Book haul May 2020

I call myself a bookworm, yet I haven't done as much reading as I could have done over the last two months during lockdown. I'm not really sure why. I've certainly had the time. Oh well. I have, however, thanks to birthday gifts of money and Amazon vouchers, ordered quite a number of books which will keep me occupied for a long while. I've read a few already. The six in the picture above are the only print books I ordered, and all arrived a couple of weeks ago, much to my excitement, and I thought I'd do a little blog post about them.

The Corfu Trilogy - Gerald Durrell
Consisting of "My Family and Other Animals", "Birds, Beasts, and Relatives", and "Garden of the Gods" - the author's memoirs of the five years his family spent living in Corfu in the 1930s. I've just finished reading the first one, and it's just as delightful as the TV series inspired by it.

Diary of a Young Naturalist - Dara McAnulty
I was particularly excited about this book. It's brand new, just published. Dara is a 16 year old autistic Irish naturalist, conservationist, and activist, and the book is a diary over the seasons of one year. It was recommended by Chris Packham, another autistic naturalist, on his daily broadcasts over lockdown, and I pre-ordered it. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, direct from the publisher - an independent, specialising in nature writing and based in a small Dorset village - wrapped in a couple of sheets of glorious bright buttercup-yellow tissue paper which I'm going to put in my 'pretty things' scrapbook. I found "Wild wishes" scrawled on the inside cover as Dara had signed all pre-orders, and also included was a little yellow "Smash Stereotypes" badge. I started reading it a couple of days ago, and it's very good, he's a great writer. I really like how it includes his experiences as an autistic, too, and I admire how he's able to put it all into words, as that's something I struggle with. There are some things I can't relate to, and it's good to get an understanding of those things from someone who experiences them, it's important, but there are some things I can relate to, particularly how being in nature compared to being in cities and in busy places makes him feel. It's nice to know that other people feel those things too. The first chapter covers spring, and in the entry for 31st March I discovered he and I share a birthday, haha!

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto
Has anyone seen the film Julie & Julia, with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Stanley Tucci? I love it. If not, and if you otherwise don't know - Julia Child was an American cook and TV personality, famous for making French cuisine accessible to the American public with her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and a number of subsequent TV shows. She and her husband Paul moved to Paris in 1948 for his work, and Julia became obsessed with the food. She enrolled in the famous Cordon Bleu cookery school, and joined a women's cooking club, where she met the two friends with whom she would work on the cookbook over the course of a decade. I loved her autobiography, My Life in France, and recently found this collection of letters between her and her friend Avis DeVoto. They began corresponding in 1952 when Julia wrote to Avis' husband about a recent magazine column he'd written, and Avis, as his secretary (in addition to being a book reviewer herself) responded. They wrote letters back and forth for two years before finally meeting in 1954, and remained lifelong friends. I love letters, and Julia's personality, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

The Wild Places - Robert Macfarlane
"Are there any wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness?" Robert Macfarlane is considered to be one of this country's foremost nature writers, and - other than the wonderful poetry book The Lost Words - this will be the first of his books I've read. It's about his search for any remaining wild places, and how important they, and our connection to them, are.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany - Marlena de Blasi
A memoir, the second written by an American who falls in love with an Italian and moves there to be with him. The first book covers their meeting and early life together in Venice. I haven't read that, only recently found out about it to be honest, but I bought this because it's the one I came across in Waterstones a couple of years ago and it's been on my wishlist since then, and I'm more interested in Tuscany than Venice. De Blasi has been a chef, a food critic, a journalist, and a food and wine consultant, so of course her memoirs (she has written a few more since this was published in 2004) are very much focused on food, as well as life with the locals in the little towns - just my sort of thing. Recipes are dotted throughout, and the writing seems to be as delectable as the food it describes. I look forward to getting stuck in, and have a feeling I will be purchasing the rest of her memoirs eventually.

