Amanda Larkman's Blog: Middle-Aged Warrior, page 5
August 21, 2020
August Ramblings, Reviews and Recommendations
Oh dear, it’s the tail end of the summer holidays and I am now staring down the barrel of the gun that is the start of term. In many ways I am really looking forward to it – the main one being I don’t think I can stay in the same house as my beloved family any longer.
Of course I love them, ADORE them in fact! Would jump in front of a BUS for them if the occasion demanded. But… Jeez. They sure can be hard work sometimes.
Without school to distract them (or feed them) I am washing clothes every day, replacing the contents of the fridge every other day, and spending a fortune on pocket money so they can go into town to while away a few hours buying things like bubble tea.
I have also discovered that the swines have learned how to cook my precious Amazon noodles (read all about my addiction here) so I have run out! Damn their eyes. For years I have got away with hiding them on a top shelf, relying on height and the fact they didn’t know how to cook or use the hob. My secret stock stayed secret. But now Son is taller than me (able to reach the shelf) and permanently hungry (an urge that will drive him to extreme measures, including working out how to cook), he has ravaged through them all.
The good news is I am finding great joy in Tik Tok. Yes I know it’s for the young ‘uns, but this woman has changed my life. In my old age, I take great satisfaction in things being tidy, neat and uncluttered and the towel cupboard has been a huge bug bear of mine. (Bear with me)
Daughter will only wear a towel once and then put it in the laundry basket. Son uses four towels every time he showers. My towel cupboard looks like some poor animal who has had its innards dragged out of its stomach, left to trail across the floor.
Well… no longer! This new Tik Tok hack has transformed my towel cupboard into serried ranks of the most gorgeous little sausages, and the children seem reluctant to disturb their perfection. Result! I can also get loads more towels in there! Yay! Have a look…. (Her account is filled with brilliant cleaning tips – yes I know I’m sad. I used to be in a rock band, don’t you know. What happened to me!?)
From @vaneamaro91 Her cleaning account is a must see!
[image error]My towel cupboard filling up with neat little sausages!
While looking through endless Tik Tok videos I came across this really lovely trend where people recreate photos from when they were younger. I loved it, and managed to persuade Son he loved the idea too. (Daughter is going through her ‘you take my picture I lose my soul’ phase).
We just visited my parents, which was lovely as we hadn’t seen them since January, and Son persuaded my dear old 80 year old Dad and my lovely Mum to do this videos. What do you think?
Son and Dad
Son and Mum
Visiting Mum and Dad also meant we could go SHOPPING! There is a great outlet shop near them and we all went a bit mad. We hadn’t been to ANY shops except for grocery stores and pharmacies for FIVE MONTHS! It doesn’t seem possible it’s been so long.
So there we were, four country bumpkins out on the town, cards clutched in hands, masks covering our faces. We skittered away whenever anyone came near and were very nervous but it was a GREAT SUCCESS.
Son got a variety of sporting outfits, Daughter looked utterly ravishing in everything she tried on – which was irritating to the extreme – and Rob got some trainers.
We trailed around a million shops before the family declared themselves satisfied. I then refused to leave until I got something for me. And this is what I found. Isn’t it gorgeous? Michael Kors and HALF PRICE.
[image error]I was going to show a photo of me wearing it, but was so horrified by my gnarly old skin I thought it would be better to photograph it in the box
We then went to see Rob’s Mum who has had to cope with Lockdown all on her own since her husband – my lovely father-in-law – died. She was in good spirits and it was great to see her, I particularly enjoyed her enormous roast dinners. Back to low-carb on Monday… (The holidays have passed very quickly, I meant to get back on the diet six weeks ago. I now have two weeks left to knock off that Lockdown stone.)
On the way to see my Mum and Dad we managed to get caught in the traffic caused by the M25 flooding. Rather than the two and a half hours it usually takes we spent SEVEN HOURS on the motorway. We could have flown to Spain and back in that time. After the 35 degree heat the only good thing was we had air conditioning.
It was therefore with some trepidation we set off from there to Rob’s Mum. We were right to be nervous. Within ten minutes on the road someone stopped abruptly for no reason and we narrowly avoided crashing into them. Then, as we were speeding along at about 70 mph, an enormous pigeon appeared out of nowhere and slammed, face first, into the car, making me scream at the top of my lungs. This made the children shriek in shock and Rob bellowed at us all to shut up.
Here is its imprint.
[image error]You can just make out the poor pigeon’s spread wings as it tried to avoid us
Heart hammering with terror I kept yelling at Rob. ‘That’s two bad things! We need to smash a jam jar or something!’
‘What?’ he replied in irritation, straining to see if the pigeon was still plastered over the side of the car.
‘We need to break something otherwise a third bad thing will happen.’ I gibbered, searching in the glove compartment. Eventually I found a pencil and snapped it in half, thus keeping us all safe for the rest of our journey.
Meanwhile, writing has taken a bit of a step back as I finished the audio version of my book. I also ran a competition to win a paperback version of my book and it was so nice to see how pleased the winners were when they got their copies. Recording and editing the audio version was hell on earth and took over fifty hours but at least it is now done. I now need to get on with my short story collection.
A friend of mine is an Artist and I sent her a story I wrote called ‘Pyotr and Vika’ about a homeless violin player in Moscow. I asked if she wouldn’t mind doing an illustration for it and she sent me this first draft. I absolutely love it – what do you think?
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I was also over the moon to receive my very first video review by a YouTuber called MadWitch. I Have a look – I was so chuffed with this I made my parents sit in front of their smart TV to watch it. They were really proud, bless them, but I suspect they don’t understand YouTube and thought it was an extract from Newsnight on the BBC or something. But still, Telly is Telly isn’t it?
MadWitch’s review of my book ‘The Woman and the Witch’ – still available on Amazon!
Reviews and Recommendations
I’ve been reading loads over the holiday, which has been bliss. You can follow my reviews on Good Reads – it should be a link somewhere next to this post.
If you read one thing this summer read this. You know how much I love Lisa Jewell, and this latest one of hers didn’t disappoint.
Ohhhh I loved this book so much it HURT! As I said in my Good Reads review, this book should be used in writing classes. Do go and have a read, it’s so compelling and unputdownable. You won’t regret it – Lisa Jewell is a master craftswoman. If you haven’t read any of her work you have a whole shelf of incredible books waiting for you.
I have also stumbled across two TV programmes which we are all enjoying as a family. This is so rare I can’t tell you. For the first time since the children were little, we all sit together to watch these two shows. They are both warm and funny – do check them out and let me know what you think.
‘Ghosts’ is brilliant. A new series is coming out this year. I only discovered it this month and had no idea it existed. It’s always good when you discover a new programme and you can watch the whole season in one go.
Alison Cooper is excellent, in particular, but the whole cast is wonderful, many of them drawn from the stars of the hilarious ‘Horrible Histories’.
This is on Apple TV and if you can get hold of it do have a watch. It’s sweet and has plenty of laugh out loud moments. Son, Daughter, Rob and I all loved it and binged the first four episodes in one evening.
I looked it up because it is created by Bill Lawrence who created ‘Scrubs’ an excellent, excellent show from the early 2000s. You can re-watch it on All 4 and I recommend you do.
Talking of ‘Scrubs’, over Lockdown the two stars of the show, Zach Braff and Donald Faison, started doing a podcast, talking about each episode of the show. It’s very funny and I love the chemistry between them. It’s called ‘Fake Doctors Real Friends’ and well worth a listen.
214: My Brother, My Keeper
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Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald
On this week's episode, Turk invites his old brother to town to help convince Carla she should say yes to his proposal. In the real world, Zach and Donald discuss WAP, the best movie endings, and that time Donald sang Mary Poppins with Dick Van Dyke on the Scrubs set.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers
214: My Brother, My Keeper
01:31:03
213: My Philosophy
01:31:58
212: My New Old Friend w/ Bill Lawrence
02:01:39
211: My Sex Buddy
01:24:27
210: My Monster
01:17:26
Finally I can’t recommend a Podcast without giving another plug for the UTTERLY MAGNIFICENT ‘Older and Wider’ Podcast with Jenny Eclair and Judith Holder. Please, Please sign up to this. You won’t regret it.
Ep 78. The one with the trip up North, the pork chops and a pair of dungarees
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Older and Wider Podcast
This week Jenny and Judith catch up on what they have been up to the last couple of weeks – Jenny has visited her Mum and Judith as been having car wash troubles – with Poppy in toe!
Email the show olderwiderpod@gmail.com
Follow the show on Instagram @olderwiderpodcast
Ep 78. The one with the trip up North, the pork chops and a pair of dungarees
45:48
Ep 77. The one with the Q&A
43:56
Ep 76. The one with the wet holiday, Judith's Birthday and some bbq'd squid
43:36
The one with a short message from Judith and a Poppy the Puppy update
05:22
Ep 75 – The one with the snore law, the arrival of Poppy and a cooking accident.
40:23
Sorry I rambled on for so long! I hope you are all keeping well and safe.
Finally, another plug for my book! Do please have a look and let me know if you like it.
July 30, 2020
Coming out of Lockdown
So after months of teaching online and not being able to get shopping delivered, we are out of lockdown! I’m back at school working out how we are going to get everyone back in as safely as possible.
So how are you? How have things been? I hope you are all safe and well. Rob has loved every minute of Lockdown and today was the first time he went out of the house and into town.
‘Wear a mask,’ I said. ‘Most people wear them around the streets as well as shops. You’ll feel safer and probably less anxious with a mask on, especially after so many months not leaving the house.’
‘Nah. Won’t need one. I’ll be fine. I’ll look stupid in a mask, nobody else will wear them outside of the shops.’
‘Yes there are,’ I reply – having ventured out of the house into town. ‘Wear a mask!’
‘No, not going to.’
Four hours later Rob returns. ‘I wish I’d worn a mask. Loads of people in town were wearing one.’
!!!!!!
I am always right, I don’t know why nobody else knows this.
So how has the Warrior household changed? Not that much, to be honest. Daughter began lockdown playing with barbies and ended it by packing her barbies away and spending all her birthday money on My Chemical Romance merchandise.
She HATED online learning. I feel for all the dyslexic kids out there, being out of school was not healthy for them at all.
Dog, after her sojourn wooing the neightbour’s stud dogs, looking for a good time, has calmed down and developed a yeast infection in her ears to keep us on our toes. Son has taken on the role of Chief Vet and twice a day dons his surgical gloves and calls for Dog. She slinks towards him, head lowered, before huffing a sigh and lying on his lap, poorly ear proffered upwards to receive the drops.
Dog rotates who she sleeps with every night. She’s not allowed on Rob’s and my bed so she sneaks into the children’s rooms. She is scrupulously fair, alternating between each child. This morning I went in to wake up Son and Dog was lying on the bed, head on the pillow, while poor Son was scrunched up in the corner. ‘This is why I need a double bed!’ he says crossly.
