Meanwhile, in Japan ...

Two weeks ago we took the daughter formerly known as Monkey, now known as Monkey sensei, to Terminal 3 at Heathrow and she officially went to live on the other side of the world. She has just finished her first week as a JET teaching assistant in Kawagoe. Like the process of getting into Manchester University it has been long and torturous. Having applied over a year ago she was told back in March that she was on the reserve list, but that if she didn't heard by July she would be unlikely to get a placement this year. Then back in October she got a message telling her she had been 'upgraded' and to expect to travel in November. A huge flurry of activity ensued: many random purchases were made, another trip to London for her visa, much yen was acquired, copious forms were filled in. And the next thing we knew she was gone. 

Look, there's a shrine, just to prove she's really there.

And she eats Japanese food (but they just call it food), and even school dinners too:

And watches Japanese telly (but they just call it telly):

She has a tiny apartment, with a tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, tiny living space ... and this fab cosy sleeping mezzanine:

So, there will be many updates about life in Japan in the coming months ... and years. She might stay. Who's to say how long. I am planning a visit in spring 2025, she gets a holiday in the break at the end of the school year.

Stay safe. Be kind. Try not to miss your daughter too much.

Mount Fuji (from the plane)

The Power

 

'The Power' by Naomi Alderman won the Women's Fiction Prize in 2017. At one point I did a challenge to read all the winners but I have not kept it up in recent years and there are four that I have not read (but probably still will at some point). The Power is a pretty scary book. What might happen if women suddenly find they have the power to inflict pain on others ... will they behave just like men do? It turns out that power does corrupt. A young woman finds she can produce electricity from a mysterious skein organ across her collarbone, and with practice can target and control it. Soon more women can, and younger women can awaken the power in older women. There ensues a fight for control of the human race. Men try to cling to their millennia old position but you can see where it is all going to end. A new religion is born and wars begin. Some women just go mad with their new found freedom. The tale is told in retrospect ... somewhat I suddenly realise, like Handmaid's Tale, but by a man, who has researched and written a book about the period of transformation. His editor suggests he might want to use a woman's name, to add credibility to his narrative. That's all really. So much going on in the story, lots of strong women characters of course, but not lacking in men, and utterly gripping. Fantastical but also utterly believable.

Here Margot is a politician, and has had to pretend that she doesn't have the power. I love the notion of 'constant ease', the idea that having this new strength makes her feel safe.

"Late at night in a part of town that she knows has no surveillance cameras, Margot parks her car, gets out, puts her palm to a lamp post and gives it everything she's got. She just needs to know what she's got under the hood here; she wants to feel what it is. It feels as natural as anything she's ever done, as known and understood as the first time she had sex, as her body saying, Hey, I got this.
All the lights in the road go out: pop, pop, pop. Margot laughs out loud, there in the silent street. She'd be impeached if anyone found out, but then she'd be impeached anyway if anyone knew she could do it at all, so what's the margin? She guns the gas and drives off before the sirens start. She wondered what she'd have done if they'd caught her, and in the asking she knows she has enough left in her skein to stun a man, at least, maybe more - can feel the power sloshing across her collarbone and up and down her arms. The thought makes her laugh again. She finds she's doing that more often now, just laughing. There's a sort of constant ease, as if it's high summer all the time inside her." (p.64)

Stay safe. Be kind. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Library books and not-library books

Like number 17 buses the library books always arrive all at once, so I will have to check out which ones have a reserve queue and read them first. I was handed a sample chapter of Naomi Alderman's new book 'The Future' when I was in Chorlton Bookshop the other week, so I ordered it along with 'The Power', that won the Women's Fiction Prize in 2017.

'Quilt' by Nicholas Royle (who is not the Nicholas Royle who has written several other novels) was bought because I thought from the ambiguous blurb that it might have something to do with quilts. It doesn't. A man coming to terms with the death of his father goes quietly crazy and builds a huge aquarium in the downstairs of the father's now empty house ... to house rays. They require a very specialist environment and he goes to a great deal of trouble and expense. Weird and disconcerting as he behaves as if it were all totally normal for the people at the wake to have to move around this huge tank in the middle of the dining room.  Not quite sure how I felt about it. Just a very unusual story.

