It's late enough to go to bed, but for once I actually feel like writing something. Lately I've been pleased to discover that living in Sweden less terrifying or claustrophobic than I have always supposed. No great plans or projects as yet, but am giving life a chance to catch up with me a little. Hopefully. A good thing.

fighting loneliness

October

After a busy somewhat crazy summer packed with good things (a new friend, flowers for a wedding, my grandpa's 90th, Henry V tour and Georgia, and now Sweden again), I find myself on a sunny Saturday in my new room in Gothenburg wondering what's gonna happen next. Perhaps this is a time for all the bits of life that have been put on hold through the years to gradually catch up with me. That would be good. Tough too, probably.
I'd like to put up some pictures from the last few months. Unfortunately my uploading cord thing for the camera disappeared in the move from Oxford, which makes things rather more difficult!
Yesterday I met a bunch of people with their own quirky passions and interests, some of which overlap mine, and it reminded me how important it is not to just try to adjust myself to the present company (which is happens a lot...), but to follow what I find fascinating and enjoyable - there will be other like-minded people out there, and when I meet them I think there will be a sense of home-coming over it.

Warwick Castle

A bit of a magical day today - Warwick Castle trip with Year 7! After a bit of rain when we arrived it was a perfect summer day with all the pretty grassy slopes, gardens and trees glowing green in the sunshine. The kids were great, and I was surprised to find myself really enjoying it, after having prepared myself for the worst possible scenarios. A bit of sadness too, though, to be so near the goodbyes. But tired now. Bedtime.

And after June, July...

Absolutely perfect holiday weather - unfortunately coinciding with the last two weeks of school! I'm tired, which makes little things resemble rather big Failures. Most of the time work has gone quite well - at least it's felt good and I've enjoyed it - but the students are unsettled by the heat and all the end of term disruptions, and I'm a bit at a loss of what to do about it. Ride it out, I suppose. And for now, sleep.
The summer plans have suddenly taken an unexpected and exciting turn. I'm still going to Sweden in the beginning of August, but will come back soon after to prepare for a tour of Henry V!!! Make-up, a bit of costumes... It ends up in Georgia, which is completely uncharted territory in my head's geography department. Hopefully not for long:)

Hamlet puppets

Lots of little things I've been wanting to add here, and it just hasn't happened. Off to Germany tomorrow to visit Deborah (!!!!), so have been packing, watering the plants (with a bit of help from the rain:)) etc in my usual scatty fashion. Yesterday I cycled up to Blenheim as there was an art/design/food festival there this weekend. What a glorious day it was! Lots of sunshine and an immaculate sky. Happy people everywhere: families of all sizes and descriptions, elderly ladies and gentlemen, lovers and somewhere behind the hundreds of windows and pillars, a wedding party. Had to leave a little earlier than I would have liked to go to 'textiles for peace' at the community centre - felting this week! I've never tried it before, really good fun. Came away with sterile hands from all the soapy rubbing. Today a good friend had her first finals exam - odd how mine finished a year ago tomorrow. It feels both immediate and so remote, and I find myself both eager to move on and looking back nostalgically to the days of endless reading and essay writing with a sense that I never quite finished anything. Four essays perhaps, maybe five. The puppets are almost done. I think I'll miss them - will have to find a new project to keep my busy:)

I'm having trouble keeping up with time these days! Exactly a year ago, I was almost finished with my finals, an odd thought. Need more mental breathers, moments of reflection, to catch up a bit. School's out for half term as of yesterday, so I'm looking forward to a whole week of anything and everything and nothing. Yesterday I managed to fall asleep during PE, Geography, lunch and Maths... not a great record. I'm going to Germany on Tuesday to visit Deborah! Exciting. Before then I need to more or less finish the Hamlet puppets - fun, but it's so beautiful outside that it seems a shame to be sitting in here.
I went to see an exhibition - mostly textiles - at the museum in Woodstock: such beautiful things!!! Made my fingers itch and made me feel a lot better about my large and growing hoard of fabric etc.
Right, I think I'll finish the other shoe...

