Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 11

My Mother

18 years ago today my mother, Margaret Mary Griffith, known as Margot, died. I could not go to her funeral in the UK: I was in the middle of an MS exacerbation.

Instead, I sent something for my cousin, the actor Clare Higgins, to read:

I said goodbye to my mother in February. I was flying back to Seattle the next day and we both knew it might be the last time we could touch each others’ face, or say the final thing. So we drank tea and talked.

After I got back to Seattle we talked by phone while we could. When her hearing failed, I wrote letters and she dictated replies. When her eyesight began to fail I increased the size of the type. Eventually even that wasn’t enough.

One day, about a month ago, Dad and I were on the phone, and he said Mum insisted on trying to talk to me. He held the phone for her. I couldn’t hear a word she said. Clearly, she couldn’t hear a word I said. So after a while we didn’t say anything. We just sat there, and breathed together, separated by eight thousand miles.

I’ll never hear her breathe again.

But she’s not gone.

Every time I look in the mirror, I see my mother.

Every time I look at my sisters, I see my mother.

I see my mother in my father’s face, too: laugh lines, and some frown lines, that Mum helped to put there.

I see my mother when I look around my own house, at the furniture I’ve chosen, the colours I like. “Green is your colour,” she would say. I have a green carpet, and green shirts in my wardrobe.

I see my mother whenever I pick up a book, because she taught me to read.

I hear my mother when I listen to music, and I remember her singing along with Frank Sinatra while she washed up. I remember how after Helena died she said, “I can’t listen to music anymore, it makes me sad.” How, eventually, she began to listen again.

And that’s one of the things I loved best about my mother: she never, ever gave up.

Mum never gave up joy.

She took joy in the smallest things: sunshine, a warm fire on a cold day, a hot cup of tea. Tea was the universal panacea. “I’ll make you a nice cup of tea,” was what she said when I’d dislocated my knee, or had stitches again. “Let’s have a lovely cup of tea!” was for triumphs like reviews of my first novel.

Mum never stopped noticing.

She taught me to pay attention to the little things. As a child, I could never wholeheartedly hate or despise anyone, ever, because Mum would always say, “Yes, Nicola, I know he started it, but did you see the hole in his shoes, the poor lamb? I wonder if he has enough to eat…”

She taught me to look at the big picture, to plan ahead, but to never, ever lose that joy of the moment: the comfy chair, the perfect truffle, the big fat paperback bought for pennies at a secondhand bookshop.

So that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow, next week, next year: enjoying sitting by the fire with a cup of tea, a box of chocolates, and a good book. And I’ll look forward to spring, and when I put daffodils on the table I’ll see my mother. And I’ll miss her, but she’s not gone.

When I look at my world I see my mother.

After Kelley, my mother is still the first person I want to call to exult with over some triumph. It’s still a surprise when I can’t. I miss her.

The ass, the cat, and baby Jesus

Happy Solstice! In honour of the season I have a post up on my research blog about the origin of nativity scenes and who, exactly, might be to blame for all those reenactments designed to scar school children for life, embarrass their parents, and delight everyone else. Oh, and also why Hild putting on a nativity play in seventh-century Elmet absolutely was possible—and an excerpt of same for you to read…

Enjoy!

H5N1: Dangerous reassortment growing more likely

Image: A colorized electron microscope image released by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows avian influenza A(H5N1) virus particles (yellow), grown in Madin-Darby Canine Kidney epithelial cells (blue). (CDC / NIAID via The Associated Press)

Three bits of news from this week:

The CDC confirmed the first severe human case of bird flu—the D1.1 genotype found in wild birds and poultry, not the B3.13 genotype infecting dairy cows and other mammals—in the US. The patient, in Louisiana, is hospitalised. (The CDC does not use words like ‘severe’ lightly.) Testing is ongoing, but so far there is nothing to indicate that the virus has changed in any way. Which means your risk is no higher than it’s been. In California: Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency and in Los Angeles, cats are dying (probably from eating infected food—whether provided by people or hunted—but that’s not certain).According to the Seattle Times, two wild cougars on the Olympic Peninsual have been killed by bird flu. Both young males; one tagged, one not; one seemed in the prime of health, barely symptomatic—death was very fast—while the other was so ill it had to be euthanised. They did not infect each other but most likely died because they ate infected prey. On the peninsula, cougars eat from both the forest—everything from birds to mammals—and the sea shore—seabirds, harbour seals, and so on. They are top predators. Given the disease rate among seals and terns and other inhabitants of that area, my guess is that there are many, many cougars now dying or dead on the peninsula, which is worrying because it’s small, genetically isolated population.

It’s very clear that bird flu is now widespread in much of the animal world, at least in birds and mammals. We just have to hope that at some point over this year’s flu season (or next, or the one after) someone infected by H5N1 via an infected animal (because right now H5N1 does not have the ability to easily spread from person to person) does not at the same time become infected with a seasonal flu virus (which does have person-to-person transmission) and provide fertile ground for virus reassortment, with the H5N1 gaining the necessary mutation to enable human transmission.

Given how widespread H5N1 now is, andn how easily flu viruses mutate, I believe we’ll have to be very, very lucky for that not to happen. To me it’s now just a question of when.

But let me repeat: I am not an expert! Let me repeat: we have effective antivirals; we have mostly effective vaccines. There is zero reason to panic. Just stay alert. And remember that some animals are very good at masking illness (it’s a survival strategy for them) so please assume it’s possible to catch the virus from what might seem to be a healthy animal (like your cat that just ate a bird; your backyard chicken; the cow or horse in the next field) and take precautions: Wash your hands; if you’ve been outside among animals, wash your boots before you come in, and change shoes; wear a mask in enclosed spaces; do not eat unpasteurised or raw animal products—cook everything.

Have a happy and healthy holiday.

When Aud met Julia

This is an experiment.

I’ve unearthed a treasure trove of readings I recorded twenty years ago from various Aud books. Patreon will be the only place you’ll be able to listen to me read them until Macmillan release the audiobooks in June 2025. This is the first 5 minutes of The Blue Place—when we first meet Aud, and Aud first meets Julia. This one you can read for free—if you’re a member. There again, right now membership is free (though there are also paid tiers, if you’re feeling generous and want to support the experiment).

What is the experiment, exactly? Well, go take a look, or wait for a few days when I’ll post about it properly here.

Rudolph, her baby, and her girlfriend

Page from medieval bestiary, Fitzwilliam collection (ms.254.f10r)

Over the last few years I’ve read some remarkable things abut reindeer. For example, did you know that reindeer’s blue eyes act as night-vision goggles to help them find food in winter? Or that reindeer multi-task in enviable ways, such eating and sleeping at the same time?1

And then there’s something I’ve known for years but that seems to regularly surprise people: Santa’s reindeer are female. They have to be: all mature reindeer grow antlers but in the winter—over Christmas when, y’know, they’d be pulling that sleigh—males shed theirs. Females, however, very often do not. This is because they are often pregnant—and the antlers are very useful protective devices against wolves, etc. both during pregnancy and after birth. So, therefore, not only are the reindeer pulling the sleigh female they are very probably pregnant.

Go back to that initial image. Here’s what the Fitzwilliam Museum has to say:

The example in the Fitzwilliam, MS.254, is unusual in several respects. It contains a larger catalogue of animals than many other Bestiaries produced at the time, and includes some unusual passages of text.

The page illustrated here deals with the stag – cervus in Latin. We see two proudly antlered animals in the top half of the page, labelled, in a sixteenth-century English hand, ‘a hart or staige’.