Dog has LOVED having us with her all day every day with lots of lovely walks in the country. This is Dog’s happy face.
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Here is another picture of my very happy Dog but I am less pleased with it as she is happy because, two hours after an expensive groom, she suddenly remembered a bone she’d buried about two years ago. She THOUGHT she may have buried it in our flower bed but wasn’t sure. This is what happened after she’d spent some time checking.
[image error]
It may not be clear in this picture, but all over her head mud was just MATTED into her fur. It was thick with dust and earth. It makes her look like a different dog.
The Dreaded Exercise
When lockdown started Rob and I did really well. For at least a couple of months we exercised every other day, did weights, did Joe Wicks (oh, if only) and felt damned smug with ourselves.
Roll on half term and it wasn’t looking so good. My June days consisted of teaching online and eating crisps. No Exercise At All. Oh dear.
All the online stuff I have had to do over the summer term has caused a devastating injury. I have tennis elbow! Except the GP said my version is called ‘Mouse Elbow’ as I have not done anything as energetic as Tennis for quite some time.
I have, however, spent quite a lot of time clicking a mouse with my arm bent, hunched over the computer.
It’s technical term is lateral epicondylitis, which sounds much better than ‘Mouse Elbow’ and it is EXCRUCIATINGLY painful. I can’t lift a kettle, I can’t squeeze shampoo from its bottle, I wake up in the night with the pain when I’ve moved my arm as I’ve slept.
My entire family refuse to take it seriously, even when I send the link to ‘What is lateral epicondylitis?’ to our whats app chat. ‘Mum’s broken her elbow using the computer,’ I hear them laugh, mockingly, to their friends.
The Doc says it can take a year to heal and there’s nothing I can do. It is getting a little better but, Good Lord, what a stupid and horrible injury. I have to wear an elbow support and when people ask I’ve decided to tell them I injured it whilst abseiling down the cliffs of Dover.
So with my stupid sore elbow and months of no exercise except opening crisps packets, I was dreading last Tuesday as that was the day we were booked back in with our trainer, Zelda the warrior gym woman. We had our session outside and my heart thumped as we approached her. I managed to get my pulse up to 130 before we’d even started. Would I have a heart attack and die? Would I pull something terrible after so much inaction?
Actually, it was OK. I suspect she was going easy on us, but at least we got back into the swing of things. So don’t ever be put off if you haven’t exercised for a while. One thing left me well chuffed. As we left the gym I asked about classes, saying ‘I should go to the over-50 aerobics, but I refuse to accept that I am old enough, even though I am now 51.’
And Zelda replied, ‘you’d probably find it too easy anyway.’
‘YOU’D PROBABLY FIND IT TOO EASY ANYWAY!’
Ha!!! Woo hoo!! Me! Me who had a resting pulse of 92 four years ago. Me who carried aspirin whenever I walked up the stairs in case I had a stroke.
Let’s just look at that again.. ‘YOU’D PROBABLY FIND IT TOO EASY ANYWAY!’
I danced back to the car until Rob pointed to the people turning up for the over 50 class and they were all in their 70’s.
‘I’m still chuffed though.
Books and Writing
My book is still selling and is up to 31 five stars and one four star – I’m so happy that people are enjoying it. It has cheered me up because EVERY SINGLE writing competition I have entered has come to nothing, which is always disheartening.
What is also disheartening is my recording for my audible book. I’ve had a few lovely people ask me if my book is on Audible and I thought, why not? It’s the holidays, may as well have a go.
After exhausting levels of research (google and wikipedia) I set up a studio in my bedroom and got cracking. The sound quality is fine, it turns out the problem is me.
I have two narrators in my story, Angie and Frieda. Frieda is cross, posh and very old. Angie is jolly and enthusiastic. I tried to act out the narration refelcting those characters.
I was quite proud of myself until I played it back to my family. Listening to my dramatic reading as Frieda son and daughter laughed so hard I couldn’t make out their mocking words.
I then played Angie’s narrative to Rob and his response was, ‘Gor Blimey, Mary Poppins!’
So my Audible book is made up of a Dick Van Dyke version of a cockney and a ‘mad old bint auditioning for the role of Lady Macbeth in an Am Dram production in the village hall’.’
Perfect!
Talking of books, you must, must check out this one. As I said in my review on Good Reads, this is probably the most well written book I have read this year. Do give it a go, especially if you like compellingly written psychological tales in the vein of’The Turn of the Screw’. ‘Magpie Lane’ by Lucy Atkins. I need to now find everything else she has written.
I am running a competition on my author Facebook page, have a look. I’ve asked people to like and share my post to be in with a chance to win a free copy of my book in Paperback. The link to my Facebook page should be somewhere on the page you’re looking at but I’m not sure where. (Or you can click here)
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Now I must go into town with Daughter, for whom life is apparently not worth living unless I get her a Krispy Kreme Doughnut. She is also extremely keen on buying an electric guitar and she is currently bidding on one on eBay using her pocket money. It comes with free amp. Wish me luck, I suspect things are going to get very loud in the future.
July 2, 2020
Summer Reads 2020
Please forgive a little plug before I start. My book ‘The Woman and the Witch’ came out in April 2020. In that time I am UTTERLY ASTONISHED to say I have – at the moment of writing – got twenty-five FIVE STAR REVIEWS! Woo hoo! Hooray! Hoorah! Etc
I’m so happy I can’t tell you. I’ve even had people go to my author Facebook to say how much they are loving the book. So, so utterly wonderful to hear. Thank you to everyone who has written and commented and reviewed.
You are going to get a bit of an exclusive here because as a thank you to following my blog you are going to be the first to know that from Sunday 5th July you will have a 7 day chance to get my book for a countdown deal of 99p. So if you haven’t read it yet, now’s your chance!
Here is a link
I have been very busy at work, albeit online, so haven’t had any chance to write anything. I am hoping to work over the summer holidays on a collection of short stories to publish in the Autumn, so watch this space.
If you did enjoy my novel you make like to know that Frieda and Angie are refusing to leave my head and a couple of the short stories will feature them, so have a look if you would like to see what happened next. (Or maybe before!) There should also be an audiobook version of the novel coming soon.
Something I really love about the summer holidays is a chance to get stuck into some good books, so I thought I’d tell you about some of my choices for this year and favourite blockbuster reads of the past.
Oh goodness I loved this book. I have always adored Weiner but went off her over the last few years. I hated ‘Mrs Everything’ so I wouldn’t recommend that.
But ‘Big Summer’ is lovely. The descriptions of New York and the lives of the rich in Cape Cod were my favourite bits. Not only because it was nice to sigh over what I would do and where I would go if I was fabulously rich, but Weiner makes sure that none of the rich characters are very happy, so you can think – well I may not be rich, but I’m certainly happier than them.
Other books by Weiner I have read and liked include: ‘Good in Bed’, ‘Little Earthquakes’, and ‘In Her Shoes’
I love, love, love Jenny Colgan. I could recommend any of her fantastic books as they are just so lovely and effortlessly escapist. Warning, you may want to move to Scotland because her descriptions are so lyrical and she makes it sound so beautiful and unspoiled. I even crave a glass of Scottish tap water as she makes it sound so delicious.
She manages to have this effect on me even though I know for a fact it always rains in Scotland, if the sun comes out then so do the midges, and the mist usually stops you seeing any views.
Before you read that one do read this one first as ‘Five Hundred Miles From You’ does follow on a little bit from ‘The Bookshop on the Shore’ and you will be pleased to see the characters appearing again.
If you’re looking for a bit of funny, light-hearted, and warm romances with lovely characters and a glorious sense of place you can’t go wrong with Jenny Colgan. You can read anything by her and you won’t fail to be charmed by her sweetness.
Some older books I have enjoyed over my summer holidays…
Liane Moriarty, what a great writer and this book ticks all the boxes for a holiday read: luxury hotel, glamorous destinations – mysterious events! I can’t think of a book of hers I haven’t enjoyed – you must check her out. I did read her sister’s book ‘Gravity is the Thing’ which I did NOT enjoy AT ALL so make sure you look for Liane not Jaclyn.
You can read anything by Liane Moriarty as all her books are fantastic. Particular favourites of mine include: ‘The Husband’s Secret’, ‘What Alice Forgot’, and ‘Truly, Madly, Guilty’.
Alliott can be a bit hit or miss – I loved her earlier books though didn’t enjoy ‘The Husband Next Door’ or ‘A Cornish Summer.’ I did like this one, especially because the main character gets to stay in a beautiful place in France which is my absolute dream! Alliott does have a really annoying thing where her characters keep licking their lips. If you can overlook that, you will find this a nice enjoyable romp.
OK so it’s a little dated now but I LOVED these two books. I must have read them twenty or thirty times. The ultimate escapist reade; you can dive into it and read for hour after glorious hour. Romance/sex, intrigue, glamour, pots of money and horses – what more could anyone ask for?
If you want to have a good wallow around in the golden 70’s, vulgar 80’s, cool 90’s and beyond these books are just the thing. I was delighted to find you could get both in one go for my kindle. I adore Jilly Cooper – the Queen of escapism.
This was the only book I have read that actually does deserve its description of ‘the next Jilly Cooper’. I am not very fond of Fiona Walker’s most recent books, but this was one of her first and is absolutely first class holiday reading.
It follows Tash French on a holiday in France and it has a very Cooperish feel – lots of laughs and ridiculous characters and (my number one thing for summer reading) lots of rich, glamourous characters and high class settings.
This might seem an odd choice compared to the other, highly escapist recommendations, but I read it on holiday by a swimming pool in the sun (those were the days!) and reading of this poor woman’s struggles with cold, sheep and the weather in the beautiful but often unforgiving Yorkshire countryside made me appreciate the sun and sea twice as much.
Have a look – the whole series is really good and I take my hat off to her for managing sheep as well as about a million children.
On my ‘To Read’ list for this summer
Do have a look on Good Reads – I’ve been trying to review books whenever I finish them so you can find more there. Let me know your top tips for summer escapism – I’d love to hear any recommendations to take me away from the UK through a book as we ain’t going anywhere this summer!
Happy reading!
PS I may get a % if you click on these links but I think my account has now been closed due to no links being clicked!
June 2, 2020
I’m Just So ANGRY!
I’m angry about a lot of things at the moment. Every day we are faced with more things that make us sad, bewildered, and angry. I cannot believe the scenes I am seeing in America, I can’t believe how lightly young people (and politicians?) in the UK seem to be taking the Lockdown. How have we got the highest death rate in Europe?! I am also sick and tired of seeing people in positions of power abuse their roles for selfish reasons.
Germain Greer once wrote it was ‘time to get angry again‘ and she was right. She was reminding us that women were still struggling, powerless and abused all over the world. But there is so much else to be angry about. The damage we do to our planet, the appalling treatment of minorities, the double standards where important jobs are underpaid, when footballers earn millions.
