't suffer side effects of hospital grade pain relief and choose not to do anything that might hinder early breastfeeding efforts... See 1.

Sit gently, even on the softest of furnishings. Be kind to yourself.

Whatever you do, don't get too close to the business end and its stitches for some time to come. Trust me on this.

Things I didn't know about being pregnant before I got pregnant

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 11:20:00 +0000

With pregnancy comes a weirdly enhanced sense of smell: part pregnant, part bloodhound.

They date your pregnancy from the date of your last period. More informed people might know this already. I had no idea. Weird? Yes. Any point in arguing that it's mathematically pointless to do so because your husband was on a work trip and you have a much better sense of actual dates? Not on your nelly.

Pregnancy hair is a glorious thing. If you've been in search of thickness and volume your entire life, the second trimester is going to knock your socks off. (I'm in denial about it all falling out afterwards. Don't talk to me about that.)

You're not meant to sleep on your back, because the weight of the baby can press on the vena cava and cut the blood supply to both of you. Joys. Good luck getting any sleep at all, and enjoying the huge sense of guilt that washes over you when you do wake up on your back.

Feeling the baby move, particularly early on, is downright weird. It's like being tickled on the soles of your feet, just on the inside of your belly. Pro-tip for dads: don't ask, the first time the mother of your child tells you she's felt the baby move, whether she doesn't just have indigestion.

'Baby brain' isn't a faintly sexist thing people say about pregnant women. Or rather, it isn't just a faintly sexist thing people say about pregnant women – it's an honest to god phenomenon. Confused, forgetful, unable to conjure words let alone sentences while you're on the phone to prominent journalists explaining a tricky issue? All symptoms eliciting different levels of frustration, annoyance and panic – as well as peculiar objects turning up in the fridge.

It's not just booze, good cheese and riding that come off the agenda. Caffeine in any decent quantity and ibuprofen are also verboten. Ideal when you're not sleeping and have every ache and pain under the sun.

Babies in the womb get hiccups. Who knew? Mostly cute, if a little like you're incubating a metronome. Or, y'know, a bomb.

Your feet swell beyond all human proportion. They can expand up to a size. And here's the kicker (excuse the pun): sometimes they don't go back. Stuff nightmares are made of.

Everyone has an opinion on your body and your plans. And they're not afraid to share them. Telling them their opinions aren't wanted is apparently not the done thing. Who knew?

I'm pregnant, not ill

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Wed, 31 May 2017 07:00:00 +0000

From the sofa on Sunday evening, back screaming from neck to coccyx, arms leaden, belly taught and heavy, and feet and ankles approaching the size of fully inflated pufferfish, I conceded to The Writer that I might, at seven and a half months pregnant, be coming to a point where I may need to start slowing down.

I’m not good at sitting back, not being involved, letting other people shoulder a burden while I don’t pull my (ever-increasing) weight and since the autumn, my mantra whenever someone has suggested I don’t do something for whatever reason has been, “I’m pregnant, not ill,” (barring the unfortunate incident with the broken rib, when I had to concede that maybe I was, for a while, both. That's still mending, by the way. Don’t break ribs, kids. Interferes with schedules something rotten).

So up until this point, I haven’t really let being pregnant factor into the doing-things equation. I continued to ride until I didn't want to push Fate any further; I've built a metric fuckton of furniture since moving back to the Home County; I remain on work's overnight on-call rota, and much to the face-pulling of my midwife, plan to work until I'm two weeks from my due date. I've made progress on the garden; I continue to practice yoga (if more sporadically than I'd like); and I'm quite capable of continuing general life admin, be that cooking, walking up escalators or nailing a picture hook into a wall. I'm pregnant, not ill.

But I'm slowly coming to accept that, even though I might not be much different in my outlook, habits or ambition, my body is different in its capabilities. It's got other stuff on the go and apparently doesn't have the patience for my crack-on-regardless attitude. These days, I overheat easily. Putting on trousers is an act that leaves me out of breath with embarrassing regularity. And turning over in bed now requires the meticulous planning and heavy engineering kit you'd find in a Crossrail tunnel.

And so my body needs me in bed early, in order to get any sleep as I vacillate between chronic hip pain, internal wiggling and an incessant need to pee. It needs me to realise that I can't make it from the office to the station in record time any more and should leave earlier because I simply can't force myself to move that fast what with carrying several pounds of small person and 50% more blood. And it needs me not to spend Sundays alternating between wrapping my bump around a u-bend before hauling myself up onto a chair so I can paint the entirety of a downstairs loo (both coats, in Pumpkin Pie) while TW is at a conference on longform journalism if I don't want to be physically punished for doing so.

And so I'm finally accepting that what my body says goes. A little more sitting. A little less commuting. A little more sleep (I can but dream) and a little less doing. Pregnant, not ill - but very pregnant, and finally willing to accept it's not just a state of mind.

Horses for courses - and the future

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 16:52:00 +0000

I've not sat on a horse in three months, and I'm not sure I've ever missed anything more (at least not since I lived in Tanzania on my gap year, and spent nine long months dreaming solidly of cheese).

Comparatively, it seems such a short time and yet my legs and bum and nose and brain and heart are crying out for it. But when you're six and a half months pregnant, much like unpasteurised cheese and a good, strong gin and tonic, riding is one of life's forbidden fruits.

Admittedly, I didn't give up as soon as I found out I was pregnant. But having checked with the GP whose advice was that “until there's a bump, you're probably fine,” I carried on with hacking and lessons, and a couple of days' hunting this side of Christmas. I found enormous solace in the online fora of Horse and Hound where answers to the question “did you continue riding while you were pregnant?” included numerous laissez-faire references to Zara Phillips (who rode until she was four months pregnant) and Mary King (winning European eventing gold at five and half), and one hardcore to the point of serious hero-worship, “yes, but only until the contractions got too distracting in the saddle.”

But, as keen as I was to keep going, there were a few moments including one very fast canter down a hill directly on the heels of the Master as one of a field of five in the twilight of a cold January Saturday, when I wondered whether I might not be tempting Fate just slightly. Back in a sprawling farmhouse kitchen once dark had settled, over an improperly delicious round of egg sandwiches and steaming hot mugs of strong tea, I got talking to the exceedingly no-nonsense Hunt Secretary who said that she'd stepped out of the saddle as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Suddenly I wondered whether I'd perhaps been very lucky up until that point and that it might be time to hang up the hat for a while.

Which wasn't too tricky when we were living in London, and the January rain was beating down on the windows. But now we're in the Home County, where the yard is five minutes' drive, the fields are green and lush, and the high summer promise of stubble fields is tantalising. I can practically smell the crushed grass and feel the launch into gallop as I stare doe-eyed out of the train window every morning. It's got to the point where the ache is almost physical, and I'm tempted to head to the yard – to bury my face in a warm, horsey neck; to stand next to Delilah in her stable, and breathe in leather and sweat.

I can't. I mean, I could, but once I was standing in front of a horse, I'm not sure I would have the willpower not to haul myself and Small up into the saddle and disappear into the springtime.

So I've made a pact with myself. There'll be no riding now, nor for the next couple of months. But, body and mind allowing, I'll let myself back on a horse at the end of the year while I'm on maternity leave for some gentle pootling around, working up to being a semi-competent rider again with a view to being back on the hunting field in the New Year.

Knowing that I've got something like that in the back of my mind, something just for myself, while selfish, reminds me that I'm not just pregnant: I'm still the person I was – and she's someone I want to keep hold of as much as I can, not someone who's been lost because she's taken on motherhood too. And by reminding myself I'm still that person, I'll be a happier, healthier parent. If that comes with being a horsier parent, so be it.