The Lost Queen - Signe Pike
This is a novel, written by an American writer not widely known in the UK. I know of her because I came across her first book, a memoir called Faery Tale, in the gift shop at Glastonbury's Chalice Well Gardens probably about 10 years ago now. This novel is her first, and the first in a planned trilogy centering around a forgotten historical queen of sixth-century Scotland, sister to a man who inspired the legend of Merlin, and her struggle to preserve the Old Ways during the rise of Christianity. I love epic historical/fantasy novels, and anything related to the Arthurian legends, and anything related to ancient pagan Britain, so I'm very much looking forward to reading this!

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots - Deborah Feldman
I downloaded this memoir on Kindle after watching the brilliant four-episode Netflix series Unorthodox, which was inspired by it. It was written by a woman who grew up in the extremely strict and insular Satmar community of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, NYC, and describes her life up until the time she left aged 23. It's a fascinating and shocking insight into a world so very different from ours. This is the publisher's summary because my attempt was too lengthy - "Deborah grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah's desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape." I really recommend reading it, or at least watching the Netflix series (which is fictionalised, a slightly different story). Of course, the author is now a feminist and women's rights advocate. One day I'll download and read the followup Exodus, an account of her life following her departure from the community.

Kindle e-books:
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Loved it! Wish I'd read it when I was younger.)
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Heidi - Johanna Spyri
Sky Dance - John Burns
The Victory Garden - Rhys Bowen
The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Natural History of Selborne - Gilbert White
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Woolstonecraft
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
...plus a number of samples to read to decide if I want to buy and read the whole thing.

I'm keeping a list of all the books I read this year - if you're interested, just click on the "My reading list" tab at the top of the page :)

Q&A, May 2020

I thought I would do something a little different, and do a Q&A! As is evident from the lack of posts over recent months, I've been rather stuck, but I had to think of some questions about myself for a family quiz recently, so that inspired me, and I thought I'd use those questions as a starting point and ask my friends and family for some more. I actually got so many that I'm splitting them into two separate posts, so the second Q&A will follow in June (as I'm working on one or two other posts to publish in the meantime). So! Here you go...

Questions I did for my family quiz:

What is my favourite animated film?
Disney's Pocahontas! Followed by the 1970s Robin Hood.

Where did I have the best meal I've ever eaten?
On the island of Sark, near Guernsey. It was lobster thermidor followed by poached strawberries in syrup with sabayon, and I wrote about it here.

Name one subject I would study if I could do college over again. [I basically failed college.]
Environmental Science or Geography.

Which song do I prefer, "Purple Rain" by Prince or "Red Rain" by Peter Gabriel?
Red Rain! Love it. Don't like "Purple Rain" or Prince much at all.

What is my favourite Shakespeare play?
Much Ado About Nothing! Mostly thanks to Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film. A Midsummer Night's Dream is second.

Questions I got from you lovely folk:

Where did you start your love of dancing?
Well, I did ballet for several years when I was very young, until I was 11 or 12 or so. Of course, years later I wished I hadn't given it up. My mum also had Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance on video when I was growing up, which I loved. (Still do; I have the DVD, and listen to the soundtrack a lot.) I didn't take any more dance classes for around 10 years after giving up ballet, but in 2014 I took up lindy hop, and did that for a couple of years. Around the same time I started going to ceilidhs, which are just the most enormous fun, and I finally tried salsa a couple of years ago (but frustratingly have lacked the ability to motivate myself to go out again after getting home from work, to go to the weekly salsa class in town I've known about for the last year and a half!). So I can't say for certain where or when I started my love of dancing, but I am glad that it's continued into my adulthood despite the long hiatus in my teenage years :)

What's your favourite place you've travelled to, and why?
Honestly, I don't generally have one single overall favourite of anything - place visited, song, food, film, whatever. I love things for different reasons and can't really compare them. So any "what's your favourite...?" questions in these Q&As will contain multiple answers, haha. So - favourite places I've travelled to. Well, Canada encompasses a number of favourites: Vancouver, Vancouver Island, the Rockies, the Yukon. In Australia: the Atherton Tablelands and Sydney. Singapore. Rome. Vienna. The Scottish Highlands. As to the 'why' for each place, it's always something to do with the beauty of the scenery/landscapes or of the city, or the vibe and culture or way of life, or the history, or THE FOOD.

