13/08/14: Birthday boy

Blogs are brilliant places to write about things that you do often & that is, well, often what I do write about - dinner recipes, trips to Columbia Road, books I'm reading, day trips to art galleries - but it's also worth mentioning things that aren't such frequent occurrences. This post contains one such occurrence, namely my being found on Kingsland Road at almost two o'clock in the morning or, more specifically, dancing around the lampposts on Ridley Road. At the risk of sounding as if I'm twenty-two going on one-hundred-and-two, my boyfriend & I have been wildchilds in our time but whereas Andrew only now lacks the stamina, I have also been known to lack the required enthusiasm. 

This Saturday night was different as it was Andrew's birthday-eve &, as befits the sense of occasion, we decided to make the effort, me pulling on some skinny jeans & my Swedish Hasbeens, first heading up Tottenham Road. Once we had finished reeling from the £18 (£18!) a round price tag, the two of us settled into a plush leather sofa in our woefully-undervalued Hunter S. up towards Islington that we've always loved for its 1920s taxidermy-clad, gloomily-lit, speak-easy impression that has lulled us in on many a winter's evening. A couple of drinks here proved perfect & we were soon planning on where we were headed next. Always inevitably having to factor in a trip to Efe's pool hall, it was there that we ambled up to to count down the minutes to midnight but the music was lame so we left soon thereafter & decided on 'Market Bar' on an otherwise desolate Ridley Road. 'Market Bar' is a venue that Andrew had always wanted to take me to but the queue never seemed worthwhile - how wrong I could have been! Five pound cocktails (tequila & watermelon was my favourite but I can also recommend the pina coladas & mojitos, the gin & grapefruit not so much to my tastes but heh) & a heaving dancefloor screaming along to Nelly's 'Hot in Here'. It was so much fun & we stayed until well after last orders. The rest is slightly fuzzier around the edges but we wound up in 'Birthdays' for the last drink of the night before grudgingly swaying our way through the streets & home.

The next day, Andrew's birthday proper, we had planned meticulously - a big vegetarian fry up for the two of us before an afternoon spent rummaging through the stalls of Battersea Boot Sale. These plans, however, were quickly abandoned in favour of sleeping until eleven & finally dragging ourselves out of bed, propping sunglasses over our noses & walking as far as the corner of our street for some much-needed coffee from our favourite Betty's. Once present opening was under & out of the way, we didn't seem up to anything beyond a walk northwards towards Stoke Newington & lying face up in Clissold Park. This is exactly what we did. Bundling up blankets to take up there & buying our trustworthy hangover cure - blue packet Doritos that is, praise be - en route, the two of us couldn't imagine better satisfaction than feeling that sunshine on our faces & awaiting the ominous roar of hunger that follows that sickness for so long. Luckily we had planned ahead for such an eventuality & ambled back towards home & Broadway Market for 'Franco Manca' pizzas that are yet to be bettered.

The next day was one of similar recuperation or at least for Andrew as I sleepily pulled on slippers at ten o'clock to get things going in the kitchen for our belated birthday brunch. For the most part originating from my desire to try Ava of Guac & Roll's homemade vegan baked beans, the oven was warming & pans were soon on every ring as I set about making roasted tomatoes, hashbrowns (with thanks to Mr. Sainsbury, ahem) & garlic buttered chestnut mushrooms to go alongside it all. The baked beans were the absolute best & will be made again - in fact, they're so easy I would make them on a weekday & not regret it. We were lucky to have another sweltering day on that Monday in which to wander down to Shoreditch & back again with very good memories of the day that went before.

I'll be back again soon with a Cornwall update but first we've got some bicycles booked & some rain in which to cycle, here's hoping that 'fish' & chips at the end of it all is ample incentive!

Speak soon - O.

