Last week, I opened my front door, expecting my friend Rosie to be on the other side of it.
We’d gone for a mid-morning cup of coffee (or in my case - on the recommendation of our friend Georgia - a truly bomb hot chocolate. Her words. Then grudgingly mine as well.) and were about to reunite for a snowy Sunday walk, but as Rosie was on her bike, but as I had only an Oyster card clutched in my gloveless paw, we’d decided to reconvene at my flat.
Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I opened the door in the casual way you do when you think you know who’s on the other side of it. ‘Helloooo!’ I said, arms outstretched, eyes already halfway to the kitchen, where I could hear the kettle starting to chuff.
Of course, as you’ve already guessed, it wasn’t Rosie.
But I’d be impressed (and a little unsettled) if you’d guessed that it was the gentleman who runs our local stationary shop.
The first time I went into Erbert Stationary (that’s the name of the shop) was when I was brand new to the neighbourhood. I came out with a magnificent haul: a spool of sheer, apricot-coloured ribbon, a gold fine-liner pen that can write on anything (no really, anything!) a cerulean blue felt tip, and three packets of shiny, cheerful stickers. Best of all, I got a whole host of top tips about the local area from Paul (that's the name of the man who runs the shop) in the time it took to ring up my treasures. The second time I popped in was just for a hole-punch, and I was in and out in less than five minutes. It was a delight, but a brief one. And that was the last time I’d seen Paul - a little over a month ago.
So you can imagine that I was a little surprised to see him at my front door. But the edges of the puzzle soon fell in to place: Paul had come round to give Ben a hand-copied recipe for his Grandma’s Christmas pudding.
Now, you wouldn’t be wrong for finding that detail more, not less surprising.
But what you have to understand is this: I am living with a man who loves Christmas. Ben loves Christmas with such open-hearted intensity that it will move a near-stranger to bring a family pudding recipe to his door.
I imagine this is how it played out: Ben had gone to the stationary shop to stock up on ribbon for his Christmas wrapping. And while he was there, he decided to seek Paul’s counsel in how to tie the perfect, fat Christmas present bow. (This much I know as fact.) Then, during what I imagine was a very convivial bow masterclass, Paul must have told Ben about a famed pudding recipe in his family. Un-tinkered-with since the 1940s! And between that moment and this, Paul had hand-copied the recipe, and put it in the perfect plastic envelope so the ink wouldn’t get smudged in the snow.
Such is the kindness of Paul, sure. Undeniably. But it’s also testament to Ben’s astonishing power as a Christmas-whisperer. I recently received text from a friend saying that the person she’s dating wanted to know if I’d bought Ben’s christmas present yet, because he’d thought of the perfect thing. Ben has met this man ONCE. I have known Ben for nine years, and am still scrabbling around, frantically typing ‘NICE GIFTS FOR A NICE MAN!’ into Google. (I know, a search engine cares nothing for the urgency implied by my punctuation or wild abandon with caps lock.)
And here’s the thing, I usually love Christmas too. Roast potatoes! Brandy butter! Chocolate, in myriad forms, multiple times a day, for a straight-up MONTH! Sparkles all over the place; goodwill flying every which way. Saying ‘Oh, go on then’, in response to literally any question. The unanimously accepted moment when everything suddenly has the word ‘festive’ in front of it. Let’s go for a festive pint! A festive walk! A festive trip to the Ed’s Diner in Brent Cross! Oh, go on then. CAROLS! Singing descant harmonies is genuinely the highlight of my calendar year, as anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby during the last verse of O Come All Ye Faithful can attest. (Man, they never know what to do with themselves when it gets to the word ‘exultation’. That’s probably because I'm forced to make up for what I lack in vocal range (or skill) with what could only really be described as Brute Force. Then - a sigh of relief. The worst is over. But NO! Here comes ‘glory’, and you’d better believe it’s a belter.
You see? I get it. I’m not a regular mom, I’m a yule mom! I’m not a Michael Caine at the beginning of The Muppet Christmas Carol. I’m a Michael Caine at the END of The Muppet Christmas Carol!
(Okay. If I’m being honest with myself, I know that I could never really be Michael Caine in any iteration, when in my heart I am forever the carolling grapes.)
A few years ago, our first Christmas Eve together, Ben insisted on putting out a mince pie and sherry for Santa, and a carrot for Rudolph. This led to the bizarre moment where I found myself creeping into the kitchen in the dead of night to eat half a carrot, down a small glass of sherry, and bury the mince pie in the bin, underneath two layers of vegetable peelings and chocolate wrappers, so it couldn’t be discovered. (Wasteful, I know, but I just couldn't face chomping my way through a dry, cold mince pie at three o'clock in the morning.) I then haphazardly sprinkled the fireplace with glitter, before crawling bleary-eyed back into bed. In the morning, Ben told me that he snuck down to do the exact same thing two hours later. (Minus the glitter. I think he felt that was overkill.) Last year, my feeling was: we are both adults! What in the name of Santa’s fur-lined knickers is going on? But still, I did it. But this year... Well, I don't know.
My grandma once told my siblings and me that she was going to buy us Christmas gifts that year, but - and this is a direct quote - 'I simply couldn’t muster the enthusiasm.' I think at the time, I accepted this for what it was: a true masterclass in the art of the sick burn. And if anything, my respect for this position - and the DGAF candour with which it was communicated - has grown with every passing year.