What's one place you've always wanted to travel to?
Rural Tuscany. Pretty countryside, beautiful little old towns and villages, incredible food.

How do I cook your speciality dish?
I don't think I have one! I like eating more than cooking. I don't host or attend things like dinner parties, so I don't have any go-to dishes I make for special occasions or get-togethers. I guess I could say lasagne, that's the real treat dinner I make once every few months or so. Ooooh no, y'know what, there is something quite unusual that I can make without a recipe, though it serves as a normal weekday dinner rather than a particularly special dish: marmitako. It's a Basque fisherman's stew. I got this from a food-philosophy book, and the author himself says he doesn't know how authentic his version is. And he doesn't use recipes so it's just basic instructions, with the idea that you make it how you like it. But it's super easy and tasty. For two people you need a tin of tuna, a tin of chopped tomatoes, one or two peppers, potatoes, garlic, and paprika (normal or smoked). Heat some oil in a pan and add the chopped peppers and sliced garlic - how much, and how big/small they are, is up to you. Stir over a medium heat to soften both without the garlic browning too much. Then add the paprika - again, you decide how much, you might have to make it a few times to find an amount you like, but maybe try a teaspoon to start. Mix it well with the peppers and garlic, then add the tomatoes and the chopped/cubed potatoes (again, amount and size is up to you). Mix together and add a bit more water if needed to cover the ingredients, and bring to a simmer. How long you cook it for depends on how you prefer the potatoes, still holding their shape or beginning to disintegrate. Drain the tuna and stir it in for the last few minutes to heat through. Once done, taste and season if needed, then serve in bowls, either on its own or with some bread!

What's the strangest dream you've had?
This will be a boring non-answer, I'm afraid. I just can't remember my dreams, even the particularly good or strange ones.

How did you get your nickname?
This prompted a second question from someone else, which I will answer first - what is your nickname? Well, my nickname, as used by just one person, is Lozelmo. (Hence the name of this blog, because I am unimaginative.) My friend started calling me this when we met in college because my email address at the time included "lozelmo", an amalgamation of 'Loz' for Laura and the first two letters each of my middle name and surname. At first I wasn't keen on it, because I'm not a fan of nicknames for myself, but I gradually learned to not mind it so much because my friend generally only uses it in online conversations, haha.

What's your all-time favourite film?
As with places travelled to, I don't have one overall favourite film. So here are some of my favourites, my very top ones: Pride & Prejudice (2005), Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Practical Magic, Much Ado About Nothing, Mamma Mia, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel... and at Christmas: The Santa Clause (the Tim Allen one).

Who was your first friend at school?
Technically my first school was in Bristol and I only have one or two vague memories of it. My mum says my first friend there was called Paige. But we moved to Southampton in early July of my Reception year so I had a week in Year R ("Yellow Base"!) at Oakwood. My first friend there was Emily, followed not long afterwards by Mat - who I still talk to and meet up with every few months 23 years later!

What was the name of your first pet?
Either Barney the grey rabbit or Tabs the ginger tabby cat.

What's your favourite food?
Now, does that mean cuisine, or specific dish, or something generic with a thousand variations like pizza or pasta or ice-cream? Oh I know! Comfort food! Haha. Good old British autumnal comfort food, like soups and stews and pies and crumbles. Yum. Pasta's great too though.

If you could be any animal, what would you be, and why?
Well, I am probably most like a cat. (Check this out: https://youtu.be/hZUj0Lp9Oro.) So, perhaps a cat. But wolves are awesome too, and being a wolf would mean I would be part of a collaborative social group with structure and organisation and strong bonds, without the difficulties of human communication.

What's the first thing you would like to do when lockdown is lifted?
Well I'm actually really nervous about restrictions being eased and will take longer to start doing most things again than others may do. But the first thing to do will be to meet up with family.

What's the best concert you've been to?
Okay so Top 3, in no particular order: Loreena McKennitt, Hans Zimmer, The Sweet (the latter more of a gig at my local venue back in December).

So, that's it for now! Hopefully that's provided some interesting reading. Thank you for reading, and for the questions. As I said above, I'll do a second Q&A with all the other questions I received, and post that in June. So if anyone has any more after reading this, then feel free to send them over.