'A Widow for a Year' by John Irving again suffered from the fact that it was not Owen Meany, which I loved so much and nothing else I have read by him has quite measured up to it. What I did like very much about it is that it is not about one person. All the characters in it seem equally significant to the story and the relationships between them and their own individual story arcs combine to create something very engaging. Eddie spends his life pining for Marion. Ruth spends her life pretending that she is not pining for Marion. Ted is an arsehole. I loved Harry and I sympathised with Marion's decision. And the whole book is somehow overshadowed by the lingering legacy of death of the two sons. The empty spaces where the photographs had been are this huge glaring symbol of the sense of loss that people struggle to cope with. A book very much about the human condition. And who the hell would publish children's stories that are so fucking scary. 

'The Zoo of the New' has been a lovely large anthology of poems edited by Nick Laird and Don Paterson. It covers a few hundred years (so a lot of poetry) and mixes up old favourites with undiscovered gems. I stated off reading them all, as I often do and then began to flick through and pick and choose. I still managed to pick out lots that I enjoyed so now I'll have to find just one ...

Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-grey, curled-upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,

like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.

That's all.

I mention this in the same way

that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,

so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Stay safe. Be kind. Look for the good parts.

Pre-Christmas post - postage and scams

These old postage stamps are now no longer any good for posting letters. If you use them your item will be surcharged. If you have some they can be swapped for the new bar-coded stamps. If you buy postage on the website or app please don't guess how much your item weighs or measures, if you underestimate your item will possibly be surcharged. Be aware there are lots of fake stamps out there ... the main clue is the price, you are not getting a bargain to send your Christmas cards, you are getting worthless bits of sticky paper.

Beware. It's nearly Crimbo time so the scammers are going to be out in force. I have had several people in recently with messages about missed deliveries. Beware of any message that does not include a tracking number. If you are expecting a package check with any dispatch confirmation you might have been sent that will provide tracking information. Messages might refer to a specific delivery company or might be vague. Some messages include a delivery driver's name in order to seem more authentic. Any message that asks for money outright is a scam. I don't know about other companies but Royal Mail never asks for payment for redelivery. Some ask for a very nominal sum, this is because it is your bank details they are after. If you click any link or supply details to any scam website, contact your bank immediately. The Royal Mail website has lots of examples of scam texts and emails:

Enjoy your Christmas preparations, I'll be back in a few weeks with my annual posting advice.

Stay informed. Be cautious. Delete that scam message.

The Hero of this Book

 

Elizabeth McCracken is a novelist, not a memoirist, but I found her firstly in 'An Exact Replica ...' nearly a decade ago, swiftly followed by 'The Giant's House'. 'The Hero of This Book' is a novelisation of her relationship with her extraordinary mother.  In the story the narrator retraces some of her final times spent with her mother, and navigates the grief of losing a much loved parent. There was so much to love about this book, so here come a bunch of quotes, because the story reflects thoughtfully on loss, parents and life in general. This first one I liked, because it makes a distinction about different kinds of loss:

"Condoling friends used the words grief and mourning. But neither was what I felt. All my life I'd heard people use those words to discuss the ordinary deaths of elderly people - or, worse, elderly animals - and (I am hard-hearted) I found them melodramatic. Those old people and dogs were never going to be immortal. Grief, as I understood it - grief and I were acquainted - is the kind of loss that sets you on fire as your struggle to put it out. My mother's death hadn't changed my mind. I just missed her. I hated to see her go. But she's had a sweet end, or so I kept telling people, though who was I to speak for my mother? She'd hate that, my opinion about her experience. It was sweet for her family, at home with hospice nurses and cats, and friends around the bed, at the time - 2018 -  when you couldn't count on a sweet end but it wasn't impossible." (p.5)

What her mother didn't approve of:

"I took her hand. I did this without permission. My mother was not a hand-holder. I sat by her bed. I said, 'I'm sorry this happened to you.' Without permission. I found her dear in her reduced state. I called her honey. I kissed her hello and goodbye. I can't imagine she approved of any of it.
Not this, either: typing sentences about her, calling her only my mother, as though that were her most important identity. 'I don't approve,' she said, of Barbie dolls, and certain flavors of bagels, and all bagels cut in half, and eating anything but the traditional pies on Thanksgiving; she disapproved of fiction written specifically for young adults (she believed they should be reading William Saroyan) and tutus on small girls. She enjoyed being a crank." (p.62-3)

