Elizabeth Gaskell

 How have I never read Elizabeth Gaskell? 

Is that some part of education that you miss out on if you’re not posh? You know, how Boris is always banging on about Virgil and Gove is obsessed with Henry James. The posh rulers of our country tend to enjoy their literature to be about a dim distant past. None of them get excited about the new James Pattison or Jojo Moyes, although Nicola Sturgeon does read everything.

I’ve stumbled upon Elizabeth Gaskell books as I try to get into the head of the women of 1882. I just discovered that my Emily did work for a little while after William left her, at Courtaulds as a silk winder in the factory that then became the Marconi building in Chelmsford. I wanted to know what that life was like and so found Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.

 I know. She’s not really my Emily. She’s just a random woman who was briefly in the workhouse and committed a crime that saw her spend a couple of nights at the Moot Hall but she is mine. I’m passionate about understanding her. I’m equally disgusted with her and protective towards her. She could be my own daughter. I’ll forgive her anything because I love her but I can’t understand what she did. Emily’s own mother is equally a puzzle and her Aunts seem like amazing women. 

It is too easy, however, to think you know how they were thinking. You assume that they think like you. Maybe they do but maybe life was so different then that you can’t assume anything. History tends to write women out.

“Oh, of course,” people say to me, “A woman couldn’t live as a single mother without a man, the shame would have been too much.”

But, the censuses show plenty of women living with their children, as the head of the household, or living as unmarried mothers with their parents. I wanted to read women who were writing at the time. The Brontes give you an idea of the very wealthy but was anyone writing about women who made their own way in the world? 

It seems that person was Mrs Gaskell. She wrote Charlotte’s biography and wrote her novel Ruth after contacting Dickens to find out how she could help a woman that she had visited in prison. She wrote Cranford, which I remember being on TV and being a story  about frivolous, gossiping women, who really controlled the town, despite what the men thought. 

Thank goodness that I don’t have eleven Christmas concerts to organise this year. I have a lot of catch up reading to do. 

Mrs Gaskell, at 50, having a kip while reading the latest Henry James?

It’s not personal

 The pudding is made and hiding in the cold cupboard with the sloe gin, the address book is updated, cards have been written and the mincemeat is slowly warming in a very cool oven. The whole house smells of Christmas, which is entirely appropriate for advent Sunday. However, this feeling of being calm, organised is new. Normally, I would be feeling stressed about a Christmas concert that should be happening today. It would be concert 2 of eleven and one that I really care about, so while the mincemeat was warming and I was thinking about making the first mince pies of the season for after church I would also be running round, fixing stands, printing music, checking the sleigh bells all worked and making sure my Christmas jumper still fits. 

It is a very strange feeling but it also means that I have time to do other things, like update the address book or clean out the backs of cupboards. 

I had quite a lot of mincemeat left over from last year. I didn’t use enough, or give enough away. Also,  think I forgot to only make half of the Delia recipe. I checked the jam cupboard and found a rhubarb and a courgette that I’d made that were disgusting, next to the old solid mincemeat. I don’t know what commercial manufacturers do but my preserves don’t seem to last as long as theirs. It has been quite therapeutic scrapping out all the old mincemeat and washing the jars.

Also at the back of the cupboard that were two jars labelled in my Mum’s handwriting. Damson 2015 and Strawberry 2016.

I had a little moment. I knew that I couldn’t face eating them (even if they were ok) but could I throw them away?

It turns out, that if you aren’t too busy then you can trick your brain into letting go of these things by telling yourself, “It’s not personal; it’s mouldy jam!”

I have no idea if it was mouldy as I didn’t open the lids and I feel a little guilty for not emptying, washing and recycling but somehow life just feels a bit better without jam I’m never going to eat in the cupboard.

Wish

 Last night I weighed out the ingredients for the Christmas pudding. Everything goes in a bowl with a good glug of alcohol (I use milk stout and Tiptree Christmas rum). Then you cover it with a tea towel and leave it overnight. 

Traditionally, during this phase each member of the family takes some time with the ingredients. Stir and wish.  Usually, I struggle to think of a wish and so I just think, “Let nice things happen,” as I stir. Whilst I am realistic that my pudding can’t work miracles it doesn’t stop you from asking for them. This year, I keep thinking of things to wish for.

I’m fairly certain that too much stirring at this stage won’t hurt the flavour but will all these wishes make my pudding bitter?

Could this be one of those fairy tales, where adding our dried bitter tears of lockdown frustration will spoil the pudding?

As I’ve walked around town, I’ve heard the phrase, ‘after corona’. People, especially teenagers have lots of plans for nice things to happen after corona. 

Okay. Just one more stir.

All together now.

“We wish for nice things after corona.....oh, and make that soon.”