04/08/14: Rome, Sorrento & beyond

I've realised in the last week that family holidays are a lot like the Christmas to me. The anticipatory excitement in the weeks beforehand, the stress of getting packed & organised just before you're due to fly, the initial joy & warmth of seeing everyone & the eventual decline into throat-wringing by the end of it all. These comparisons aren't only in terms of relationships either as eating & drinking habits often lapse into uncharacteristically hedonistic indulgence justified by wanting to mark the sense of occasion. So too are the feelings that follow on return home akin to the New Year: regret at having to return to everyday life which seems more mundane than ever, sentimentally looking back at how great it was really & resolutions anew to renounce white bread & a bottle of wine with most meals. All of these things are what make these occasions what they are & we wouldn't change them for the world - that was certainly the case when I set off for a week in Italy a fortnight or so ago, two days in Rome followed by a handful in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast with my small sister in tow.

-Protestant Cemetery-

The two of us were excited to return to Rome as we had such a good time in the city when we visited last, as a family (plus my older brother & his now-wife!), two years ago as part of a trip that saw us wind up on the French Riviera in Nice. That particular occasion was packed full of all of the best sights - The Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, Keats' House, The Parthenon, St. Peter's Basilica, The Vatican, The Forum, almost all of the churches, The Trevi Fountain, to name a few - so we decided to clear our itinerary this time around & just explore the city in varying weathers of either blazing heat or muggy rain. We made our pilgrimages to the almighty Baths of Agrippa & the unassuming isle of calm of the Protestant Cemetery that both Keats & Shelley now call home but before we knew it, it was time to gather up our suitcases once more & hit the road towards Sorrento. 

-The two of us in one of Rome's many picturesque squares-

The Amalfi Coast is a part of the world that I had not yet been fortunate enough to visit so, after a long & stressful family drive as family drives often are, I was excited to see the swooping coastline that I was so familiar with from the latest series of 'The Trip'. Truth be known, our own trip was loosely based around that that Steve Coogan & Rob Brydon did over those six glorious episodes & we duly paid homage to the two comedy greats in our plans for the five days we had in the region. With renewed energy, our first day further south was spent, after another drive, at the excavation site of the ancient city of Pompeii - the destruction of which I studied for years in Latin (#coolkid #iwasreallygoodatitaswell) - which was astonishing both in terms of scale (it's huge!) & how much had been preserved by layers of ash that had coated the city. Sofia & I managed to find some peace amidst the inevitable hoards of tourists, ducking into immaculately tiled baths & retreating into the shade of towering pillars. After a lunch of spaghetti & olives just down from the site we resolved to scale Vesuvius, taking an ex-military bus with killer suspension as far up the volcano as we could before mounting the summit, me ever-practically dressed in, errr, Birkenstocks. The crater loomed ahead of us as we disappeared into cloud & walked the perimeter, looking down on the staggering view of the coast that laid below us. 

-Pompeii, it's mosaics & chipped toenails, sorry!-

The next morning was spent recuperating from a busy day in the heat, Sofia & I taking some time out by

ourselves to secure two seats on the decking that comprised the beach, jutting out from the cliff face on which our hotel hovered. I read (the very little time I had to do so during the week, sob!) my novel, Antal Szerb's 'Journey by Moonlight', a beautiful & captivating book that took in both Rome & the Protestant Cemetery in its pages, & then went for a dip in the surprisingly cold sea with Sofia who laughed uproariously as I tried to convince myself to duck my shoulders under. Lunch was a lighter affair of Salad Caprese before a stunning, weaving drive right along the mountain road, dodging madmen on Vespas & even madder men on bicycles through Amalfi itself to Ravello. Though we had come only to wander around & meet our dinner reservation, my Dad had also come to seek out Villa Cimbrone & its 'Terrace of Infinity' that offers famous views out to sea from its railings. Little did I know that it would be so beautiful & so romantic, bought by a Lord Grimthorpe in mourning for his departed wife, these grounds & gardens became the centre of much artistic activity during the 20th Century, including frequent visits from Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield & D. H. Lawrence. I only lamented that we had so little time to look around, pausing only briefly at the rose gardens but taking a deep breath at the vista from the balcony that is like nothing else on earth, I am sure.