This lovely interaction in a corner shop:

"I thought about buying cigarettes - I smoke sometimes when I travel - but they were kept behind doors, so you couldn't look at brands and then say casually 'Silk cut, please.' You had to be a serious smoker with a plan, and I wasn't. Years before I'd been a devotee of the English ten-pack; a lovely thing, to be able to buy just ten cigarettes at a time. Like my father before me, I fooled myself when it came to bad behaviour. I worried that the young woman behind the store counter wouldn't like me if I asked. For anything large, I don't worry about judgement. Only for the cigarettes, the 10:30am prosecco. Only going on a Ferris wheel by myself, alone and middle-aged. She had a pretty, lupine face.
I pretended I didn't speak the language, put my sandwich and brownie on the counter, and paid in coins, which I counted out as though I were unfamiliar with the notion of money. I tried to look worthy of kindness." (p.92)

And the trials of old age, to be resisted at all costs:

"But her and my mother knew: When you're old, safety is overrated. Safety is the bossy Irish lady, who is, after all, your employee, taking away your wineglass, saying, 'That's enough, that's enough now, that's enough now, darlin'.' Safety puts you in a nursing home and turns you over regularly so that you do not die in your sleep. You could be kept for years if you weren't careful , like a roped-off chair in a museum that nobody is allowed to sit in, which makes it only something shaped like a chair. Watch out for safety. It will make you no longer yourself, only an object shaped that way." (128-9)

The narrator has a lovely visit to London, relishing doing things alone. Relishing things she might not have done with her mother. Missing her mother, but enjoying her activities while thinking how she had loved doing them with her mother, recalling her mother's exuberant enjoyment of life.

It's a story, it's not a memoire about Elizabeth's mother, but I hope it nearly is. 

Stay safe. Be kind. Mum's are the best.

October Flowers

 

I chopped down a load of stuff in the garden a week or so ago, and just left it in a huge heap hoping it might dry off or something. It is all still a mess. But I popped outside just now to see what has been going on and found all sorts of delights. Above, a sunflower in with the plum tree.

Below, the miniature rose decided it was warm enough to put out some fresh blooms:

The persicara flowers on and on since July:

The morning glory was a disappointment all summer, growing huge and attaching itself to the honeysuckle but no flowers ... and then suddenly a few weeks ago a fabulous display of bright blue ... delightful:

Some random borage self seeded in one of the pots, it remains one of my favourites:

Indoors: I had left a couple of basil plants on the outside kitchen window sill (just to see how they would do) and I had bought one inside to use recently and now it's decided to flower too:

And the lemon pips that Dunk saved for me have all sprouted and now I have 3 tiny lemon trees:

And I totally forgot to mention that when I chopped down the *outside* cucamelon plant I was astonished to find it had fruited ... a dozen cucamelons ... I call that a win.

Stay safe. Be kind. Get another compost bin because it's amazing how much waste 20 square metres of concrete can produce.

A Guest is a Gift from God

Is a month long enough to have a half written blog post waiting around? Probably. So I will also tag on the end a list of the others that have also been read in the last month since I went to Devon.

'Elena Knows' by Claudia Piñeiro is not a detective novel. I keep reading that she is known for this genre, and while a death occurs and police are involved that is not what this book is about at all. Unless, I suppose, it is an investigation into a mother/daughter relationship. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize last year, probably how it appeared on my radar. Elena and her daughter Rita seem to have developed ones of those bickery but can't imagine life without you kind of relationships. We jump into their lives in the moments after Rita is found hanging in the church belfry and Elena insists that she did not commit suicide. She can't get the police to take her seriously, despite her repeated pestering, though the local detective placates the grieving mother by continuing to meet her and listen to her growing list of suspects. The main problem is that Elena has Parkinson's disease, and is incapacitated to a significant extent, and so realises she is going to need help with her investigation. There is only one person she can ask, who she feels owes Rita something, and the book follows her struggle to get to this person.

