journalesque

It Must Be Graduation Week At QUB...

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

Strings

I've been listening to Ravel's String Quartet in F Major somewhat obsessively lately and I think I'm a little bit in love. It was a random discovery; the second movement features in the credits of The Camomile Lawn, which is quite possibly the best TV adaptation of a book I've seen*. Rather than inviting comparisons between the two, it manages to improve the book without diminishing - or attempting to improve on - it, which is both impressive and rare. It's definitely my favourite book/adaptation combination, although the BBC's Pride and Prejudice mini-series comes a very close second.

But it was odd that I should discover the Quartet in the way I did, since I now know it to be a major work and also strongly influenced by Fauré - and I love Fauré. It makes me wonder what else I'm missing out on by sticking too much to what I know. Although what I 'know' mainly consists of a bit of Bach (which I maintain is all anyone really needs to qualify as civilised) and enough other stuff to very occasionally get the right answer on the University Challenge music round.

(*In a strange twist of casting fate, both The Camomile Lawn and Pride and Prejudice starred Jennifer Ehle. The Camomile Lawn also starred Toby Stevens, who went on to play Mr Rochester in the BBC's (wonderful) adaptation of Jane Eyre. Jennifer Ehle dated Toby Stevens during the filming of The Camomile Lawn and Colin Firth (Mr Darcy) during Pride and Prejudice, meaning that she's dated both Mr Rochester and Mr Darcy. The hussy. Rochester vs Darcy - I would so read that book.)

Little Wing

Finally tried Little Wing Pizzeria on Ann Street today. I've been hearing great things about the pizza and it looks so sweet from the outside, plus its location makes it the perfect place for a mid-shop/post-uni snack. Inside is lovely and cosy, with lots of fairy lights, tucked-away tables and cool music. Very chilled out, a little bit retro and a good menu.

I wasn't that hungry so just ordered a single slice of Pepperoni, which turned out to be pretty huge and delicious. Friend L. ordered the special Calzone (baked ham, portobello mushrooms and mozzarella). We also managed a slice of chocolate cake between us. Nothing is particularly expensive and the portions are generous, so it works for quick lunches as well as evening meals (they serve wine and beer).

A new favourite, I think!

That'll Be The Day

When I was little my dad would take me to Graham's record shop at Connswater. It wasn't exactly a cool place to go (it was the mid-90s and the shopping centre and surrounding area of East Belfast was far more run-down than it is now), but Graham's had a good selection of the sort of music my dad liked - mainly 50s and 60s rock and roll, lots of Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and The Everly Brothers. He would spend ages flicking through the tapes (yes, tapes!) and, already the consummate people-watcher, my attention would turn to other people in the shop and what they were buying.

Once I saw an older boy with raggedy long hair buying a whole stack of CDs. Loads of them. I had never seen anyone buy so many CDs in one go before. He paid in cash with a wad of notes, like it was no big deal. I watched the whole transaction, jealously fascinated. I was too young to have even started buying music for myself at that point; I mostly just listened to what my dad bought and whatever was on the radio (although my obsession with the Sunday afternoon Top 40 countdown was still a few years away). But I had never wanted anything more that day than to be able to buy as many CDs as I wanted whenever I wanted.

A few weeks  ago I was in HMV, for the first time in, well, I don't know how long. At least a couple of years. I generally only buy music on iTunes and DVDs from Amazon. But the sale was on, so I popped in and found the Alias box set I'd been wanting all year with a great discount, and then I spotted The West Wing box set on sale, so I decided to get that as well. As I was waiting in the queue, I picked up a couple of other things and by the time I got to the checkout my arms were full. It was only when the sales assistant asked me how many bags I wanted that I realised just how much stuff I was buying and how much I was spending. Right then, in my moment of thoughtless consumerist bliss, I felt like a proper grown-up ... until I remembered it was birthday money from my dad that was paying for it all.

2009

Today I...

