Witterings about lots of things.
“Secrets, silent, stony, sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.” James Joyce, Ulysses Maybe it's a symptom of living in almost certain safety, to find the idea of banned books romantic. Imagine: the soft crackling of a paper bag containing a hard-back first... Continue Reading →
Important Daily Activities: An Incomplete List Make coffee. Dress. Neglect to check mirror for errors made while dressing. Check Facebook, Instagram, What’s App, news websites and Twitter. Stare out of window at high rises. Feel tired. Download a Taylor Swift song. Arrive at work Attend meetings that go on for 56 hours Answer several million... Continue Reading →
In the winter of 2009, I spent four days in the dark windswept wilds of Shetland. Without any phone signal or internet, I was reduced to digging my book out of my bag. Luckily, that book was Lanark by Alistair Gray. It was just what was needed. It reminded me of the days when I... Continue Reading →
My resolutions for 2014 involved drawing on a moustache and starting a band called Our Collective Jungian Dream. I have achieved both. I also started riding a sweet 1970s bicycle, went to a piss-up in a brewery which was really well organised, wore some big jumpers, and got to know the best coffee roasting establishments... Continue Reading →
I get all excited about Christmas. I start making plans around August. Oh, the snowball cocktails; the consensual glitterfication. I’ve been contemplating layering. How much merino is too much merino? Do patterns clash if there’s nobody there to see them? While I wait for everyone else to get interested, I went out today and found... Continue Reading →
The alarm goes in the dark. The day looms ahead: rain, aches, itches, work. Wonderful possibilities are passing you by. Strangers are lost and unhappy and grief-struck. We’re an insignificant speckle amid infinite space. Yes, ‘tis the festive season again. Pass me my daylight therapy lamp, for I am s.a.d. If the dark is getting... Continue Reading →
I’ve been thinking about the word feminist for a long time. I’ve been thinking about it, but for most of my life, I haven’t been saying it. There were big reasons and small reasons. For the most part, it was to do with my feelings about privacy and the right to be a weird little... Continue Reading →
In the afterword to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov wrote: "Every writer [...] is aware of this or that published book of his as a constant comforting presence. This presence, this glow of the book in an ever accessible remoteness is a most companionable feeling". Nabokov goes on to describe Lolita and his view of his completed... Continue Reading →
Whenever I talk about Doris Lessing, I tend to become a little incoherent with infatuated love, and talk about her I do, a lot, to anyone who is reluctantly cornered and can't get away. I first encountered Doris Lessing when I read The Golden Notebook at twenty-one. I was an immature twenty-one. I flailed around... Continue Reading →
While searching through the bookcases in search of tutoring materials, I pulled out a beautiful 1969 print of Edward Lear's The Owl and The Pusscat. It's so utterly beautiful and of-its-time that I want to frame every single page. Except that I can't bear to rip the book up to do so. Weren't the sixties great? Dreamy, trippy - even the fish in the sea are absolutely gorgeous. I was on a roll by then, and found some other delights, most of them from the 70s. The World of Uncle Peter deserves a place in my heart for featuring a protagonist (Uncle Peter, naturally) who is an ex-art school dude who frequently has daydreams that looks suspiciously plant-based... (this was 1979). There is also a definite Royal Tenenbaums feel to the list of characters. I love that mix of old staid portraits and sleepy cartoon animals. Another gem was 'The Witch's Hat', which was one of my favourite books when I was a little critter. The bat-print on the inside cover is exactly what I'd like in a t-shirt these days... And the illustrations (from 1980) have a certain Pink Floydd appeal to them! Lastly, 'Magic' and 'I thought I saw' used to haunt my dreams as a little one. There was something about bright colours with sparseness of illustration that really got to me - I have no idea why. Now I think they are an inspired bit of art. Part of me really wants all this stuff on my walls - some of it is so perfect. But I don't think I'll ever be able to dismantle the books. They're all little works of genius.
Amy Jardine 