What I've been reading

How Does It Feel? A Life of Musical Misadventures
by Mark Kermode

"In 1975, armed with a homemade electric guitar and very little talent, Mark Kermode embarked on an alternative career - a chaotic journey which would take him from the halls and youth clubs of North London to the stages of Glastonbury, the London Palladium and The Royal Albert Hall."

To enjoy this book you really have to like the author, who is one of the film critics I rely on for recommendations. I knew that he was in a skiffle band, but hadn't appreciated that he was one of those people who was always in a band of one sort or another from the time he could sing or hold an instrument. It was an easy book to read and just the right choice from the library.

The Fraud
by Zadie Smith

"Kilburn, 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter."

This is billed as a historical novel, and lent to me by a friend who enjoyed it. I didn't find it all that interesting; it's the second of her books that I've read and I didn't think the first one lived up to the hype either, although I think I liked it more than this one. There might well be some deeper message comparing the issues in the Tichborne Trial with those of the other featured characters, but I can't be bothered to spend any more time thinking about it.

The Scar
by China Miéville

narrated by Damian Lynch

"Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travellers, each with a reason for fleeing the city."

This really wasn't my cup of tea despite some interesting ideas. The story wasn't quite good enough, and I didn't care about the characters, not the main protagonist nor even the one who tragically died towards the end. And, unusually, the narration was pretty poor and included words that weren't actually pronounced correctly. Only a few times, but enough.

The Boy Who Wasn't Short
by Edwin Kirk

"Human stories from the revolution in genetic medicine - a geneticist tells the stories of men, women, and children whose genes have shaped their lives in unexpected ways."

I picked this up in the library - they don't stock many science books at all and don't even have a section for science. I think this was hidden in Biology. It's pretty good, worth a read.

On the home front

Harcourt Arboretum, March 2025

I was out in the garden hacking down the jungle as usual when I heard voices from over the wall where the wisteria grows. There were a couple of gardeners, hired by the neighbour, and I asked them if they could possibly deal with the huge amount of wisteria that was coming at me over the wall - I've got enough on my plate dealing with my own wisteria going over the wall in the other direction. So maybe that will be sorted before next year, if I'm lucky.

My car needed an MOT and service recently. I've been going to the same garage in Leamington for more than 20 years, and they've always gone out of their way to be helpful. Simple things like listing what's still OK at the moment but might need dealing with soon (like low tyre tread), along with doing small jobs if I just turn up at any time they're open - checking tyre pressure, topping up oil, replacing a bulb - and they never charge me for these little jobs.

They highlighted that one of my wheels is a bit out of shape. It's not an MOT fail, just something that I might like to deal with. But I'm not going to deal with anything on my own, given that I don't even check my own tyre pressures any more and couldn't tell you where the dipstick is, let alone where to stick it for dipping. Saying this, I can still change a wheel for the spare if I have a flat tyre, and I really ought to get one of those magic jump start devices, size of a video cassette with two leads, chargeable by USB, which is an astonishingly useful invention.

So, the out of shape wheel. One of the garage guys told me about a business that exists just for sourcing spare parts around the country. So I fired up their website, put in the registration number of my car, asked for an offside front wheel, uploaded a picture and sat back to wait. Two quotes came in - one for £300 (of which £50 was delivery) and the other was £180 (delivery just £10). So I followed up the second quote with another picture just to be on the safe side, and they replied with three pictures just to make sure it was the right part, and my garage said I could put them down for the delivery address, and it arrived within two days and it will be fitted this week.

Other stuff - I went to a 60th birthday garden party at the weekend, with somewhat variable weather but lots of very old friends. Well, 60-year-old friends anyway. Some success with GRUHI too - I got rid of a bookcase and even made a small amount of money by selling DVDs. It's going to take a very long time to empty the house if I continue at this rate.