Seasonal Balance

 My yoga this morning contained balancing postures and I can report that I am very wobbly at the moment. It’s like my body is shouting, “Hah, balance! What’s that?” 

I don’t suppose I’m alone. The government announced that we were all in tier 404 yesterday and now none of us know where we really stand, or even if we’ve got enough balance to actually stand.

Yesterday was the day that the government were supposed to have completed looking at the data to decide which tier each region would be in. Put simply, in all tiers everything except pubs and clubs are open. Clubs aren’t open anywhere and pubs only in tier one and in two, only if you eat. You can’t have any human contact, though in any of their tiers and are not even allowed to see people you like at a distance, if you sing happy birthday while washing your hands, jog around doing the hands, face, space dance, open the windows, dress as Batman or do any of the other three word marketing suggestions that Boris keeps mentioning. He says that he has his foot on the throat of the beast and that we have all been altruistic and just need to carry on until the pricks come marching over the brow of the hill, saving us all by Easter.

Unfortunately, they made the announcement via a website that you had to put your full postcode into to know your tier, causing it to immediately crash. Computer says ,”no,” You are in tier error 404! 

So, we can all be forgiven for feeling a little wobbly.

This is often a tricky season to balance for me. I’m normally, running round, rehearsing, moving furniture and organising 11 Christmas concerts. This year: Nothing. No wonder I feel a bit out of sorts. I have replaced my Christmas busyness with historical research because if you don’t fill the hole then you really will topple over but when you can’t stand on one leg, your body is telling you that your seasonal balance is off. Maybe it’s time to join the rest of the town and put my lights up, deck the halls with boughs of holly , watch Christmas films and eat mince pies.

I’ve just realised that I’m already late. Stir up Sunday was last weekend. I need to make my pudding and get the sprouts onto boil. 

The writing cardigan and cape

 Insomnia rituals will vary from person to person but once you get good at not sleeping you’ll know all the things that help you.

Some people lie still and pretend they are asleep, others get up and make a milky drink and then go back to bed. There are whole armies of middle aged hormonal women reading or listening to the radio at 3am. I’m sure it’s not just women who are bad at sleeping but I’m fairly certain that hormones can make the land of Morpheus difficult to stay in.

Your Fitbit panics so much about your lack of sleep, it decides you must have had a kip when you took it off to have a bath and it just stops registering the three hours you did actually sleep at night because, well, that can’t be right, can it?  If this is you, then like me, you are probably a seasoned pro and you will have rituals that get you through the long, dark, cold hours before the birds start tweeting.

When I have failed at lying still, or reading under the covers and can tell that I’m disturbing the Long Suffering Husband , I get up and go downstairs and write. This is where the writing cardigan comes into its own.

My writing cardigan is long, brown and comforting. It’s got pockets, which are particularly important because when you write you need to stand up and walk around a bit to loosen the ideas or stop your bottom sticking to the chair and you need a pocket to stash your favourite pen in. There’s nothing worse than completing 10 laps of the living room, coming up with a brilliant idea and not being able to find the right pen because it’s slipped down the crack in the sofa. You can slip a writing cardigan on over any outfit: pyjamas, yoga clothes or even your everyday work clothes and suddenly you are transformed. No longer an insomniac or tired teacher but a woman in a writers cardigan with ideas and words at your fingertips. My writing cardigan is beginning to get a bit old and is starting to bobble and develop holes but I still love it.

It can be quite chilly at this time of the day. The heating hasn’t clicked on and so a little while ago I bought myself a fleecy blanket to stay in the living room. It matches my writer’s cardigan and sometimes I pop it over my knees, like an old granny. If it’s very chilly I might pull the blanket up to my neck or wrap it around my shoulders. This turns me from jaded woman, jabbing at a keyboard to superhero. I’m invincible. Now in my laps of the living room, I have a cape.  I swish up and down, collecting ideas and suddenly 3 am becomes 5am and there are 2000 new words flashing on my screen.

I have put ‘new writing cardigan’ on my Christmas list. I wonder if it will work as well if it isn’t brown and doesn’t match my cape.

Jacob, Jacob and Sons

 This blog has been alive for 9 years.  That's a lot of words and I can't guarantee that I haven't written about the same thing twice.  This morning, I have a weird sense of deja vu, even though, what I'm about to write about must be new because it's never happened before. I feel as though I might have dreamed it when I was 15, after I played the flute underneath the stage for a production of Joseph.

Last night, Rinky-Dink Peter won Bake Off, as predicted.  It was  a lovely programme, just at a time we needed it and so beautifully done at the end, showing us the lengths people had gone to to bring it to us, showing us a lockdown baby, the friends the Bake of Contestants had made in a time when none of the rest of us have been able to make new friends, and a tribute to the lovely Luis (former contestant, who died of bowel cancer a few weeks ago). At the end we were all a little emotional and singing Coat of Many Colours from Joseph.