Beltane 2020

I joined a lovely little online celebration of Beltane a couple of nights ago. Beltane, or Bealtaine in Irish ("be-AL-tin-uh"), is the Celtic cross-quarter festival marking the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. For the ancient Irish it marked the start of the light half of the year, and so was one of the most significant dates in their calendar. And for many modern Celtic neo-pagans, it is still the biggest day of the year.

Beltane events are usually joyous, lively, celebratory affairs. A real festival. Like this: https://youtu.be/R-ZgZNwsiMA. It takes place at the height of spring, almost the beginning of summer, and is all about fertility and life-force and fire and light. But this year, obviously, the usual events can't take place. It's more subdued. Instead of large gatherings with feasting, music, dancing, and lots of merrymaking late into the night, people must stay at home, and light hearth fires instead of bonfires. It seems that this year the focus is more on moving from darkness into light, hope and healing, and remembering and connecting with all the non-human life we share this world with and which is still carrying on as normal.

A Facebook group I'm a member of, for local people of earth-based spiritual leanings who want to come together to celebrate the seasons, hosted a 'watch party' for a video live-streamed from Ireland at 9:20pm on Tuesday 5th. It was the lighting of the Bealtaine fire on the Hill of Uisneach, a sacred site in Irish mythology, believed to be the place where the earth goddess Ériu (after whom Ireland is named) gave the land to the Gaelic people, and the final resting place of both Ériu and the sun god Lugh. It is also said that every High King of Ireland went there as part of his king-making for a sacred ritual at Bealtaine where he symbolically married Ériu, tying his fate and fortune to that of the land.

The archaeological monuments and relics at Uisneach date back 5000 years to the Neolithic, through to the Bronze Age, and right up to the medieval period. There was even a medieval text providing a written account of the Bealtaine festivities there. 10 years ago the celebration was rekindled, and is now an annual event attracting thousands of people. This year's one was due to take place last Saturday, May 2nd. Obviously unable to hold a public event, the organisers decided to live-stream the lighting of the fire on Facebook instead, and chose to do it on the astronomical cross-quarter day itself, this year falling on Tuesday 5th May.

Shortly after 9pm, the local group host did a live video of her own before the Irish one, lighting her own little fire and offering a prayer to Brigid. Brigid is an Irish goddess usually associated with Imbolc, the previous cross-quarter festival on February 2nd, but she is also a goddess of healing - and obviously the world is very much in need of healing at the moment. There were only a few of us watching, but it was really nice to have that little connection, and to be invited to share somebody's own little simple ceremony and to know that the others were there too, interacting through the comments. The host invited us to light our own little Beltane fires and share them on the group page, too. I lit some candles, took a photo, and posted that. I've never met or spoken to anyone in the group; I would love to meet up with local pagan-minded people sometime, but generally can't easily get to where they meet.

For the ancient Irish, days began at sunset, and so the Bealtaine fire is lit at sunset. The Uisneach livestream was a little late starting, but by 9:30pm the bonfire was well and truly lit and blazing, and a piper was playing. The Facebook 'watch party' meant that the members of the local group could watch the livestream together, and interact with each other, rather than see and compete with all the comments from the hundreds of other people watching the livestream on the main organiser's page. They had also arranged lots of candles around the hilltop which formed a large heart shape. And what made it even more special was that the fire acted as a signal beacon. Minutes later, fires burned on distant hilltops in every direction. There's something exciting about long-distance visual communication things like that - signal fires and beacons, smoke signals, flags - and I'd love to see something like it in person.

I was due to go to the Beltane event at Butser Ancient Farm here in Hampshire on May 2nd, and was very disappointed that circumstances meant it was cancelled (among several other events I was looking forward to between March and May). I've been wanting to go for years and it would have been my first Beltane celebration. But I'm glad that the admin people on my local Facebook group found out about the Uisneach live-stream and that I remembered to tune in for it. It was simple, but lovely.

A little song the host shared:

Holy water, sacred flame,

Brigid, we invoke your name.

Bless my hands, my head, my heart,

Source of healing, song, and art.