At the bottom of the page, four more of the beasts are shown, crossing a river up to their shoulders in water, in single file, each resting his head on the rump of the one in front. An accompanying text explains this unusual, rather touching image, and compares the stags supporting each other with members of the Christian Church, who out of love and charity help one another. The author quotes St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, 6, 2: ‘bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ …’.

Ah, but then look at the Christmas card the Fitz had for sale (I came across this image some years ago on Lucy Allen’s old blog).

The bestiary might name them ‘harts’ but, well, they’re on a Christmas card, so: reindeer! And look at how they are entwined: definitely more than friends. So, in conclusion: Rudolph is a girl with a baby and a girlfriend.

Now that is a family Christmas tale I can believe in.

PBS has a handy reindeer fact sheet: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/reindeer-fact-sheet/ ︎

Snippets: Disease X, Bird Flu, and the 7,000-year affair

‘Disease X’

WHO revealed that 10 of the 12 samples taken from those ill with ‘Disease X’ in Kwango province tested positive for malaria. Testing continues. But given that, as previously mentioned, this is a region with a lot of malnutrition and where respiratory virus rates are rising, it’s looking more likely that this is not an ‘outbreak’ at all, but rather an unfortunate confluence of events. Look at it this way: the problem was noted in November, and it’s partially solved already. That’s great news: public health systems are working!

When sapiens met neanderthalensis

Two different papers, one in Nature and one in Science conclude from study of aDNA (that is, genetic data from ancient remains) that when modern humans left Africa a small group of them interbred with a small number of Neanderthal groups over a roughly 7,000-year period. The Nature paper showed that Neanderthal DNA found in almost all ancient and present-day non-Africans came from one “pulse” of interbreeding that happened somewhere around 45,000 to 49,000 years ago. In other words, most of those H. sapiens groups that left Africa and did not interbreed did not survive—did Neanderthal genes confer some evolutionary advantage or was it just that most groups, including so me that had interbred, died and so our ancestors were just lucky?

That’s part of what the Science paper sought to answer. They “analyzed genomic data from 59 ancient individuals sampled between 45,000 and 2200 years before present and 275 diverse present-day individuals to study the evolutionary history of Neanderthal ancestry throughout time” and the result “suggests that the gene flow occurred from a single or multiple closely related Neanderthal groups. By contrast, the earliest modern humans […] possess substantial unique Neanderthal ancestry and a distinct matching profile to the sequenced Neanderthals, indicating that some Neanderthal ancestry in these early individuals is not shared with modern humans after 40,000 years.” When they looked at the frequency of Neanderthal ancestry across the genome and over time, they “uncovered new candidates of adaptive introgression, including regions that were immediately adaptive for modern humans and some that became adaptive more recently from introgressed standing variation.” The conclude, “We found strong support for a single extended period of Neanderthal gene flow into the common ancestors of all non-Africans that occurred between 50,500 and 43,500 years ago […] The majority of natural selection—positive and negative—on Neanderthal ancestry happened very quickly after the gene flow and left clear signals in the genetic diversity of the earliest modern humans outside Africa.”

Livescience has a pretty good explainer.

H5N1

So, one more time for the people in the back: DO NOT CONSUME RAW MILK OR RAW MILK PRODUCTS. EVER. See the last three points:

A study published this week suggest that cats can serve as mixing vessels for reassortment of avian and mammalian flu.Another study indicates Mongolian horse herds are (super scientific term) positively seething with H5N1 antibodies but seem to be asymptomic. Which means it could be spreading madly but no one thought to look. Until now.A child in California who drank raw milk may have been sick with H5N1. They tested positive for influenza A (which includes H5N1). Testing could not show H5N1, though, so it’s not being added to the national registry. Their symptoms were fever and vomiting. Fortunately, they have recovered.In Los Angeles County, two cats developed symptoms after consuming milk from Raw Farms. They tested positive for influenza A (which is rare in cats) and testing is ongoing. Their symptoms included appetite loss, fever, and neurologic signs. Both died after their symptoms worsened.In Arizona, animals at the Wildlife World Zoo near Phoenix fed raw milk died: a cheetah, a mountain lion, swamp hen, an Indian goose, and a kookaburra. An infected white tiger appears to be improving after treatment. (Oh, and, according to APHIS—US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, that has a nifty map here, infections have also been confirmed in a coyote and a polar bear.)