-Sunset from the Terrace of Infinity-

While enamoured by all of the tin can, original Fiat 500s that were parked on every precarious corner, our last full day on the coast was spent on a different mode of transport but not one that made me feel any less sick, hooray. It was the Sorrento-Capri ferry that we hopped on at eleven o'clock on that Wednesday but thankfully the journey was quick & it wasn't long before we were on a significantly calmer vessel making our way to lunch at Da Luigi, wind in my hair threatening to blow my polka dot dress up around my ears...! 

I must admit that, despite the pleasure of the indulgence, I found vegetarian eating a little joyless during my time in Italy, the natives having not moved on from replacing meat with cheese. I love cheese but I felt in need of lentils, big time. This lunch was different. Maybe it was the sunny skies just starting to give way to faint rain, a glass of good wine, feeling at peace surrounded by the cliffs & the waves, but I had pasta with the lightest, creamiest courgette sauce that was amongst the most delectable of dishes that I've ever enjoyed. Unfortunately I wasn't given due warning of our steep upward climb into the town not to order a slice of traditional Caprisian chocolate almond cake so it was with numerous stopping & hunching over that we clambered up into the town & back down to the marina again in time for lemonade & the ferry back over to Sorrento.

Even looking back on these photographs now it all seems something of a dream, only potentially improved by having Andrew with me to share it all with, soppy date as I am, sigh. I was still very sad to leave via Rome airport the next day, a phone full of New Yorker fiction podcasts to guide me home at gone midnight.
As luck would have it, I only had to endure four days at work this week ahead of going again tomorrow for another seven days, this time in the potentially-not-so-sunny seaside town of Fowey in Cornwall. I'm going to have all the scones! Oh & take my laptop with me so I can fill you in on my adventures.

Have you been holidaying lately too?
Speak soon - O.

-The marina in Capri-

16/07/14: Life lately #2

 I think that, in spite of certain arduous complications (ahem, no hot water, ahem), if I think that life is pretty good then it must be pretty good. Especially this past weekend that involved some much needed down time after a hectic few weeks in which  two days off together have been rare. The boyfriend was working on Saturday so I had the day to myself, scribbling on squared paper in the sunshine of my desk almost all morning (see my last post on a new source of inspiration) with homemade granola & plenty of tea. After a lunch of leftover chickpea curry I jumped on my bicycle, Fernando, & peddled down to Columbia Road at about three o'clock, prime time to snap up some bargain blooms. Peonies are my absolute favourite of flowers, their petals a little rougher around the edges than your average rose & those deceptively tightly balled buds slowly bursting into that unmistakable fragrance, but even though the season was later this year because of the rain, I was beginning to worry that I wouldn't be able to get any. Luckily, my fears were unfounded & I was soon wheeling my bicycle back in the direction of Haggerston Park with an armful of three bunches (two pink, one white) of the flowers for a mere ten pounds. Accompanied by an iced coffee & my book of Katherine Mansfield's short stories, I spent a very happy couple of hours in the isle of calm that Haggerston Park has always provided when London Fields has, err, not. It was down to Brick Lane that I cycled come six o'clock to meet Andrew from a long day at work & we wandered lazily home for the World Cup final which I will shamelessly admit was about the third match I'd watched of the tournament. Still, Deutschland über alles!

Monday soon rolled around (I did say that my weekends have always been slightly skewed!) & after a languorous morning spent reading & grudgingly getting dressed, Andrew & I decided on a similarly serene afternoon in St. James' park. I had had the idea of going to see the thoroughly exciting new exhibit on on Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery (last time I was there it was for David Bailey, remember?) but the weather was just too nice (read: sunshine) for me to consider lurking in the shadows, even for my most favourite of writers - another day, no doubt. So instead we picnicked on pretzels, nectarines, raspberries & blueberries while reading our books in the sunshine & getting freckled knees until gone six o'clock. Almost unbelievably neither of us had yet had the chance to see the new Foyles on Charing Cross Road so ambled up there through a bustling Trafalgar Square. While it will doubtless take more than one visit to get a sense of the place & rid of my sentimental attachment to the old premises, the new shop is doubtless something to behold - an open central atrium with plenty of light &, on this occasion, sun, the smell of fresh paint that lingers, displays of beautiful editions zig-zagging with the staircases up & up & up.I somehow

escaped with a little literary pamphlet (that, okay okay, featured Lydia Davis whom I have not finished fangirling for yet) called 'The Next Review' which I've already read almost cover to cover & the latest 'Chickpea Magazine', a vegan quarterly whose photographs & content are always, without exception, delectable.