Cough, splutter, break

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 19:48:00 +0000

“And what about if I press here?”

“Yes, that hurts.”

“Here?”

“Yup.”

“And here?”

My eyes welled up as I gripped the sides of the bed. “Yes, that's really quite painful.”

“Mmm. I'm sorry to say you've broken a rib.”

Recumbent in a GP's examination room was not how I'd intended to spend a Monday morning some five days before we moved from our London flat to the Home County. There was all sorts to be done at work as I took over a new team, let alone the boxes at home which rudely and resolutely refused to pack themselves.

I'd been suffering from a cough since the beginning of the year, which had got worse during a work trip to the Middle East; better on holiday under two weeks of balmy South Asian sun; and then evolved into a full blown chest infection upon landing at Heathrow several weeks prior. The prescribed antibiotics had done their thing, but the cough still lingered. And then, the previous evening while washing up after supper, a coughing fit got the better of me.

“Are you ok? That doesn't sound good. I think you need to go back to the doctor,” The Writer said as, tea towel in hand, I doubled over, hacking.

Which was when something snapped.

“Ow,” I said, gasping for breath. “That hurts. Oh god. That actually really hurts. I think I've pulled a muscle.”

TW gave me his best Hard Stare. “Back to the doctor tomorrow. I'll make you a hot water bottle.”

The pain overnight and agony the following morning persuaded me that he was probably right and down I hobbled to the surgery, wincing with every step, unsure as to how a pulled muscle could be quite so debilitating, and hoping the doctor would give me something more for the cough. Instead, I got a wholly unexpected diagnosis of my first ever broken bone.

“It's not unheard of if you have very strong core and intercostal muscles,” she said, helping me gently off the bed. “But the good news is that they'll hold everything in place while the break heals. The infection has cleared up, but I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for the cough to disappear. And your rib will take a good while to get better.”

Joys.

“Obviously you're limited in terms of what painkillers you can take while you're pregnant.”

Joys abound.

“It'll probably take between six and ten weeks to fully recover, but the first two will be agony, so I'm going to sign you off work.”

Now it was my turn to deploy the Hard Stare. “I don't think that's practical. Could you just suggest I work from home?”

And then hers. “No. There's a reason I'm writing this note. I suggest you don't do anything at all. I'll prescribe a week's codeine for the pain, but stick to paracetemol and rest if you can. It really will be very painful for a while.”

And thus she packed me on my not-so-merry way. It's still not healed, and I'm still grumpy about it - and the fact that my unblemished unbroken record has been shattered in such a pathetic way. *Cough*

Yes please, I would like a seat

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 13:14:00 +0000

My pregnancy didn't become externally apparent until quite far along, but the “Baby on board!” badge was obviously quite clear as I stood on the tube going home late after work one night.

I know that because the man sitting in the clearly-labelled “priority” for preggers and otherwise hard of movement seat tugged at the elbow of my jacket as I held the handrail, willing him telepathically to GTFO.

“Where's your baby?” he said, nodding his head towards me. It took me a moment both to work through what he was asking, and also that a total stranger had so brazenly touched me.

“What?”

“Where's your baby? Your badge. It says you have a baby.” My thoughts at this point included: is this guy completely stupid? and if you're going to be enough of a dickwad not to offer the seat, at least pretend not to have clocked the pregnant woman, surely?

“It means I'm pregnant.”

“Oh. Good joke!”

A moment of stunned silence and narrowed eyes. “No, it's not a joke. It's so people like you who are sitting in the priority seats have the opportunity to offer them to people who need them more. Like pregnant women.”

“Oh. Ok,” he said, continuing to sit exactly where he was – just like everyone else in earshot, most of whom were staring at their shoes and pretending not to have heard the exchange.

It was one of the slightly more memorable preggo-related encounters I've had on the tube, but not one of the atypical. There was one woman who physically pushed me out of her way so she could run to a vacant seat; another guy who saw my badge, and then looked pointedly at my belly before deciding I was clearly just making it up and staying where he was.

And while I'm aware, as The Writer loves to say, that the plural of anecdote isn't data, I've been scratching down a quick tally of my experiences – and seeing the numbers in black and white has been deeply disappointing, to quite a surprising degree.

Taking into account all the tube journeys I've made since being pregnant (around six months), during which I've been wearing a “Baby on board” badge, and have been standing up because there are no seats available (and I've also not felt so desperate that I've flat-out asked someone to move, which I quite merrily do), I reckon I'm offered any seat (not just the priority ones) some 18% of the time, with two thirds of those offers being made by women, and usually younger women. Where the offer's been made by man, I don't think it's ever been made by a man over 40.

Yup. That's fewer than one in five journeys. Which, when you consider how many people there are in a tube carriage at any one time, is probably one in 30 or 40 people.

Early on, with a flat belly but an inclination to sleep against anything you're not about to be sick on; or a little later, when your stomach muscles have come apart leaving you with little core strength, no balance and a constant fear of falling over on a jerky tube; or when your unborn darling is kicking, not gently and endearingly, but thumpingly and painfully in the cervix, you don't want to have to ask people to move. You don't want to have the awkward conversation as they look at you with a high level of scepticism. And you certainly don't want to be forced into shaming someone as an unthinking arse in front of their fellow commuters.

For a few moments, you just want to sit down, to be able not to think about how shocking you feel, and ideally next to a door so you don't have to make a Sherpa-like climb through a horde to get away again.

So next time you happen to be in a priority seat on the tube, don't stick your headphones in your eyes and your nose in the Metro, conveniently unaware of the humans around you who will appreciate a small act of kindness more than you could realise. Just don't be a dick.

It's not home any more

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 09:10:00 +0000

It's an oddly emotional experience, saying goodbye to a flat you've lived in for five years – and one that's seen your life change in momentous ways.

From relatively early on, it was in the abstract future plan for The Writer and I to leave London at some point in our lives. But with the impending arrival of a miniature, somewhere around Christmas the abstract crystallised, and by March the flat was covered in boxes.

And even though I'd always known that we were going to outgrow a first-floor, one-bedroom flat in central Brixton, the reality of leaving brought just how much that little home meant.

We signed the lease on a cold January night five years ago in something of a flurry. It was more than we wanted to pay, but the Victorian ceilings meant that TW would never feel claustrophobic; the shelves in the alcoves by the chimney breast could be home to hundreds of mutually acquired books; and the kitchen screamed 'parties'. We outstayed the other couples looking round on the same evening, and took it then and there.

One spring evening two years later, back from an anniversary dinner at Polpetto, TW got down on one knee while my back was turned, leaving me to come face to face with an enormous surprise and even bigger sapphire. The following winter, tanned and newly married, he carried me over the threshold as we returned from our honeymoon.

It saw friends turn up late at night after break ups and panic attacks to stay on the sofa for a week. It saw new, better jobs that have taken us both to interesting places with even more interesting (in all senses) people. It saw annual Christmas parties that became the highlight of our advent seasons – both with and without coke all over the bathroom, and guests setting fire to their hair.

There were dinners and celebrations featuring round after round of birthday guest-themed Just A Minute; post-hen party celebrations of Taylor Swift and Bollinger; squabbles and debates; the discovery first of moths and later of mice – one dispatched cleanly with a single thwack of a chopping board, the other hopefully left behind, sated by cashmere of fond memory.

But change blows through like a fierce January wind, and all of a sudden we were faced not with a cosy home full of tchotchkes, but an echoey and empty house that was left with little but the imprints of memories and fun.