Received a polite text message from my boss asking me if I was aware I was supposed to have worked yesterday. No. No, I wasn't. I somehow managed to get this week mixed up with next week, because I am an idiot. My boss is ridiculously cool though - in my last job randomly not showing up would've got you fired.

Met Alexander McCall Smith. Lovely man. Was rockin' a bow tie.

Had a woman in the street stop me to tell me that we're all going up and down in lifts. (I actually try to avoid lifts. Walking up stairs is my cardio.)

Got my coursework results. Did surprisingly well. Yay!

Was referred to as 'the lady' by a woman with a small child.

Watched two planes pass scarily close to each other on my walk home.

The Old Plane Tree

The thing I remember most about my first time in Bath is the walking. I find walking - shoes and weather permitting - to be one of the more tolerable forms of exercise, along with horse-riding (where really the horse does most of the work) and yoga (which barely counts as exercise at all - at least the way I do it), but requiring less expense or preparation than either. It was March, although closer to the spring end of the month than the winter. The town (it's a city really, but I was never able to think of it, and never heard it referred to, as anything other than 'town') was cool and crisp and bright, with sunlight bouncing off the golden Bath stone walls. I was wearing my cream coat with the tiny glistening speckles; smart, well-cut, more expensive looking than it actually was.

From Bath Spa Station, I walked up Manvers Street and Pierrepont Street, got lost somewhere around Sally Lunn's, called the guest house for directions. It was just around the corner, the first of a short row of  townhouses right behind the Abbey, perfectly central. My room was on the second floor, overlooking the square. I had dinner in the pub across the road alone, for the first time in my life. I tried to hide my embarrassment by pretending to read the tourist leaflets I'd picked up in the guest house.

When I'd finished it was dark outside but still early, so I started walking. It seems odd to me now that I walked around in the dark in a strange place, but I did and I never felt unsafe. It's just that sort of place. Within about a minute I'd stumbled across the Abbey, just there, all lit up, right in front of me. That's the thing about Bath - the history of the place is everywhere you go and, in a sense, its history is all it has to offer. Shops and offices sit inside borrowed buildings knowing that the buildings will be there long after they've gone, just as they were a hundred years ago and a hundred years before that. But no one seems to mind.

The next day I visited the Roman Baths, then walked up the hill to the Jane Austen Centre. I didn't especially like Jane Austen, but she is, as they tell you, Bath's most famous resident. They also tell you, rather apologetically, as though you might think it's their fault, that she hated Bath. I thought it strange, so enchanted that first day by the charm and elegance of the place, that it could be hated by anyone. Eventually, I took a strange sort of comfort in the fact that she'd been miserable there too, and she grew on me somewhat. I felt less self-conscious eating lunch in the tearoom - Jane Austen would understand the single girl awkwardness, wouldn't she? - and caught the eye of a middle-aged woman also eating alone. I thought about asking her to join me, but I couldn't think what I might say to her if she accepted (I'm not much of a small talker), so I didn't.

Onwards, upwards, to The Circus and Royal Crescent. Legs aching, but worth it. So beautiful, so uniform, so precise. I do love symmetry. The Fashion Museum next, full of French schoolchildren (Bath, I later discovered, was a city populated in seemingly equal parts by residents, students and tourists). Excusez-moi s'il vous plaît. Corsets. Manolo Blahniks. Exhausted then, I headed back, bought food to eat at the guest house because I was too tired to fake nonchalance. The loneliness began to wash over me at that point and the night felt very long. I wished I'd brought my laptop. I've always thought of myself as a solitary sort of person - you get used to being on your own, occupying yourself, when you grow up without siblings. I never minded that, but it's not the same as being properly alone.

The next day, craving human contact of any sort, I went on a walking tour. It was led by a man in his 70s with that lovely, lilting Somerset voice who could almost walk faster than I could run. I walked the same walk as the day before, freshly surprised as the city revealed itself to me once again. An older couple asked why I was there, were suitably impressed when I told them, wished me luck at the end.

