And Then We Come To This Part

And away we went, up north.

The last few days prior to leaving for our mini-holiday were so busy that I did not get a chance to arrange for blog posts to appear whilst we were away. Judging by my own blog reader with its 100+ posts, I do not think any of you missed me much. Good.

During the journey north I revised my opinion of The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - particularly the lyrics going "And if a double-decker bus / Crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die" as the road was slippery and the bus was swerving dangerously back and forth. I clutched my beloved's hand and told him that I did not want to die by his side right there and then. He understood.

Time spent with family. Time spent laughing. Time spent looking at things in the grand scheme of things. Time being quiet and time being busy combined in a strange way

And then time to go back home. I have a cough and a sore throat throat to remind me of the perils involved in spending time with little germ-carrying nephews. And an aching heart too because I miss those little tykes already.

Presents, I had were given a lot and too many to mention. Tiny gifts from friends with big hearts. Big gifts from people far away. Liberty fabric and a cape from my partner (a cape! a cape!). I turned my book voucher into three books, one of which I have already finished and will be writing about shortly.

2011 is almost upon us. I never make new year's resolutions. I do, however, make promises to myself. One year I finally learned to swim. Another year I travelled to New Zealand. And then there was the year I left a rather poisonous job situation and made good on a tough promise to myself. I tend to make positive, affirming promises to myself instead of going "I'll give up chocolate!" or "I'll read Ian McEwan's entire back catalogue!".

In 2011 I would like to make things, specifically:

  • Eleven hats. I did the 10 shawls in 2010 challenge which was hugely enjoyable. I need more hats and I'd like to knit some of the current chic hat designs such as Rose Red, the Grand Cloche, Fern Glade and Quincy among others.
  • I'd like to sew myself something wearable. Something which makes me happy every time I wear it.
  • I'd like to try a new craft - thankfully The Life Craft is just around the corner! - such as quilting, sashiko embroidery or paper-making.

Small, attainable goals.

First, though, I need to sleep and through some rest hopefully put the last few weeks into perspective.

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Be There Two O'Clock

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It's a new week. And I completely forgot to write about the highlight of the previous week. Friday night my partner and I had an impulsive dance-a-thon in our living room when we realised that BBC4 was showing footage of Pulp headlining at Glastonbury 1995. When we first met, D. and I initially bonded over our shared love for early to mid-90s British guitar pop (some call it the 'Britpop' era but, really, that name was a media construct). Nowadays that era gets boiled down to "so, were you into Blur or Oasis?" because that was the huge (and nonsensical) story of the day. Did you hum along to Country House by cheeky middle-class Southern chaps Blur or did you bellow along to Cigarettes & Alcohol by authentic working-class northern lads Oasis? People knew who you were by which one you preferred - nevermind that Blur's drummer eventually became a Labour activist/politician and the singer from Oasis now dabbles as a fashion designer.

D. and I pledged our allegiance elsewhere (much to the frustration of a former boss of mine who thought she could pinpoint me by asking the Blur/Oasis question) and we both preferred Pulp and Suede.

Pulp used sparkly pop songs to deliver social commentary via great story-telling.  Suede glamorised working class struggles whilst referencing Byron and Andy Warhol and playing with androgyny. Suede soon descended into cringe-inducing banality (tellingly around the time their guitarist left to pursue other musical interests - he is now a record producer) but I still love their first two albums. Pulp's frontman, the charismatic Jarvis Cocker, now works as a broadcaster for BBC, and Pulp recently reformed to do some UK festival dates in 2011.

William Shatner(!) has done a great(!!) cover version of Pulp's most famous song, Common People, and Nick Cave has turned their anthemic Disco 2000 into something heartbreakingly beautiful. My favourite Pulp album is His'n'Hers from which Do You Remember the First Time? is taken (lyrics obviously NSFW). I cannot believe that song is now 16 years old and I'm in my mid-30s.

Time has been somewhat kinder to Pulp than Suede, but for old time's sake here is Suede doing a cover of The Pretenders' Brass In Pocket, a live version of So Young (still my favourite Suede song - so much gloomy romanticism!), and the awesome The Killing of a Flash Boy which will forever remind me of living in London in the mid-90s. Looking back it is unbelievable they got away with something like this at a multi-corporate awards ceremony or that my mum approved of me loving them so damn much.

So, yes, we danced around the living room in a totally cool mid-90s minimalist way. And it was the absolute highlight of last week.

(And in case you did wonder..)

Pre-Holiday Panic

It has been a week of woe in Casa Bookish. A possible burst water pipe, a plumber missing in action, parcels also missing (prompting a vaguely panicked last-ditch shopping expedition today) and a tonne of other mishaps great and small. To round it all off tonight I accidentally snapped a key-fob made for me by a dear friend. At that point I sat down in the hallway and laughed hysterically. At least my last(?) knitting project of 2010 has turned out nice. My twee winter hat is currently blocking over a plate and I'm actually wearing the matching fingerless gloves as I'm typing this. I love the mitts: they're pretty, wintery, warm and soft. I'm also loving how much colour they mitts and hat provide - this is very much appreciated in a miserable Scottish winter when everything seems to be a shade of grey.