I'll always have extreme fondness for our first home together, and in 20 years when we're walking down the road which will have changed beyond all measure, the purview only of the very rich, we'll remember where we started, and be grateful for our time there.

Knock knock knocked up

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 07:46:00 +0000

Nothing prepares you for seeing that the peed-on stick perched on the edge of the bath says, quite clearly, “PREGNANT”.

Not the fact that you've been discussing a family, in the abstract sense, since well before you got married.

Not that, (smugly) happily married, with two good jobs and decent incomes, and support networks of family and friends that you thank your lucky stars for nearly every day of the week and, just outside of the city a home that you own, you have all the structures in place that you could possibly ever ask for to have children, bar only a good natured if mischievous Shetland pony.

Not that, on Boxing Day with the Home County wind whistling over your new fur-bobbled hat, you spend an hours-long walk debating the pros and cons of starting a family in a less abstract sense. This year? If not now, when? If not now, why? Will delaying make a marked difference to your career? Is it worth sticking it out for another promotion? Are you happy to give up a portion of time in your current role, given that you love your job so much? If you don't start now, but find whenever you do that it takes some time to happen, will you regret not having started sooner? Are you actually ready? And if you're not, will you ever be...?

Not that later in the year you take the fairly mighty psychological plunge of not renewing the prescription for your contraception – a feeling utterly alien given how much of your late teens and twenties you and your girlfriends spent utterly terrified of the prospect of pregnancy.

Not that, based on a collection of symptoms rather than any sort of intuition, you momentarily wonder whether something had maybe done its biological thing, and instead putting it down to spending a week in a freezing portacabin in the woods, hungry, stressed and sleep-deprived as you learn to metaphorically pick up the pieces of a massive catastrophe as part of a training course for work.

Not that after your period, usually clockwork in its arrival, is late to show.

Not after discussing it with The Writer, who isn't convinced this can be it so soon but nonetheless accompanies you to Boots on the way to work to pick up a bit of plastic to pee on, raising his eyebrows in that way he has of “the science is all the same, but whatever you want to do” when you dismiss an own-brand product in favour of a far pricier one that you won't have to decode but that will tell you as soon as you look at it what the deal is.

Not that you spend the day at work paranoid that your bag will somehow launch off your desk, scattering its contents and your thoughts to the entire office.

Not that the wait for TW to get home that evening is agonising, a small box containing two plastic sticks burning its way through the bathroom sink.

Not that as soon as he's home, you run to the loo, wondering as you wash your hands afterwards how three minutes can possibly feel like three years.

Not seeing the word, unmistakeable in its digital display, and running out of the bathroom waving a bit of plastic in the air, a faltered “Um, you need to come and see this...” falling off your tongue as you pass the proof to your husband.

Not as you stare down at your hands and then at each other.

“Fuck,” you both say. “We're going to have a baby.”

Recent reading

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 14:16:00 +0000

With all my books packed snugly into boxes and a ban on bringing anything into the flat that'll need putting in a box, I'm currently on a reading hiatus. But the beginning of the year saw a pretty good run...

Title: Mount!
Author: Jilly Cooper
Read: 24 December – 27 January (yes it took ages, but I was only reading it in bed as Best Mate had gone to the trouble of getting my birthday present copy signed by the goddess herself and I wasn't going to have it dogeared by dragging it around the Victoria line.)

If you're a Jilly aficionado, you'll enjoy this. It's no Polo, but let's face it, what is? If you've read her other stuff, you know the basic story, so crack on and enjoy its joyful Jillyness. If you've not, do yourself a favour and start with Riders. You can thank me later. If you don't like Jilly... well, we'll never be friends.

Title: The Underground Railroad
Author: Colson Whitehead
Read: 18 – 24 January

This reimagining of the 19th century slave escape network as an actual subway has had so much press and so many reviews from people more qualified do so than me that I'm not sure what I have to add. It's one of those novels that makes you want to go away and read about the history and real stories of the period, which says everything about its utterly enveloping, horrifying nature as can be said, I think.

Title: The Vegetarian
Author: Han Kang
Read: 29 January

I've not read anything quite like this slim little book. It opens with an apparently very ordinary man and his ordinary wife, who one day decides to become a vegetarian. From the day she throws all the meat out of the house, the story becomes something else – a much darker tale of desire both fulfilled and unfulfilled; violence; and shame. If you're after something different from anything you've read in a while, this is the disturbing one to tick that box.

Title: Rich and Pretty
Author: Rumaan Alam
Read: 30 – 31 January

One of the things that a course at the Faber Academy taught me was what the books I really love all have in common. They're all biographical novels, looking at themes of family and friendship, which is what this has in spades. It follows two women – one rich, and, you guessed it, one pretty, and their friendship over decades as they grow up together in New York. It's thin on plot, but the prose is lovely, and if you're able to read this on a lounger in the Sri Lankan sunshine, then I can recommend that all the better.

Title: Plot Against America
Author: Phillip Roth
Read: 1 – 3 February

The New Yorker recently ran an email from Roth to one of its writers about the new President of the United States. In it, this book was referred to so I picked it up out of curiosity. It's about a celebrity is elected President, in thrall to a hostile foreign regime, whose racist policies lead to huge upheaval for American society. Word to the wise: if you borrow a copy from your local library, as I did, check the cover design closely before you check it out. Being given a large dollop of side-eye from your fellow guests around the pool for reading a book covered in swastikas will really distract you from your tanning.

Title: Lincoln in the Bardo
Author: George Saunders
Read: 4 February

I don't often read a book in a single day. This isn't an ordinary book. It's the story of the dead son of Abraham Lincoln, and the grief of his father, blending the worlds of life and death as well as the lines of fact and fiction. Nothing I can say will sell this incredible book with justice. Do yourself a favour and get a copy.

Title: Fates and Furies
Author: Lauren Groff
Read: 5 – 6 February

This is another of those modern literary novels taking a sideways biographical look at a couple and their friends and relationship to each other – with an added helping of classical references. I adored this book, and particularly the latter half, which shows us that every story has another perspective. One I'll keep and read over and over again.

Title: Fear of Flying
Author: Erica Jong
Read: 6 – 7 February

Billed as a seminal work of feminist fiction, this is one of those books I felt I should read at some point. I'm not sure if I'm a horrible feminist for saying this (probably), but it just didn't gel with me. I can appreciate that its frank exploration of sexuality and female desire was a huge deal in the 70s, but (thankfully) we've come a long way since then (although not far enough) and I think there's more challenging contemporary feminist literature out there.

Title: The Line of Beauty
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Read: 7 – 10 February

This is one of my all-time favourite books, re-read because I stupidly only took six books on a fortnight's holiday, and The Writer had finished reading this by the end of our stay. Again, it falls into that modern literature camp of a story about relationships and friendships and belonging, at the same time as painting one of the most sharp portraits of Thatcher's Britain in the 80s. The upper middle class, the lower middle class, the gay scene, politics, mental health, love and art are all beautifully painted, and I'd urge to read – or re-read – this. You'll find something else to love every time.

Title: The Wild Other
Author: Clover Stroud
Read: 19 – 28 February

I won't be letting TW, who frets every time I get on a horse, read this. Clover's memoir about growing up in the shadow of her mother's catastrophic and life-altering riding accident is almost enough to put a gal off her ponies. It's written with huge passion and love, and explores the itch in life that can only be scratched by rubbing up against danger – whether it wears a bridle or not. One to weep your way through (before wiping the tears, and getting back into the saddle).