 The two of us were reluctant to abandon the warm, summer's evening but soon resigned ourselves to tiredness (& my 7:30am alarm set for the next day, yawn)  & were soon home to rigatoni with ricotta & big broad beans from this week's Growing Communities vegetable bag. My signing up to the scheme has been something of a learning curve, I've got more vegetables to collect tomorrow without having cooked everything from this week's bag & I'm making gradual progress in thinking about a more organic assembly of my meals i.e escaping the 'meat & two veg' mentality of my childhood. Still, I'm finding myself so satisfied with the vegetables themselves, their freshness & quality as well as the feeling of connectedness that they give me, & I've cooked some delicious dishes this last week or so - Kitsunetsuki's beetroot risotto, from-scratch bean burgers with plenty of spring onions (both in such a natural form as I've ever encountered!) & griddled carrots, heaps of Hackney Salad alongside veggie kievs & roasted cherry tomatoes. I've the latter left from this week that I'll mix into a chilli non carne & then there's a bountiful bunch of swiss chard to stir into a potato curry, I reckon.

I think it's likely that I'll note down a few of these recipe ideas for the boyfriend as I'm, dun dun duuuun, off on holiday next week! To tell the truth, this time next week I will actually be in Rome with a handful of family, spending a few days there followed by a couple in Sorrento & Capri & I could not be more excited. Aside from the good company I am looking forward to lots of walking in the city, the sunshine, the books, the opportunity to dust down my SLR lens &, of course, the food which I plan to savour at every meal - from Italian coffee & pastries to burrata & basil salad to an improbable amount of pasta. Needless to say, this will all be documented in my notebook & later, here on this blog so do check back. I'm no where near organised enough as far as packing lists go but I think my reading materials of choice will be the latest issue of 'The New Yorker', a pinched copy of my Mum's 'The Infatuations' by Javier Marias & the topical (well, Venice isn't too far off) 'Journey by Moonlight' by Antal Szerb.

For now, I'm going to busy myself with a long-awaited spaghetti alla puttanesca & listen to the rest of this podcast from Shakespeare & Co. of Lydia Davis (yes, her again) reading from her wonderful new collection 'Can't & Won't' - you should too!

Speak soon - O.  

15/07/14: The Opposite of Loneliness

I hadn't planned on writing a blog post today but I feel as if it's been something of a significant Tuesday.
I read a lot at work (occupational hazard of booksellers, I admit), mostly recipe books & first pages of novels, occasionally a short story during a particularly rainy afternoon, all things that are always enjoyed but not necessarily remembered. Today was different. I had read about Marina Keegan before, likely in the American press although I can't remember with any clarity the circumstances of this discovery. I do remember being struck by her story, that verb being apt given the real shock of what actually happened - a bright undergraduate student at Yale & aspiring writer, between graduating from college & starting a job at 'The New Yorker', is killed in a car crash at the age of twenty two. I'm twenty two. What incredible, inexplicable tragedy. It wasn't, however, until an encounter with the book of posthumous (posthumous!) writing she left behind that I felt the force of this sadness that has left a hollow in my chest. This is particularly true as my feelings weren't always so ambiguous - I thought, however cynically, of the impossibility of really knowing the quality of the writing in the light of its dark context, of the undoubted parallels between Marina Keegan & the girls I disliked at school & university because I envied them - the ambitious, opportunity creating & fulfilling, optimistic & successful.