"Mum, enough, she said and she stood up, walked over to the stove, turned the flame to maximum, and set the pamphlets on fire. When the flame was about to burn her hand she let them fall, the charred pages fluttered to the green tile floor, landing beside the uncooked pieces of pasta that her mother had spilled.

Rita stood motionless watching the paper as it blazed, cracked, and danced until it changed colour, melted away, turned to ashes, and finally, went to the place that fire goes when it burns out." 

She despises Roberto, Rita's boyfriend, and his mother Mimi; here she is, under protest, having some beauty treatment, because Rita is disgusted by her hairy chin.

"Mimi said, your feet are a disaster, how do you even wear sandals with those heels? I just put them on, she answered, or Rita does it for me when I can't. At least put some lotion on them at night, Elena, that helps with the roughness. And even though Elena showed no concern for the roughness of her heels, Mimi said, I'm going to send you some calendula cream with Roberto. It'll just go to waste, Elena thought, because she wasn't willing to add any more chores to the unending list of daily challenges: walking, eating, going to the bathroom, lying down, standing up, sitting in a chair, getting up from a chair, taking a pill that won't go down her throat because her head can't tip back, drinking from a straw, breathing. No, she definitely wasn't going to put calendula cream on her heels." (p.98-99)

The pain and struggle she goes through to find out what really happened tells you more about her relationship with Rita than all the bickering. I liked her, she was so lacking in self-pity.

'Resistance' by Anita Shreve was a typical Anita Shreve picked up at Claire's house. I went through a bit of an Anita Shreve phase some years ago and loved her small town america stories. This one is set during World War Two however and concerns a shot down airman rescued by the French resistance. Lovely, atmospheric, and without the predictable ending, which was nice.

'Hard by a Great Forest' by Leo Vardiashvili, was won in a Caboodle competition and is not actually published until next year. Written by a Georgian writer about the war that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union and the subsequent exodus of the family concerned. It is a part of the world that I know little about and it was a real eye-opener. Forced to make hard choices and haunted by the people they left behind, many years after their departure Irakli returns to Tbilisi on unfinished business. When he vanishes both his sons follow in a desperate search to find the truth. Well worth looking out for.

Quote from near the end:

"But then I remember one night from my childhood. I was in a bed, all alone in an unfamiliar bedroom. We must have been visiting someone. Pools of darkness filled the corners of the room - perfect hiding places for some other family's monsters. I kept my eyes open owl-wide. There was no way I'd sleep.

Irakli appeared in the doorway, haloed by cigarette smoke and lamplight from the other room. He came and sat down, shifting the bed with his weight. He didn't say much, and what he did say I can't recall. Vague words of comfort. Faint smell of tobacco and wine on his breath.

He put a hand on my chest. And finally, I slept.

Laid out on the lumpy wet forest floor, I try to feel the weight of my father's hand on my chest." (p.216)

'Lonely Castle in the Mirror' by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel, was pressed on my by Monkey because she wanted someone to discuss it with. I was confused, because I thought it was going to have more fantasy element, but it turned out to be a bunch of lonely teenagers learning about real friendship via a magical mirror world. Not my usual kind of thing but we had some interesting chats about it anyway.

'Wild Things' by Laura Kay was a lovely comfort read for me. El decides to have a year of doing scary things. But then suddenly she and a bunch of friends buy a house together when one of them breaks up with a girlfriend and is going to abandon their plans. It's all very cosy about them getting to know the locals and making their house and garden into a home. The main character faces her fears and has some personal growth, that kind of sentimental stuff. Sappy and heartfelt. I like one of these occasionally.

Currently reading 'A Widow for a Year' by John Irving, and not sure how I feel about it. Life a little in flux at the moment and struggling to hold it together. Stay safe. Be kind.

Post script: 

'A Lost Lady' by Willa Cather, picked up in the charity shop on the basis of having enjoyed My Antonia, was a small story of a woman's vulnerability. A young boy watches and idolises a local beauty, watching as her life's fortunes change, feeling both protective and often angry at her poor choices. While it was interesting it was mostly as a study of patronising misogyny: Marian fails to live up to to Niel's idea of what a woman should be and how she should behave.