‘Go ask Ronaldo how to cure Corana,’ I watched a medical specialist say, ‘you pay him over a hundred times what you paid me.’
As humans we have to get angry when faced with injustice, or poverty, or abuse. Anger can be clean and powerful, and an agent for change. But what I keep seeing on the news is something that is destructive, and divisive, and it breaks my heart.
I don’t know what the solution is; I’ve lived long enough to see terrible injustice, but it never seems to change. How long do we have to wait until we no longer need to be angry?
Impotent fury is the worst. It is terrible watching the news and seeing things are so wrong and not being able to do anything about it. But you can. Use your vote, people. Or stand to be elected yourself. Do something.
As a middle-aged woman I have been angry plenty of times. Not just at great big social issues, but the dishwasher not being emptied. I could power a country if they could harness the energy created by my rage. I have written about it far too often, I now realise.
So I can’t solve the problems of the world, but hopefully we can look together at the funny side of anger. The times when you know you are being stupid but the rage still bubbles. I connected with a great group of friends on what made out blood boil. Here are some of the stories.
Stephen Fry once wrote a piece called ‘Sock Fury‘ in which he described the incandescent fury engendered by losing one of his favourite socks. At the time of reading it I was young, single and childless and I found it very funny. Now, married, aged, and with teenagers, I am haunted by his words.
I’m sure I never used to get this angry. Where does all this rage come from? What particularly worries me is what worried Fry; it’s not just things like injustice, or world poverty or political dirty dealing that make me cross, it’s trivial things like not being able to find my phone in my bag when I know it’s in there – I can hear the damn thing ringing. Whenever my mother-in-law comes to stay she turns the kettle and toaster off at the wall. Yes I know it’s sensible and ensures we won’t all burn in our beds, but it drives me absolutely mad when, after waiting for ten minutes, I find the water un-boiled and the bread still bread.
This is the group of incidents I class as the yes-I-KNOW! type of triggers. It also includes how cross I get when the children were young, and laden with shopping and dying for the loo, I discovered that my husband has locked the Yale lock, which means I had to put everything down, wedge my toddler against the wall and tuck my baby under my arm so that I have both hands free to open the bloody door. He thinks I’m being stupid and of course he’s right, security is very important – it’s just that him saying that makes me crosser than ever.
Of course the most annoying situations are the ones when deep down you know it’s actually your fault. Rage that your trousers won’t do up? Shouldn’t have had that third bag of crisps should you? Furious that you can’t find your keys? Well, maybe if you were a bit more organised and put them in the same place you wouldn’t lose them. God how I hate that little smug voice at the back of my head (occasionally sounding a little like my husband) that adds a dash of guilt to irritation which leads to impotent rage – the worst kind.
So, what else makes me angry? Well at the moment the new Facebook layout is annoying as it confuses me. I had to revert to the old layout in order to update my status which took for ever. Now the real reason I’m angry is because deep down I know I shouldn’t be fossiking about on the Internet, I should be making scones, or clearing out the kitchen cupboard which is sticky with spilt syrup. I suspect my husband also knows it’s there, but is hoping he’ll get away with pretending he hasn’t seen it so I have to clear it up. I also know, sadly, that I’m really far too old for Facebook – and that makes me cross too. Oh, and sneezing loads of times and not being able to find a single scrap of tissue paper.
Other irritating things aren’t so much my fault. In the old days when parking your car, people would sometimes give you their ticket as they had a few hours left on them. I used to do it. It gave you a warm feeling in your heart and made everyone feel a little more human. Now all machines make you enter your licence plate number so that you can’t do that any more and you end up paying for a space that may already have been paid for – how mean!
I hate how easyJet’s policy of first come first served to get seated means everyone turns into snarling animals – glaring at others to get out of the way so they can get to the seat first. It makes me so cross when we have yet another rubbish summer – but to whom do I complain?
My husband will confirm how furious I get with mascara adverts. Whenever they come on I yell at the screen. For years I thought my eyelashes were rubbish – nothing like the adverts, no matter what mascara I used. Now I see that not only do they have false eyelashes on (lash inserts used) they also enhance them post-production!! OK, maybe I was a little naive but it infuriates me nonetheless.
A brief survey of friends threw up similar findings. In a matter of hours after posing the question of what drives you mad on Facebook I was inundated with replies including: trying to get bracelets off with one hand… alone; friends pinching food from your plate; people walking too close and too quickly behind you; friends misreading your jokes and getting offended; people who phone you with a weak signal and then shout at you because they can’t hear you; litterbugs; traffic lights; being patronised by your partner when you’re cross in a traffic jam; traffic lights generally; things falling wilfully on the floor because you’ve not balanced them properly and stubbing toes and fingers were all on the list of things that made us see red.
For me, I think a major cause of my anger is having children late. I heard recently that the angriest people in the country were those with small children. I reckon that’s about right. I am An Older Mother – which makes it even worse. This means that I have got used to a selfish lifestyle in which all my desires were (mostly) gratified immediately. Those times when, simultaneously, I’m on the phone to my mother trying to solve her latest IT related emergency; the baby is yelling to be fed; my toddler needs to do a poo and the pasta’s boiling over; I could stand there in the kitchen and just scream. All I want to do is sit on the sofa (alone!) with a good book, cup of tea and a biscuit. I want to be able to go to the loo on my own. I look back longingly on the days when I could sit quietly without a toddler jumping on my head. Now the thing is, having suffered a full term stillbirth and two miscarriages I, more than many, appreciate what a blessing my two beautiful children are, and most of the time I do. It’s just sometimes, and I hate to admit this so I’ll say it quietly: they can be a little bit too much to handle.
The funny thing is when I talk about this with friends we end up hysterical with laughter. We agree how ridiculous (and harmful) it is to get so angry and we resolve to not take ourselves so seriously in future.
So next time something is driving you up the wall and you feel yourself boiling over, take a look at your cross, self-important little face in the mirror… and laugh. I guarantee you’ll look ten years younger and feel ten times better.
May 29, 2020
It all Started With The Jam…
Lockdown kept reminding me of something and I couldn’t think what. Over the past ten weeks in between novel publishing (it’s still out and only two quid!!), teaching, and wrangling the children – well Son – to do their school work, I’ve been cooking. Yes! Proper cooking!
I’ve discovered how amazing pizzas are when you use fresh dough. To begin with I used the frozen stuff from the Pizza Dough Co, which made incredible pizzas. Then when I finally got hold of some yeast I made my own and they were even better!
Then I started reading this book (Big Summer) and loved it SO MUCH, I have set it aside as I am reading it too quickly. I wrote on my Instagram the following.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by @ amanda_larkman on May 25, 2020 at 9:14am PDT
I’m not joking – the descriptions of food were so luscious I could feel my stomach rumbling. If you’ve not come across this book I highly recommend it, it’s perfect summer book reading and I love the character Daphne so much and could have read about her all day but then Weiner drops in a murder and I was gripped even more. I’m reading it too quickly but it is so lovely and so well-written. Have a look!
So let’s get back to my original point – what did Lockdown remind me of? Then I remembered, it was when I was on maternity leave and I had long days with little to do except try and keep my baby alive and safe. I also had the same desire to cook and did things like make jam and pickle onions. Most unlike myself. Well, to be honest, I spent the first year after having my children slightly mad anyway – must be the hormones.
Here are some of the things I have cooked on Lockdown.
[image error]Pizza before[image error]Pizza after![image error]Maple syrup and pecan rolls – not v. successful[image error]Daughter’s cake! – was delicious[image error]Cinammon rolls – trouble is they turned out looking a bit like vaginasCooking!
So this got me thinking and reminded me of the very first blog post I published so very long ago. I thought I’d re-post so you can have a good laugh at how very bad I was – and still am – at cooking. Enjoy!
It All Started With The Jam
Well, actually it all started when I saw a few straggly blackberries hanging on a hedge as I drove back to the cottage. Blackberries! I thought. What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon with your children – blonde heads gilded by the Autumn sun as they bend eagerly over rustic baskets filled with luscious, purple-black fruit – we can make jam! I thought.
An extended shopping expedition was in order. Flushed with excitement, I made my way to Lakeland (my favourite kitchen shop). Imagine my delight! A whole aisle devoted to jam making implements, everything from preserving saucepans to jelly strainers. I also loaded up on those gorgeous jars with the lids that bolt down with a strange wire contraption. (I now know them as the ubiquitous Mason jars) I also chucked into my basket a couple of bottles for making sloe gin (Sloe gin! There must be some sloe bushes? trees? nearby.) And finally, as an afterthought, I picked up the latest WI preserving book with delicious looking pictures on the cover. Big mistake.
So the picking of the blackberries was a disaster. Having worked Son (6) up to a pitch of feverish excitement and having acquired the perfect rustic basket, we set out on a gloriously sunny day to garner our blackberries. I was convinced the best place to go would be the edge of the farmer’s field that joined our garden. Unfortunately for Son I kept forgetting that the long grass, although only just over knee height for me, was hitting Son square in the face. He bore this uncomplainingly for about twenty minutes before roaring to be taken home.
My bright chatter held him off for another ten minutes by which time we’d circumnavigated all the woods round the house before finally coming across one group of brambles directly opposite the front door. Sadly, it was a sorry sight. After much searching Son and I came up with four scrawny berries each which looked pretty rubbish in the basket, nestling as they did against four old leaves and a Cbeebies magazine that Son insisted we take in case we got tired.
Giving up on the blackberries but still determined, I went to the local farm shop and bought so many punnets of strawberries that I had to get one of the lads to help me carry them to the car. ‘Making jam tonight then?’ he asked in amusement as he slammed the boot shut. Driving home I realised that I didn’t have any scales. Too late to buy any but determined, I spent a very hot anxious hour shelling – hullung? – piles of strawberries and trying to work out if they weighed as much as the bag of sugar that I knew weighed 500 grams. That’s an interesting thing; did you know that to make jam you combine ONE KILO of sugar for every kilo of fruit? That’s a lot of sugar.
Anyway, finally made the jam. Am still not really sure why five tonnes of strawberries that filled a whole boot only filled two and a half of my lovely jars, but I was very proud of them nonetheless.
The following weekend I was leafing through the WI book and found a recipe for pickled onions. Eyeing up the rows of jars on the windowsill I was struck by a brainwave – Rob (my husband) loves pickled onions! I’ll make them next.
After buying a 5 kilo bag of pickling onions, again from the local farm shop, I managed to make six jars. The house stank of vinegar – my fingers reeked of onions – and don’t go near the car boot. (Leaving 5 kilos of pickling onions in there for a week or so has left the most peculiar smell that still hasn’t gone away)
I was so proud of my efforts I uploaded pictures of my jam and onions onto my Facebook page. I was shocked at the hoots of derision from friends who aren’t really used to seeing me as anything remotely related to the W.I.