On belonging

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 11:44:00 +0000

It's something special, an unequivocal sense of belonging. A feeling that you are where you should be, or that you know where you come from.

Years ago, a friend whose parents moved to the UK from Italy said to me that she never really felt like she belonged anywhere. Both countries were home, but neither was. When she was in one place, she felt her identity more deeply bound with the other.

I've always felt deeply that the country is where I belong. I'm rarely happier than in a pair of muddy boots in the middle of a field, and if I happen to be on top of a horse at the same time, so much the better.

But as our move out of the city gets perilously close given the number of boxes that remain flat and the volume of stuff that remains outwith them, I've started to think that maybe the 6 years I've spent living and 9 working in London have left a bigger imprint on me than I'd realised.

Whenever I'm in the city, I curse the number of people, wishing fervently for deserted heathland. I hate the chaos that smacks the eyes and ears and nose on coming up from the tube at Brixton. And don't get me started on the people who pull on a welly at the first sign of drizzle.

But when I'm standing, covered in post-hunt mud and sweat in a farmhouse kitchen halfway up the country, an egg sandwich in one hand and a mug of strong, steaming tea in the other, surrounded by people who spend their working and social lives in total rurality, I realise that I don't hate all aspects of the city.

I don't hate its variety, and the plethora of entertainments on offer, the ease I'm offered of everything close and easy to get to. I don't hate being in the middle of where things are happening, where the decisions are taken whose ripples are felt far beyond view. I certainly don't hate that around me are people like me, and not, whose attitudes and beliefs I might agree with or never have considered before, but all of which force me to examine and interrogate – and sometimes change – my ideas and preconceptions.

So maybe, as I'm being forced to consider my location in a starker way than I usually would, I'm nervous that the story I tell myself about being a total country bumpkin doesn't quite match my internal reality. But maybe I just need to reset an expectation, and accept it isn't necessarily true that you can only belong in one place at one time. Instead of feeling like my identity is reliant on one or the other, maybe I just need to accept that it's okay to love – and have – both.

On sticking out like a sore thumb - in a velvet hat

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 16:13:00 +0000

Some things just... fit. Cocktails in a jamjar in an artfully grimy South London bar. The smell of sunscreen under a tropical sky. The gentle crunch underfoot of unknown detritus on the kitchen floor the morning after a party.

And some things, well they just don't.

The Writer and I rolled back to the flat late one recent one Friday night. Stuffed full of Sri Lankan food (rather better than most of the food we had whilst on holiday in Sri Lanka, as it happens), BYOB, and War and Cake's frankly debaucherous millionaire shortbread, there was nothing that would have been more welcome than collapsing straight into bed for a long digesting lie-in and a lazy Saturday.

But I'm apparently not someone who makes terribly practical decisions about weekend plans. And so due at Kings Cross at 08.30 the next morning to catch a train to be halfway up the country for a day's hunting (of which there's frustratingly little to be found in South London) – a sport that, along with a decent sense of balance and slightly less than half a sense of reasonable self-preservation, requires its participants to be properly turned out - there was no straight to bed for me.

Rather than snuggling under the duvet I found myself frantically running around a small one-bedroomed flat in the centre of Brixton at close to midnight, spinning in front of the sitting room mirror to see whether black pants were visible through buff jodhpurs while the iron heated up in the kitchen to sort out the tangle of creases that was formally my stock. (The less said about my ironing on a tea-towel on a kitchen side, rather than the board, the better.)

At the same time, I was trying – with partial success – to make sure my black riding boots were in presentable (that is, not covered toe to knee in dried-on mud) condition after some harlot had clearly returned them in a filthy condition instead of cleaning them off before they went back in the cupboard. Ahem.

Of course, being in the aforementioned one-bed Brixton flat and not a sizeable pile in the Home Counties complete with boot room and trough sink, and I found myself rootling round for a stock pin and hair net in the bottom of the bag with one hand, and using the other to scrape the remains of a Northamptonshire field off my boots with nothing more than an elderly packet of baby wipes, having eschewed the getting-mud-all-over-the-bottom-of-the-shower option. Classy? No. Effective enough that errant splatters could be passed off at the meet as acquired while staggering through a puddle during an inelegant mount? Sure.

None of which, of course, came anywhere near the experience of having to leave the house at half seven the following morning. It might feel slightly out of kilter to have equine paraphernalia scattered all over one's bijou SW2 sitting room late on a Friday night. But it's a damn sight less surreal than, on a Saturday morning when most self-respecting urbanites – heels in hand – are staggering out of their morning-after Ubers, to be walking through central London in full hunting kit, a hat peak and whip sticking out of one's bag, aware of the subtle and not-so looks and whispers that suggest no one south of the river has seen a bottom in jodhpurs since the publication of Riders in the 80s.

Still, who wants to fit in, eh? And I should confess that the boots, happily quarantined in a plastic Countryside Alliance bag in the back of the wardrobe, didn't go back clean this time either...

Leaving

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 22:29:00 +0000

When a man is tired of London, Dr Johnson said, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford

If Dr Johnson had been a millennial, he might have instead said that when a woman is tired of London, she is tired of not having a life, for there is in London a lot that life on the salary of anything but a successful hedge fund manager can’t afford.

I love London, at the right times on the right days - when I’m up so early that no one else is around; the rain isn’t hurtling down the back of my collar and up into my shoes from a broken drain; 10 minutes after I’ve beed paid and feel momentarily like a solvent adult; or when the flat doesn’t look like a toddler has spun through it on a high-destruction setting.

When we’ve snuck the last table for brunch at Salon, five minutes around the corner from the flat, one of my favourite restaurants in the world for unpretentious but creative and delicious food that hasn’t been put together with tweezers. When I’ve manned the resistance against the dictatorial tones of the alarm clock and hauled myself out from the duvet in a manner so slovenly it’s almost embarrassing, yet I can still be in the office in 35 minutes. Or when I leave the office and the city lights are at their most seductive as I walk under Big Ben and over Westminster Bridge, and I’m surrounded by all the friends who have chosen to root their lives here.

But the privilege of living in this big, exciting, smelly, cosmopolitan, poisonous, brilliant city comes at an extraordinary cost. To people’s lungs, their living spaces, and holy hell their bank accounts. And, if they ever hope of owning a home, often their ambitions.

We'd like some space – for books, for breathing, for ourselves. We'd like not to live on top of and beneath and squashed in by neighbours on a street where the luxury cars belie the fact that the drug deals outside the house are just as frequent now as when we moved in, and I'm still a bit twitchy about walking home alone in the dark. We'd like a house that we own, that isn't subsiding into a river under the street, for a mortgage that doesn't cripple us as far as the financial horizons. We'd like air that doesn't stink of weed at 8am on the way to the office, or vomit at 11pm after a late night (probably also in the office). We'd like not to hear the party next door at 4am, sirens at 5am, planes at 6am and a city roaring to life before the Today programme has really got going

And so, the time has come, for The Writer and I, to put into boxes all the tchotchkes that come from melding two lives into one shared flat, five years of books and seashells, pictures and wooden elephants, wellies and favourite jumpers with the moth holes in the elbow, and bid farewell to the city where we met, fell in love, decided to get married.

We're not cutting off ties completely – we'll be here to work, to see friends, to make use of the hard-won Hamilton tickets in the months ahead. But it won't be home. And not because we're tired of this infuriatingly wonderful city – but because we're waking up to the possibilities that lie outside it.

I'm a feminist but...

