Books and places

I’ve just started reading Hilary Mantel’s Experiment in Love, and it’s making me nostalgic for England:

In summer, when I was a small girl, we would take a bus to the outskirts of town, and walk in the hills, rambling along the bridle paths in clear green air. We were above the line of the mill chimneys; like angels, we skimmed their frail tops (p. 11).

Of course, I was nostalgic for England even before I ever visited there (not counting being born there), having grown up with tales of the old country from my father and my Nanna. Now, however, the nostalgia is my own – for that wonderful first year in York which I had set aside for adventure, and the wonderful years after that, enjoying the town and the countryside with Michael. Ah, England in summer, with thick green grass, and little stone walls…

Incidentally I think I am developing a crush on Hilary Mantel (after loving Wolf Hall last year) and intend to read every one of her novels…

Last night I finished Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which impressed and intrigued me. Its communistic leanings are especially fascinating given the intense anti-communist, individualist sentiments here that I am only now beginning to get a feel for. I had no idea that if you earned more money here you don’t get into a higher tax bracket, for example. Back to the novel, however… I really enjoyed his descriptions of landscape and animals – especially the animals – and I liked his characters so much that when I got half way through I didn’t want to keep reading for fear of bad things happening to them. Towards the end, though, the characters seemed to become more symbolic, and you got the sense he was really laboring to make his point. (Almost like the didactic sections of War and Peace.) Still, I enjoyed it greatly and am keen to read East of Eden at some point. The last paragraph really took me by surprise – extreme breastfeeding, anyone?

In non-book related news, I am really enjoying life here at the moment. Felix’s night-time sleeping has deteriorated badly, so I’ve been quite tired, but am feeling much more zen about it just now. There is a really fantastic mother’s group which meets up several times a week in different places, and I’ve been enjoying getting to know a bunch of really interesting women and their children. If I want the car for the day I need to drop Michael at work in the morning, but he works only five minutes away from the downtown river walk, so my new routine is to drop him off and then park at the river for a walk before the day heats up too much. Felix naps, breastfeeds with a view of the waterfalls, and often has a roll around on his blanket on the grass afterwards. When we’re at home my main task at the moment is flipping him onto his back – he rolls onto his tummy, has a look around, gets stuck, then complains loudly. Repeat. Though today at the river he did manage to roll back the other way twice, with a bit of help from the slope of the ground.

Most excitingly, my parents are on their way over here and should arrive tomorrow night. I can’t wait!

Speaking of reading, here is Felix having a go at the Sunday paper, aged 20 weeks:

 

Yorkshire

We had a beautiful beautiful trip to York and Leeds last weekend. I saw many old friends. The places themselves are like old friends, and it was so refreshing to see them. It was lovely to see my old supervisors, although everyone in UK universities is extremely depressed and worried at the moment, because the government is cutting state support of universities by up to 75%, which will have a devastating impact… My supervisor reckons it will be the biggest change in the university system in the UK since the 1960s when they made many of the old polytechnics into universities. He guesses that now many of them will have to go back, or close down… Student fees are set to at least double. It’s also a pretty impossible situation for many of my friends who, like me, just finished PhDs, but now can’t find any casual teaching work (which you need to build your CV), because when people go on leave or retire at the moment they aren’t replaced – the remaining staff just have to work harder. Which in turn effects their own ability to research and publish, which will impact on their university’s standing and ranking, etc etc.  Anyway, my supervisor reckons it’s a brilliant time to take time off and have a baby!

Depressing economic situation aside, it was lovely to be there. The towns and countryside of Northern England feel so much more settled, established and cultivated than Norway does. The houses are brick and stone, the fields have hedgerows, ancient abbeys crumble slowly next to the rivers. It feels loved and lived in.

I also did lots of shopping. I love maternity wear. Finally I can buy t-shirts and jumpers that are really long enough for me! We were lucky enough to get two days of brilliant sunshine, and on Sunday we took our old friend Vic to Bolton Abbey, and did the first section of one of our favourite hikes ever.

Not much more to say really, except that if you’re ever in the area, you really should go there. You can do a short walk of an hour or so along the river, or you can keep going on up through the ‘valley of desolation’, climbing up to arthur’s seat for the most incredible views of the North Yorkshire Moors. (Wasn’t up for that this time but have done it several times.)

When we got home the kittens had survived being fed by the neighbour for five days, and were very pleased to see us, curling up tightly on our laps and refusing to leave for hours.

 

Whales and worlds

Today the light was soft. Sunlight hazed through billowy clouds, gilding the edges of the harvested fields, getting caught in the golden trees that have already started losing their hair. English weather really. Most mornings, frost glitters on everything, and once the mist clears, the sky is blue as ice.

Quite a lot has happened in the past two weeks. I had my last day of my summer job of proofreading and newsletter writing. Finishing up was actually a bit sad. We made a seriously brilliant newsletter though.

