Nun Sandwich

Thankfully there’s always a Boosh moment to sum up the air of surreal chaos that envelops me. To quote another Boosh moment, life is coming at me like a nun sandwich. I’m just grateful I went to a convent school and have prior form with nuns, and sandwiches.

Oscar did not get into Glasgow. They waited until after the two week deadline and decided to let him know last thing on Friday, which was a bit of a kick in the nuts. They did say that if he wasn’t rejected straightaway he could assume he was a solid contender, so at least his belief that he did well in the audition was sound. He allowed himself an evening of wallowing, which is entirely fair. What’s nice is that rather than allow this defeat to flatten him, he’s back up in the game with renewed vigour. He really wants this life and he’s willing to do what it takes, which is important. It’s not a career for the faint hearted. I’m more proud of the way that he dealt with the rejection than anything else actually. The boy has guts.

My middle daughter came to stay for a couple of days last week. She’s finding winter plus work plus looming dissertation a hard row to hoe and needed a retreat. We snuggled up in my bed and watched a lot of telly together. Our ritual is Call the Midwife which everyone else hates and which we only ever watch together. By the time we had sobbed through that we decided to finish things off with the last brilliant, hilarious and heartbreaking season of Big Boys. Many noses were blown.

Jason is in his second week of man flu. I love that man with the heat of a thousand suns and would defend him to the literal death, but he is extremely bad at being poorly and our boat is very small. There have been times where I have dreamed of having some kind of rescue vehicle that I could launch into the marina. I don’t mind being the one in it and I don’t even mind not being rescued by anyone. I’d just like to be somewhere with less snot for five minutes.

In not entirely unrelated news, I had a two day migraine last week. The latest iteration gives the symptoms of coming down with flu mixed with the joy of having your head twisted off while woodpeckers attack your face. This sounds terrible and it is terrible but it is so much less terrible than they used to be that I find I can function even with the woodpeckers in action. I did fail to go to book club, despite having read the book and having a lot of thoughts. It takes me 90 minutes to get to Beckenham and involves a lot of buses and it was the journey that did for me. Next month we are discussing Greta and Valdin which was one of my favourite books of last year, so even if I have to be stretchered in, I’m going. I’m not really sure that this powering through a migraine is a good thing, because it’s very probable that my body is suggesting that this is the time for the emergency rescue vehicle, but it is infinitely more practical when there’s a lot to do.

Work was a joy again. What an absolute treat to be able to say that. I feel very blessed in what I do and the people I get to spend time with. If you’d like to be one of those people, you can make an appointment with me here. If you’re not sure if you’d like to be one of those people but you’re burning with curiosity there are a couple of options available. I offer a fifteen minute reading for £20, which should give you a taster of what it’s like, or you can message me and we’ll figure things out between us. My latest post over on the spookier side of the stack tells you a little more about how I work, which may help to either entice you or create a sticker asking me not to come round. Your call.

In funner things to do, I went to the Tarot Exhibition at the Warburg Institute in Bloomsbury with

Rebecca Armstrong

, but only after we had scoured the charity shops of Dalston and eaten a significant amount of bunnage at the Dusty Knuckle. We know how to prioritise, and to be truthful, the buns were far more fun than the exhibition, which was fine but I’m glad it was free.

I can hand on heart recommend buying a focaccia loaf the size of a mattress from the Dusty Knuckle. I also ate a delicious Danish thing filled with custard and poached rhubarb which will remain locked in the memory banks as an exceedingly good thing forever and ever. As for The Warburg Institute it’s well worth a visit regardless of what exhibition is on, because it’s weird and wonderful, rather like the Wellcome Collection or the Grant Museum of Zoology, both of which are nearby.

Going further afield I finally got to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Tirzah Garwood exhibition. I remain conflicted about this experience. I will unpack. Firstly, Dulwich is a convoluted journey for me, and at £20 admission with no Art Pass discount, that’s a big investment of my time and money. I didn’t think it was entirely worth it for the size of the exhibition. Secondly, this was a shame because I did rather love most of the exhibition but was a little annoyed at how many Ravilious paintings there were, given that the exhibition is about his wife and is subtitled; Beyond Ravilious. I love Ravilious. In fact, the last time I went to Dulwich in anger was to see a huge Ravilious retrospective but I had paid to see Tirzah Garwood.