And now I'm at the Warwick Folk Festival during the set-up period, back in the Comms room surrounded by radios ready and waiting to be issued, at the request of Radio Man who said that Tuesday was really busy and he found it difficult to manage tracking the radios as well as all the other things he needed to do. So far I have issued only three radios, and one of them was to him. I have done a bit of setting up and tidying and organising, and hopefully my Joint Deputy Venue Manager (Comms) will turn up soon and we'll talk about shifts and cover and then I will go home.

Self-restraint

What my wisteria doesn't look like, Warwickshire, May 2025

This new way of life, filled with denial masquerading as 'doing the right thing', is difficult. Not that I expected anything else; eating less has always been difficult for me. When I've talked to people who naturally stop eating when they are full at a meal, I find they simply don't comprehend why anyone would overeat. Jokes about having a different stomach for pudding are seen as just that - jokes, rather than representing the actuality of wanting to eat something that tastes good, just because it tastes good, and more always being better than less.

Shops in town are full of delightful treats. My friend had a garden party that included wonderful cakes. The weekly board games group and my regular local Buddhist group both have a tea break that includes biscuits. I ended my Tuesday volunteering at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre by making a lemon tart for the workers there. Visiting Lola II and Mr M, I happened to arrive on the night of Lola II's termly concert, after which there was a party, and then her craft group next day happened to be holding a celebratory lunch. Visiting Adhisthana for my kula meeting - someone brought snacks. When volunteering there, I have little control over meal content or the portion on my plate. A festival day at the Birmingham centre included a bring-and-share lunch. It's everywhere, almost every day.

This is no surprise. As a qualified Dietitian I am well aware of the place of food within every society, and its role as anything but simple nutrition. Food as evidence of love, of celebration, of consolation, of generosity, eaten for comfort, eaten to make someone else feel better, mindlessly eaten with anticipation, then disappointment, then regret. The 12-step program around food addiction runs in exactly the same format as that of alcohol. 

Then there's the negative impact of food choices on family and friends, of refusal to accept well-meant food offerings. Of being thought of as 'difficult', or 'fussy', or being told 'you ARE good', or people apologising for eating something in front of you that you're not having, or trying to accommodate you but getting it wrong. The discipline to do what is best in the moment, but often to reflect on what went wrong this time and resolve to do better when it happens again. As it will.

So everywhere I go I am practising mindfulness. This means remaining aware of habits that have been thoroughly embedded over 60 years, and trying to catch every thought and hold it rather than act it out. I remain determined but I feel weak. It's easiest to operate at home, where I can arrange distractions, and do my best to stay out of the kitchen. I didn't go to the party after Lola II's concert, I kept my back to the food at the craft lunch, and I brought my own lunch to the bring-and-share event and stayed out of the room with all the food laid out. I'm telling everyone about my predicament in the hope that they will remember and support me.

Last time I lost weight was during the pandemic, when we weren't allowed out and I only had at home what I bought during my weekly shop. The time before that was when I was on a dietetic placement, living in a rented room and being kept very busy and fairly miserable. Those were very different circumstances. I have also used a calorie counting app in the past; this time I am focussing on reducing carbs and portion sizes, but the calorie counting may have to come into play if this doesn't work on its own. Two weeks in, so far so good, and I'm trying not to think about whether my life will need to stay this way forever.

Trying to be idle

Worcestershire, March 2025

I am consciously trying to fit less into my days, but it isn't easy. I've just spent a happy hour browsing the different live venues in my area for films, shows, theatre and live music, and booked two events, one for later this month and the other in October. On the other hand, on Thursday evening I am considering neither going to badminton nor supporting our introductory course to meditation and Buddhism. But I have agreed to lead the Buddhist group on Tuesday, because nobody else is available, so how could I refuse? (Update - the person who was supposed to send out the email about the Tuesday evening meeting failed to do so, so only three people came and one of them was an hour late. So I'm saving my idea for next time I'm asked to lead.)