The thing is, they can mock all they like, but I’ve LOVED pottering about in my kitchen making things to be savoured in the winter. I am disgustingly smug that my pickled onions were really crunchy – despite my mother-in-law’s dire warnings that home made pickled onions always went soggy. (The secret is to soak them overnight in salt water, apparently.) OK, so there were some disasters, my first attempt at peaches in brandy looked like mushroom brains in slimy gunge, but the latest lot almost look like the ones in the shops (if you ignore the strange violet caves where the stones were, oh, and the floating bits of peach – don’t know how that happened) I’m really looking forward to having them ‘warmed, and served over ice cream’ as recommended by my reliable guide: Carol Tennant.
I still have a few jars left and will make that blackberry jam even if I have to buy them from the damn farm shop. I’m also still quite keen to make sloe gin (every time I think about it I keep quoting ‘Under Milk Wood), and overheard the postman saying to the neighbour that he had loads of sloes at the bottom of his garden. I’m planning on following him home. Also, I’ve just found an amazing recipe for something called Rumtopf which looks absolutely fantastic. Apparently you have to use a special ceramic jar – I wonder if Lakeland sells them…
May 15, 2020
‘Green Eyes’ Sneak Preview
I’ve been trying to work on my second book and losing hope and energy as work keeps getting in the way!
It’s a very new genre for me. My last book was a kind of fantasy, feminist adventure involving a 100 year old witch and a fat, fifty year old cleaner (very much based on me) and this one is different.
It’s a thriller about a newly married woman who discovers some strange things about her husband. Here is the first chapter, I’d love for some feedback!
Chapter One
He watched her through the glass doors as she entered the concourse. The cold light streamed in from overhead, picking out the flashes of blue in her crow-black hair. She looked nervous; her hands twisted together and he enjoyed seeing her eyes darting about. She’s getting thin, he thought.
Amber leaned against the wall keeping out of the way of the flood of passengers surging towards the overhead screens. Her pulse skipped a little as she searched for Alex. Where was he? He was right behind her as she came through passport control.
It felt odd to be standing on her own. She felt dizzy, as if a prop had been removed – leaving her side exposed. Amber scanned the faces around her again; still no sign of him. She was used to spotting Alex straight away. With his height and great shock of white-blond hair he stood out. But not now. Had he been held up?
Amber swallowed hard as she remembered leaving the hotel with their pile of bags and Alex joking about hiding some weed in his shoes. Surely he wasn’t serious? She gave a sigh and gave her head a shake, imagining her worries splashing onto the ground and disappearing. A trick the grief therapist had suggested, but it hadn’t worked so far.
It was cold. She untangled her coat from the long straps of her handbag and pulled it on, zipping it up and nestling her chin in the furry warmth of the collar. It didn’t seem possible it was nearly a month since she had last worn it. Already the endless days of blue skies and sands bleached by the hot, white, disc of the sun felt like a dream.
Come on, Alex! Amber debated whether to retrace her steps back to passport control then worried she’d miss him so stayed where she was. For the entire honeymoon she and Alex had been entwined, relishing the time they had to concentrate on each other without the distraction of work or real life.
It felt odd not having him within touching distance; she had got used to him being close. To her left gaped the doors leading to the outside. She kept her eyes fixed forward. Memories of her Mum, waving, a beam splitting her face as she welcomed Amber back from school trips and holidays with the girls, studded bullets into Amber’s heart.
How could an empty space feel so solid? These moments were so hard to bear, even though it was almost two years now since… Amber rummaged for her phone. She smiled to see the lock screen light up. Alex grinned at her, somewhere in the New Forest. He was holding up a muddy welly.
Swiping up she clicked the phone off airplane mode for the first time in nearly four weeks. Notifications chattered in so fast she couldn’t read them quickly enough.
‘Hey! I thought we agreed no phones until we got home.’ Alex’s voice breathed in her ear and Amber jumped, shoving her phone back into her bag with a blush of guilt.
‘Where have you been?’ she complained, reaching for him so he wrapped his arms around her. In an instant the noise and chatter of the baggage claim disappeared and Amber lost herself in the clean folds of Alex’s shirt. She pressed her nose against his skin.
‘Come on, babe, the bags will be here any minute. Go and get a trolley.’
With reluctance, Amber peeled herself away and headed for the trolleys. There was a queue and as she waited the exit doors pulled at her eyes again. She ignored them and the emptiness that stood on the other side, and fixed on Alex instead.
He was standing by the baggage carousel, having already found a group of people to entertain. A man with a neat, dark beard threw his head back and laughed as Alex finished his story. Grins leaped from face to face as Alex’s voice grew louder, his gestures more exuberant; he seemed to be re-enacting what looked like an argument with a customs official.
Amber was torn between impatience and indulgence; Alex’s magnetic pull on people drove her crazy. The night they met, he and his best friend Curly had been holding court at the bar. Standing, awkward and slightly distanced from the group she had come with, Amber had envied their easy charm and good-natured banter.
Watching him now, pushing the white-blond hair out of his eyes and laughing his big laugh, Amber felt again the shock that he had sought her out that evening. Not just sought her out, but told her she was beautiful. He’d kept on telling her she was beautiful until here they were, back from their honeymoon after a courtship and marriage so fast it had made her head spin.
The queue moved forward and Amber pulled out the last trolley with a shriek of metal. It had stuck to the fixed bar and she grew hot with embarrassment as she tugged and tugged until it eventually broke free.
Amber rattled across the shining floor to the baggage belts. The group around Alex drifted away leaving him surrounded by suitcases.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
‘I was only gone about ten seconds!’ Amber laughed. ‘You seemed fine.’
Alex hooked his arm around her waist and swooped her back so her hair hung almost to the floor. He bent over and kissed her. Amber, aware they were creating a scene, tried to push Alex away but he kept on, smiling against her mouth as passing old ladies and young mothers clucked and giggled.
‘Come on! Stop it!’ Amber protested. ‘Let’s get home.’ Alex gave her a final lip smacker on the cheek and started chucking their suitcases on the trolley.
‘So, listen, babe, I’ve got something to tell you.’ Alex grabbed Amber’s hand and pulled her along as he steered the trolley towards the exit. Just before they reached the exit he swerved towards the wall, parked the trolley and turned to Amber.
‘OK. Don’t freak out.’
‘What?’ Amber’s stomach dropped. ‘What is it?’ She took a breath but panic still thudded along her veins; her hands tingled.
Alex reached for her hands. ‘Stop it,’ he whispered. ‘It’s nothing frightening. It’s a good thing.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘OK, so I know you wanted me to rent out your gran’s house…’
‘What?’
‘Hang on, listen. The thing is I went to see it and it’s amazing, babe. A great, big, beautiful house.’
‘It’s a wreck!’ Amber protested. Irritation flickered across Alex’s face.
‘But who better to do it up than me and Curly? It’s what we do all day every day, after all.’
‘Curly?’
‘Yeah. We planned a surprise, we’re going to be living in your gran’s place!’ Alex’s face was awash with excitement and a sort of boyish hope.
Amber struggled to take it in. ‘But what about my flat?’
‘We’ll put it on the market, the money can go towards doing up your gran’s place. Me and Curly have got it all worked out, he’s been sending me some brilliant ideas on what to do with the ground floor…’
‘But Alex I love my flat!’ Amber found the words at last. She had used the money her gran had left her for a deposit on a tiny apartment in a modern block. It was only two years old when she bought it and she had loved its view across London, its clean, white walls and immaculate (though small) kitchen and ensuite bathroom.
The thought of living in her gran’s dust-warren of a house filled her with horror. It had four floors and sat on its own in a grim tangle of a garden right next to Wimbledon Common. Amber had always hated going there, it was dark and oppressive with hooded windows that seemed to gaze down in disapproval as she walked up the path to the peeling front door.
Her gran had done nothing to it since her husband died in the late 70’s and the house had grown darker and more dishevelled until it was passed onto her mum and, following her death, onto her.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You told me you were going to sort it all out with the agency as I was busy at work and with the wedding…’ Amber’s trailed off.
‘But don’t you see? It’s the perfect place for us! Curly and I can do it up at weekends and that. You got to remember I’m getting on now…’
‘Don’t be stupid, you’re only thirty-five.’
‘Still, it’s a lot older than you, and I don’t want to leave it too long. I’m a married man now, got to get ready to settle down.’
Amber smiled. His enthusiasm was infectious. She pushed against the cramp of mourning for her pretty flat remembering the curtains and carpet she had chosen with such care, the little bookshelf she had found that fitted so perfectly next to the big window.
‘I’m not very happy about this,’ she managed, wishing she could fight harder against his fait accompli.
Alex’s face softened. ‘I know. It’s a shock. But hopefully a happy one. I can’t wait for you to see it.’
‘What do you mean? We’re going there now? But it’s a dump!’
‘Aha! Well that’s the surprise,’ Alex said, his black eyes sparking. ‘Curly moved in there while we were away, he’s managed to replace one bathroom and has done up the main bedroom. We can hole up there until the work is finished.’ Still talking, Alex touched Amber’s elbow and guided her towards the doors and through to where loved ones, relatives, and taxi drivers held up signs, waiting for the new arrivals.
‘And here he is! The man himself!’
Amber was bewildered as she tried to take everything in. With a rush they were through the doors and she blinked at the sudden blaze of light and clatter of noise. ‘What about my flat?’ she asked again, but Alex was gone, marching ahead to where she could now see Curly was standing at the rail. When he spotted Alex he waved.
He looked grubby, Amber thought with a grimace. She wasn’t keen on Curly, with his chaotic energy and thoughtlessness; an attractive quality perhaps at 19, perhaps, but less so at thirty-five. Alex had made it clear from the start that if she loved him she had to love Curly as they had been friends for years. She had no choice but to put up with him. She gave a tight smile as he pulled her into a hug, trying not to recoil at the musty smell of his long, tangled black hair and the grimy dampness of his denim jacket.
‘Wait!’ he said, tugging Alex so he could join the hug. He held up his phone and beamed into it. ‘Come on, smile, you two!’
Alex sighed. ‘You and your bloody Instagram. Aren’t you a bit old for all of that? How many followers you got – three? Including your Mum?
Curly chuckled. ‘More than you, that’s for sure.’ He uploaded the picture and muttered as he typed. ‘The Newly Weds Return… There, all done. So! How was it? Must have been good as neither of you have got much of a tan.’ He gave a leer and nudged Amber in the ribs. She pushed him away.
Alex laughed and started chatting, so intent on Curly he forgot about the trolley. Amber took hold of it, catching the bag on top that was threatening to fall off. She pressed down a bubble of annoyance. Why was he here? Alex had said they’d get the train back from the airport, take it easy. Now they were hustling towards the multi-story car park, dodging cars, and travellers with their careering trolleys and piles of bags.