I wish sometimes that this was my only memory of the place. That this city, hewn from the hills that surrounds it, could always in my mind be a pleasant and welcoming thought to drift to, instead of tarnished with the experience that would come months later. When the limestone walls I'd thought so light and elegant were instead dark and oppressive, trapping me inside and driving me almost mad with loneliness. In the end I ran away and, as I was lifted up over the hills, I looked down into the winking lights of the town, and felt only relief.

50 Songs

50 songs I love. In alphabetical order, 'cause that's how I roll.

4.35am - Gemma Hayes
A Life Less Ordinary - Ash
American Pie - Don McLean
And It Stoned Me - Van Morrison
Aria (Goldberg Variations) - Bach (Glenn Gould)
Breakfast At Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something
Breathe Me - Sia
Carvel - John Frusciante
Chariot's Rise - Lizze West
Chelsea - Counting Crows

Children Of The Revolution - T-Rex
Closer To The Start - Duke Special
Daysleeper - REM
Denis - Blondie
Downtown - Petula Clark
Fidelity - Regina Spektor
Guide Me Home - Freddie Mercury
Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros
I'm Going Slightly Mad - Queen
I'm His Child - Zella Jackson Price

It's My Life - No Doubt
La Cienega Just Smiled - Ryan Adams
Landslide - Smashing Pumpkins
Leaving To Stay - Jonny Lang
Life On Mars? - David Bowie
Love Of My Life - Queen
Manic Monday - The Bangles
Monsters - Band of Horses
Moon River - Henry Mancini
My Skin - Natalie Merchant

My Sundown - Jimmy Eat World
Never Forget You - Noisettes
One Day Like This - Elbow
Only You - Yazoo/The Flying Pickets
On Saturday Afternoons In 1963 - Rickie Lee Jones
Pull Shapes - The Pipettes
Rain King - Counting Crows
Ran For Miles - Gemma Hayes
Save Me - Aimee Mann
Sleep To Dream - Fiona Apple

Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
Stand By Me - Ben E. King
Street Life - Roxy Music
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of - U2
Teenage Kicks - The Undertones
There She Goes - The La's
The Whole Wide World - Wreckless Eric
This Time Around - Hanson
Weird - Hanson
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips

Playlist for the ones that are on Spotify.

Бабье лето

Last week I was thinking it was starting to feel like autumn. It was chilly and blustery, the kind of weather summer-loving people sigh regretfully about, but us pale-and-interesting types love. It's weather that means not having to feel silly for wearing opaque tights in July (this was a matter of practicality - my job mostly involves sitting down and the air conditioning system in the gallery leaves me freezing and numb-fingered), not squinting in the blinding sun, not slathering on SPF50 and still ending up itchy and red and not having to feel self-conscious about wearing a skirt because I have the whitest legs ever seen on anyone outside of the Arctic Circle. I look forward to the nights closing in, the nip in the air making my cheeks pink and the wind blowing the cobwebs out of my brain as the new semester begins. There's nothing quite like those first few weeks of autumn amid the hustle and bustle of lectures and blisters from walking around in new shoes and essays and exams still seeming ages away. I am appreciating it even more now that there aren't very many years of my (already impressively extended) student life left.

So I was all set for autumn and new books and cosy knits and drinking hot chocolate in Clements when summer suddenly decided to have a last hurrah. Slightly disconcerting but not altogether bad, as it's given me the chance to wear a few of the carefully chosen summer outfits I thought would never see daylight this year (I find summer clothes difficult - they seem to be designed for the sole purpose of revealing as much as possible as brightly as possible, which is not at all the look I go for). For the opening night of our new exhibition (where us lowly gallery assistants serve drinks and try to spot local minor celebrities) I wore my Jasmine Guinness Daisy skirt with a white blouse and red cropped cardigan, red patent flats (very sweet, but hurt like hell) and my Oasis pearls.



Cute, a bit retro, quite appropriate to the era of the exhibition - as was noted by an old lady who wore a large pearl earring in her right ear, an apple-shaped one in her left and bright red lipstick. Oh, and slippers.