Much of what I know can be related to a musical and it seemed appropriate that Pru was wearing her coat of many colours last night.

The show aired just after the government had announced the plans for Christmas.  I say announced but what I mean is leaked to the Press.  Nicola Sturgeon gave a press conference but we got a Twitter announcement on Simple Politics, written in comic sans with numbered bullet points.

My daughter and I had been discussing it just before the show started.

"This Christmas thing is making me feel a bit emotional," she said (she has a cold; she's always emotional with a cold)

"I think they are just resigned to the fact that people will see each other and by putting in the three households bubble they will at least get people to think about it."

"Maybe. But how will people choose?"

I didn't really understand what was bothering her because I, like most people, am completely selfish.  Christmas was never going to be a problem for me. It's one advantage of your parents being dead. My children are living at home and my sister lives on her own (there are no rules about how many dogs can come for Christmas dinner). The Long Suffering Husband is also an orphan and rarely sees his sister and never at Christmas.  I also might be a bit of a rebel in my old age because I had already decided that I am perfectly capable of social distancing (in fact I prefer it), so I could see as many people as I liked (which, in reality, is no one)

Of the thorny life questions 2020 was going to sort out, "Who is your favourite child?" wasn't one that I expected.

It was easy for Jacob. Joseph, the youngest, would have been the one he had round for dinner.  The others and their wives just irritated him. (Everything I know comes from a song)

However, if you have three or more grown up children, how do you decide which ones you see? How do you, as a couple decide if your bubble is his parents and sister's family, your parents and brother's family, or if you separate for Christmas, so that you can both see your family?  A parent of two grown up, single children living in a house share each will be able to have both home for Christmas but what about Granny? How do you explain to your small children that they can't see big nanny because little nanny has decided that you are not her favourite child? Many people are already speculating about their status on Twitter, with one person saying they are ordering their microwave meal now because they know they are lower on the list that the dog and the stray cat that brings their parents headless mice.

I don't think these are easy decisions for a government.  They know that we will see our loved ones over Christmas. It's a tradition that most of us would prefer to keep but they want to remind us that big parties are not safe.  No one should be cooking for thirty. This is not the year to watch your Uncle entertain your other cousin's children by taking off his prosthetic leg and making it dance around the room to the tune of Jingle Bells. 

2020: the year when you find out that you are the least favourite child. I think I might make some Christmas cards featuring Pru's coat.  

Jolly Safe Christmas

 The Vaccines should release a Christmas song. I hope they’re working on it already. 

Boris’ head in a tv screen gave another metaphor rich press conference yesterday. I couldn’t stop wondering whether he had trousers on and so I confess that I didn’t listen properly. I somehow imagined boxer shorts with a Hawaiian print. 

“This man has no trousers on!”

Once he’d got over being excited about the Vaccines coming over the brow of the hill, he had to tell everyone it wasn’t over yet. This caused him some trouble, as he wanted to launch into his Winston Churchill impression: Never in the field of human virus fighting has your Prime Minister asked so much of you, etc.

The gist of it seemed to be that a woman on the Oxford team said that they had to develop a vaccine that could be stored in a normal fridge and so we have developed a ‘world beating’ immunisation that is 70% effective. This is less effective than those announced last week but it will be enough to stop the health service becoming overwhelmed. It is also more effective than this year’s flu vaccine (40-60%). 

The he told us that if we want a jolly Christmas then it will end in tiers: it was the only way to have a jolly safe Christmas. He was particularly proud of this bit of language manipulation and had a little chuckle to himself. They are still working out exactly what the tier system will mean, the criteria for tier placement and what relaxations will be made for Christmas but from the leaked information it seems quite well thought out. Reduce as much social mixing as possible but keep things going that encourage good health. Gyms, physios and hairdressers open, places to drink yourself into a stupor closed. It’s not as much fun but I see the logic. 

I was going to write about two tier local authorities (because how can the whole of Essex go into the lower tier of restrictions when you look at Brentwood rates) but there are just too many tiers, all meaning different things and so I’ve confused myself.

I suspect there are also too many tears. 

Last night, as we were taking the dog for an evening walk, there were two police cars outside a house with their flashing lights on, drawing attention to themselves, also blocking a man from getting his car out and telling him he would have to wait. People were hanging out of their windows to look. My daughter flipped into professional journalist mode, took a photo and fired off a request to the Police for information. One of the people hanging out of a window shouted, “Nosey!”  It made us laugh.

We spent the rest of our walk talking about how it was probably just a domestic, chastising ourselves for saying ‘just ‘ a domestic and worrying that the people in that house might not have a jolly safe Christmas, even with a vaccine or tiers.