A first look at the cover of 'The Opposite of Loneliness' dispels these feelings almost instantly - a young girl stands in a park with cuffs pulled over her wrists & balled into her palms, eyes level & face smiling & the potential & the future that she already represents is haunting. This continues throughout this slim but vital volume during which Marina writes engagingly, in fiction & non-fiction, on themes of the fragility of hope, of the importance of achieving 'the opposite of loneliness'. In these pages, a girl so unlike myself, talked me around to this impatience for and anticipation of all that awaits her in life with the knowledge of her seemingly arbitrary and senseless death only increasing their poignancy. The dust jacket is covered with laudatory quotes from adoring professors &, while further testament to her promise, Marina says all that she needs to in her own words. They make me feel newly determined to make the most of every opportunity, to flip the 'v's at food intolerances, to be curious about the world around me, to fill more & more pages of my notebook (more & more pages of this blog) with whatever is important to me & to have the self belief that enabled her to graduate from an Ivy League college without the dread of unemployment or unhappiness.

So, Marina Keegan, I might not change the world with the knowledge of your relentless optimism or dedicate myself to your legacy but right after I finished that final page, I scribbled a list of things that I want to write about soon to make an impression on the world & I think you'd be okay with that too.
Read the titular essay here & I hope you feel that it changes you too.

Speak soon - O.

05/07/14: Joining 'Growing Communities'

I've really outdone myself today. Being as admittedly apathetic as I am most of the time, I feel it's important to acknowledge that I've gotten an unprecedented amount done today. Y'see, a dear friend of mine is moving to Berlin on Sunday so we thought it only right to congregate for a number of farewell drinks last night, a plan that quickly descended into drinking Smirnoff Ices (yepp) & dancing around pool tables to Justin Timberlake at almost two o'clock. I was quite prepared for today to be a write-off. I have, however, since crawling out of the depths of bed at midday, done a load of laundry, swept the kitchen, been to 'Sainsbury's', washed up & made a batch of homemade granola, all of which have made me feel a lot more human than having to wash my hair in the sink this morning. Mm.

 Amongst all of this uncharacteristic productivity was my also remembering to write this blog post about...joining Growing Communities, hooray! For those not in the know, Growing Communities is a 'social enterprise' of local, East London people that run a box scheme of weekly, organic, sustainable & locally grown vegetables. Since really committing to vegetarian cooking, I've often found myself reading up on various companies that offer vegetable boxes & been umm-ing & aah-ing about whether they would be affordable or worthwhile. I went through a phase of buying all of my fruit & veg from Ridley Road Market & was amazed at how much cheaper it was compared to the supermarket but that kind of shopping unfortunately no longer fits into my weekly routine. It was one afternoon walking past the allotment where they grow the 'Hackney Salad' below followed by a nudge from Ava of Guac & Roll that I decided to go ahead & sign up.

Opting for a weekly 'standard no potatoes' bag (I figured potatoes & onions are amongst the cheapest & easiest to supplement), Growing Communities were so pleasant & helpful at every juncture - answering emails on everything from being able to opt out if I wasn't totally sold to when I would be able to collect my first bag. Cities can feel like big, anonymous places where these feelings of genuine community can be hard to come by but I know that I, at least, get a real sense of fulfilment when knowing that I'm investing in my local area. It also works out at just over a fiver a week each for my boyfriend & I which is an undoubted saving on what we would usually spend in the first two aisles of Sainsbury's.

So what's in the bag? This week, a huge bag of luscious spinach, a perfumed pouch of fresh basil, an eccentric bunch of vibrant beetroot & green garlic (the latter of which I've never tried!), a couple of paper bags of mushrooms & cherry tomatoes & 'Hackney Salad' that I'm looking forward to piling into work-day sandwiches. I'll admit that it's going to be a big change & one that will take a bit of adapting but this is all for the better - using fresh, seasonal produce in my cooking, being less reliant on rice or pasta as the base of any dish, eating less meat substitutes & more real & nutritious foods. Oh, & knowing that 85% of the vegetables I received this week were grown the UK, brilliant! I'm also hoping that starting from ingredients rather than recipes will be make me a better cook, a more creative, thoughtful & instinctive one, although we'll wait & see.

I'm already eyeing up Kitsunetsuki Kitchen's beetroot, basil & roasted garlic risotto & then there's this evening's hot chickpea & spinach curry that'll make sure I sweat out the rest of these toxins, blargh.

