2009, So Far

+ "No, I'm not going to twirl you around like they did in Moulin Rouge.. oh, okay. But if you fall, I'm not picking you up." + cough-cough-cough.

+ ".. ella, ella, ella, eh, eh, ella.." (or, why it's a bad idea to leave the TV tuned to E4 whilst you go in search of tissue paper)

+ Cold, misty walk along the river yields surprisingly low dog-walkers count.

+ "Do you know what time it is? No, it's not five minutes to five. It's trying on sweater-time so I can check if I need to do more increases. Do try to look excited."

+ "Any more shortbread left?"

+ Wonder how a tongue-in-cheek post can produce very disagreeable comments (but then again not be terribly surprised, sadly).

+ "Nooooo, they're not going to show the kissing bit from Doctor Who again, are they? That's disgusting."

+ Realise that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will probably not get made which is a shame since it was my favourite Narnia book. Then realise that the non-filming of a good book could be a Rather Good Thing.

+ Now in search of food (and tissue paper).

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Hogmanay Etc

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denmark-july-2008-297This is my favourite photo of 2008. I shot it in early August when we went to Sweden for a day. The weather was incredibly hot (although not particularly sunny) and all these tanned, long-limbed Swedish teenagers were hurling themselves into the Øresund from various cliffs and balconies. I don't know who this boy was, but I am very happy that I decided to take an impromptu photo of him.

I have frequently said that 2008 was an annus horribilis. Looking back, there were some good bits.

The Obama win.

Our trip to Denmark and Sweden was a great success.

I rediscovered my creative side and did so many strange, wonderful things that my head is slightly reeling.

I met some fantastic people: Ellie, Kathleen, Kippen, Anna (who has the best blog title evah), Paula, Angela, SoCherry, Lilith and Kirsty (and the rest do not have easily accessible online profiles) to name but a few.

My Alasdair Gray fangirl-ness reached a new height.

And I managed to remain alive with all my bits and pieces intact which is a bit of a triumph all things considered.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions because I know I will fail horribly if I set myself goals like "I need to lose ten kilos" or "I will watch Kieslowski's Dekalog without falling asleep." However, knitterly resolutions feel different.

I have signed up for a "Twelve Projects in Twelve Months" challenge and I would like to get back to doing stranded knitting (which I did when I was a teenager). I want to use more local wool instead of tricking myself into thinking that US brands are way superior. I want to knit down some of my laceweight stash. And I want to knit a Faroese-ish shawl with my Faroese laceweight to celebrate that I’m partly Faroese on an obscure side of my family.

And I'd quite like to read a bit more too and watch some of the DVDs that we have amassed recently (in particular Brief Encounter, In Bruges and Juno).

Happy new year to you all. As we say in Scotland - Happy Hogmanay! - and in Denmark - Godt nytår!

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On the Bus

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Sometimes I just feel overwhelmingly foreign or Other. I was heading home from a knitting meet-up, when my bus was invaded by half-cut neds. They started hurling bits of food at people and a tall black guy stood up to tell them to show other people respect. Ah. That led to other people proclaiming "Eh mate, they're jus weans an' the wan nae showing any respect is you."* And the bus driver didn't want to get involved and the swearing got worse and the racist insults kept coming (not just from the neds). I kept my head down, said nothing and texted Other Half so he'd pick me up from the bus stop. I felt rotten because I did not have the guts to stand up beside the sensible guy asking for some order - but I clearly do not speak with a Glaswegian accent and I did not know how I'd handle getting slurs directed at me.

So.

I finished knitting a beautiful hat during my Christmas holidays and I had things I wanted to say about New Year's resolutions, but I won't write about these things tonight. Instead I'll go have some tea and snuggle up beside my Other Half while I try to remember I actually do love living in Glasgow.

*) My transcription skills are sorely lacking sometimes.

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2008: A Year of Reading (Or Not)

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I hate admitting this, but I did not read that many books in 2008. One memorable year I easily made it through 100 books. This year I think I struggled to read more than twenty-five books. I have my reasons for this sudden shift in reading habits - an irritating inability to concentrate (thanks to a certain health issue) and my new-found love of knitting which took up much of my spare time. Two books left their marks on me, though. Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic The Road was raw, bleak and.. superb. McCarthy's language usage was extraordinary: both his sentence structures and his word choices were deliberately pared down to the bare bones. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was exuberant, by comparison. Initially I found it difficult to get into Clarke's dry, if wordy, prose but after 200-odd pages I was thoroughly enjoying her tale of a Regency Britain which felt very recognisable and odd at the same time. A book which transcended its genre and its tools.

I saw even fewer films in 2008 than I read books(!) and the only film I would single out was released four years ago. Yes, really. However, Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was a very good film and I was sad that I missed seeing it on the big screen.

Let's just skip music except to say that Alaska in Winter's "Dance Party in the Balkans" with its lo-fi, organic/gypsy electronica was the soundtrack to my year. Oh, and song of my year? The Phoenix Foundation's Damn the River (from 2006!).

At least I've knitted a lot in 2008, eh?

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Comfort Reading

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dec-2008-188The last Christmas present has been wrapped (Misty Garden by Jo Sharp in Rowan Damask), I have had a lovely pre-Christmas get-together with friends and I 'just' need to pack my bag now. Yes, that was a slightly hysterical 'just' there. Christmas stress has finally set in and I'm getting slightly frayed at the edges. What do you mean that I 'just* need to pack? Don't you understand how that means I need to find matching socks, clothes that match and a suitable knitting project?!

Thankfully I have enough time to sit down and think to myself: "Yes, TS Eliot has wonderful sentence structures" which automatically means I am less stressed.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; So that the glittering rapture, the amazement Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree, So that the surprises, delight in new possessions (Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell), The expectation of the goose or turkey And the expected awe on its appearance, So that the reverence and the gaiety May not be forgotten in later experience, In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium, The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure, Or in the piety of the convert Which may be tainted with a self-conceit Displeasing to God and disrespectful to the children

Eliot's "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" is rather obscure as Eliot poems go. It is a continuation of the mystical-religious poetry he wrote in the mid-1930s to late 1940s - the poetry that hardly ever gets anthologised and only occasionally gets taught. I am not a religious person myself, but I derive much comfort from Eliot's poetry (both the heady early Modernist period and the mystical late years).

Today it was a pleasure and a respite to sit down with "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" and just let myself drift into the convoluted-ness of it all. A pleasure.

Oh, and happy birthday to my mother who is ever-young. I don't know how she does it but I suspect she must have a portrait hidden away in the attic..