I held a two week old baby. She was beautiful.

I got back from the UK yesterday, a five day trip that started with an essay exam in Leeds, continued through a packed two days of catching up with friends in Leeds and York, and culminated in a lovely weekend involving curry and beer in London with my brother and two cousins and their wives. Family is just the best.

I also squeezed in an exhibition on T.S. Eliot and Faber and Faber in the British Library (did you know, there was only ever one Faber but they thought that two Fabers sounded more distinguished). Seeing type-written letters between Eliot and Pound and Stephen Spender and a whole host of other poets was just cool.

And on Tuesday morning I went to the Turner Prize exhibition with my brother. Probably not quite worth the eight quid but fascinating all the same. My favourite was a partial whale skeleton that you could only view through slits in the wall so that you were taken aback by shocking details and strange angles. It was called ‘Leviathan Edge’. The artist had also reproduced Brancusi’s Bird in Space sculptures in coal dust. My brother preferred a different installation involving an atomized aeroplane scattered on the floor like a desert landscape, and wall sculptures made of a mix of plastic and powdered brain. Actually both installations seemed to be about trapped flight, and movement, and time…

Speaking of flight, that’s what Michael’s been doing – brushing the sunset with his wings. He’s in the States for a conference (and other things), but I couldn’t join this time because of commitments.

I got home last night to a fat package covered in stamps with whales on them. It was a copy of the brand new Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature, which my Grandma very very kindly posted to me. Another world, more than a thousand pages long. I can’t wait to get stuck into it.

I’m happy to be back – happy to be at the kindergarten, and to have two days a week free now for writing. Let’s see where it takes me.

 

Of Love and Faraway Places

I’ve been back exactly a week and I’m still catching up on posts from when I was in England. There’s something I want to write about the medieval congress too, but that will have to wait till the weekend. Because nearly three weeks ago, before my graduation and before the congress, my cousin got married.

Richard moved from Adelaide to London shortly after I moved from Adelaide to the UK, six years ago. I started a Masters in York, he started a job in a bank (which he has since ditched to work at Google). It’s been so nice, all that time, to have a familiar face in London, not to mention a spare futon on which to crash when necessary. We’ve been friends a very long time. He’s about three years older than me, and I remember insisting on sending him an invitation to my birthday party when I was very small. ‘Mum, how do you spell Richard?’ ‘Just how it sounds, dear.’ ‘W-I-T-C-H-E-A-R-D’. Unfortunately my spelling has not improved greatly since then.

When I lived in York, first at the University Hall of Residence and then with Michael, he used to come up and visit us. Once, we made a snowman outside of Durham cathedral. Actually, he was the first member of my family to meet Michael (who’s German). ‘I like him a lot’, I confessed over a cup of tea and a scone in the York railway museum. ‘I can tell’, he said. ‘You can’t stop smiling.’ And last year Richard met the girl of his dreams, who happens to be from Russia, and now he’s married her. I think it’s brilliant. And I’m not the only one.

The wedding was great. Relaxed and heart-felt. Lots of family came across from Australia, making it a big reunion – my cousins and aunts and uncles from Adelaide, and my Dad’s cousins from Lancashire. Just in case you’re curious, here we all are when we were considerably smaller.

The priest who married them is also a journalist, and he mentioned my cousin and his bride in an article he wrote the following week:

I married a lovely young couple on Saturday. They very much represented our globalised parish today: the groom was of Australian extraction, working for Google; his bride was Russian. It’s optimistic these days for a priest to expect to marry couples in their “local” church, whatever that can mean. But it was a joyous occasion and a privilege to dispatch them on their journey of matrimony.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this ‘globalized parish’, this globalized world that we live in. The webs of love stretched across it, pulled taut. London is a long way from Adelaide, or Moscow for that matter. As Norway is from Germany or Australia. Richard visited Australia with his fiance in April, but they were engaged before his family had met her. Michael and I had been together a year (and living together for more than half that time) before my Mum met him. (This was a bit of a challenge for her, of which I was blissfully oblivious.)

The problem with these new loves is that they take us – or keep us – very far from home. And to get everyone we love in the same place is difficult, if not impossible – though at this wedding we gave it a pretty good shot! Here’s Richard with his sister, who’s still in Adelaide (and also a very close, very old friend of mine), and his brother, who’s soon to move to Perth with his wife and small daughter. They adore each other.

And here’s me and my brother, of whom I’ve sadly not seen a great deal for several years, but it’s been just brilliant to spend more time with him recently.

But family, it seems, is stretchable, flexible, adaptable. You can’t stop love springing up in unexpected places, and why would you want to? Who knows where it will take you.

 

Oh noes!