What do you make of the 'Growing Communities' scheme?

Do you know what to do with green garlic?!

Speak soon - O. 

26/06/14: Another week, another cookbook

While my life is sometimes prone to change most of the time it does just stay the same - I do my best impression of Annie Hall once a week in suede waistcoat & floral skirt, increase my worrying dependency on caffeine, make feline friends - & that's okay, especially if you're able to fill your days with all of those things that you've come to love & never tire of. While my Sainsbury's shop is, to a large extent, exempt from such a compliment, today, a rare mid-week day off, has been wiled away as such. After a languorous morning in bed with homemade granola, several mugs of tea & cartoons on my laptop, I pulled on some jeans & a handful of tote bags & headed to the couple of charity shops just down the road from my house. It's been a while since I've been able to dig out any secondhand bargains but I was lucky today in spying this linen, floral blouse, an old Monsoon label fraying from the neckline, & with a three pounds price tag. I don't think I will ever shake the habit of excitedly changing into my latest purchase as soon as I get home, musty charity shop smell be damned, & that's exactly what I did while the grill warmed for lunch.

Seeking to justify my hankering after yet another cookbook - this time Anna Jones' beautiful, functional, vegetarian 'A Modern Way to Eat' which you can see a sneak peak of riiiight here - I spent yesterday evening, having pulled my head out of one book, flipping through my beloved 'Smitten Kitchen' cookbook which, closely followed by Nigel Slater's 'Eat', was the first that I bought. Ever. Inevitably, I was fittingly smitten for the first couple of weeks that I cooked from it & then jars of Sacla pesto sneaked back into my evening routine after a long day at work & it began to gather dust under the stacks of books in my bedroom. I've recently gained a new determination, however, to not neglect my cookbooks & their infinite resources of inspiration & beauty - just last week I spent my morning making the most delicious broccoli pesto from scratch, most of it finding its way from the bowl into the spine of 'The Green Kitchen' cookbook in which I found the recipe. A whole head of broccoli, a couple of generous handfuls of hazelnuts, plenty of olive oil, garlic & black pepper, I spooned it into a jar & peddled to the park to spread it onto oatbakes for lunch & later into wholewheat fusilli for supper.

Buoyed by my renewed enthusiasm, I
thought I would look again to my culinary library for ideas for a leisurely Thursday lunch perched on my backstep. I've long thought that including recipes for salads in cookbooks was something of a cop out but I discovered last night that this prejudice was misguided having stumbled on one for a kale salad with chopped radishes (something I've never bought let alone topped & tailed), dried cherries, toasted pecans & feta cheese with a honey, mustard & olive oil dressing. With a bag of kale bigger than I realistically knew what to do with, this big bowl of varying colours, flavours & textures was exactly what I needed & will doubtless make again when lunchtime inspiration is running at a low (& there're always leftovers pecans, my ultimate weakness, to add to weekday breakfasts, hooray!)

There are, actually, a whole host of things to look forward to at the moment, for which I am grateful - managing to book some holiday off work for a European jolly with my Dad & assorted other family members next month, finding myself totally enthralled in the first of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' cycle (I can't remember the last time that I was so under the sway of a book & already have the second to read soon afterwards), snapping up this beautiful bib, frilled smock dress from The White Pepper (it hangs so beautifully & has pockets so it's a double thumbs up for sure) & excitedly scribbling the start of teaching date for my masters degree in my diary. I've also struck up something of a friendship with my local Growing Communities thanks to the ever-brilliant Ava who talked about them in an eye-opening blog post on Shake, Guac & Roll (srsly, read it, you won't regret it) - but all of that can wait for my next post when I'll have more to share. For now, there's lentil curry to cook.

What've you been cooking up lately? 