The River Kelvin, December 19, 2010.

I am running behind on everything, though.

I am yet to writing Christmas cards, yet to make some gingerbread cookies to bring with us to the big Christmas family gathering, yet to finish my red cardigan, yet to do all the necessary household chores, yet to conquer the mountain of work I need to do before Christmas, yet to finish re-reading Atwood's Oryx & Crake so I can take The Year of the Flood with me on holiday, and .. oh, I make life so difficult for myself sometimes.

At least I accomplished quite a few things today: paperwork, laundry, xmas shopping, snow-emergency-xmas-dinner-buying, present-wrapping. Check, check, check! I am also rather relieved I decided against handmade presents this year.

Also: I really miss my Danish family and friends because .. well, it's Christmas-time and the season for missing my dear ones.My mother is having a big birthday this Thursday and it is pretty hard that I cannot be there to celebrate her. I knew some things were going to be tough when I decided to move to the UK and this is one of them.

Onwards and upwards. I'll finish some paperwork whilst listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing Christmas songs and I have assorted Christmas candy next to me to help me along and things will work out fine.

Deep breath.

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Canvas

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Preben Andersen Christmas came early this year. I just received this beautiful collographic print in the post. The sender? My artist uncle, Preben Andersen.The photo does not pay it justice as you don't get the wonderful play between print and paper so evident in real life.

I grew up in a working-class family in rural Denmark, but ours was a weird family. Everybody seemed to be creative one way or another. Some of my uncles set up their own 'beat combo' in the mid-1960s which led to much heartache among the local teenage girls. Others became more interested in visual arts and crafts: murals, collages, sculpture, pottery.. Of course my family still obsessed over football results and popular music, but there was a definite and pervasive sense of self-expression and creative exploration which I recognise in myself.

I grew up with paintings on the wall and frequent visits to galleries exhibiting works by members of my family. I inherited a big pile of art history books from my great-grandmother's brother (who had been a farm labourer as well as a painter). I recall one summer when I spent days in my great-grandmother's backyard trying to use a hammer and chisel so I could carve out a sculpture from a cheap piece of concete.

I never knew my upbringing to be different from everybody else - that is, until I started school and other kids did not make their own Christmas decorations, their mums did not knit them jumpers in mad colours, and their parents much preferred reproductions of famous paintings (Monet's water lilies, in particular) to no-name oil paintings by weird uncles. It was a rude awakening but thankfully I did not reject my unusual upbringing. I just .. well, I'm still a crafty, creative, slightly odd person, am I not?

Canvas

I paint too.

Well, I used to paint. I have sold a couple of paintings over the years, never made enough decent paintings to stage a real exhibition and currently I live in a space which does not lend itself to splashing acrylic paint around. I miss it, though I know I am not particularly gifted; I just love colour - one of my first art loves was Wassily Kandinsky unsurprisingly. I am also shacked up with an art school boy who is a creative, slightly oddball and colour-obsessed man. They always say you end up marrying your father - I did not have a father but I had a huge number of creative, slightly oddball, and colour-obsessed uncles. Draw your own conclusions.

Finally, just two quick links to two of my favourite artists/paintings. I grew up with figurative art but I fell in love with abstract art very early on in my life.

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My Big Read

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Every so often I come across a list of 100 books - the result of a BBC project called The Big Read in which the British public was asked about their favourite books. The list is being circulated as part of an ongoing internet meme asking people how many of these books they have read. You know, as though this list is an authoritative and complete list of the best and most important books. It is not. It is filled with recent best-sellers, pop culture phenomena and books people vaguely remember from school. If you are searching for a good reading guide, please consider looking at these lists instead. Warning: these lists are purely aspirational and are filled with dead white men.

However, here is my personal list. It consists of 25 books not on the BBC list.  I consider these books the cornerstones of my reading life and I recommend all of them. One book per author. Feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments section.

  1. Tom Kristensen: Havoc
  2. T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
  3. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
  4. Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own
  5. Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophel & Stella
  6. Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons
  7. Hart Crane: The Bridge
  8. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master & Margarita
  9. Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones
  10. Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
  11. Allen Curnow: Early Days Yet (esp. Landfall in Unknown Seas)
  12. John Cheever: Falconer
  13. Alexander Trocchi: Young Adam
  14. Primo Levi: The Periodic Table
  15. Alasdair Gray: Lanark
  16. Jeanette Winterson: Sexing the Cherry
  17. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale
  18. Keri Hulme: the bone people
  19. Iain Banks: The Bridge
  20. Michel Faber: Under the Skin
  21. Andrew Crumey: Mobius Dick
  22. Jonathan Coe: The House of Sleep
  23. Jan Kjærstad: The Seducer
  24. Cormac McCarthy: The Road
  25. Erna Brodber: Myal

PS. If anybody looking at my list can figure out what to call or how define my taste in books, please let me know. I've tried to come up with a succinct description for years but the closest I have come is "I like small, nasty books".