The traveller returns

It is done. I have heard books, I have read books, I have introduced books. I have told a former Booker Prize judge what Badger thought of Vernon God Little - had anyone been in any doubt before now about how influential I am?

And now I come back from my journey with tablets of stone. Of stone! Are you ready?

Okay. You need to read this, and this, and this.

If you don't read this, then you are a fool, and if you don't want to read this, then I don't want anything else to do with you.

It's important to also consider this and this.

Don't say I never tell you anything.

thecoffeelady.blogspot.com

You're wondering where I am. Or maybe you're not.

I'm here.

I don't mean I am just looking at the website. I mean I am there. At a literature festival. Listening to, you know, literature.

I was going to tell you about it night after night. I was going to bring it alive for you, with witty and insightful reviews and colourful descriptions.

But I'm too tired. Sorry. So I'll see you when it's over, if that's okay, and you'll be kind enough to not mention my miserable failure ever again.

Afternoons

Afternoons

Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.

Philip Larkin, from The Whitsun Weddings

So the other night Mr Coffee and I watched Robert Webb on BBC Four talking about poetry, and when I wasn't thinking moronic thoughts like 'Doesn't he have a bouncy walk?' and bemoaning the fact that neither Limecat nor I would probably get the chance now to marry his mate, I was remembering how when I was a student I really didn't like TS Eliot, who was the main focus of the programme, and how much I did so very, very much love Philip Larkin.

Webb read out Afternoons at one point, which had me dutifully digging out Whitsun Weddings and taking it with me to read for the afternoon. Tragically, ironically, I reacquainted myself with this poem on an Autumn afternoon, in a playground.

I don't know, if I'm honest, what a 19 year old feminist was doing falling in love with Larkin anyway. Pessimistic, misogynist, constantly bleating on about his lack of success with women whilst carrying on several affairs.

But beautiful. The technical brilliance. The -ing, -ing, -ing, forcing us on through time. And it didn't occur to me at 19 quite how patronising he was. Estates, Philip? What did you know of those, exactly?

Whether I wish now to address the issue of my own thickened beauty, I am deeply unsure.

If you are ever in need of a poem to get you through the afternoon, you won't be able to do much better than Nina Cassian's Post Meridian, to be found in Life Sentence. It's unbelievably good, and it doesn't suggest that your life is consumed with laundry, which is always a plus.

About ten years ago I drove Nina Cassian around for the day in my car to see the Lakes, before hearing her read this poem at a poetry reading. I remembered thinking at the time that I didn't need to faff about climbing any mountains or seeing the Grand Canyon or anything now, because that was about as good a life experience as I could ever get.

(Anyway, if this is all too much for you, watch this instead. I know Limecat will be doing.)

Roll up! Roll up! A never-before-seen meme!

My esteemed colleague and blog friend beanphoto is collecting reading experiences. So I thought I would turn his questions into a meme, so then you can help him. He's a very nice man, and he makes me coffee a lot, so he deserves it.

I am doing the meme myself here, see.

1.Most memorable place/experience reading a book?
Do you know, I have just realised I am the most tedious woman alive. I have had no memorable experiences reading books. In fact, I don't recall ever having any memorable experiences at all, ever, with or without reading material.

Though memories of every part of my adult life come bound up with book-reading. (I'm not so hot on remembering childhood). Reading on trains travelling to see my old boyfriend at college, reading in my college room, next to the University lake; later, escaping to a cafe every lunchtime at my first job to read; reading on buses when I lived in Liverpool, reading poetry with the handsome young man I met at a poetry reading (aka Mr Coffee); reading in pubs, cafes, on ferries, at home, abroad.

2. Most unusual place/experience reading a book?
It's not exactly reading, but a friend just invited me to a book group she is setting up, and it seems to take place in a swimming pool. I doubt we'll actually take books though. (Or even talk about them, if I'm honest.)

3. Most dangerous place/experience reading a book?
I used to read books on the bedroom floor in the semi dark whilst trying to get small children to sleep. And that would strain my eyes, wouldn't it! God, I live life on the edge. I also remember sneakily reading a book whilst I had measles as a teenager, having been told I could Go Blind if I did.

I'm a risk-taker.

And while we were camping this summer we read outside the tent at night with headtorches, and one night a hedgehog came up to us. And hedgehogs creep me out*. So that was dangerous, because it made me jump and I nearly spilled my wine.

*They motor along as if they're on wheels. Creepy.

4. Most luxurious place/experience reading a book?
My sister in law told me when I was pregnant with Eldest that I should do nothing in the weeks before the birth. No nesting, no preparing, no batch cooking and freezing meals, nothing. So I spent 4 weeks sitting on the sofa napping and reading James Ellroy novels. And I look back on those weeks as the most relaxed time in my life. I always laugh behind my hand when pregnant women go on about nesting and freezing meals. (That's not true. I laugh right in their faces.)

Now my luxury is reading in the afternoon - Eldest is just getting confident enough with her reading to sometimes snuggle up with me for 20 minutes after school to read our books together quietly. It's often the best bit of the day, if Littlest isn't screaming at us.

5. Funniest place/experience reading a book? Or, add a reading-place/experience description of your own...

Mr Coffee once came upon me reading How to Stop Smoking and Stay Stopped For Good whilst smoking a Marlboro Light. He thought that was pretty funny. But it was 12 years ago, which is about the time I Stopped Smoking For Good. So.

And that's it. The deal is that you tag some people - let's say maybe three, though I'm doing five, to get it going - and when you've done it you email beanphoto at mail@beanphoto.co.uk and tell him you did it so he can go and collect it. And ask the bloggers you tag to do the same.

I'm tagging Readersguide, Eurolush, Badger, Dottycookie and Every Day I Lie a Little.