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 13:49:00 +0000

A wee homage to The Guilty Feminist podcast – a podcast in which the glorious Deborah Frances-White and phenomenal Sophie Hagan in front of a studio audience explore their noble goals as 21st century feminists, and the insecurities and hypocrises which undermine them.

I'm a feminist but...

If he stood for elected office, I'd vote for Mark Carney purely on the basis of his being a silver fox.

I get my husband to remove spiders from the bath.

Oh, oh, OH, Henry Cavill with no clothes on.

There isn't a day that goes by without my wishing I had longer legs and thicker hair.

I really enjoy it when my husband opens doors for me, and walks on the road side of the pavement.

I wear my glasses in important meetings with older men, because I get the sense I get taken more seriously.

I'm not above a bit of judicious flirting if I think it'll help me get my point across in a situation. (I figure the patriarchy owes me this at least.)

When watching Team GB play in the Olympic women's hockey final, instead of being impressed by their talent, dedication and achievement, I couldn't get past how fucking beautiful the lot of them were.

Being aware of my feminism has made me realise that some people are just a bit shit. And while I should probably take the time to explain to them why I find them phenomenally difficult to deal with, instead I find it easier just not to engage. And that's not always a comfortable thing.

When trolled on Twitter by a brigade of misogynists for being peeved that women in showjumping, where men and women compete as equals, were referred to by the commentators as 'lady riders', my first inclination was to withdraw from the situation and let them get on with it rather than fighting back.

When a great friend of mine recently said she wouldn't ever describe herself as a feminist, I let the comment slide rather than fighting the point and explaining exactly why she is, and why I think it's damaging that she won't identify as one.

Sometimes I worry that I'm not being rightfully pissed off about an issue – I'm just being humourless about it.

April’s and May’s reading lists

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

3 - 13 April

I often struggle with Atwood. LOVED Handmaid, but started Assassin four times and then gave up. This was somewhere in the middle: solid New World upstairs-downstairsesque period drama, with ghostly undertones, touching on themes of gender, and sex, and right and wrong, and psychology. I thought slightly reminiscent of Tess of the d’Urbervilles crossed with Woman in White. Crying out for a big-budget glossy Beeb adaption, if Andrew Davies is after new ideas.

The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
14 - 30 April

I do wonder whether I’m just not well-versed enough in traditional medieval English mythology to have really got to grips with this book - I felt that there was an impenetrability holding me back from really understanding and loving it, and if I were more, I would have got the cleverer jokes and references. And maybe the turgid prose is a deliberate construct, instantly giving the reader the same feeling as the protagonists who are struggling with an amnesiac fog that’s descended over their country. Or maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing and this one just wasn’t my cup of tea. I’m all for a good bit of fantasy fun, but I wouldn’t go to Ishiguro again to get it.

Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld
1 - 7 May

Straight up, I’m going to admit to not being an Austen fan. So sue me. I find her a bit… wet. She just doesn’t have the full-fist impact of a Bronte, for me. On the other hand, I’d read Sittenfeld’s shopping lists if she published them. If you’re the same, let the love of the latter trump the trepidation about the former, because this book - a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice - is a total joy. You know the story - and yet this book has you in suspense every page of the way. She’s that good a storyteller. It’s a very modern hug from an old friend. Perfect summer reading.

Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris
8 - 23 May

This one is strictly for New Yorker and grammar obsessives - more the latter than the former. Norris has been a copy editor for the mag for years, and I was hoping for far more anecdotes about its life and times from the woman with the comma shaker on her desk. As it is, it’s heavily about the use of language and punctuation - but done in such a way that if you’re inclined to pick up this particular book, you probably know it all anyway. Fun if you’ve run out of reading, but not one to nudge to the top of the list otherwise.

The World of Simon Rich, Simon Rich
15 May

I read this in two hours in one sitting over a couple of cups of coffee on a Sunday morning after a long night on call for work. It’s Rich’s trademark everyday observations told in the quirkiest manner. Not quite up there with Last Girlfriend, sadly - it reads a little more like he couldn’t stretch each observation out into even a short story - but some lovely vignettes that’ll have you cackling away to yourself. A perfect book if you have a couple of hours on a plane any time soon.

On Love, Alain de Botton [also known as Essays in Love]
24 - 30 May

Like many of the people I know who have read and recommended this, I loved it. I didn’t agree with a lot of it, and some of it made me downright cross - but ultimately I loved it. It’s a novel about the process of love; whether you’re in love, have been in love, have an unrequited love, want to be in love, you’ll get something out of this. The characters annoyed the hell out of me, I could see the ending coming from the first few pages, there were premises that made me want to give up on the thing (although I wonder whether that’s because I’m happily married…) but the writing is gorgeous. It’s ultimately an elegant and slender tome on the human condition, and that’s always something worth having.

Five years later, thanking my lucky star

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Fri, 20 May 2016 10:40:00 +0000

Five years ago today I didn’t expect to meet the man I’d marry.

I’d been dating for hundreds of years. I’d had my heart squeezed through other people’s careless hands a couple of times. For the rest, I’d been bored, disappointed, horrified. I’d optimistically thought that if I just kept going, I’d eventually meet someone who didn’t underwhelm me into submission.

Finally I met a self-styled “foodie” six inches shorter than he’d professed to being who, wearing an anorak, took me to Strada on a first date, and presented a 2-for-1 voucher at the end of the evening. On the train home, I reconciled myself to the cliche that was living with the cat, and completely gave up on dating. If that was what mankind had to offer, I told myself, felinekind genuinely was the way forward: I wasn’t going to waste any more time, money, effort, emotion or headspace on men who didn’t come close to meeting the standards I demanded in someone I was going to share my life with. Settling wasn’t an option: I’d rather be by myself.

Months later, and with zero expectation, I went for a drink with a man with whom I shared a mutual friend.

The Writer confounded absolutely everything I’d come to expect from the experience of dating. I found him seriously attractive. He didn’t wear questionable jewellery. He was interesting and interested and intelligent. He was open-minded, honest, feminist. He listened and asked questions. He didn’t bore on about decorating his bathroom in the perfect malachite tile. He didn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t (i.e., gay), waver about what he wanted, have a massive coke habit.

And unlike almost every other man I’d dated, he didn’t play games. At no point did I have that sinking feeling you get in your gut when a text goes unreplied to for hours, days - I didn’t have to ask friends to reassure me that he had probably lost his phone, been captured by the Israeli security services on a secret mission to neverwhere, been eaten by sharks, all the while knowing deep down that I’d been left to slide quietly from the scene. It was just so… easy. It was like dating as it’s sold to you by Hollywood: exciting, full of potential, fun.

Reader, I married him.

But I’m crushingly aware of the fact that it wasn’t because I dated man after man that I ended up with the love of my life. It wasn’t because I put in the time and effort to get out there and date: the time and effort merely resulted in hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds spent in places I didn’t need to have gone to with people I never saw again. In a few cases, it led to tears. Stubbornness and a refusal to lower my standards certainly played a part: if I’d been stuck in a relationship that was fine, but not happy, I’d never have been in the position to go on the date. Open-mindedness and not being rigid about what I thought I wanted also helped.

But it started, ultimately, with luck. It was luck that we were both free that night, and fancied a drink after a long week. Luck that the bar was quiet enough for proper discussion, and that the restaurant had a late table where we ended up being the last two in the room. Luck that he was single and so was I. Luck that we hit on the topics of conversation that made us realise we had more in common than first appearances might have suggested. Just bloody good luck that in a city of millions of people, we came across each other.