Are you reading anything that I'll fall similarly head-over-heels with, d'ya think?
Speak soon - O. x

  

18/06/14: Literary lately #3

Ah, the golden hour. Is there anything better? I must admit that I enjoyed today's even more than most because I was able to enjoy it sat in the dappled sunshine of London Fields at five thirty, the breeze in my plaits, rather than from the gaps in between people's heads on the overground back from work. My shifts are a little different this week so I've found myself with a rare mid-week day off which I duly decided to put to use peddling from E8 to NW1, Hackney to Camden, for a chickpea burger in a granary bun stuffed with shredded lettuce & beetroot washed down with a delicious Ethiopian iced coffee, nom. I made it back to the homestead just in time for the sun to start sinking behind the skyscrapers & for me to finally kick off my Doc Martens, prop up my bicycle against a tree & read a chapter or two of my current book.

This current book just so happens to be Jean Rhys' slim novel, 'Voyage In the Dark', a quaint Penguin Classics edition that I picked up in a secondhand bookshop in Stratford-Upon-Avon a couple of summers ago. It was while reading Olivia Laing's wonderful piece in The Guardian about women writers & alcoholism that I remembered owning such a volume among the (huge) stack of my to-read pile by my bed & decided to dig it out. I studied Jean Rhys' 'Good Morning, Midnight' during my second year of university & have always considered her to be a fascinating character, a woman whose tragedy is acutely expressed by Diana Athill & quoted by Laing:

'No one who has read Jean Rhys's first four novels can suppose that she was very good at life' but no one who never met her could know how very bad at it she was.'

'Voyage In the Dark' is one of those four novels that tells the story of the young Anna Morgan, a native of the West Indies for which she longs, & her fall from innocence during a flirtation with an older man she meets while on tour with a theatre company in England. While only two thirds through, the sense of the outsider & the character's experience of reality at one remove is particularly striking, elegantly expressed in the permeable border between the worlds of her wild childhood home & her rented rooms in London, her family & her current associates, her past & her present. First published in 1934, Rhys' perception of the significance of being a woman is also central to the novel, from the pressure of society's expectations to the ease with which men are able to hold them in their sway. It is the simplicity of the poetry of Rhys' prose that I really adore & I shall be sad to finish this little heartbreaker of a book.

I must admit that my tendency towards tales of hardship & misery has not waned of late & the book that I finished reading to make way for Ms. Rhys is certainly evidence of this, namely Oswald Wynd's 'The Ginger Tree'. It is now with horror that I realise that despite having been through so much education & an undergraduate degree in English Literature, I have not read so much as a page of a book originating from anywhere further East than perhaps the Czech Republic, sparing pieces of Dostoyevsky aside, & certainly nothing originating from Japan or China, something I hope to put right very soon. It started with this. 'The Ginger Tree' tells the story of Mary McKenzie, a young Scottish girl who takes a ship to China to marry a wealthy military attaché only to have an affair with a Japanese solider for which she is outcast - with her husband intending to return her to Scotland & the wrath of her mother, Mary instead flees to Japan to live out over forty years in an unfamiliar place that never truly embraces her differences. Widely recommended & a bestseller at the time of its publication in the 1970s, I had high hopes for this novel which were only partly realised. While sensitively written, especially considering the author was writing a female character & a mother at that, the story's telling through diary entries felt both claustrophobic & distancing - the reader never gets a complete sense of the protagonist from a singular perspective & thus your empathy for her is complicated &, arguably, made more difficult. Some passages that described the Empresses' palace in Peking & the landscape of the Fuji mountains in Japan were very beautifully wrought but I will need to read with greater variety if I am to get a more authentically drawn representation of these places, I think.

Reading about other cultures & particularly texts in translation has become another habit of mine that seems to have established itself of late. This is only reinforced with another couple of recent acquisitions from the ever-brilliant Pushkin Press, 'Red Love: The Story of an East German Family' by Maxim Leo (translated from the German) & 'The Spectre of Alexander Wolf' by Gaito Gazdanov (translated from the Russian) The first speaks of my love of biography & fondness for Berlin that I've had ever since learning German at school; the second has been endlessly recommended to me by many & whose blurb is too gripping not to have me at 'hello', or privet.

Both of these will, alas, have to wait until I have, at long, long last, started the first in the 'My Struggle' cycle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, for which I am quite giddy with excitement. 

 What's your favourite place to find yourself during the golden hour?

What're you reading at the moment?

Speak soon - O.