I was going to write a blog post tonight, really I was. But it is late and I am tired and we have to get up early tomorrow to drive to the airport. Off to London, for my cousin’s wedding, then up to Leeds for the IMC and then my graduation! Much excitement and I can’t wait to catch up with my brother and my cousins in London…

It’s been a very busy few weeks since I posted. I have a summer job at M’s research institute, coming up with a newsletter prototype and coming to grips with InDesign. It’s brilliant. I’ve also been applying for academic jobs in the UK, interviewing people and writing an ethnography assignment, sussing out academic contacts in Norway and intending very muchly not to leave my conference paper to the last minute again. Oops. I’ve also been offered a part time job in a kindergarten and I’ve been dithering and dithering. It was really hot for two weeks – lots of cycling and swimming in the evenings. This week the rain has almost been a relief. Very much looking forward to the UK. And hoping to do some conference-papering on the plane tomorrow…

 

In which the travel gods smile on me and I have some wonderful friends

The trip over to Bingley went relatively smoothly and several minor disasters were averted with surprising ease.

1. I accidentally got onto the train with Michael’s work key card in my pocket, but managed to post it back from Oslo train station in the fifteen minutes I had to spare.
2. I couldn’t find the charger for my English phone but my cousin Richard in London lent me a spare one of his.
3. I forgot my power adapter! I forgot it last time too, and last time I had to buy an expensive multi-adapter plug from a computer shop in town because Boots in the train station didn’t have any Europe-England ones. But this time they did! I was so happy I thanked the check-out lady profusely and she admitted she remembered me from last time…

Anyway… Everyone is taking such good care of me. I stayed with Richard for a night in London and he cooked me dinner! This is a first. His fiance is having a good influence on him. It was also just lovely to catch up (haven’t seen him for months and months). So nice to have at least one person over here who has known me my whole life! We stayed up till two drinking wine and were a bit wrecked the next day, but still…

Am now staying with the lovely Vic who thinks nothing of surrendering her lounge room to me for three weeks. Waiting for me was a parcel from Mum, ugg boots stuffed with fruchocs and cherry-ripes! Bliss! (So am nice and toasty wearing ugg boots and the jumper she knitted for me. ‘She likes to keep you warm, doesn’t she’, said Vic. And very thankful I am too.)

And my wonderful Michael is doing what he does best and planning a holiday in the midst of the five million other things he has to sort out at the moment. So – yeah. I’m pretty lucky.

Two weeks left for the thesis! I cannot believe it. It’s just the strangest feeling. When I put it all in one document for a trial run, and saw chapter four beginning on page 180, I felt what can only be described as vertigo. Like I’d been climbing a massive building without looking down, and I suddenly realised how high up I was.

I met with both my supervisors this week and they were very impressed with the new stuff I sent them. I pretty much re-wrote chapter two and they loved what I did. Supervisor one said it would have been good enough before but that it was much better now. I wouldn’t have been happy handing it in as it was before I fixed it, but now I am. So… hooray! It’s ready! It’s fine! There’s still plenty to do to it over the next two weeks – final editing of chapters, conclusion, and smoothing over chapter four, but two weeks is definitely long enough. I started putting together my contents page today. Strange, strange, strange…

 

Babbies and bairns we’ll always be

‘Me babbies, me bairns!‘ The immortal opening lines of the York pantomime. I thought I’d better say a few words about it before the moment passes. We went to York especially for the pantomime, before coming to Germany. We love it. It’s been going for more than thirty years. The same panto-dame has had the lead role for thirty years, and the panto-baddy has been in it for twenty-one. It’s just super. We watched it every year while we lived in York, and now still try to get to it. Frivolous songs and dances and silly story-lines and cross-dressing and amazing costumes and local references… Hard to explain really, if you’ve never been to one. This time it was Dick Turpin (famous highway man who was hanged in York – though of course the panto changed the story somewhat). In the past I’ve seen Sleeping Beauty and Sinbad the Sailor and I can’t remember what else. Lovely. This was my fifth panto, and Michael’s seventh. I’m hoping for many more!

 

Bingley Footbridge, 8am

On one side of the bridge, the misty moon hazed and floated. On the other, the sun thought about emerging. When I returned, ten at night, the moon had shuffled to the other side, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

(And you all come here for photos of the same places in different lights, don’t you?)

The footpaths are sparkly with frost.

Yesterday, as I walked along, thinking of dear friends, a stranger told me I had a beautiful smile. Which made it all the broader.

I had a two hour meeting with my brilliant (medievalist) supervisor. She identified a couple of places I’d been tying myself in knots, and corrected a couple of generalisations. I felt exhausted afterwards, but now I know exactly where this chapter needs to go, which luckily is not all that far away.

I talked to some fellow phd students and graduates about hopes and fears.

I am on the cusp of something new, standing on the bridge in the changing light.