“I knew he was it,” Best Mate said, some years later. “I knew after that first date. The way you talked about it, about him - it was different. It wasn’t like any of the others.”

It wasn’t. He isn’t. Sometimes expectations are confounded and love arrives like a freight train to deliver us into a completely different life. But we all still need a little luck to help us on the way.

March's reading list

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 07:00:00 +0000

My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem
23 Feb - 1 March

What’s not to love about a memoir by one of the original feminists? Steinem tells about her father’s peripatetic attitude to life as she was growing up, and what she learnt from the people she came across. This is a book that touches on race and class as well as gender, and it’ll inspire you and make you angry in equal measure. Massively worth the read if you’ve even a passing interest in a more equitable society.

Head of State, Andrew Marr
3 - 12 March

If you’re already sick to the back teeth of the EU referendum, this might not be for you. But if you can get past that wee fact, this novel about a Conservative Prime Minister during the final days in the lead up to a referendum (although Scottish independence, rather than European), with the Out campaign led by a glamorous female former Home Secretary. If you’ve ever worked in or around politics or political media, this will make you chuckle deeply with some of its side-eye looks. If you’re not a political nerd, the not-terribly-elegant prose might annoy you more than the fun story entertains. (What is with journos not being able to write fiction?)

A Change of Climate, Hilary Mantel
4 - 25 March

From the ridiculous to the sublime, here. Mantel is a woman whose prose should be heralded by angels. It’s gorgeous. This is an all-pages-turned-down kinda book. It’s a family saga about love and betrayal and what makes a person a good person. If you like her other stuff, you’ll love this.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Helen Fielding
26 - 28 March

I picked this up in the library as I thought I might see the upcoming film at some point. If it’s anything like the book, the film would have to be on Netflix after I’ve finally worked my way through all 12 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, as well as having read every single book left on the shelves. It’s desperately average. Bridget was of her time, which has been and gone.

The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
28 March - 2 April

A gorgeous novel that falls into the ‘fairy story for grown ups’ category. Set in the wilds of Alaska in the early 20th century, an elderly couple create a girl out of snow during a storm, only for her to come to life. It’s haunting and magical, occasionally dark and always enveloping. The perfect Sunday afternoon on the sofa read.

Why I give a damn

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 11:00:00 +0000

There was a piece on the Guardian recently that suggested that we’d all be happier if we cared less about our jobs.

I can see the logic: clock in, do as much as it takes to get by, don’t let the work get to you, clock out and don’t give it another thought. You’ll be less stressed, ergo you’ll be happier.

Except: bollocks.

A lot of us spend a lot of our lives at work. It seems deeply odd to me that you’d choose not to care about something that you do for eight, 10, 14 hours a day (although I imagine if you don’t care about what you’re doing, you’re probably not spending 14 hours in the office, somehow).

In an office where you get on with the people you’re working with, it seems odd to me that you’d do your colleagues, your boss and your team the disservice of not caring about what you’re doing. If everyone else does care, and is putting in their best to win the new business, to get the project off the ground, to provide the best service, then you’re letting everyone down by not pulling your weight. I sure as hell wouldn’t want you on my team - in any capacity.

And it certainly seems odd to me that we wouldn’t want people to care about what they do. I want my firefighters to care about whether they get the family out of the burning house; my Government ministers to care about the real-world effects of their polices; my surgeons to care whether they save the lives of the people on their tables.

I care deeply about my job. I care about my colleagues. I care about my performance and whether I’m doing my best - because I care about the outcomes. I’m also lucky enough to love my job. I know that I’m spending my working hours doing something that’s important to me - and that makes me pretty happy.

Yes, I find it stressful - consciously, in the moments I’m under pressure, and at an unconscious level, as I find it increasingly difficult to properly detach. But I’d far rather be in that situation, surrounded by colleagues who also all care about what we’re doing - and try to find ways to manage the stress.

Life isn’t about apathy. What you put in, you get back out. Don’t half-arse it.

Being 30+: my take

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 12:21:00 +0000

Based on Rachel’s recent piece about what she’s learnt since turning 31, some unsolicited advice for those facing the big(ish) three oh, and things I’ve learnt up till this point. They’re all largely aimed at women because I don’t have a huge amount of experience at being a 30-something chap.

You realise that over time, you’ve started to give less of a shit about what other people think. Obviously you want to know if you’ve got your skirt stuck in your pants, or a piece of kale in your teeth, but their sneering about how you’re choosing to live can get to fuck.

At the same time, there’s somehow an increased sense of societal pressure about the life choices you’re making and what you have - or haven’t - managed to achieve by now. And while some is most definitely societal (grannies asking when you’re going to settle down, anyone, or any frickin’ Daily Mail headline from here to Kingdom Come?), I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the pressure comes from ourselves. I’m almost certain that no one I know is judging their friends for being single / not having bought a house / not having a ‘better’ job / having or not having had children… (Are you judging your friends for any of those things? Because if so, you’re frankly a bit of a dick.)

As a general rule, comparison is deeply unhelpful but sadly inevitable. Your friends might have a better job / shinier hair / a bigger flat. But you can almost guarantee they’re jealous of your thinner thighs / more free time / seemingly endless capacity for partying. Get on with your own thing and stop peering around enviously thinking about what you’ve not got. Someone looking like they have it all sorted means fuck all. THE GRASS IS JUST GREEN.

Life’s a bitch and it’s possible to have spots AND wrinkles. Seriously, what gives, skin fairy? On which note: if you’ve got the funds, upgrade your skin care. Your skin isn’t 21 any more. You need to look after it accordingly. On a good day, it’ll thank you for it.

If you were a precocious little shit like I was growing up, you probably grew up thinking you were somehow special, or different. By this point, you’ve probably (hopefully) grown out of that delusion. You’ve not been fingered by Destiny to be the UN Secretary General. Or Beyonce. You’re just another person who’s muddling through. And that absolutely does not make you a failure.

That said, if you really think you’d be ace at being UNSG, or Beyonce (or both? Why limit the dream?), knuckle down. Work out what will qualify you for that position and work really, really, really hard at those things. In all likelihood you’ll probably not end up there, but you’ll have given it your best shot, and not let yourself down by not trying.

Related: life probably doesn’t look how you expected it to at 10, 16, 21. That’s ok. How boring would it be if it did? And you know what? Life at 40, 65, 80 probably won’t look like it does in your head either.

If the millennial way of life is one that works for you, go for it. Travel, value the experiences, step out of the rat race. But don’t for a second think that gives you the right to judge people who work hard at the 9 - 5 (HAH! If only), have a home they love and a ‘conventional’ lifestyle. I have feelings about the prospect of paying for other people who haven’t bothered to think about how they’ll fund their old age. They’re not generous.

The patriarchy is real, and a pain in the arse. As a woman and as you get older, you begin to notice it increasingly, in ways that are highly detrimental to being able to just get on with shit. As my gal Gloria says, you’ll become more radical about it as you get older. If we all shout loudly enough, it will have to change.

If you’re a man, just LISTEN to women when they complain about how the patriarchy screws us. DON’T say that it’s not you. If you’re lucky enough to be floating through the world assuming you’re not part of the problem, you’ve just not thought about it for long enough. No. Don’t argue. Just listen. Learn.

There comes a point where, if you’re lucky enough, you might start to feel guilty about what you have in comparison to other people. Be aware of it, don’t pity other people, be understanding. And if what you’ve got is through sheer hard work rather than dumb luck, bugger the guilt, quite frankly.

