That was about it today. More of the same tomorrow, I suspect.
How much do I love travelling? Let me count the ways… I love the anticipation of packing a suitcase and imagining adventures ahead, I love people watching at the airport and trying to guess where they might be travelling to and why. I love sitting on a plane and see the world tiny and mysterious far far below me, I love love love arriving somewhere new and not knowing what to do or where to go, signs in different languages, the air that smells new, and the light… have you noticed how different places have their own unique light? Same sun, different light.
Arriving in Dubai was fascinating. I had never stepped out of the airport before, always just passed through… We didn’t stop to visit this time either, but a car took us two hours North into a tiny territory which is actually part of Oman (which instead is South of Dubai.
We crossed some spectacular desert mountains, arid, with only the odd silvery green tree and goats for company (lots of goats!)… and then we arrived at our resort…
Yes… I think I can handle this for the next six days…
We’re staying here. If you’re curious.
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Wishing you all a wonderful new year.
If, like me, you have birthed three boys it’s inevitable that most family days out involve one sports or another… there have been holidays with trips to baseball matches, basketball games, hockey arenas and even a football game in Thailand once. ‘Soccer’ that is, we’re still missing an American Football game.
Yesterday we travelled 3 1/2 North to support the family team – Liverpool – in their glory journey towards Premiership victory. (Or so we hope, anyway).
So anyway…
First… this is us (unauthorised posting of photos coming up)
I’ll be in trouble for this, I hope you appreciate it!
And then we entered the stadium… first impression? how small it is. On tv the perspective is all wrong, but sitting there it felt intimate, like a live performance at the theatre…
Second impression? the noise. A good noise. A common sound, a chorus of voices united for a while for a common purpose, tied together by a shared love. I don’t think it matters that what’s shared is the love for a spherical object and eleven men in red – or whatever other colour – , I love sport when it does that, erasing the differences for a little while. (And yes I know there are things in football that need ‘attention’ shall we say… racism is unacceptable for example… but there is also a lot of good… and last night, it brought a smile to my face.
Liverpool won. Everybody was happy, well the opposition fans weren’t… and the long way back didn’t feel too long.
Also… who knew they pitch got watered??
A good day. A very good day.
In the limbo week between Christmas and New Year, life goes on, a little bit slower than normal, a little fuzzy at the edges but still on it rolls. I like it. I like not having a clue what day of the week it is, I like eating left-overs and not getting dressed till late. The lazy afternoons, the slow walks. A little reading, a little knitting.
I’m currently sitting at my desk taking a rest from some college work, two of the boys are watching a rugby match with Mr M and another is taking apart, and hopefully putting back together, his computer. The dog is snoring at my feet.
I’m behind in talking about books I’ve read… they’re slowly piling up on the corner of my desk… and totally illogically I’m going to begin with the latest one I’ve read.
Alice Munro, Canadian, short story writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Beautiful writer.
Lives of Girls and Women is her only novel I believe and it’s just … wonderful. It reminded me of ‘Stoner’ (by John Edward Williams), in as much is a novel about life and people, amazingly observed and so carefully and beautifully written to appear to have been done without effort… while we know that to achieve that level of effortlessness… takes a lot of work!
I normally don’t like long descriptions… my mind wanders and I much prefer a dialogue or a tight prose like Elizabeth Strout who can say so much with so few words… but Munro got me. I was ‘in’ the world she described, I could see it.
We follow Del Jordan as she grows up in a small Canadian town of Jubilee, we get to know her family, her friends, we live with her adolescence and first experiences with boys and sex and … life… in all its forms.
People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.”
Each chapter is about a different time in her life and could almost be read as stand alone short stories, but all together they weave this glorious tapestry that draws you in and traps you there. Del is surrounded by women and girls, and she tries, through observing others to find herself and own way into the world… she’s not like her old fashioned aunts, her feminist mother, her traditional friends…
What was a normal life? It was the life of the girls in the creamery office, it was showers, linen and pots and pans and silverware, that complicated feminine order; then, turning it over, it was the life of the Gay-la Dance Hall, driving drunk at night along the black roads, listening to men’s jokes, putting up with and warily fighting with men and getting hold of them, getting hold – one side of that life could not exist without the other, and by undertaking and getting used to them both a girl was putting herself on the road to marriage. There was no other way. And I was not going to be able to do it.”
If you’re looking for a deceptively quiet book that nevertheless delivers plenty of punches… this is for you. A real gem. Perceptive, delicate, forceful, one of those books that will stay with you like an echo for a while.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th’unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
‘There is no peace on earth, ‘ I said
‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.’
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.’
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Two more sleeps…
… one of my favourite Christmas Carols…
Four more sleeps…
while you're ahead... 