 

Chimneys and words and packages

Here’s another view of the Bingley chimneys. And the semi-frozen canal. The ducks promenade around here much as they do in Halden. The thesis chugs along. I reckon I’ll get it finished in early February, or possibly late January. I got my chapter one (extension of intro) nearly written. I felt like I was juggling so many balls so beautifully, and then I tripped and dropped them all, and couldn’t fathom the energy to pick them all up again. But it is nearly nearly there. I have sent it to my supervisors and will meet with them both individually this week – one tomorrow, and one on Thursday.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been getting back to the first chapter I wrote – the one that’s always caused me the most trouble. I still feel like I’m somewhat awkwardly hanging my argument on my textual analysis, rather than boldly using my textual analysis to advance my argument. The problem with this poet is that he says one thing and then he says the opposite – it’s really hard to pin him down. Anyway, pinning poetry down isn’t my ultimate aim, is it?

My technique this weekend has just been to write the paragraphs that need to be written, without wasting too much time about whether they fit on page eight or page twenty-eight. It’s been working, this close attention to detail, but I’m beginning to feel like printing it out and coming up for air. Tomorrow.

Vic has been a great encouragement. She keeps reminding me that I love this stuff, really.

And it is nearly Christmas which I am very very pleased about. Michael’s coming over to the UK on Wednesday, and we’ll have a few days here before heading across to Germany on Sunday. Good good good. (He’s had some horrible adventures in Norway this week – the valient snuggle-car does NOT like the cold. It got frozen, snowed under, and refused to get going in the Oslo airport carpark, but it’s ok now. I think in winter we’ll keep it to the temperate south from now on.) And oh – Mum and Grandma – all your parcels/cards have arrived in Germany safe and sound! Thank you thank you thank you! Apparently the postman was very excited to be delivering parcels from Australia.

 

Walled Cities

I finished reading the most beautiful novel the other day. Gatty’s Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland. I first realised what a lovely writer he was when I read his translations of Norse Myths, and I vowed to get hold of his King Arthur trilogy. I did, and have read the first one so far, and loved it. Gatty’s Tale is a spin-off from that – a thirteenth-century girl joins a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

There it was!

Jerusalem!

At once Gatty reined in.

There it was, waiting for her.

No need to ask. She recognised it like a home from which, long ago, she had strayed. Its contours were her own heart’s and mind’s contours. She felt like a little girl again. No need to say anything.

The Holy City, golden, grew out of the gentle slopes on which it sat. Or was it the other way round? Did the Holy City, Gatty wondered, come down from God, out of heaven? And did the hillslopes and the valleys and everything else on the earth grow out of it?

All that stood between the pilgrims and the golden domes, the clustered towers and columns and walls was one last shallow valley, dark with olive groves.

I read this on the train, on a very tedious journey from Stansted Airport up to Bingley. Finish the damn thesis, I told myself glumly as I stood in the cold in Peterborough station, waiting for a train that didn’t come, you’ve got to stop doing this. I ended up catching a train up to York, and then another train to Leeds, and then another train to Bingley.

As I waited in York station, I thought about how usually I would feel very sad just to be there. I lived in York for three years. I loved it. It was home. I met Michael there. We lived together in the sweetest little house. We cycled everywhere – to the shops, to the pubs, to the wonderful Baroque concerts with two pound tickets for students. I did my masters there. I finished my novel there. I started my PhD. I would walk on the stone walls, and hang out in my favourite bookshop (now sadly closed). Every time I returned there, after being away, as the taxi swung past the walls and the gates to the city, I would feel a tangible surge of at-homeness. It was so sad to leave.

But – this time I didn’t feel sad. I felt content, in myself. I have a new home now. I am building a new home.

And then, on the train, I read about Gatty in Jerusalem. And my heart surged. I have been there – the centre of the world, as they thought in the Middle Ages. I have stood inside this other walled city. Michael had a two month scholarship to be in Israel, and I went to visit him, and we went to Jerusalem together.

Like Gatty, I had heard about it all my life. The Bible was a big part of my childhood and my early adulthood – I have read the stories over and over. My parents went to Jerusalem when Mum was pregnant with me. Dad bought a little statue of Moses, which has sat in the corner of the lounge room all my life. My Mum bought a big brown coat, like a monk’s cloak, which I wore for a while as a teenager. And there I was, again, the centre of the world.

For Gatty, part of her has always been in Jerusalem, and part of her will always be there. And when she prays inside the church of the Holy Sepulchre – that mazelike, burrow-like place where I too have stood – she prays for all her friends and family at home, for those who could not come to Jerusalem and never will, but when she prays they are there anyway, with her, safe inside the walled city.

And I don’t quite know what I’m trying to say, but I like that idea – of being together even when you’re not together, of being at home even when you’re far away. And there, on the train, between York and Leeds, the journey was a burden no longer, and I gripped the novel firmly, with tears in my eyes.