There also comes a point where it gets hard to make new friends (not acquaintances, real, honest to god, will hold your hair back over the loo after too many tequilas, not judge you for anything, help you bury the body friends). At the same time, if there’s someone around whose presence is a drag, it’s ok not to have them around. Life’s too short for toxicity and selfishness.

Dating is hard. It only gets harder. Not a lot I can offer there. Just don’t settle. And realise that it’s not you: it’s luck.

I’ve always dismissed stress as a feeling you get at the precise moment when you’re under pressure. It’s so much more than that. Find ways that actually help you cope with it. I’m still struggling with this one, and spend the 90% of my life when I’m not on a beach in Thailand or galloping at full pelt across a field affected by it in at least some small way that I usually don’t even think about. Thankfully I have an extremely patient husband.

Be slightly pushier about stuff than feels comfortable. Lean in. You’ll be surprised at how far it gets you. It doesn’t come across as pushy: it comes across as confident.

You might feel a bit lonerish / pathetic / guilty about spending Saturday night in jogging bottoms on the sofa with Netflix and wildly preferring it to being - frankly - anywhere else in the world. You might feel just the same about spending every weekend in a hedonistic haze of drunken, ecstasy. There’s no point. If you’re not hurting other people, kick on.

There’s probably never such a thing as ‘a good time to have children’. There’s certainly always a reason not to. As far as I can work out, as a woman, you’ll always have to sacrifice something. (And yes, I do believe that sacrifice is the right word, I don’t care what you think about that.) Policies like shared parental leave are moving us GLACIALLY in the right direction, but if you’re 30ish now, they’re not enough by many country miles.

Of course, that’s if you’re fortunate enough to know how you feel about children. That’s a whole other emotional quagmire. You’re not alone, however you feel about this one. Talk to your female friends. If we’re all more open about this stuff, maybe we’ll figure out some answers. Or at least not feel like weirdos.

Kindness is so fucking important. Be kind. To everyone. No one is beneath your kindness.

February's reading list

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 08:00:00 +0000

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett
30 Jan - 10 Feb

God I love everything this woman does. I would read Ann Patchett’s shopping lists if only she’d publish them. This collection of essays is gorgeous (lots of pages folded down in the notebook). Anyone who has even a passing interest in writing will adore The Getaway Car, the essay in the collection about the writing process: I found it utterly inspirational.

Euphoria, Lily King
10 - 13 Feb

Curtis Sittenfeld, author extraordinaire of American Wife (one of my Desert Island books), recommended this on Twitter, and where is the sense in not reading something recommended by someone whose writing you love? It totally hit the mark, as apparently all fiction about anthropologists making discoveries in the deepest jungle does (see also Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Signature of All Things - although that’s botany and the colonies, but has a similar feel. I digress). I read this in just a couple of sittings: it’s enveloping, and King has a wonderful turn of phrase. Highly recommended.

Big Magic, Liz Gilbert
13 - 16 Feb

I saw plenty of people rave about this on Twitter as an inspirational exploration of creativity and inspiration. If you’re the sort of person who loved Eat, Pray, Love (disclaimer: I haven’t read it, and don’t plan to), I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that you’ll enjoy this. Otherwise, I’d steer clear. It’s about as hippy drippy as you can get (ideas being sentient things that search for a home through humans who’ll birth them? Do please fuck off). There are a couple of tiny nuggets in there that you might find interesting (how Gilbert is bosom buddies with my gal Patchett, for starters) but I’d read Happy Marriage instead. It’ll save you the blood pressure rise.

Make Your Home Among Strangers, Jennine Capo Crucet
16 - 22 Feb

Another book recommended on Twitter by the fabulous Sittenfeld, who suggested that if you enjoyed her Prep, you’ll like this debut novel: I can see where she’s coming from. The premise, of a young woman out of her depth at a fancy US university, is very similar, and throws the protagonist into similar situations. It’s a thought-provoking read about class and social mobility; about race and racism; different worlds and fitting into neither - and both; and family and where you come from. (All February’s books seemed to be linked in some way. Funny how that happens. But a good month for cracking (ish) female writers - unplanned, but the best reading month I’ve had in a while.)

Sometimes we all need to hear we're wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 20:59:00 +0000

It came up in discussion with The Writer over crab linguine on a Wednesday night.

(Bring a pan of heavily salted water to the boil, and add 200g linguine. In the meantime, sweat four cloves of garlic in olive oil. Add 1tsp of fennel seeds, 1tsp of chilli flakes and the zest of a lemon and combine. Add the brown meat from a prepared crab, with several tablespoons of the pasta cooking water. Stir to combine. When the pasta is ready, add to the crab mixture with a little additional cooking water. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, the white crab meat and stir through. Serve with chopped parsley and a drizzle of olive oil. Serves two.)

And then again in a piece I read on Medium the following day. And by the end of the week, the topic was swilling round in my brain enough that I’d had my firm belief reiterated that one of the most useful challenges you can set yourself is to read material you disagree with.

Increasing numbers of people get their information from news websites – from the stories they choose to click on and read, or from personalised feeds that deliver the stories they’re most interested in – and others from a self-selected Twitter feed. Even Google bases its search results on your history, meaning that you’re likely to exist in an ever-smaller bubble when it comes to the type of information you’re presented with.

I’d very happily trundle along in a world where everything I read confirmed views that I already hold. I’d love to truly believe that I have all the answers, and if only the world existed as my beliefs would have it, then we’d be living in a better place. Much as I’d love to have that level of confidence in my opinions, I don’t. I’m thoroughly prepared to accept that other people – and other people whose views I don’t like – might have more expertise, have spent longer contemplating the issue, might simply be right.

So even though I’d rather read Hugo Rifkind (it’s weird: it’s like the man articulates thoughts I hadn’t got round to forming yet), it’s better for me to read Owen Jones. I read as much Melanie Philips (urgh) as I do Melanie Reid (swoon). And it’s important that there’s a good chunk of my Twitter timeline whose views make me question whether we’d ever be able to be friends offline.

By forcing myself to consider the other side, to engage with opinions that I’ve not previously considered or interrogated, I’m ensuring that my bubble is as big as possible; that I’m forcing myself to think about what I believe and why; and whether there are better ways out there.

None of which, of course, ever justifies listening to Radio 4's Any Answers and some of the frankly crack-pot views it broadcasts. Open-minded: good. So open-minded your brains fall out: not worth it.

My notebook

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Wherever I go, whatever bag I’m carrying, I always have a small notebook with me.

It’s recycled brown craft paper, with plain pages; small, about A6, and dog-eared. Unremarkable, and of huge creative value to me.

Inside, the pages are covered with lines of text, copied out in scrawled handwriting, from whatever source I’ve taken them. They run in all directions across the paper, some have small doodles at the end of the sentence. Some pages are covered from top to bottom in closely packed print; some have a single line that leaps from the blank space on the paper. (Some pages have been well-thumbed, and are stuck to the middle of the book with Sellotape.)

The lines are taken from anywhere, with the single thread running through that all of the text has, at some point and on some level, spoken to me. They’ve come from novels I’ve read, magazine articles I’ve skimmed, tweets I’ve enjoyed, half-formed thoughts I’ve had and scenes I’ve observed while walking home late at night. (An easy way to tell how much I’ve enjoyed a book these days is the number of pages of a novel folded at the corner, ready for me to easily revisit and transcribe.)

Some are full sentences; some are snatches of text, half-phrases where a couple of words rang true; some whole paragraphs; and some are merely the definitions of words I didn’t previously know, but having taken the time to look them up and note them down, I now notice everywhere I go.

