From Departures
Blogging from the luxurious environs (ahem) of Gatwick Airport Holiday Inn, after a long day packing and tidying and cleaning – not only are we (K- and I) off on a long awaited holiday tomorrow, but our good friend S and her 3 year old son (my godson) have come up to London to flat-sit for us, and more importantly, look after Jack and Harry while we are away. What a strange feeling of wrench, to be leaving these two small creatures who have come to identify me as a sort of substitute mother. Of course they will be fine, because that is the nature of kittens – look after their basic needs and they will adapt – one of the reasons why we find them so congenial as pets. When we left earlier this evening they had been introduced to S, and A had made some friendly advances; when I said goodbye said charges were sprawled out on their towels in the study; two little scraps of life with their eyes squeezed shut and the breath rising and falling, rapid and regular, from their little kitten lungs.
So I write this at the beginning, I suppose, of an adventure in the sense that we’ll be exploring new territory out in Germany: Munich and Bavaria to be exact. Contained adventure in that a holiday like this is intended for pleasure and relaxation rather than dramatic discovery. Hopefully there will be none of the elements of crisis, revelation and denouement that make for a good vacation-based fiction, or even the disaster that journalist Martha Gelhorn identified as a central element of exciting travel reportage: ‘The only aspect of our travels that is guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster’. Looking forward to some opportunities for cultural blogging nevertheless.
As for holiday reading. I have a rather miscellaneous list, viz Lorrie Moore, Basil Bunting, Close Listening, Word Warriors (more on that one in due course), and two new holiday purchases, The Glass of Time by Michael Cox, and The Secret History by Sebastian Barry. The Barry looks like it is making use, at least in part of the first person speaker we identify in class as the reminiscent narrator: one who, towards the end of their life, looks back on an adventure of the past, often prompted by a letter or a newly discovered photo – or simply some other sort of Proustian moment. ‘For dearly I would love to leave an account some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself, and if God gives me the strength I will tell this story and imprison it under the floor-board and then with joy enough I will go to my own rest under the Roscommon sod…’Very similar in fact to traditional autobiography, though of a fictional ilk. Perhaps less similar to the in-the-moment, or culturally reflective stuff of blogging.
Journeys, departures. K- and I caught the Gatwick express at about 8 pm, and were practically the only persons on the train, barring the guard, and the reflections of our ghostly selves in the blackened windows – a parallel mirror-image. The disembodied woman’s voice recited its information to us in a spectrum of European languages as I reflected that the particularity of this train service is that its destination is itself a point of departure.
So the end of the day but the beginning of the holiday, again in a hotel room but this time with welcome company. How pleased I am about this, especially after reading David Mitchell’s offering in the Guardian summer short story magazine special, where the tortured ending of a marriage is painfully yet enigmatically evoked through what they believed to be a trapped rat behind the fireplace – but turns out to be something rather different, and rather more beautiful, released then vanishing forever through the open window and thereby closing that story down. This one is full of beginnings.
So I write this at the beginning, I suppose, of an adventure in the sense that we’ll be exploring new territory out in Germany: Munich and Bavaria to be exact. Contained adventure in that a holiday like this is intended for pleasure and relaxation rather than dramatic discovery. Hopefully there will be none of the elements of crisis, revelation and denouement that make for a good vacation-based fiction, or even the disaster that journalist Martha Gelhorn identified as a central element of exciting travel reportage: ‘The only aspect of our travels that is guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster’. Looking forward to some opportunities for cultural blogging nevertheless.
As for holiday reading. I have a rather miscellaneous list, viz Lorrie Moore, Basil Bunting, Close Listening, Word Warriors (more on that one in due course), and two new holiday purchases, The Glass of Time by Michael Cox, and The Secret History by Sebastian Barry. The Barry looks like it is making use, at least in part of the first person speaker we identify in class as the reminiscent narrator: one who, towards the end of their life, looks back on an adventure of the past, often prompted by a letter or a newly discovered photo – or simply some other sort of Proustian moment. ‘For dearly I would love to leave an account some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself, and if God gives me the strength I will tell this story and imprison it under the floor-board and then with joy enough I will go to my own rest under the Roscommon sod…’Very similar in fact to traditional autobiography, though of a fictional ilk. Perhaps less similar to the in-the-moment, or culturally reflective stuff of blogging.
Journeys, departures. K- and I caught the Gatwick express at about 8 pm, and were practically the only persons on the train, barring the guard, and the reflections of our ghostly selves in the blackened windows – a parallel mirror-image. The disembodied woman’s voice recited its information to us in a spectrum of European languages as I reflected that the particularity of this train service is that its destination is itself a point of departure.
So the end of the day but the beginning of the holiday, again in a hotel room but this time with welcome company. How pleased I am about this, especially after reading David Mitchell’s offering in the Guardian summer short story magazine special, where the tortured ending of a marriage is painfully yet enigmatically evoked through what they believed to be a trapped rat behind the fireplace – but turns out to be something rather different, and rather more beautiful, released then vanishing forever through the open window and thereby closing that story down. This one is full of beginnings.
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