Those last three piss me off. If you’re an adult and you choose to drink raw milk, then I think you’re a fool but it doesn’t make me angry. Kill yourself in whatever way you fancy. But children? And animals who have no choice? I hope whoever fed them that milk suffers eternal haemorrhoids.

About the Authors TV

Earlier this year I recorded an interview for About the Authors TV (shows on Tubi) and a 13-min promo video for that just went up on YouTube.

I don’t know when the show itself airs, but here’s a nifty snippet. Enjoy!

35 years in the US [audio]

Today is the 35th anniversary of me moving to this country to live with Kelley. (As opposed to the 36th anniversary of meeting and falling in love with her a year and a half earlier. And the 11th and 31st anniversaries of us getting married. Which we also celebrate. Carpe party!)

Here’s a photo of me, taken in Kelley’s tiny apartment in Duluth, Georgia, on her 29th birthday.1 It was the second to last night of a 6-week visit for us to decide if what we had was real, and, more to the point, strong enough to get us through all the hardships ahead. Because, oh, we knew there’s be hardships; and there were.

Taken in Duluth, Georgia, before flying back to the UK to pack my stuff and (ten weeks later) leave forever

That day thirty-five years ago was hard. I left my family and friends, my partner of ten years2, the culture I knew and belonged to, and came—on a tourist visa, good only for six months—to a country where I had no job, no health benefits, and no welcome (it was illegal to even enter the country as a lesbian). I brought two suitcases—my whole life in two suitcases. I had no money. I was also ill, with what was eventually diagnosed as MS, and broke. Saying the move was stressful is an understatement. Sometimes still, a week or so before the anniversary, I have stress dreams of wandering lost and alone in a strange place. I don’t think they’ll ever go away completely.

And today will be an extra specially estranging day—the first anniversary Kelley and I have ever spent apart. (She’s in Chicago on business.) I miss her—but ot nearly as much as I missed her all those years ago when we were separated by an ocean and homophobic immigration law. Here’s a song I wrote for Kelley in either late 1988 or early 1989, which I recorded on a boombox in my Hull kitchen and sent to her on a cassette.

I could write a whole book about those early years—the joy, the stress! the fear, the delight!—and one day I will, and call it The Georgia Years, Part II of my memoir. For now, though, I just want to be glad that everything turned out well. We’re married. We share a life built on shared work and love. And I’m a dual citizen. Life is as safe as we can make it. Life is good.

No, that’s not a dress: vest and shorts. I used to wear dresses occasionally—they’re comfy, and feel good, and are very easy to move in. But as my MS progressed it got harder to wear them: they don’t work well with crutches. Now that I’m in a wheelchair dresses are not a good idea (they don’t hang well when sitting). So I’m not philosophically opposed, I just…don’t. I think the last time I wore a dress might have been when we crossed the Atlantic on QE2. ︎A fine woman who did not deserve to be abandoned. I felt like a monster: she’d done nothing, not a single thing, wrong. And I still loved her. So it was hard. Very hard. Happily, though, a few years later she met and fell in love with and is now married to a lovely woman. In fact, I’m guessing she’s happier now than she ight have been with me. ︎

Unknown illness (Disease X) in the DRC

Since sometime before 24 October an unknown illness in the Kwango province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has sickened at least 394 people and killed 30 (WHO) or 79 (DRC Ministry for Health) or 143 (Reuters and AP) people. Symptoms seem to be those of a respiratory disease: fever, headaches, runny nose, coughing, difficulty breathing and anaemia. I say seems to be because no one has yet identified the cause.

