At Least Afloat

Saturday:

Having arrived in Oxford some time past 11pm, I went to bed late, and on just over 5 hours of sleep, then made my way to the college I work at. It was grey from both the early light and the rain, but the autumn leaves blazed around me. University Parks are quite something later in the year. They’re just always quite something.

The porter made a double-take when I got there, and so did a lot of my colleagues. I was asked about Paris, naturally. Naturally, I said it was good, but I was horribly homesick.

It was a fun shift, in both senses of the word: On the one hand, it was a degree day brunch that we were serving at; on the other, unfortunately our dishwasher had broken. The kitchen porters were having to wash by hand the dishes that we had to pile, and it was a brunch of about 100 people. I got through the first two hours alright, and then the tiredness hit me. I realised my mother may have been right – maybe I did need a rest.

After work I came home, and I went with my dad and my littlest sister to the allotment to get some veg for that night’s soup. Specifically beetroot, as Mum was making borsch. A strawberry I had planted has got two runners. There were three I planted. One is no longer with us. The third is chilling.

My youngest sister gets sassier each time I come home. This week’s firecracker was from my talking about how, before Horrible Histories became a TV series, we had HH plays, and one of the characters I remembered was a lady called Miss Tree, who was a crotchety spinster. “Like you!” Well, yes, Tiny, I suppose so – like me. This kid is going to give everyone a run for their money when she grows up, which she is doing, at an alarming pace – she’s up to the bridge of my nose now, I think.

After that, I made a quick trip to Blackwell’s one the quest for Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (which they only had in compendium with other plays – rather expensive), R. F. Kuang’s Babel (for being the hot stuff of last month, this novel of particular interest to a linguist such as myself seems to has made itself rather scarce), and Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen series, some detective novels based in Oxford that my neighbour had introduced me to in the summer. I only managed to get halfway through The Case of the Gilded Fly because I was reading it aloud to my then bedbound sister, who subsequently became no longer bedbound, and I really couldn’t bring myself to betray her by reading it quietly and alone. This copy we had borrowed, and I returned it, but with the memory of how vastly entertaining I had found the half-book I had read, and what a beautiful homage it played to my home town and the types of people who live here and pass through, I had to secure the book again. I also shared the love, and bought The Moving Toyshop for some family friends in Paris, whom I would meet the next day.

Mama had poured her heart and soul into the borsch and balish that we ate. I crossed the Channel to eat a meal with my family. I would easily cross it again, or oceans. We sat with my youngest sister’s friend, who commented in the end, “You’ve given me a lot of instructions this evening, Bella.” I made a lot of observations and tips. I wish I remembered what they were, because I would add them here – the only thing I recall is that they were sage, if I may say so myself.

We finished the evening with the macarons and Pierre Hermé’s Ispahan tea, so the experience would be complete. Yes, the macarons were just over 3 euros apiece. Is this something a student can afford? No. But I will say this, that if ever you do wonder in the direction of Pierre Hermé, the teas are divine and can be bought loose for 12 euros, and the macarons need to be tried once. If you have to choose one, I would make it Ispahan (rose, raspberry and lychee), but their Mogador (milk chocolate and passion fruit) is also excellent. But there is one for everyone’s tastes – fruit, chocolate, nut, spice, you name it – they have it. Always unique in their combinations, and absolutely an experience. One of their recent limited edition macarons, Agra, combines curry and praline. Trust me, it works.

And I also got to open the parcel containing Stornoway’s vinyl of Dig the Mountain! that evening. I don’t think my parents had ever seen me that excited. This is the third in my collection of vinyls, the other two being A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and, actually, two vinyls in one sleeve by John McCusker.

Sunday, Day 29:

I woke up early and after a mishap of getting to the busstop with everything except my phone and having to turn back again, I made the 4 hour journey to London Southend.

It used to be that if you had a stick, a knife, and some rope, you could travel the world and do anything. Now, your essentials are your phone, your wallet, and your keys. That is the check I usually do before I go out. That morning, clearly part of my mind wasn’t sitting in my head.