‘I can’t remember what floor I’m on,’ Curly said. ‘Hang on, I’ll go and check with the desk.’ He slipped away, brandishing his ticket.
Amber felt exhaustion hit her. They’d been travelling all day and all she wanted to do was crash out with Alex curved tightly against her, the way they always slept.
‘Great to be back, eh?’ Alex turned to her. He looked so happy Amber didn’t have the heart, or the energy, to talk about the flat and the house any more. Maybe he was right, he and Curly were builders, after all.
Alex studied her face. ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing.’
She dozed in the back of the car listening to Alex and Curly talking about the holiday and what had been done to the house. Sleep hung weights on her eyes and she allowed them to close, too shattered to mind how uncomfortable she was, wedged up against the big suitcase on the back seat.
Just as she sank into unconscious she realised Alex and Curly had turned in their seats and were watching her; she was too far gone to wonder why their voices had dropped to whispers.
*
It was dark by the time they drew up outside the house. Getting out of the car Amber stretched her arms above her head pulling the aches out of her cramped back muscles. The cold air was a shock after so many weeks of balmy warmth.
Apart from looking even more dilapidated, the house was as Amber remembered. If Curly had been doing anything over the past four weeks, it hadn’t been on the outside. Ivy had been left to clamber across the face and up to the roof, sending tendrils winding into the gutters.
Amber gazed up as Curly and Alex unloaded the car. She remembered visiting when her Gran was still alive and the ivy hadn’t been so high. She had learned the little round windows in the roof and above the front door were called Oxeyes. Now they were drowned in the dark green ocean of ivy; nothing remained but three, ragged-edged mouths that gasped for breath.
She knew if she looked hard, beyond the rotten wood, the gap-toothed brickwork, and sagging roof, she’d see the fine bones of the house. Turning her back to the front door she could see right across the common; it was very pretty, she acknowledged, but it still gave her the creeps.
Amber longed for car-filled streets, colourful, slick shop fronts, and crowds of people. All this greenery and wet dankness hid all sorts of things. In town you knew where you were, and there was nowhere to hide. No bushes, leaves and trees to shield people who wanted to watch.
‘Amber!’ Alex’s voice made her jump. ‘What are you doing? Come on, let’s get inside, it’s miserable out here.’
Amber moved towards the house, conscious she was stepping into its shadow that stretched towards her. She couldn’t get past the sense of unease that was blocking her throat and making her skin creep.
Alex pulled her to him and the warmth and strength of his arms was comforting. He was all that was important, she told herself, holding onto him. He was all she had. And Curly, she thought with a wry smile as he led them up the steps and into the front hall.
It stank of damp and mould.
‘Like I told you, mate, I’ve only managed to clear out and clean up your room and my room…’
‘Your room?’ Amber asked, surprise.
‘You can’t expect him to come and work on the house for hours and them send him packing back to his bedsit,’ Alex said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. ‘He’s doing us a huge favour, babe, I owe him – big time. This place is going to be a bloody show-stopper when it’s finished.’
Amber looked up at the ceiling which rose three storeys above her. It disappeared into shadows. Cobwebs swung in the corners and she could hear something pattering about.
‘Come on, let me show you your room,’ Curly said with a sweep of his hand indicating the stairs which was littered with wood splinters. ‘I’ve sorted it for you guys so you’ve got somewhere to escape all of the mess.’
Alex took Amber’s hand and they climbed up to the second floor. She had forgotten how huge this place was; how on earth had her grandma coped on her own for as long as she did?
As Alex pointed out the port windows and the mouldings on the ceiling, Amber tried to absorb some of his enthusiasm but it wasn’t easy. She hated old things. In these houses she couldn’t help thinking about all the people who had lived and died in them. Their ghosts hung about her, smelling of dust and neglect.
She listened to Alex as he explained what he wanted to do, the changes he and Curly would put in place. They would knock down walls, and open up boarded over fireplaces. ‘It’s got a huge basement,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait to show it to you. I reckon we could put in a state of the art gym.’
‘But how are we going to pay for all of this?’ Amber said.
Alex waved his hands. ‘Don’t you worry about it. We’ve got some of your mum’s money and I’ve a few ideas up my sleeve.’
Curly nodded. ‘It’ll be lit when it’s all done, Amber, honest.’
‘The trouble with you is you’ve no imagination,’ Alex nuzzled his face into her neck.
‘He’s right, you know,’ Curly said, scratching his mop of hair releasing a drift of what looked like plaster dust. ‘Have a look at this. I’ve got one room done, once you see this I reckon you’ll have a bit more faith.’
They’d arrived at the main bedroom. She took a deep breath. The last time she had stood here was the last time she had visited her gran, sickly and frail, who was sent to hospital soon afterwards. The room had been stifled by great swags of patterned fabric. Everything matched, the counterpane, the curtains, the cushions on the bed. They were covered with the same dark green leaf pattern.
The bed had been big and dark, a heavy wood; her gran had floated on top of it, a tiny, wizened figure dwarfed by the lumps of dark brown furniture that loomed around the room. It had stunk. Amber wrinkled her nose remembering. The strange, sweet smell that puffed from her gran’s body, along with the sting of antiseptic and cheap cleaning fluid, had made her feel sick. She couldn’t wait to get out of there, and now here she was again.
With a flourish, Curly swung open the door. Amber gasped. Everything in it was gone, and the difference was extraordinary. Light filled the room which had been re-plastered and painted white. The patterned carpet had ripped up, exposing the floorboards. All that remained was a white framed, simple bedstead and a pretty dressing table set under the window.
‘What do you think?’ Curly stood by the window, he looked so shy and pleased Amber softened and gave him a hug, despite the whiffiness of his jacket.
‘I love it, Curly. It’s beautiful.’
‘I left it really like, bare, as I thought you could decorate it yourself, you know – put up your fairy lights and that.’
‘What did you do with all of the furniture?’
Curly looked troubled. ‘I dumped it. Alex said that would be OK?’
‘Of course, mate, that’s fine.’ Alex turned to Amber. ‘It was all junk, babe, not worth anything and I know you hated it so we just thought we’d get rid of it.’
‘It’s OK!’ Amber smiled at Alex to reassure him. He looked so worried, bless him, she thought. Seeing the transformed room brought home how hard Curly had worked.
‘It’s lovely. Really, Curly. I’m so pleased with it.’
It was a good job the bedroom was so wonderful as the rest of the house was in utter disarray. The kitchen hadn’t been used for decades and every room was filled with junk. With barely anywhere to sit, let along cook, they decided to walk across the common to the local Indian restaurant and Amber found herself relaxing, enjoying the protection offered by Alex and Curly walking on either side.
Their bulk was reassuring. They were the same height, though Curly was a bit heavier with a belly that Alex – who worked out every day – would never tolerate. They had the same dark eyes, so dark brown to be almost black, but they were more striking on Alex with his blond hair. Curling her arm around Alex’s waist and feeling the quilt of his muscles she marvelled again that he was her husband.
‘OK, babe?’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘How lucky I am to have you,’ she said.
‘Ah no, I’m the lucky one.’
‘Too right!’ snorted Curly. ‘Sad old man like you with a babe like Amber.’
‘Ah thank you, Curly.’ She saw the look on Alex’s face. ‘He’s only joking,’ she said.
‘Ha ha.’ Alex smiled, but the look he cast at Curly was stony.
Crossing back to the house, groaning she’d eaten too much and her stomach was going to burst, Amber giggled. Her blood bubbled with happiness though she was drunk and almost blind with exhaustion. Alex and Curly had swapped outrageous stories about their past and Alex never took his hands from her, twirling her hair around his hand, kissing her, telling Curly how beautiful his new wife was and how happy he was to be married to her.
It had been lovely, and Amber swung Alex’s hand in hers as they walked home. Curly seemed happy playing third wheel but had managed to get the waitress’s phone number.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Alex had said. ‘It’s not like you take care of yourself, I mean look at the state of you. What’s in it for them?’
Curly waggled his tongue obscenely. ‘I’ve got great technique,’ he said making Alex laugh and Amber feel slightly sick. She had seen for herself the spell Curly seemed to cast over women. In the year and a bit she’d known him he’d got through scores of girlfriends, all of them beautiful, all of them trying to domesticate Curly and failing. Amber suspected he was untameable, a wild tom cat.
They were standing outside the front door waiting for Curly to wrestle it open when Amber’s phone rang. The ring tone was distinctive and Alex turned, his face sharp.
‘That her?’ he said.
Amber shrugged, checking the screen. ‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you told me you blocked her number?’
‘I thought I had.’ Amber silenced the call. Again. It was the tenth call she’d received since the plane had landed, along with almost 20 messages.
‘Give it to me,’ he said, taking the phone before Amber knew what he was doing.
He held it up to her face, ‘look at it,’ he said, and the phone unlocked.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting that bitch out of our lives and off your phone,’ he said, swiping through the menus.
‘I can do it, Alex!’ she protested, trying to get the phone back, but he held it out of her reach. ‘There. Done,’ he said in satisfaction, handing it back to her. ‘I’ve deleted all the texts she’s sent as well. You haven’t answered her have you?’ His mouth had thinned into a grim line.
‘Don’t be silly, of course not.’
‘You better not have. She’s out to tear up apart, you know that. I told…’
‘Yes, yes, I know. God’s sake, Alex.’
‘What’s up with you love birds?’ Curly said. He was standing in the doorway.
‘Nothing.’ Alex shouldered past him, leaving Amber on the steps.
May 11, 2020
Book Reviews and an Escaping Dog
It doesn’t seem possible but it is already nearly six weeks since my book went live. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. This is due to the Lockdown, of course, and the days seem to drag and go fast at the same time.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been spending a lot of time staring into the fridge, as well as trying to cope with working online. I’ve also been trying to get some of my next book written, having done quite a lot over the Easter holidays, Unfortunately it turns out I can’t work, plan lessons and deal with my children/laundry/cleaning/cooking etc and write as well.
The ABSOLUTELY AMAZING THING is that I’ve sold copies of my book! ACTUAL REAL LIVE COPIES! I can’t quite get my head around it. AND what is even more incredible is that people have written to say they enjoyed it.
Gosh, it’s like I’ve had a shot of heroin every time I see a nice review pop up on Amazon. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but as of today I have received eleven FIVE STAR REVIEWS!
It is going to be so embarrassing if you’re reading this and you pop over to have a look to find all my reviews have plummeted and I have an average of 1 star. But for now, I am living in the moment. To hear people talking about my characters as living, breathing humans is MIND BOGGLING. And it has also made me realise how much it means to have someone say they like your book.
In fact, it has made me so happy when I get a nice review, I have wanted to pay it forward. I went to Amazon and Goodreads to write some reviews for books I have loved. This whole process has made me realise how important it is to do a review when you love something. It’s so easy to criticise and find fault, and I am a bit ashamed of the number of holidays I have enjoyed, meals I have relished, or books I have loved without leaving any positive feedback.
