What I've been reading

The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje

narrated by Jennifer Ehle

"The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, obsessively tends to her last surviving patient. Caravaggio, the thief, tries to reimagine who he is, now that his hands are hopelessly maimed. The Indian sapper Kip searches for hidden bombs in a landscape where nothing is safe but himself. And at the centre of his labyrinth lies the English patient, nameless and hideously burned."

It wasn't bad, I suppose, but seemed to meander on without any significant story line except the mysterious identity of the English patient. And when it was revealed I didn't quite understand the significance, but I think that was because of the audiobook format - in a print book I can flick back through the pages to check on some aspect of a character or plot. I seem to remember the film was very good, though.

Beloved
by Toni Morrison

"In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved."

I had many library books waiting to be started but found myself needing something to read while all my books were elsewhere. So I picked this off a shelf of second-hand books, and I'm so glad I did. It isn't an easy read; the subject is slavery after all, and brutal events are told but in a way that softens the impact and allows it to be understood, bit by bit so the pain doesn't impact all at once. I know there is more that could be understood on a second reading, so unlike most of my books I'll be keeping this one in case I'm brave enough to have another go.

Two Serious Ladies
by Jane Bowles

narrated by Laurence Bouvard

"Two serious ladies, nothing is natural for them and anything is possible. For Mrs Copperfield - a trip to Panama, where she abandons her husband for love of a local prostitute. For Miss Goering - a move to a squalid little house on an island and a series of sordid encounters with strangers. Both go to pieces - and both realise this is something they've wanted to do for years."

What a very peculiar book! Apparently, contemporaneous reviews were mostly 'uncomprehending', and that doesn't entirely surprise me. I was baffled at the start, but after I time I relaxed and let it carry me along to all the weird places where these two serious ladies went, entirely separately - they spend time together only at the start and the end. They met men and women, drank, slept and fought with them, and then usually left them for the next thrill to come their way. It's quite an achievement that the narrator made it all make sense.

The Buddha of Suburbia
by Hanif Kureishi

"Dreamy teenager Karim is desperate to escape suburban South London and experience the forbidden fruits which the 1970s seem to offer. When the unlikely opportunity of a life in the theatre announces itself, Karim starts to win the sort of attention he has been craving - albeit with some rude and raucous results."

I didn't really get the sense of a story, just an account of an immigrant family living in and around London, lots of sex, not much character development. I suppose it pushed the genre forward when it was written, and it didn't bore me, but I never really wanted to know what happened next.

What a Carve Up!
by Jonathan Coe

narrated by Richard Goulding

"It is the 1980s, and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year. But once their hapless biographer, Michael Owen, starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time is growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance."

I started listening to this in the car and a lot of characters were introduced, so I took the decision to start again, and I'm glad I did. It's a murder mystery dressed up as a family saga, and all the characters are wildly exaggerated, but I ended up enjoying it. I listened to most of it in the evenings while I was volunteering, because I was very much left to my own devices in the evenings, and it was perfect.

Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens

narrated by Cassandra Campbell

"For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand."

Another cracking book. I'm spending much too much time sitting listening to books in the evenings when I should be doing some more pressing tasks, but with this one I just needed to know what happens next. I've even seen the film of the book, which follows the story pretty closely, so I already knew what happens next. For a change, I think the film is as good as the book and I wouldn't have bothered reading it if it were not for a strong recommendation from a friend. The narration was absolutely outstanding too.

Volunteering (part 2)

St Mary's Church, Kempley, September 2023

Still working (volunteering) at the retreat centre, and my first day off saw the end of the heatwave and pouring rain. As it happens, Former Landrover Man and Former Bee Lady live quite nearby, and I'd arranged to meet them for for a walk and a pub lunch. First they showed me the progress they had made in the garden, and I wish I'd taken a photo of the flowering beds because they were stunning, and the new pergola glistened with raindrops like strings of lights. The rain was easing off so we went ahead with the walk, but there were still heavy showers on and off. 

Along the way we dropped into a Norman church which has 'the oldest timber roof of any building in England.' There are also magnificent 12th century wall paintings, uncovered in the 19th century - such a treasure in an ordinary little church in the English countryside. We do have some wonderful heritage. And pubs. Cheese! and chocolate cake! I went home for a day and as well as getting through a lot of the boring admin that was waiting for me, I consumed my body weight in chocolate and cheesy Wotsits.

