Blog Archives

The Dark is Reading 1: Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond all imagining

I think if I were to read The Dark is Rising for the first time now, it would be a very different book. I was thirteen when I first read it on the beach in Hastings. Hastings is a town in

Posted in Among Others, Books, Fandom, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

In Nimes

…The so-called temple of Diana was an Augusteum, the niches in the cella also suggest some library use… I’m in the South of France. Far off, a flute is playing Vivaldi’s measured Summer And all around unmeasured profligate summer Is

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face, Poetry

10th November 2016: How I feel when people reference Farthing

Generally if something in the world causes somebody to think of something I have written, it’s delightful. It means I’ve succeeded in encapsulating something, in finding a way of describing something that’s useful to somebody. Something I’ve written has helped

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face, Small Change, Writing

2nd May 2016: My Goodreads review of Petrarch’s letters

Five hundred and ninety years before I was born, Petrarch died in the middle of writing me a letter. What do you mean it wasn’t to me? It totally was. It was addressed to “Posterity”, and if I’m not his

Posted in Books, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

29th January 2015: Everything alive and dead to weep as one

There’s a family anecdote about me that I’m not sure whether I actually remember or whether I just remember being told about it lots and lots of times. I was four or five, and we went to St David’s Cathedral,

Posted in Books, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

30th September 2014: A Kind of Rissole

One of the things I am reading is Boccaccio’s Decameron. It’s a fascinating collection of medieval stories, comparable to the Canterbury Tales but more Italian and with more sex. The frame story is that seven young ladies and three young

Posted in Books, Human culture

5th May 2014: When you’re happy and you know it…

When I was four years old and went to school, they put me in Mrs Caulfield’s class with older kids because I could read. Everyone else had been in school for a year already, and they knew how school worked.

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

8th April 2014: Culture, or how I discovered Bach

I think it was 1994, and I was twenty-nine. I was in a charity shop in Lancaster, one of the smaller ones, down at the bottom of Penny Street. Ken and I wanted some more music both of us could write

Posted in Human culture

October/November 2013 Poland Scandinavia/Novacon Trip

13th October, Montreal So I’m about to set off for my month-long European trip. I keep second-guessing myself on what I’m taking, but I have made decisions and am packed, all but the computer, and ready to set off in

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

30th April 2012: Home From Jo March’s Europe

I am home, having spent the last week walking my feet off in Florence and Rome. What I said about Florence last time still very much holds. This time I wasn’t alone with Ada but joined by Z and A and

Posted in Books, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face