Southend-on-Sea is lovely, by the way. I had no idea Essex was so pretty. Sweet countryside and stunning views of the sea. And the people are really friendly, too. I got onto my bus to the airport and it had this lovely community feel, because people just chatted. It’s really random, but that day, having woken up to porridge made for me by my mum, who then walked and finally cycled with me to the Oxford Tube busstop, having been called sweetheart by a lady at Information in West Ham station, having travelled through a gorgeously sunny day to the sea, sat on a bus with smiling strangers, passed another family on the bus who were about to go for a walk in the midst of this beauty and sunshine, I thought, much like in the words of Stornoway, “If I knew I was going to die, well I’d be satisfied – ‘cos we’d shared this moment.” The world seemed to be full of love and care, and I thought, as with perhaps my usual anxiety about planes, if this is my last day, I’m finishing it on the best note I can.

But I didn’t finish it. And although I arrived at CDG and had to take a rail replacement bus to Mitry-sur-Claye to then take the RER B to Chatelet-les-Halles, to then take the RER A and subsequently my bus, the evening ended with my seeing the parents of my, arguably, first friend, for dinner, and that, in my books, is a beautiful, beautiful day.

Monday, Day 30:

And so we come to today, which despite the calamities that beset it has turned out excellently.

This morning, the bus before mine had got stuck, and so mine was stuck behind that, and then the 8.06 bus got stuck behind mine. The neighbourhood was thrown into such disruption. Today I saw not one but maybe a dozen cars drive down our road backwards, coming close to the top of it and either seeing or being warned by friendly neighbours that there was an impasse. I had to take a taxi. This was a silent trip – we sat and listened to the radio, and I felt like I was doing homework for my listening class at uni again.

When I got to work I realised I was getting cold symptoms. Today has been spent mostly in between cups of tea, trying not to fall asleep, and doing tasks slowly. I bought 6 clementines at lunch. I had eaten all of them by 4pm. I am determined not to be taken down by a cold.

I left work early, and went and got more citrus.

I should add that the other calamity at work today, other than maybe another tiny one of the plumber not coming as scheduled, was that my boss was not in, because she was stuck abroad, as her flight had been delayed. I thought, I’m going to have to face the handyman and the plumber by myself, and I don’t really know what needs to be done. It was all ok in the end, though, and my boss will be back tomorrow.

I came home, I cooked dinner, I worked on my French course for half an hour, and read some interesting articles on the monitoring of climate change with the help of indigenous peoples. This comes after I reposted a petition to grant old trees protection in the UK, and one friend commented that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship had some good and hopeful things to say about climate and our future. I said I’d have a look. I read the Wikipedia article on them, and one of their aims is to promote Western values. As someone with Asian and Eastern European blood as well as Western European blood, as well as someone who likes to mull things over a fair bit in their spare time, I read this bit of the article with chagrin. I read the entire article in disappointment. Sometimes you read some stuff and you wonder where the hearts and minds of the people it’s about got to.

So, friends, although I feel these articles could be written perhaps with more sensitivity, these are two I read, and one I intend to read:

Climate scientists are working with indigenous tribes by Chris Baraniuk, from BBC News

On whose green Earth? by Stephanie Parker, in Knowable Magazine

Locally Based, Regionally Manifested, and Globally Relevant: Indigenous and Local Knowledge, Values, and Practices for Nature, by Brondízio et al., in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Another great one to look at, from a linguistic perspective, is this article on Gàidhlig:

How Scottish Gaelic is helping protect Scotland’s seas, by Magnus Course and Alistair Cole, in The Conversation.

I really should watch Iorram.

Anyway, I really should sleep, because I am terrible at resting, and that really is what I ought to be doing now.

Actually, one last thing. I will share this song with you: We Are the Battery Human.

“We need to fix our loose connections, out in the natural world wide web, where humans evolved in three dimensions…”

Love you all, no matter who you are, or how you are. ❤