However, if it goes tits up I do say something, and that’s not right. Of course you should be truthful if things go wrong, but don’t forget to make a point of noting when it goes right too!
For those of you who don’t know, my book ‘The Woman and the Witch’ came out at the beginning of April.
And here are some of my most favourite reviews I’ve seen so far. Don’t these lovely people make it sound marvellous?
A most unusual and interesting book. Loved every minute of it. I will watch for this author.Fabulous read .
May 9, 2020
A Poetry Lesson 5: John Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnet XIV’
This poem gives me the shivers. I always look forward to teaching it and watching my pupils appreciate John Donne’s brilliance as a poet. They also like its violence and rudeness; two qualities which usually appeal to a teenage audience.
If you look up The Metaphysicals in the poetic dictionary they pretty much define this movement as ‘in the style of John Donne’. George Herbert – whose mother was friends with Donne – was a great admirer, and one can see Donne’s influence in a number of Herbert’s poems.
Metaphysical poetry marked a change from the rather formal, courtly poetry of the Elizabethan court. The key features include: the fusion of intellect with emotion, rhythms which reflect natural speech patterns and often a direct and shocking opening – Donne’s rather startlingly anti-semetic poem which begins ‘Spit in my face, you Jewes’ is an example of this.
The Wikipedia entry on John Donne is good and fairly comprehensive, and you can also find a decent entry on him at the Poetry Foundation.
Born towards the end of the 16th century in 1572 Donne was an exact contemporary of Ben Jonson (satirical dramatist, and poet) whose style couldn’t have been more different.
Jonson was a more formal poet than Donne with a public voice. Unlike Donne’s seemingly chaotic and intimate lyrics, Jonson wrote in a simple, unadorned – though highly polished – way. In fact Donne’s style so irritated Jonson he once said, ‘that Donne, for not keeping of accent (formal rhythm), deserved hanging’.
Bit harsh!
When Donne was a lad he wrote the most wonderfully rude, and flamboyant poems. All of them seemed to be designed to get women into bed.
Have a look at the gorgeously erotic ‘Elegy On His Mistress Going to Bed‘ where he urges her to take off all her clothes because ‘what needst thou hast more covering than a man?’
Cheeky!
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Donne was considered quite a hottie as a young man. By all accounts he spent most of his youth sleeping his way around London. In 1621, following the death of his beloved wife, Donne became Dean of St Paul’s and delivered fiery sermons to which people flocked. Particularly women.
Sonnet 14 is one of the Holy Sonnets Donne wrote later in life, having put his erotic love poetry behind him. Born a Catholic at a time when practising Catholicism was a crime, Donne struggled dreadfully with his faith. He converted to Church of England Protestantism but never shook off a sense of lack of self worth, citing the sins of his misspent youth.
In this sonnet Donne’s speaker is desperate. Crippled with sin, broken and weak, he begs for God to come and subdue him, ‘overthrow’ him, as he recognises he doesn’t have the strength to find God himself. Most striking of all, Donne uses the sonnet form. This would traditionally have been used to woo mistresses. With his use of violent and sexual imagery, Donne would have shocked his reader rigid. The effect of using erotic vocabulary in a devotional lyric is dramatic and powerful..
Have a look…
Holy Sonnet XIV
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Let’s look at the form to begin with. Here Donne uses the sonnet. At the most basic level you have two types of sonnet, the English (or Shakespearean) form and the Italian (or Petrarchan) form.
Both use iambic pentameter and both are 14 lines, but where the English sonnet is divided into three quatrains (four lines) and a rhyming couplet, the Italian divides into an ocatve (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines).
They also have different rhyme schemes. To find out more about sonnet forms and their rhyme schemes you can look at this website on ‘Basic Sonnet Forms‘. I can tell you that Donne has used the English sonnet form here. Unusually for him as he tends to like the Italian format. Let’s have a look at the first quatrain.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Look at that beginning! ‘BATTER MY HEART’, he says. See how Donne has stressed the first syllable BATTer. It’s also a verb, and a violent one at that. Think about why he’s used ‘Batter’ rather than ‘hit’ or ‘smash’. ‘Batter’ has connotations of a powerful and destructive force. ‘Don’t knock on my heart,’ Donne says, ‘BATTER at the door.'(I should say ‘the speaker’ or ‘the voice of the poem’ here, but unless you’re studying this for GCSE or A level, ‘Donne’ is easier)
[image error]Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
This 16th/17th century plate shows what an important role Jesus’s words had to the culture of the time. The passage from Revelations describing Jesus knocking at the door of the heart would have been familiar to Donne and his contemporaries. It’s a gentle and loving image.
But Donne isn’t having any of it. He doesn’t want Jesus to ‘knock’, ‘breathe’ or ‘shine’ on the door of his heart, he wants God to BATTER at the door. See how passive the verbs ‘breathe’ and ‘shine’ seem compared to ‘BATTER’!
Also note how bold Donne is being. Remember he is talking to God. The reader is placed in the position of (slightly uncomfortable) eavesdropper. Placing the verb at the beginning of a sentence turns it into an imperative, a command. Donne is ordering God to batter at his heart. We need to think about why this is? Why isn’t a ‘knock’ good enough for Donne?
The second half of the quatrain is equally imperious…
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
To begin with Donne uses a paradox. How can being overthrown allow you to rise? Metaphysical poets, especially Donne, love using paradoxes. Here the paradox is explained if we look at things spiritually. In order for Donne’s soul to be able to rise and be close to God he has to be physically thrown down. Forced into submission. Why? Let’s look at the end of that quatrain.
Donne asks God to ‘bend/ Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.’
I LOVE this line. Can you see how Donne has cast God here as a Blacksmith? And Donne is the iron? Listen to all those lovely plosive ‘B’ sounds. ‘Your force’ is iambic (tee tum) and so is ‘to break’ (tee tum) but then POW! ‘Break’ ‘Blow’ ‘Burn’ are all heavily stressed. No iambic rhythm here. Donne applies equal stress to those three words and the alliteration of the ‘B’ sound makes it stand out even more.
Why does he do this? So you can hear – physically HEAR! – the hammer blows of the blacksmith as he works on the anvil. BANG BANG BANG! But why is Donne saying this?
Because he recognises he needs to be reforged, fundamentally changed, in order to be good enough to be with God. ‘Break’ The iron is broken into pieces. ‘Blow’ They are hammered down. ‘Burn’ They are melted, and then ‘made new’. The iron is made liquid by fire and restructured to forge something fresh.
What a brilliantly dramatic way to convey the idea of deep, spiritual change, letting go of the sinner of the past. The use of the blacksmith imagery shows how traumatic and violent this process will be. But Donne is up for it. He is so weighed down by past sin he feels beyond help. He needs a powerful, and determined God to change him.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
In the second quatrain Donne shifts gears and introduces a new image or conceit (just means extended image). He compares his body and soul to a town which has been taken over by the enemy. See how the iambic pentameter in the first line is disrupted by the comma causing a pause after the first syllable which leads to a stuttering, unsure effect.
This faltering continues in the next line with that despairing cry ‘but oh, to no end.’ He wants God to enter the town, but can’t do it. He admits that his ‘reason’ (or rationality) which is God’s ‘viceroy’ (which means an official who rules a place while true ruler is away) should let God in and defend against enemies. But is ‘captiv’d’ and ‘untrue’. Donne cries out in despair that his whole being has been usurped by sin and the devil, locking God out.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
I love the beautiful simplicity in the first line of the quatrain. Look at it closely
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
You can really hear the anguish in the line and notice the rhythm which is fascinating. Rather than using the iambic rhythm which would look like this: (ᶸ means unstressed, / means stressed) ᶸ / ᶸ / ᶸ / ᶸ / ᶸ / it looks something like this:
ᶸ / ᶸ ᶸ / ᶸ ᶸ / ᶸ ᶸ /
Isn’t that odd? to give it its technical name, I would say this line is an iamb followed by three anapaests. So: tee tum, tee tee tum, tee tee tum, tee tee tum.
yet DEARly i LOVE you, and WOULD be lov’d FAIN
Can you see that? Sorry, it’s difficult to explain typing.
The reason? Well it’s because this is the heart of the poem. He loves God and dearly wants to be loved by God. That’s it. No need for elaboration and fancy imagery – that’s all. And the anapaest give the line a swinging, rising, hopeful feeling. Notice also it means there are two stresses on either side of the comma. This gives the line balance and security – it’s the core message of the poem. This form is in contrast to the rest of the sonnet.
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
The last three lines of the quatrain introduce the idea of betrothal or marriage. Donne moves onto another conceit, this time the metaphor of being married to Satan. Back he comes again with the imperatives- ‘Divorce me’ ‘Untie me’ ‘Break the knot’! He goes on to ask to be taken, ‘imprisoned’. Look at the last line – the rhythm is all over the place. It’s incredibly choppy.
Donne is giving up hope. His strength is faltering, he staggers – listen to the forlorn end of the line ‘for I…’ It’s a feminine ending – no stress on the last syllable so it floats up. Uncertainty and weakness dominate. We move from the the faltering, floating line of ‘For I…’ to…
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Donne continues the line with deep, deep sadness. He shall ‘never’ be free until God ‘enthralls’ him. ‘Enthrall’ comes from the Old Teutonic language ‘thrall’ meaning slave. So he asks God to enslave him so he can be free. Another clever paradox.
Then those, last, brutally shocking lines which mean: ‘I’ll never be pure unless you rape me.’
Blimey!
This is usually the point when the pupils look at each other and say, did she just say…?
Yes. Donne’s final, desperate request is for God to rape him. Talk about powerful.
The reason Donne uses such powerful and brutal language in this poem is to emphasise his sense of frailty. He feels poisoned and destroyed by the sins he has committed and is helpless. He simply cannot see any way he can find God unless God does something dramatic. FORCES Donne to come to him.
So what do you think of the ending? Is it hopeful? Will God be able to win the speaker round? I can’t help thinking the poem ends in such despair and anguish Donne must feel there is no hope. He knows he has to find God himself. It’s not God’s duty to come find him. And he knows he can’t do it. He’s too enamoured of sin.
What a poem, eh?
I’d LOVE to know what you think of this poem. Leave a comment to tell me your thoughts.
PS My English teacher, the divine Mr B, always referred to this as ‘butter my buns’
May 8, 2020
A Poetry Lesson 4: Miniatures and Sonnets – The Snapchats of the Renaissance
It is easy to assume that Snapchat and Instagram are modern phenomenon – but the practice of sending sexy pictures of yourself to admirers has gone on for centuries. This was never more true than in the Elizabethan court where the exchange of miniature portraits was hugely popular. (You can read a great article on them at the The Victoria and Albert Museum website.)