I am no nearer to solving this puzzle of how to spend my time. Everything is flexible given that I don't have a paid job, but there is quite a bit that needs to get done - things like insurance renewal, house maintenance, keeping the garden in check - so I find it difficult to be at home doing nothing. For a while I tried to abandon the lists that keep track of the jobs that are waiting, because I thought it might make it easier to do nothing, but instead I was always on edge worrying that I would miss a commitment or a deadline. There is a good deal of satisfaction in crossing jobs off the list, but the list never gets any shorter. I don't know what the answer is.

One of the jobs on the list relates to my progress towards ordination. I'm meeting three good friends who have agreed to support me in this, and to get the most out of the meeting it's been suggested that I write a kind of report. There's a framework for this in eight sections, but I'm finding it extremely tedious - in fact, I'm writing this as a distraction before going back to carry on with section five. It will be easier next time.

Given that I am determinedly trying to do less, there's not much more to say here. I've been to see mum and we had a lovely trip to Lidl, I've been working in the garden, watching some tennis, some films and reading, board games, badminton and volunteering. It's interesting that this is what I've been up to when I'm trying not to do too much.

What I've been reading

We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin

narrated by Toby Jones

"In the totalitarian society of the OneState of the great Benefactor, in a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, is a world where people are numbers, there are no individuals, only numbers. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall."

A precursor to Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this is a Russian author imagining a future in a rational world where Freedom and Happiness are considered to be mutually incompatible, and happiness is produced by the removal of freedom. It's another Classic that has a literary style, so quite a bit of political discourse at the cost of plot, so I can't say that I enjoyed it.

Rubyfruit Jungle
by Rita Mae Brown

narrated by Anna Paquin

"Beautiful, funny and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for her right to happiness."

I think it makes a great difference with audiobooks whether I listen to them in just a few sittings or over a longer period. I'm sure that I enjoyed this one more because I didn't leave great gaps between listens. It was a fairly ordinary story about a woman growing up as a lesbian in the American South and then later in New York, and nothing wrong with it at all. Unusually, the narration wasn't as good as usual because there was almost no difference in the voices of different characters.

Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke

"Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls."

I'm not sure what to say about this - it starts in a magical realist way, narrated with a very particular, naïve voice, and then it starts to become interwoven with a modern voice, and it all comes together at the end except that the mystery is never explicitly solved. What exactly happened remains mysterious, but slightly less mysterious by the end. I think I liked it. It was certainly much more fun to read than The Satanic Verses.

The Blue Flower
by Penelope Fitzgerald

narrated by Thomas Judd

"Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, the passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kühn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends."

Another literary 'Classic' book which failed to provide any interest or engagement, despite being based on the early life of a German poet and philosopher. Perhaps if I were interested in German poetry or philosophy...? Despite this I'm finding it very enjoyable to be able to borrow audio books freely from the library, even though the range is a little limited and four out of five books I'm interested in are out on loan. I'm going to start experimenting with the 'Reserve book' option next.

The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie

"Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jumbo jet blows apart high above the English Channel. Through the debris of limbs, drinks trolleys, memories, blankets, and oxygen masks, two figures fall towards the sea: Gibreel Faishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices."

I get the feeling that I would have got more out of this book if I knew more about Islam and the Koran and the Prophet Mahound, but given that I don't know a great deal, I didn't get much enjoyment in the reading. In fact, I'd describe it as quite a slog.

The Group
by Mary McCarthy

"Eight Vassar graduates meet a week after graduation to watch one of The Group get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives - traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City."

Another from the Classics list, and this time it was rather interesting. Written in 1963 about a group of women graduates in 1933, it sheds light on that era without being overtly political. I found it enthralling.

The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data
by David Spiegelhalter

"Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, we are shown how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial."

I can't deny that although the book is interesting, it was also very hard going, and I skimmed quite a lot of the explanations and equations. At one point he writes something like "people often say that probability is a difficult and unintuitive idea... after forty years of researching and teaching in this area, I have finally concluded that it is because probability really is a difficult and unintuitive idea." Which pretty much sums up the book.