It would be easy to assume an infectious agent is responsible for the deaths—but it could be something else. For example, there was a case, again in Africa. in which many children died unexpectedly after becoming infected with some pathogen—but it wasn’t the virus that killed them, it was the cough syrup they were given to help with the symptoms. Is that what’s happening here? I have no idea—I’m just saying, keep an open mind.

It would also be easy to assume that this is a scarily virulent, highly pathogenic disease: all those people dead and so quickly. But it’s the nature of diseases to not really be noticed until some people start to die—which means thousands of people could have had mild illnesses and recovered, or have been (still are?) asymptomatically infected, but no one paid attention until young people started to die. According to a WHO spokesperson, “The cases began in mid-October and the signal was picked up on 29 November by the Ministry of Health. Among the cases reported as of 3 December, 63 percent are children under the age of 15, who also account for 81 percent of reported deaths. Among these, young children under the age of five years are particularly affected.”

Young people dying is, of course tragic, but it also introduces another uncertainty factor. Does this mean it’s something to do with those younger people never having been exposed to a similar pathogen (if it is a pathogen) before and so having no immunity, whereas older people have? Or might it mean something in the young people’s environment—toxins in school water supply? scratches from a poisonous plant as they play outside in bare feet?1—could be wholly or partly responsible? No one has any idea. Yet.

So I’m finding all this very interesting and will be following along. So if you’re also interested and are okay with summaries from an absolutely unqualified in any biomedical sense observer, feel free to follow along, too. But if you really want expert, informed opinions you should sign up for reports from WHO, CDC, CIDRAP, or the Johns Hopkins health security newsletter.

I’m just making this up—it could be that all this and much more has been examined and dismissed—but my point is, we just don’t know much right now. ︎

Unknown illness in the DRC

Since sometime before 24 October an unknown illness in the Kwango province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has sickened at least 394 people and killed 30 (WHO) or 79 (DRC Ministry for Health) or 143 (Reuters and AP) people. Symptoms seem to be those of a respiratory disease: fever, headaches, runny nose, coughing, difficulty breathing and anaemia. I say seems to be because no one has yet identified the cause.

It would be easy to assume an infectious agent is responsible for the deaths—but it could be something else. For example, there was a case, again in Africa. in which many children died unexpectedly after becoming infected with some pathogen—but it wasn’t the virus that killed them, it was the cough syrup they were given to help with the symptoms. Is that what’s happening here? I have no idea—I’m just saying, keep an open mind.

It would also be easy to assume that this is a scarily virulent, highly pathogenic disease: all those people dead and so quickly. But it’s the nature of diseases to not really be noticed until some people start to die—which means thousands of people could have had mild illnesses and recovered, or have been (still are?) asymptomatically infected, but no one paid attention until young people started to die. According to a WHO spokesperson, “The cases began in mid-October and the signal was picked up on 29 November by the Ministry of Health. Among the cases reported as of 3 December, 63 percent are children under the age of 15, who also account for 81 percent of reported deaths. Among these, young children under the age of five years are particularly affected.”

Young people dying is, of course tragic, but it also introduces another uncertainty factor. Does this mean it’s something to do with those younger people never having been exposed to a similar pathogen (if it is a pathogen) before and so having no immunity, whereas older people have? Or might it mean something in the young people’s environment—toxins in school water supply? scratches from a poisonous plant as they play outside in bare feet?1—could be wholly or partly responsible? No one has any idea. Yet.

So I’m finding all this very interesting and will be following along. So if you’re also interested and are okay with summaries from an absolutely unqualified in any biomedical sense observer, feel free to follow along, too. But if you really want expert, informed opinions you should sign up for reports from WHO, CDC, CIDRAP, or the Johns Hopkins health security newsletter.

I’m just making this up—it could be that all this and much more has been examined and dismissed—but my point is, we just don’t know much right now. ︎