Despite no Photoshop, ladies and gentlemen of the court could make sure the artist painting their portrait flattered them. Henry VIII famously fell in love with his future fourth wife, Anne of Cleves when he saw her portrait painted by Holbein. Unfortunately the reality was slightly different, and Henry dismissed her as ‘the Flanders Mare,’ complaining she was ‘she is nothing so fair as she hath been reported’
(By the way, I’ve just discovered something rather gross – because Henry didn’t think Anne was good looking enough he couldn’t consummate the marriage, so it was quickly annulled. Henry proved it was not his fault – i.e. he was not impotent – by saying he had ‘duas pollutiones nocturnas in somno’ which means he had two wet dreams in the night)
Miniatures were tiny, jewel like paintings kept in caskets and lockets usually made from gold and decorated with precious gems. It was very fashionable to add these tiny caskets to your everyday dress and there are plenty of documents written at the time which attest to their popularity.
Here is an extract from a letter about Queen Elizabeth I. ‘Lady Derby wore about her neck and in her bosom a portrait. The Queen, espying it, inquired about it, but her ladyship was anxious to conceal it. The Queen insisted of having it, and discovering it to be the portrait of young Cecil, she snatched it away, and tying it upon her shoe, walked long with it, afterwards she pinned it on her elbow, and wore some time there. ‘
Look at this beautiful miniature painting case I found through The Frame Blog.
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Isn’t it gorgeous?
At the same time these miniatures were the talk of the court, sonnets were also tremendously popular. Sonnets were written to charm Queen Elizabeth I, and like the miniatures they were a way to show off skill and talent. The beautifully crafted sonnet had much in common with the miniature cases with all their artistry and craftsmanship.
The sonnet is a really interesting form of poem. The structure is formal with a restricted number of lines and an ordered rhyme scheme. Writers in the Renaissance period LOVED sonnets. In the Elizabethan court they were hugely fashionable, and were the equivalent of snap chat in terms of flirting. They certainly weren’t all about love – Surrey used this form to write about friendship, death, and courage, and Shakespeare’s sonnets cover about a multitude of themes. But generally, a whole host of courtiers wrote flattering, impassioned romantic sonnets about how in love they were.
Between 1530-1650 approximately 200,000 sonnets were written, an astonishing number. The biggest influence on British sonnet writes was Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) a medieval Italian poet. The story goes that Petrarch as a young man fell madly in love with ‘Laura’, a married woman who rejected his advances. He wrote a whole sequence of sonnets about the agony of this rejection. There is a mix of emotions in these poems: Being close to her brings about pure, unadulterated joy – but his love being unrequited drives him to the depths of despair. This is the inspiration for the Petrarchan sonnet. Woman are beautiful, but use their beauty like weapons which wound their lovers, who suffer terribly. The romance of this suffering, inspired by Petrarch and the drawing on the roots of Courtly Love has a profound impact on the literature and art of the Elizabethan court.
Petrarch’s poems were beloved by the writers of the Tudor courts from the mid to late 16th century. Poets such as Wyatt and Surrey translated Petrarch’s poems as well as writing sonnets of their own, often as a way of making themselves more attractive to senior member of the court in the hope they would be rewarded by an upwards social move.
The Elizabethan court LOVED these poems of anguish and beauty and you can see the influence of the Petrarchan ideal in many sonnets of the time. Writers like Wyatt made some changes in the structure, adapting the form and rhyme scheme, basically because it’s much harder to rhyme in English than Italian. Instead of using the octave/sestet (8 lines 6 lines) form of Petrarch, Wyatt and his successors wrote sonnets divided into four quatrains and a rhyming couplet.
Both Italian and English sonnets are made up of 14 lines, but in the English sonnet the poem is shaped around three quatrains (groups of four lines) with a rhyming couplet at the end. So instead of having a volta or ‘turn’ (shift in tone or a change in direction) at the eighth line, that English sonnet has the volta at the 12th line. This image sums it up nicely as well as showing the different rhyming pattern.
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The most striking impact of this change is the introduction of the rhyming couplet. At the time the writer’s ability to express a philosophical point, or conclusion into as few a lines as possible was greatly admired. The couplet tested the skills of writers to the limit. It has an epigrammatic quality which was appealing. How to compress the 12 lines of the whole poem into a two line summary or conclusion? Many poets could do this with great wit and style, particularly Shakespeare. What I love about the couplets in many of these sonnets is they can surprise you with a sudden shift in approach, or make you laugh by shocking you with an unexpected, witty ending. The couplet acts as a little treasure within the box of the poem – just like the miniatures they dangled from their elbows and shoes.
Even the miniatures portraits were affected by Petrarch. Have a look at this miniature by Hilliard who was a prolific painter. Here you see a rather sexy young man with an open shirt and a come hither look in his eyes. Notice the flames in the background which signifies how much he suffers because of unrequited love. I love the intimacy of this picture.
This tiny painting gives a good insight into how we should see the love-struck poet who burns with unrequited desire.
What about the Petrarchan heroine? Well here we can look at one of my favourite Shakespearean sonnets, but in order to appreciate its message you have to have a look at the ideal woman of the Elizabethan age, based on Petrarch’s Laura.
Here is a poem with sonnet like features by Thomas Watson, written in around 1582
Hark you that list to hear what saint I serve:
Her yellow locks exceed the beaten gold;
Her sparkling eyes in heav’n a place deserve;
Her forehead high and fair of comely mold;
Her words are music all of silver sound;
Her wit so sharp as like can scarce be found;
Each eyebrow hangs like Iris in the skies;
Her Eagle’s nose is straight of stately frame;
On either cheek a Rose and Lily lies;
Her breath is sweet perfume, or holy flame;
Her lips more red than any Coral stone;
Her neck more white than aged Swans that moan;
Her breast transparent is, like Crystal rock;
Her fingers long, fit for Apollo’s Lute;
Her slipper such as Momus dare not mock;
Her virtues all so great as make me mute:
What other parts she hath I need not say,
Whose face alone is cause of my decay.
So hair of gold, eyes like stars, voice like music, a straight nose, and lips as red as coral. This mistress’s breasts have crystal clear skin, and her neck is as long and white as a swan.
I particularly like that at the end of this rather long winded and descriptive poem the poet notes (ironically) the woman’s beauty ‘make me mute’, and the final couplet contains a slightly saucy hint about how bodacious her body is – ‘I can’t talk about her body, describing her face alone is enough to destroy me.’
Like many of the poems of the time it sounds generic. A ‘to whom it may concern’ love poem that flatters the lady love. The couplet does act as a little witty epigram in the poem as a whole, like a miniature portrait hiding in a beautiful case, but generally the images seem unimaginative and the rhythm is monotonous.
So then we come on to Shakespeare. A poet who took a form used and overused by many other writers and lifts it to a whole new level. Here, in one of my favourite sonnets Shakespeare blows a hole through all those sonnets praising Petrarchan heroines.
Let’s look at the first quatrain.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
Look at that negative, right from the first line. His lover’s eyes are ‘NOTHING’ like the sun. Immediately, the reader sees Shakespeare is challenging the weary similes and metaphors of other writers, like Watson above, who use cliches to flatter their women.
It draws attention to how silly those images are – how can eyes be like the sun? He goes on, her lips are not like coral, and her breast are brown , not snow white. And then, the ultimate anti-Petrarchan description, her hair is not golden, ‘black wires grow on her head.’
Also note the subtle undermining of the steady iambs of the sonnet. ‘If hairs be wires,’ is iambic- if HAIRS be WIRES. But then he uses a comma which introduces a pause. This means you have to stress ‘black’ which throws the steady rhythm completely off. If we were to read that phrase iambicly it would look like this: black WIRES grow ON her HEAD. But this isn’t how you read it. Actually you are forced to read it thus: BLACK wires GROW ON her HEAD. All over the place!
(Have a look at my lessons on Herbert and Donne for a fuller explanation of metrical structure and how it affects rhythm)
I find it fascinating how Shakespeare uses subtle variances in rhythm to possibly indicate a challenge and subversion of a a recognised and very formulaic structure. Note there are very few rhythmic variations in Watson’s poem above.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
The next quatrain directly challenges those poets with their lazy images. ‘I have seen roses’, he says, ‘but my mistresses’ cheeks look nothing like them’. And then those gloriously blunt lines which say, I have smelled delightful perfumes but they bear no resemblance to the breath ‘that from my mistress reeks.’ It works so well – reeks has such a strong connotation of a stench, a foul emission. I always imagine the mistress to whom this poem is dedicated reading this with shocked laughter and clouting Shakespeare around the head at this point.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
The third and final quatrain goes on to describe his lady’s voice and movement. He writes he loves ‘to hear her speak’ but points out music sounds much nicer. Note how here and in the previous quatrain Shakespeare uses a run-on line or enjambment so the sentence flows onto the next line.
This gives the poem a lovely, natural feeling. Almost a chatty quality. It doesn’t have the stiff, formal, almost nursery rhyme feel of Watson’s poem, which can sound sing-songy. In the next line the speaker continues to say he’s never actually seen a goddess but he can say for sure when his lady walks, she ‘treads on the ground.’ I always imagine Shakespeare giving his mistress a sly wink at this point, followed by her rolling her eyes at her mates in response.
And then, oh! That final, beautiful couplet that completes the sonnet.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
It is such a shame that this couplet loses some of it’s impact as you have to translate it a bit. Some of the vocabulary isn’t in general use today.
Basically it means, ‘and yet, by God, I think my lover is as special and rare, as any of those other women who have been lied to by poets who use false comparison.’
As you can see, my version isn’t nearly as elegant as Shakespeare’s! But now you know what it means, have another look.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
This couplet contains the whole sense of the sonnet compressed into two lines. The speakers says, the woman I love is a real woman, not some imaginary Petrarchan heroine. OK, she’s not blonde, her eyes are not like stars, and her boobs have a bit of a tan, but to me she is lovely. And no other woman comes close.
It’s at this point I see Shakespeare’s mistress fighting across the room of the poetry reading and giving him a big hug. The audience wiping their eyes and smiling.
Sonnet 138 reflects a slightly more mature love affair.
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
I love this. Read it a few times. Hear the wry voice of the older man, married to a young woman who lies to him that he is still in his prime. He knows she is lying, but allows the lie to stand. In this way she lies to him and he lies to her.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be
I like the little irony of meaning on ‘lie’ meaning to deceive, and ‘lie’ meaning to sleep with. Again, Shakespeare allows his lines to run on to the next, giving the poem an approachable, wry and honest feel which makes this timeless. Beautiful.
If you would like to look at more of Shakespeare’s Sonnets the British Library has a good section on them. You can also read about Hilliard’s Young Man against Flames on the Guardian Website, and this site has some interesting stuff about the artist.
May 7, 2020
A Poetry Lesson 3: Sylvia Plath’s ‘Cut’
What a thrill —
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian’s axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man —
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump —
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
I love this poem. It is one of the few I know by heart. A few weeks ago I was messaged by the first year 11 pupil I ever taught to say he was coming to visit my school for work, and could we meet up?
