mehrunnisa
the first of the month begins with lia leendertz’s melodious voice on ‘as the season turns’. it is an audio field guide to the seasons, unfolding a month at a time. it is a clever production with the most wonderful soundscape. this sometimes makes it hard for me to distinguish its soundtrack from that of the rough paths bounding the reservoirs on the doorsteps of woodberry where i live. lia tells me that april, named aprilis by the romans possibly had roots in the latin verb aperio which means to open. may is named after the greek goddess maia who is associated with the land, fertility and growth. both are apt for this time of the year when life is tripping over itself to get going in earnest. buds turning to blossoms. flowers blooming, leaves springing on what had been little bumps and nodes on the branch.
woodberry has been home since the summer of twenty-eighteen but it was not until this year that i realised just how much nature there is between and alongside the glass and metal highrise. clouds of frothy pink and white blossoms appear between the buildings. sweet box sarcococca scents the air along the sidewalks. the heady scent of white jasmine with pale pink buds makes me miss pakistan. i float sprigs of these tiny flowers in a bowl of water. baba moved them around the flat, so that they would perfume different parts of it. he loved thick stemmed hyacinths that sat in a vase, remarking each morning about just how awesome their fragrance was. the grape-like flowers of purple and white wisteria framed windows and doorways. there was so much birdsong. the swan was nesting again which meant that all the residents were on cygnet watch. the canadian geese have yellow goslings who waddle under the watchful eye of their parents. baba and i saw a cormorant on one of our walks. it had its wings splayed and looked regal and reptilian at the same time.
april and may introduced new measures of time.
there is canine time which i discovered when cumin came to spend the day. everything is an experience and an occasion for a dog. there are olfactory encounters of different sorts, all of which must be attended to. the meeting with other dogs almost always starts with a sniffing of private parts. territory must be established by urinary markers. any affection offered must be soaked up like a sponge. it is impossible to hurry a dog along. i had thought that i had been generous in my allowance of extra time to get to the tube to head to the london review cake shop. but i was quite wrong. cumin walked to his beat and i just had to fall in line.
in may, i went to the hague to meet my baby nephew, a few months after his arrival in january. he is a mixture of his parents with little dimples and fleshy folds under his chin and at the points where his arms fold at the elbow and his legs at the knees. he is (as all babies are) a keeper of his own time. his longest stretch of sleep was from nine o’clock at night to the very wee hours of the morning. he is deeply curious and likes talking to adults, although what he has to say is not quite clear yet. day time naps were scarce. he does not care about the markers that usually divide the day like the work day, mealtimes and bedtimes. he reorders the clock and we work to his time.
april and may were for family time. i had the pleasure of watching baba get to know his grandson. it was the first time in over a decade that baba and i were alone together. and it had been over three years since my brother and i had been together with our parents. one evening, baba said to my brother and i that we will remember this time in years to come. i have no doubt that we will. but i wonder whether our memory will be faithful to the moment. i feel that this time of the year, when the shadows become longer, where a single chair on a balcony is cast as a bench double its size says something of the mechanics of memory. that it is transformed by time, place and person.
notes from the department of edible things: a tomato sauce flavoured with curry leaves and nigella seeds to pair with a creamy burrata at caravan kx; my friend and bread maker extraordinaire sarah eden’s hot cross buns with sour cherries, chopped prunes, raisins, cinnamon, ajwain and orange zest. baba and i had these for breakfast with plenty of butter, marmalade and a slim slice of brie. impossibly light and feathery cultured kaymak butter with sourdough pide, grilled hummus with smoked oil that tasted so thoroughly of itself and a delicious plate of grilled kalamar with brown crab barley at mangal ii. a final breakfast at honey and co’s fitzrovia with my mentor. we had still warm fitzrovia buns. these are a riff on chelsea buns featuring sour cherries, pistachios and mahlep. all manner of buttery and flaky treats from miel that t and i spilt after late afternoon sound baths at the house of wisdom. a velvety black bean soup and one too many slices of lemon, olive oil and rosemary cake with omair at the london review cake shop. all of what was ordered for lunch at brat x climpson’s arch with a special mention for all the vegetables. the woodfire had turned them into bolder and fuller versions of themselves. silky roasted leeks served with shaved asparagus that had bite. hispi cabbage that was charred on the edges and soft in the middle.