Back in the retreat centre kitchen: catering for large numbers is difficult, especially when it is all vegan and there are people with a wide range of food intolerances. Thankfully no nut allergies, but one coeliac and four gluten-free as well as 'usual' intolerances: soya, onion, garlic and peppers, and also legumes, brassicas, spinach and chilli. The people who have been here the longest have started to object to other things - cooked tomato, too much broccoli. I need to practise cooking quinoa after my attempt ended up like wallpaper paste. I don't bother with quinoa at home, but one of the cooks here made a delicious version - unfortunately it involved rinsing, steaming and roasting so I probably won't bother.

There are a couple of things I might try at home, though. Vegan parmesan made of nutritional yeast, finely ground almonds and salt was very easy. Polenta chips less easy but very good. But the day that the college-trained cook decided to do fajitas using seitan for 'meat' and other components like peppers, guacamole and refried beans took me to the brink. There were 11 non-standard plates needing alternative components and by the time it came to serving up my brain had melted.

On Sunday I was taken off kitchen duty (there were two other people who wanted to cook together) and reported for duty to the laundry room, where the housekeeper hadn't been told I was coming. She was delighted, because a) she had a huge cloth she wanted to fold up and b) there was more Spanish translation, printing and laminating to be done and she really wasn't keen. In the afternoon the work was more physically demanding, including dismantling and cleaning extractor fans and moving furniture to hoover skirting.

Another interesting thing about Sunday was this rally which went right past the end of the access road to the retreat centre. This meant that we weren't allowed in or out for most of the day (not a problem) but there was also significant loud noise several times during the day. Along with some other residents I went to have a look...

Volunteering (part 1)

Biddulph Grange, August 2022

Since I last posted I've been volunteering at a Buddhist retreat centre. I offered them dates in September, October or November and they took me up on the September ones straight away, which was a bit sooner than I expected. After a busy weekend keeping well away from the plague-ridden UJ I arrived ready for the heatwave that was forecast.

When I arrived on Monday a retreat for Order Members that had started on Friday was in a phase of silence. Those of us working and not on the retreat were asked not to chat in public places around them, so it was a very quiet time until talking started again on Thursday afternoon. Three people I know very well were here on the retreat, including VG (whose retreat I'd supported in July), so it was lovely to see him again and catch up once the silence had ended.

I met the person in charge of volunteering, who promptly gave me two days off before I had to start work, so I wandered about feeling slight twinges of guilt when rocking up for my delicious meals after having walked about aimlessly and sat in the sunshine reading all day. My room has windows facing south-east and south-west, which I would normally welcome, but during a heatwave with little breeze it was uninhabitable between 11am and 6pm. Once I started working, however, I had very little time for sitting in my room between 11am and 6pm.

I exist in a state of limbo between the people visiting to attend a retreat and the people who live here. Both these groups have evening activities, but I am left to my own devices. On Monday evening I found my way to the local group that happens to meet in the retreat centre, and on Wednesday I joined the first session of an 'outreach' course for newcomers being held in Malvern. Otherwise I've been happy to spend time on my own in the evenings, reading and listening to books and generally recovering from the ordeal of working all day - something I'm not used to any more. I've also managed to do a bit more work for Mr MXF. It reminds me a little of my time on the kibbutz in the 1980's - the heat, and the lack of responsibility for anything except turning up for work - but with much less alcohol.

When I first asked if there was any scope for volunteering here I was asked what sort of work I might do, and I suggested office admin or kitchen, gardening if that was all there was, and please no cleaning or housekeeping. They picked the kitchen, and I was offered the option of being responsible for meals for people with food intolerances or allergies. That isn't how it has turned out, because the kitchen is operating without a permanent manager at the moment, so a variety of people are covering a few days each - there have been three different people in my first week, and each has their own approach to the job.