It was so great to see him and catch up on old times and I was delighted when, over pizza in a local restaurant, he recited this poem in full – he still remembered it from when I taught it to him just over 20 years ago.
The story of Sylvia Plath is well known. You can read an excellent article on her at the Poetry Foundation. She was married to Ted Hughes and is famous as much for her poetry as she is for committing suicide at the age of 31. Tragically, Hughes’ next partner Assia Wevill also committed suicide six years later.
I always thought how awful that must have been for Ted Hughes, but then I heard an interview with him. In it he was asked how he felt about two women so close to him committing suicide. His response? ‘It’s not my fault neurotic women find me attractive.’ This put me right off him. A shame, as his poetry is wonderful – particularly ‘Telegraph Wires‘ and ‘Pike‘. ‘View of a Pig‘ is awesome but also gross.
Now I could swear blind to you that’s what I heard him say, but despite thorough googling and double-checking my poetry and criticism books, I can’t find any proof that he said that. He may not have done and I’ve imagined the whole thing. So probably best not to believe everything I say.
Like many of my contemporaries I ADORED Plath when I was in my teens and early twenties. I read The Bell Jar and all the poetry I could get my hands on. I also wrote some really quite dreadful poetry inspired by her.
Now I am am older, I find too much Plath to be a little wearisome as thematically it is so full of agony and distress. Part of me is a bit unsympathetic and impatient; I want to shake her and beg her to cheer up and look on the bright side.
I know. I know. But still…
However, as a poet, her skill is unquestionable. Poems such as ‘Mushrooms‘, show her ability to use metaphors in a way that will make the hairs on your neck stir. The joy of being pregnant has never been better conveyed than in her poem ‘You’re‘. The chanting, drumming, droning rhythms of ‘Daddy‘ will make your blood surge and I love the drama and authority of the voice in ‘Lady Lazarus‘
‘Cut’ isn’t an obvious Plath poem to choose. If you want to see the more famous ways in which Plath used red and white, conveying the struggle of life and death, look at ‘Tulips‘, another beautiful piece; but I like ‘Cut’. I like its simplicity and delicacy.
The title ‘Cut’ is also the first line of the poem:
Cut
What a thrill —
My thumb instead of an onion.
Look how the shape of the word ‘Cut’ reflects its meaning. As does the sound. If you trace the shape of the word with your hand – go on, try it – you mirror the action of chopping. See how you come down on the ‘t’?
When I read that I can hear the knife gritting through the onion and landing with a knock on the chopping board. The ‘t’ of ‘Cut’. Chop! But Plath uses ‘Cut’. In conveys precision, and strength in a way ‘chop’ doesn’t.
Then that dry, calm voice of the speaker: ‘what a thrill.’ Not a response we would expect. Why is it a thrill? Isn’t it painful? As she goes on to say, the speaker has missed the onion and cut her thumb. Quite badly, as the next lines demonstrate.
Hear the delicious relish of the words ‘what a thrill.’ I always imagine someone like Bette Davies saying it in a bored drawl. Once we have read the whole poem, you start to understand why the speaker calls it a thrill. Pain for her is something real in a world which increasingly feels numb. It is not a mistake she has chosen the word ‘thumb’ rather than ‘finger’.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
At this point, the speaker adopt a curiously flat, observational tone. She examines the damage to her thumb with interest, but no emotion. Look at the effect of ‘quite’ in ‘The top quite gone…’ With mild surprise she reports she has managed to chop off the tip of her thumb before going on to say, ‘except for a sort of hinge/Of skin.’
Brilliant! See the way Plath has used enjambement to great effect here? Enjambement means that a poet runs the sentence onto the next line. Here it works effectively because the movement of our eyes from the end of the verse to the first line of the next verse mirrors the movement of the hanging bit of thumb.
Having the word ‘hinge’ at the end of the verse means the word itself acts as a hinge joining the two separate verses together.
It is at this point I usually draw this on the board to illustrate:
[image error]‘except for a sort of hinge of skin.’
Can you hear the precision of ‘a sort of hinge of skin’? The speaker want to let us know exactly what she can see. Instead of rushing to bandage it, or scream in pain, she examines it closely, in almost forensic detail.
‘A flap like a hat.’ There is a childish delight in the snappy short vowel sounds here. It sounds like a nursery rhyme – there is a sense of satisfaction. As the speaker watches she is stuck by the ‘dead white’ colour of the thumb, before, suddenly: ‘then that red plush.’ I love how she uses ‘then’ to add a sense of weary resignation to the inevitable welling of blood.
What a great way to describe the rich swelling of deep, glossy, red blood that appears after a wound. ‘Plush’ has connotations of velvet, of richness – not just the literal meaning but the luxurious hidden ‘lush’ sound within the word. Again, no sense of pain – just a wonderment at that contrast between white and red.
In other poems such as ‘Tulips’ you will see this use of red and white tropes is quite common in Plath’s poetry. Red is associated with pain, and life – white, with peace, calm and possibly death.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian’s axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
Here we have the first images to do with conflict, civil war and violence. Holding her thumb the speaker’s voice is gentle and pitying: ‘little pilgrim’, she addresses her thumb – curiously, as if it is something separate from her – ‘The Indian’s axed your scalp.’
Plath takes a metaphor from American colonial history and the speaker plays the ‘Indian’. Does this indicate inner conflict? A separation between mind and body? The reference to scalping conveys vividly the tip of the thumb being ripped off, a brutal picture of self-inflicted violence.
Another great use of enjambement: ‘Your turkey wattle carpet rolls…’ A brilliant metaphor. The image evokes the colour red again, but here the red of the wobbly bit under a turkey’s beak. Plath manages to imbue a real sense of texture in her image. As the blood now pumps from her thumb, it gushed out like a spongy red carpet.
[image error]Your turkey wattle carpet rolls…
See the enjambement? Because Plath constructs the line ‘carpet rolls/straight from the heart’ falling across two verses, again our eye drop, reflecting the movement of the blood downwards onto the floor. The blood rolls in a red carpet from the heart as it pumps. A real sense of life force here.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is.
With a wonderfully bonkers invocation of walking on a red carpet holding a foaming bottle of pink champagne. The speaker begins to move – shaking herself out of her intense, still, exploration of her wound.
[image error]Clutching my bottle of pink fizz…
The poem is now full of movement, ‘I step on it’ she says, with the double meaning of stepping on the carpet of blood, and the echo of urgent action: ‘step on it!’ The pink fizz is a ‘celebration’ and the hissing echoing rhyme of of ‘this is’ with ‘pink fizz’ gives a whispering almost surreptitious delight. It’s as if the speaker is talking to herself, under her breath.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
This marks a turning point. Now the blood is described as a ‘million’ ‘redcoats’ making the reader see of all those red blood cells tumbling out of a gap. Red coats remind us again of war and violence, with particular reference to the British Army – another link with the American civil war? (Please see comment below this from Damon who knows American history better than I do!)
I think it is interesting she uses references to civil war which indicate a dissonance, a conflict within oneself externalised. This is when the poetic voice moves from observation to a pertinent question: ‘Whose side are they on?’
The question raises important issues. The blood should be protecting, healing the speaker, but they run ‘out of a gap’ as if they are running away, betraying their host. Cowards.
This realisation triggers a wail of despair. Hear the pain in these lines which rush you through the poem at a helter skelter pace. Look at this.
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man —
Listen to the frenzied power of the repeated ‘ill’ sound: ‘ill’, ‘pill’, ‘kill’ which then segues into the flat ‘i’ of ‘thin’. It sounds like bells ringing. And they aren’t good bells. They are tolling, relentless, maddening chimes. Following the anguished ‘O my Homunculus’ the lines ring with intensity
An Homunculus is a little human, the speaker’s thumb, once described as ‘little pilgrim’ and a ‘bottle of pink fizz’, now becomes ‘little me’, ‘little human.’ I always picture something like this
[image error]
but maybe with Sylvia Plath’s face on…
[image error]O my Honunculus I am ill
The cry continues, the pill has been taken to kill the ‘thin papery feeling.’ Why doesn’t it hurt more? Is the speaker so numb and catatonic the pain is felt at a remove? Distant and fragile as paper?
And those words: ‘Saboteur, Kamikaze man’ both meaning self-destruction or willful destruction. Is she addressing herself or her thumb? The next section makes it clear, it’s the thumb.
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes…
‘Gauze’ is a reference to a bandage. So white it’s ‘Klu Klux Klan’ white. That’s really white. But it’s stained. Plath often uses images of white to convey peace and death. But the peace in which she wants to exist is troubled and disturbed by life, by the spreading stain of the wound she has caused. Notice ‘tarnishes’ and ‘stains’ and ‘darkens’. If blood is life, she’s not welcoming it. Those words are negative, and unsettling.
The babushka is a reference to big hats or scarves worn by Russian grandmothers. Remember Plath wrote this in 1962 when WWII was still very much in people’s minds. These links with Russians, civil war, kamikaze men, the Klu Klux Klan, all conjure images of bloody violence and terrible conflict.
And then those last lines. The ones that always give me a little shiver…
and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump —
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
The poem ends focusing on the heart. The voice calls it ‘the balled pulp.’ That’s not good. Pulp is soft, mushy. Here it is balled up like a piece of paper. I find the combination of ‘balled up’ – with its connotations of scrunching a piece of paper in your hand – with ‘pulp’ which makes you think of squelching human tissue between you fingers, revolting.
‘The balled pulp of your heart’ makes the heart sound awfully vulnerable and easily squished. The ‘balling’ movement implies it is being trapped, rolled and compressed by a careless hand. This line makes me feel breathless.
There are a number of critical readings of ‘confronts its small mill of silence.’
I think it means the fear created by the confrontation of one’s mortality. Call me crazy, but I see that small mill of silence to be the empty beat BETWEEN heart beats. That infinitesimal moment when your heart doesn’t beat. When all is still. The gentle stillness between pulses which is the emptiness of our death.
The speaker reaches out to that moment and it frightens her. It makes her ‘jump’ and her heart is kick started and starts pulsing again. The ‘trepanned veteran’ – the old soldier who has had a hole screwed into his head, comes back to life.
The poem ends on a faltering rhythm.
Dirty girl
Thumb Stump
‘Dirty’ is trochaic – see my lesson on Herbert for some info on rhythm – DIRty with the stress then falling on ‘girl.
Dirty girl
but the last line is a spondee, both syllables are stressed THUMB STUMP. It even sounds like a heart beat and I always think it sounds like a heart beat stopping.
Certainly it indicates the speaker awaking from her dreamy state and coming back to herself realising after all that ribboning of the imagination, all the imagery she has woven around the experience, what is she left with? A stump.
I like the ‘thumb stump’ with its echo of ‘thumb print’. One imagines her ending the poem with a bloody print on the page.
[image error]
