My digestion and I awake in the wrong hours again last night, and today lowness of spirits at a new low. But we've just nailed the nesting box to the tree in the garden, which feels like a hopeful sort of thing to do. And been round to visit our tenant, and do the annual inspection of the house, as she's now been there a year. All is well there, the damp in the cellar improved by work done by Ultimate Pest Control, and she is not being made redundant (we'd heard of job losses in her company), and has no plans for moving on. Strange to be walking about in our old home though, up the white painted stairs clackety clack, the view from the velux in the spare bedroom...
Yes, and so this means it's a year this week since we moved here. By some distance not the best year of my life, but maybe worth remembering not the worst either.
L came back from Leeds with a present for me - Jo Shapcott's 'Of Mutability', which has just won the Costa prize. Not that that means much to me; I wanted it when it first came out, but book-buying is verboten at the moment. I'm working my way slowly through it, as if walking round a garden, taking in the scene gradually, knowing I can come back and look at this shrub, this tree, this quiet corner seat again later. It is good, strong, moving poetry. I'd like to be inspired.
Next Saturday we're going to a poetry reading in Leeds. I'm at my Personality Development Seminar in Manchester til 2.30, then will get the train all the way back, and on the other way to the second city of the day, where I'll meet L who is returning there to buy the shoes she hesitated over this week... Major treat, as the whole excursion will cost me well over £15, notwithstanding some fab deal like 2 pizzas for £12 at Pizza Express beforehand! We're going to hear George Szirtes, which is very thrilling to me, and lovely Clare Pollard, who was one of my tutors on my Arvon course in 2009. Also Clare Shaw, one of our local treasures, and two or three others I am not familiar with. I'd like to be inspired, but I'll settle for being moved, excited, entertained, diverted.
(Do tell me if I'm becoming obsessed with money.)
3 comments:
From experience, I can tell you that NOT having money makes one obsess over it far more than having too much. You have to, in order to survive. I'm with you.
They did the Costa Prize announcements on Radio 4, an arts programme (Front Row?) which I don't usually listen to but happened to do so at that moment, so that told me a bit more about 'On Mutability'. Amazon had been trying to flog it to me since I got her 'Tender Taxes' her version of Rilke's French poems.
I'm deeply envious about your hearing George Szirtes, he's a bit fab IMO. His blog's really good too, and costs nothing to read. I don't go there as often as I might, as it's something of an embarrassment of riches. I also rather enjoyed seeing him whup Andrew Motion hollow in a special poetry edition of whatever that BBC4 book quiz is I've forgotten. Not that I mind Andrew Motion or anything...
Thrift is no fun when it's obligatory; I so hope you find a way up out of this worrying and lowering time soon...
Hi M - yes, but it gets so boring!!
L - will give full report of George S et al.
And thanks for your ongoing care and concern. Yes, this too shall pass, I know I know.
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