I seem to be in a rather happy state of mind these days, for no particular reason. Everything is so green and generous and full of life, and it rubs off on me! I spend at least eight hours on my bike each week, usually hedged in by hawthorn and Queen Anne's Lace, and even in the rain (perhaps, especially in the rain!) it's absolutely lovely. Refreshing. These thoughts were passing through my mind at a leisurely pace on the way to work this morning, and I thought I'd better write it down, take stock, place a wee marker here. Work is good. Friends are plentiful, if scattered and sporadic. The birds sing outside my window. The play seems to have been a success, including the costumes which caused me a certain amount of anxiety... Plenty of things to improve on, of course, but that is how it should be, or at least, how it always will be.

The website for the play I've been doing some costumes for over the past few weeks, months...

http://www.marecheracelebration.org/SBBK.html

I just rather recklessly (or so it felt) bought train tickets to Strasburg to visit Deborah Lanz! Two weeks tomorrow!

A quick line or two before bed - a simple necessessity after my first experience of an 'alley cat' (a bicycle treasure hunt following clues round Oxford). Superduperfun. The Oxford Cycle Workshop organised a cycle festival today, including a bicycle bell orchestra, a showing of Belleville Rendezvous, bicycle polo and a puncture-mending competition! I missed a lot of it, but a happy thought all the same. I did the last odds and ends for the costumes of a play that starts tomorrow. It's been going on for a fair while now, so I'm looking forward to having something new to work on:) I've been meaning to give the garden some tlc for months (!), but for some reason it just hasn't happened. Today I saw that the pink rose had blown over and needed tying up, so did that in the dying light tonight. It looks a lot airier now, and I feel a bit more inspired:) Let's see how long it lasts.

Yesterday I had a rather random but very lovely visitor - a girl I met on the plane on the way back from Sweden last weekend. She was knitting a sweater for her baby-on-the-way, which got us chatting about this that and everything. Knitting is a great conversation starter! She ended up needing a place to stay last night, so she came here. A super-good Bangladeshi dinner, a mini-tour of Oxford in the dark and an apple-porridge-breakfast later, she's on her way again. A good start to the weekend:)

'Twilight, the gradual softening of the day into darkness, is surely the gentlest, most natural way to prepare for sleep. And yet it is a pleasure we deny ourselves with the switch on the bedside lamp. Even the guttering of a candle or the afterglow of a paraffin lantern is less abrupt. A couple of generations ago most country people went to bed when it was dark, at least in the summertime. And so we miss the time of darkling shades in which our pupils can dilate by slow degrees and dreams drift in as, wide-eyed, we enter the rook-black night.'
Roger Deakin, Wildwood

On the somewhat magical subject of twilight, a very early Boris Pasternak poem was read out on the radio a while back. I only managed to catch a few snippets:
'... And what is creativity if not compassion for twilight? ... a thousandfold nameless agitation that has missed the path and lost itself...'

'I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.'
Mary Malone (Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass)

Starting a blog was meant to be something in the lines of a New Year's resolution, but it has been kept about as tentatively as it was made. So this is a renewed effort.
This is my first day back in Oxford after ten days or so in Sweden over Easter. It's funny how a place grows on you. When I was in Sweden coming back here felt like a bit of an effort, a bit of a strain, but now I'm here I've slotted right back in. Spring is well ahead of Sweden here, with the more eager of the chestnuts already in full bloom, bluebells among the thriving weeds in the garden and the magical and startling realisation that summer may after all be more than an beautiful myth. I started reading a book about Linnaeus, and this was, unsurprisingly, his favourite time of year. There's the sadness of an ending to full-blown summer that so quickly ushers in the harvest. And yet I suppose at the end of the day, the harvest was the point of the whole thing.

mayflies

i've been raised by the wings
of twenty-five thousand synchronised things.
airborn vibrations have hi-jacked my heart
which beats to the beat
of thousands of synchronised wings.

I cycled to Woodstock today to see how long it takes for getting to work tomorrow. Not bad, cold toes apart. On the way home I detoured along the canal for a ways, and how beautiful it was! The canal was frozen over, and the odd dislodged shard showed the ice to be over a cm thick. A wine bottle was held upright in the middle of the ice, suspended, its slow journey downstream interrupted. Further on the smooth ice sat on the water like a marbled finish, pale mint green swirled with frosted white.