The first volunteer cook I worked with lives in Norfolk, is self-taught, and worked without written recipes or pre-planning (or tidying up). This was a challenge for me, being new to the kitchen and large-scale catering . He didn't know what he would be cooking until he'd had a think, didn't use recipes so couldn't be sure how much needed preparation, and without any record of what ingredients he had used it was pretty difficult to make sure that nobody ate something they weren't supposed to. I spent a lot of my time just clearing up after him.

The second cook is one of the live-in community here, went to catering college, and again didn't use printed recipes. She was much easier to work with because at least she had an idea ahead of time of what needed to be done, and made some effort to accommodate allergies and intolerances at the planning stage. The third cook also lives and works here but not usually in the kitchen, and within minutes I could relax. He put everything back in its proper place - at last I know where to find ladles and strainers and oven gloves! There were printed recipes, we decided together what people with restricted diets could and couldn't have and what I would cook for them.

Meanwhile, the Order Member retreat had ended and in its place two retreats had started - one just for the weekend for fathers, and the other for South American Spanish-speaking women, which would include five of them being ordained here. The person in charge of housekeeping realised that it would be helpful if the information provided about how to clean the kitchen after meals were provided in Spanish. However, for reasons known only to herself, she only translated some of the information, so some jobs like cleaning the hob and emptying the bins weren't done. I talked to her about it, and got no commitment from her to do anything more.

This sort of situation has always challenged me. Someone has done a bad job which affects me - what should I do? Should I accept the situation and do the jobs myself? Should I take it up with her again, or the person she reports to? Working within this context gave me an opportunity to reflect, to consult other more experienced Buddhists, and the option of trying out new ways of responding. What I actually did was to re-write the cleaning information and introduce it to the cleaning team myself, with the help of Google Translate and a bilingual retreatant. A small incident, but indicative of the ways that life can be different when working in a collaborative and supportive setting.

London, Manchester and York

York Minster, August 2023

Lola II's Belated Birthday events continue, and I invited myself to a long and fancy lunch in London with her and Mr M and also Mr MXF and his daughter. The timing was good because I was due for another orthodontics appointment beforehand, but the aligners they ordered had not arrived. So I enjoyed the lunch before getting fitted with new aligners along with what they call 'buttons' but I call 'cheek gougers'. 

Small, sharp metal nubbins have been welded on to my lower back teeth in order to attach little elastic bands during the night so that vertical pressure can be applied. Immediately after the orthodontics appointment I was due to catch a train, so I arrived in Manchester knowing that I was going to need an immediate remedy (dental wax) to avoid the 'buttons' slicing their way through to the outside of my cheek. Now, a week later, things are settling down.

I enjoyed my brief time in Manchester, during which I happened to revisit some of the haunts of 30 years ago. Much has changed - there are more student flats that I could ever have imagined, the tram system is excellent, and people are just as likely to talk to a stranger as they were back then. I spent a morning at the Manchester Buddhist Centre. watched a very short part of the Pride parade, visited the Museum of Science and Industry (which was much smaller than I remember) and went to see a film as well as a comedy show.

Manchester was a stopover on the way to the main event, which was a couple of days with one of my Buddhist friends who moved from Birmingham to York earlier this year. Coincidentally I had met someone from the York Buddhist community at a recent retreat, and she was able to open the Centre so I could have a look. My friend was keen to show me the wonders of York, and we spent some quality time putting the world to rights.

I came home via Manchester again, enabling me to pay a visit to H+B and the cats. The whole journey was carried out by train, with hardly a hitch despite the train strike on the Saturday (when I wasn't travelling). I found this quite surprising - when I used to be a regular train commuter my recollection is that the majority of trains were cancelled or late on my daily journeys, probably because the ones that were on time didn't make any sort of impression.

UJ was away at the same time as me. She had flown to Spain to visit friends, but had a pretty miserable time - they weren't feeling well when she arrived, so she not only spent her whole holiday with people who weren't up for doing much but she also caught Covid and brought it home with her. We had three days together in the house before I went away again, and during that time her challenge was not to pass it on to me, and mine was not to catch it.

I found a spare kettle and toaster for her room, and made two meals a day for her, and she didn't mind her incarceration too much because she was feeling rough and sleeping a lot of the time. But we made it; my Covid test was negative before I left for my latest adventure - a month of volunteering at Adhisthana, a Buddhist retreat centre, of which no doubt I will write more later.