Thirdly I don’t think it was particularly well curated. I was really intrigued with regard to her subject matter, which was quite whimsical and did strange things with proportion that verged on the surreal. I think she straddled an interesting line between the domestic life of women, the natural world, the supernatural world and childhood. I also think there were interesting parallels that could be drawn with the work of Leonora Carrington to name but one, but everything was just covered with a few lines about the domesticity of her life and I think it did her dirty. Having said all that, there were artworks I was truly delighted to have seen that made the negatives more palatable.

In slightly less cerebral news, we have been rationing the final season of Ted Lasso in the manner of someone on a train breaking the glass in an emergency, but we finally finished it. Like Gone Fishing, it is a show that I love because it depicts men actually being decent human beings who cherish their friendships and are not afraid to say how much they love each other. I feel that we need more of these shows to counter the Incel/Alt Right dumpster fire blazing merrily away elsewhere. We started watching Shrinking because Brett Goldstein who plays the iconic Roy Kent in Ted Lasso is involved and we needed something Ted adjacent. It will do.

In book news, I have slowed down significantly in February, which is probably a good sign, mental health wise. I read the latest Rachel Seiffert, Once The Deed Is Done via Netgalley (published 6th March) and loved it. Seiffert is English but her grandparents were German and very active in the Nazi party. She often writes about WWII, its impact and legacy and always has interesting things to say. Her first book, The Dark Room is a masterpiece. I read the latest Han Kang, We Do Not Part. It’s my first and possibly my last book by them. I found it so stressful that even when one of the main characters was waiting for a bus in a snowstorm I had to stop reading for a bit. Great on tension, not great if you’re trying to shift any tension yourself. Right now I’m alternating between the latest Maeve Kerrigan, The Secret Room, by Jane Casey, which is terrific (publishes 24th April) and Sally Mann’s autobiography, Hold Still which is terrific in a different way.

House hunting is back on, in an extremely low key way. We did a little scouting at the weekend and made a list of properties that maybe, might be ok. Mainly we went to Dungeness and ate piping hot fish and chips at The Pilot because it was way more fun than looking at EPC ratings and drainage. In the old days we cared naught for things like broadband speed and the depth of roof insulation. We merrily upped and moved into all kinds of stupid houses. It was all part of the adventure.

We laughed in the face of the flooded cellar where the children sat on the stairs and wept because we wouldn’t let them swim in it. We delighted in a pointless spiral staircase and an even more pointless turret that was full of dead flies and looked into the tanning salon across the road. We dealt with woodworm and exploding water pipes. Gas pipes that had more holes in than a recorder were a mere bagatelle and inexplicable fountains coming up through the hall floor were the Bellagio of NW4. We lived in ex-servants’ quarters with black mould and no heating. We lived in weird mansions, barn conversions and ex-council houses. We cobbled together furniture from things we found on the street and things we found in IKEA. I spent four months sleeping on a deflating air mattress with bare wires sticking out the ceiling at one point.

We ran dangerous wires here and there like bunting to create ambience. I’ve lived with more brown, swirly carpets than you’ve had hot dinners. We’ve dealt with drunk neighbours, angry neighbours and neighbours who only came out at night and who we were very sure were vampires. We didn’t kill the neighbour who waited until we were on holiday to overturn a tree preservation order on our shared boundary and chopped down all the trees before we got home. Domestic situations, we’ve had a few.

Now though, I am tired. I am so freaking tired of adventures in housing it’s deep in my bones and spiralling through my marrow. Now I want a house that works. I want it to be warm and dry and to be able to keep it warm and dry without having to sell a vital organ. I want it to be light and airy and functional. I want it to be deeply, utterly boring, which is why I spend my evenings looking at EPC ratings, broadband speeds and home buyers reports. It’s why I ask myself whether I can live with that kitchen without wanting to chop down the pointless kitchen island that isn’t so much a feature as an expensive trip hazard. I feel I’m about to buy the most boring house of my entire adult life and I’m not even sorry about it. Adventure can come in other forms.

Talking of which, on top of all this, Jason and I have booked two holidays this week. We are going to Canada for two and a half weeks in April and Corsica for a week at the beginning of September. We have only booked the flights so far, but we are already excited. Our Canada journey starts in Vancouver, which we know and love, and ends in Toronto, which we have never visited before. When we have more idea of what the itinerary between the two looks like, I’ll be scouting for recommendations for places to go and more importantly, places to eat. That’s an adventure I can get behind.