notes on culture, listening and reading: an evening with stanley tucci at the apollo theatre which was just pure joy. it was the perfect combination of wry, funny, warm and fuzzy. he was interviewed by elizabeth day and the best part of the evening was the questions from the audience. there was not a single empty seat and it felt incredible to be back in the theatre. cabaret at the kit kat club was mesmerising. the plotlines have aged a little too well which is a sobering thought. it is a clear-eyed view of how present the past is. i was struck by the physicality of singing, especially in the solo performances. the playhouse theatre which originally opened in 1882 has been redone as the kit kat club. the stage is in the centre and there is not a single bad seat in the house. the father and the assassin at the national theatre which like cabaret is about the presence of history. the play is ambitious in its scope as it tells the story of sub-continental politics, nationalism and partition. it uses dark comedy with skill and the set was very well designed. it is also unique in that it looks at the life of the perpetrator. this cultural life podcast particularly the episode with kwame kwei-armah. i was not looking for an explanation about why theatre and live performance is so incredibly powerful and moving. but kwei-armah’s is so good i had to write it down. (it is so much better if you hear him say it around the forty minute mark in the podcast.) ‘but theatre is different. theatre is live. it is the difference between pornography and live sex…no one is going to tell you that pornography is going to replace the thing that is infront of you. to see the person in front of you, reflecting you, to be within inches or feet of that being. we’ve just been through covid. no one will tell you that it is better to have a zoom meeting.’ edmund de waal’s the hare with amber eyes. leslie jamison’s essay, ‘bright passage’. writer ocean vuong: ‘beauty is medicinal to me. it’s not useless”. sheila heti in conversation with caren beilin on ‘how do we stop repeating ourselves?’
Jenny
Spring can really hang you up the most. First, the ankle of the leg that I didn’t think I’d wrecked, fractured one morning when I was out running. It happened so quietly that I don’t even have the story of a pratfall to go with it, though maybe the fracture is the punchline to all my past pratfalls. When the pain I hoped would fade away got so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think, or think, I cancelled plans and got a lift to A&E, hobbling out again a couple of hours later — in a “walker” boot, on crutches, with a pocket full of co-codamol.
I was a quick fix for A&E. Others must have been there for much longer than I was and in need of much more support than kind words from receptionists and sympathetic glances from fellow patients could provide. Whilst the ambulances weren’t queuing that day, it was still a place marked by the desperation of the pandemic, with a bouncer at the door to separate the walking wounded from their would-be rescuers.
I wondered – and still do – how everyone fared that day, but I soon turned away to concentrate on feeling sorry for myself, despite all the help that arrived (and stayed) while I was immobilised, dependent and useless. Once the initial relief of getting into the boot and out of the plans I’d made wore off, I felt more shut in than I had been in lockdown.
But not shut in enough, evidently. When I slowed down, I let COVID catch up with me. After two years of high anxiety, the two lines on my LFT still took me by surprise, but, to begin with, I just got on with the testing and contact tracing admin that we still have here, cancelled more plans and got back to work, albeit from the sofa.
I felt pretty cheerful, all things considered, until it occurred to me that cheeriness might have been the result of oxygen deprivation. I slowed down more after that, though I didn’t want to go to bed and feel the full force of COVID’s grip.
I was lucky to have been vaccinated and boosted and infected with omicron rather than delta, and I was lucky that the weird progression of the virus meant that it mainly stayed in my full-to-bursting head. I’m still haggard, and hungover, but I’m lucky that my sense of smell and taste has come back and even more lucky that I can move around again without feeling much more listlessly low or anxiously high than in previous normal-for-pandemic times.
Now, out of the boot and testing negative again, I’m back in a world that seems determined to identify as post-pandemic. I’m going out – walking and standing – and eating in, trying to make the most of the window of being less worried about giving and getting the virus, but I don’t know yet whether I’ll be able to keep up.