As well as keeping track of lines of literature I’ve loved, the book provides a wealth of creative inspiration. Going back and flicking through the pages, I revisit personal highlights of the work of favourite authors without taking the time to read the whole book. And seeing some gems juxtaposed with others that would never otherwise have come crashing up against them can spark an idea that takes on a new direction altogether.

It’s such a small thing, of no aesthetic or monetary value, yet its worth to me is far more than its scruffy pages and scratchy handwriting could ever suggest.

How to become a dog person

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 08:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been very much a cat person. For more than 30 years my parents have had cats; I grew up with and have always loved them; and after buying my house, Colin was one of the first acquisitions.

Almost by definition, then, I’m not a dog person. It’s the smell, if I’m honest – the way you can tell just by stepping through the front door if a dog lives in someone’s house. The slobber. The slightly greasy feeling you often get from scratching them behind the ears. It probably also says quite a lot about me as a person that I much prefer cats’ insouciance, independence, self-sufficiency.

The Writer is as fond of dogs as I am of cats. He is also, heartbreakingly, allergic (something that, had it appeared on an online dating profile – would have had me dismiss him without a moment’s hesitation, forever reminding me that what we think we want isn’t actually what we do, or what’s best for us). And his permanently streaming eyes and a shortness of breath isn’t a price worth paying so I can indulge my love of having a snoozing furball around the house.

So for the past few years, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that if I want a creature in the house, which I absolutely do because houses should have animals in them, it’ll be canine rather than feline. Which, over the last months, has been a fact made rather easier by one small person.

Enter Gretel.

We met the nine month-old black and shaggy miniature Schnauzer through Borrow My Doggy, a sort of canine dating site for those without dogs and those who are willing to let someone else walk theirs.

We’ve walked in the park, in the early days not daring to let her off the lead for fear of never retrieving her. Together we’ve scampered up the base of trees in search of squirrels and scattered flocks of ducks at speed. She’s chased me and my slippers around the sitting room; sat under tables as TW and I have read the papers in coffee shops; and let herself be bathed after rolling in unknown, stinky substances. She’s snaffled Scotch eggs from the stand at Herne Hill market (oh, the shame); guided a 12 week-old whippet puppy through a Sunday morning playtime; and leapt onto the sofa while I watch telly, resting her head on my feet and going to sleep.

She’s chipped away at the things I thought I didn’t like about dogs: there’s no slobber, or grease, and she’s one of the least smelly dogs I’ve met. Instead there’s a sweet and playful nature, an inquisitiveness, an intelligence – and a face that’s impossible to resist. Somewhere along the way, I learnt to love her wholeheartedly. It might take some time yet to make me a dog person, but I’m certainly a Gretel person already.

In which I recommend (or not) the books I read in January

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 09:09:00 +0000

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
30 Dec - 8 Jan

Six different stories of six characters, their souls linked through time. Structurally interesting, but its structure is the best thing about it. A couple of story strands (one notary on a ship sailing to Hawaii, and one young musician writing to his lover during an apprenticeship to a syphilitic older musician) are compelling but the rest of the book is hugely underwhelming.

The Rise of Islamic State, Patrick Cockburn
8 - 12 Jan

I read this after The Writer, who’d bought it as an introduction to the beginnings of Daesh. As someone who knows a bit about the subject anyway, I wasn’t particularly impressed by this. It’s always tricky to write a book about a subject that’s evolving so quickly without it feeling dated - and this is no exception. There’s a huge focus on Iraq, where the writer’s previously spent a lot of time, at the expense of Syria; and not all of the text rang true, with a lot of exposition and not a huge number of references to back up what’s presented as fact. I’m sure there are other, better introductions out there if that’s what you’re after.

Capital, John Lanchester
10 - 29 Jan

TW gave up on this a couple of chapters in, but I really enjoyed it. Eight story strands are brought together along one road, Pepys Street, in South London, where the houses have skyrocketed in value just before the 2008 financial crisis. An investment banker worried that he won’t get a million pound bonus, a Polish builder and an asylum-seeking traffic warden are all drawn beautifully. Captivating, and an easy read, whilst holding a mirror up to current British society.

Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi
Unfinished

I got about a third of the way into this and gave up. A story about a girl drifting in 1950s America, nothing had gripped me and the writing wasn’t strong enough to keep me going.

Animals, Emma Jane Unsworth
Unfinished

Two girls, their close friendship, and their even closer relationship with booze. Superficial and irritating. If you want stories about darkness and destruction and addiction, pick up a Bukowski, not an incredibly poor imitation of him.

In which I think about walking in someone else's shoes

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 17:03:00 +0000

Prompted, by The Redhead: 75 words or more on "someone else's shoes".

It’s a favourite of those Facebook friends you were at primary school with and have no real idea why you’re still connected with given their over-fondness for “u ok hun?”, or Pinterest where the text is displayed on a background of trees and road, or wibbly blue lines.

At first glance, it’s not necessarily the worst adage: “Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes.” It’s not a bad thing to try and understand someone, their view of the world, the pressures they’re under and why they think and act like they do. The world probably could do with people being more open-minded, and less, you know, Daily Maily. We’d probably all be happier if everyone tried it.

One thing my new(ish) job has taught me is the importance of negotiation. It’s critical when you’re negotiating to really understand the opposing side’s position: what they say they want and how that can be completely different from the reality, the stresses they’re under from external forces, what they need out of the situation. To walk in their shoes.

But something else I’ve learnt is that, regardless of how well you understand the other side, you’re the one who can fight for you. If you’re lucky, you have a team rooting for you, but you’re its centre. You’re best situated to know what you’ve been through, the forces you’re acting under, what your position is, what you need.

By all means, go the extra mile to understand someone else. Be gracious. Absolutely be kind - the world gets grotty when we’re not. But don’t do it at your own expense, don’t be naive enough to expect the other side, with their own issues and desires and concerns to put themselves at a disadvantage.

Walk a mile in someone’s shoes. But take them off before they give you blisters. Finish the journey in your own.

In which I consider a first impression

noreply@blogger.com (Blonde) — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 21:56:00 +0000

Another prompted post (but goodness, they make it so much easier to write). This one from The (utterly wonderful) Redhead: first impressions.

I’m a terrible one for making snap decisions about people, places and things based on gut reactions and very little information.

I’ve been known to be rather less generous about my snap judgments. On the tube, I’ll write off fellow commuters as shoving, smelly, and sour-faced; a party guest as a bore; a journalist as one of the drawer’s less sharp knives…

Sometimes the judgments are the right ones: my first impressions of the The Writer were a) tall, b) interesting and c) handsome, and given I went on to marry the man, they've since been borne out.

But sometimes (and I don’t doubt it’s probably the majority of the time), I’m not quite as on the money, to my own detriment: I put off reading Jilly Cooper for years, having dismissed it as chick lit (how wrong a gal can be). I didn’t eat Christmas pudding for years, mistakenly assuming something full of fruit and brandy wouldn’t be delicious (see above). And given that TW’s first impressions of me were everything he didn’t want in a woman (short, blonde, in PR), I’m lucky that other people aren’t so stubborn as not to revise theirs.

So I’m not too concerned that my first impressions of the new year have been somewhat underwhelming.

It’s been wet and windy enough to incite serious cabin fever, with depressing news dripping in on the broadcasts for days filling me with increasing anxiety about the return to work, and a tax bill large enough to put paid to brunch for the foreseeable. Not a vintage start, I think you’ll agree.

But in best best-foot-forward mood, I’ve decided not to let it get to me. Because first impressions can be so wrong, and the year might yet pleasantly surprise me.