Witterings about lots of things.
Name: Wednesday Friday Addams Born: 1938 Hobbies: Ballet, pyromania, raising spiders Likes: The Bermuda Triangle; a pressed white collar; the abyss Dislikes: Smiling; team activities; other people Style: Impeccable It’s October: the best month of the year. The days are bright, chilly and serene. The ground is crispy with leaves. Spicy hot chocolates can be... Continue Reading →
It’s hard to know when something momentous is about to happen. Unlike everyone in Alice’s Wonderland, we can’t remember the future, so we just have to wait until it’s all sped in to the past. It’s only then that the bright bits are easy to spot. Ah yes, this day was the most wonderful day; that moment was our... Continue Reading →
Novels are foxy and full of tricks: they wear guises, they steal tales and retell them, and they shape-shift shamelessly. You can have your narrator storytelling before he’s been born (Tristram Shandy); or have your main character stumble upon the author, only to accuse him of being inept (Lanark). Novels are unpredictable, capricious, and exquisite.... Continue Reading →
Christmas is here, season of goodwill and morning drunkenness. It’s my favourite time of the year. Everyone wears wool. We all eat pastry a lot more than usual, and take a moment now and then (lackadaisically dusting pie crumbs from our jumpers) to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. So let’s do that. Join... Continue Reading →
She’s not so much a secret style icon, as my blueprint for a life. When I grow up, I want to be Etheline Tenenbaum. You can’t discourage me by suggesting she isn’t real. I know there’s a New York out there where it is always autumn, turning to winter; where baroque townhouses sit in faded... 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 →
Here it is again, the arse-end of winter. What's a girl to do but stay in and eat condensed milk straight from the tin with a spoon. I've also been buying lovely things, as is my wont. (And reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, so I can brush up on my Morningside accent and use words... 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 →
Amy Jardine 