And this year, as we limp towards the end of 2017 - a twelve-month-long kick in the nethers - I really get where she was coming from. On a global level, it's been a year pocked with days and hours of refusal, resentment, and gaping, open-mouthed disbelief. Personally, it’s been a year of change after change; some great, some less so, but all the sort that’ll wolf you down whole if you stop too long to think about them. (And with a velocity not dissimilar from my approach to a second helping of roast potatoes.) It's been a year of powering on, and muddling through, and all of that makes it hard, sometimes, to muster the enthusiasm.
So by the time December rolled around, I was fully ready to flop into bed, not to resurface until January.
Scratch that. April, at the earliest.
So what do you do when your enthusiasm is a little on the un-mustered side of things, but you also want to build your first proper Christmas with a partner that happens to be a taller, more bespectacled version of Buddy the Elf?
I needed to wrestle my festive cheer back from the precipice. Like Gandalf, battling the Balrog (in this case, the Balrog represents my festive ennui). And then I too would return triumphant - twinklier, and pearlier of beard than ever before.
So: first things first. I will go out and get an advent calendar! That's festive, right? I thought. Oh very much so. Undeniably festive. And I was firm in my intention, but kept not getting around to it, for this reason or that. Then, on November 29th, the stars aligned, and I happened upon the perfect one!
In the last missive I sent out, I mentioned (I think) that Ben and I got engaged in a treehouse earlier this year. So when I found the most beautiful build-your-own treehouse advent calendar, I was beyond delighted. Every day you add a tiny piece to the woodland scene: a perfect glittery crescent moon, a string of rainbow bunting, today was a little blue and white bowl, heaped with clementines. There's been a polar bear, a fox, and a magnificent dappled stag with a bird on its back. The tiniest something to look forward to, every day.
And it's been just the thing. There's something so comforting about unfolding a month, day by day. Especially in the whirl of December - a month usually sponsored by panic purchases and lurid, effervescent vitamin drinks. Because then of course, the days themselves fell into place, just as they always do. One by one. Gentle days, whirring, frantic days; jolly days, and worried days, and both at the same time.
We bought a little tree, and strung it with tiny, battery-operated lights. (Plain gold for Ben, rainbow on my insistence.) We got a branch of red berries, and stuffed it in an empty wine bottle. I've now knocked over so many times it's almost bare. We wrote Christmas cards, with glasses of brandy, and carols twinkling away in the background, scribbling away until our wrists ached, telling our friends and family that we loved them in all the different ways we knew how. We made umpteen trips to the post box, me worrying that I shouldn't have used felt tip for the addresses because what if they all get smudged in the rain beyond legibility? (It was fine. I think.) We learned how to make mince pies, and Turkish Delight (SO much more stirring than I ever imagined possible), and Ben experimented with multiple recipes for gingerbread. The first batch would have needed to be identified by their dental records. We gave the good gingerbread to our neighbours, and excitedly told each other when we saw anyone taking some from the tin in the hall, before remembering that our front door is far from sound-proof. We went for ill-advised jogs, and failed to go on so, so many more. We went to parties, missed trains and buses, nursed some frankly spectacular hangovers, and made gently bubbling vats of chicken stock. We powered on, and muddled through. Every day we added another little piece to our treehouse scene, and just like that, we built our first December together.
And Building a First Christmas Together had felt so daunting. Like every decision would be imbued with this new weight of 'This is our tradition now. This is The Thing We Do. And we do it all wearing sparkly socks and cashmere-quality jumpers.' By that logic, The Thing We now Do on December 21st is sit on the kitchen floor at two'o'clock in the morning, eating yesterday's pasta straight from the saucepan. And that's FINE. Sleepy night-pasta is a noble tradition, and one I intend to honour for Decembers to come.
And of course I needn't have been so wrapped up (some pun intended) in the idea of not feeling 'festive enough', because I've come to realise that possibly nobody does. And I needn't have worried about my secretly wanting to hibernate, because I've come to realise that possibly everybody does.
Well, almost everybody. This morning I came into the kitchen to discover that Ben has put a mini festive jumper and bobble hat on all the bottles of oil by the stove.
I give up.
The Cameo
My guest this week is Josie George.
What’s your job title/profession?
I’m a writer, but rather than writing books, at the moment I write for and run a secret society - a curiosity club - for people all around the world called Letters from Wonderland. Since I’m the boss, I got to pick my own job title. Chief Hatter seemed the most appropriate.
What would you love for people to know about your work?
The most significant thing is that I still feel very much like a beginner in my work. Letters from Wonderland is my education. It’s a way for me to explore ways of being alive in the world and to write about it. I try to use words to wake people up and get them excited, to nudge them down new paths and into new worlds. I don’t see myself as an expert in anything though, or even an experienced writer. So my work doesn’t come from any place of authority or confidence or surety: more just a kind of open willingness to see what writing and looking can do. The whole project is simply an extension of me trying to be brave.
What might people be surprised to discover about your work?
That I’m terrified on the inside. I started the project on a whim, as a way to escape writing boring copy for little money. I make it up entirely as I go along and am very much flying by the seat of my pants. I also have no idea what’s next. There’s no big plan and no ambition. I’m just writing as much as I can and seeing where it takes me.
What made you/helped you to choose what you do?
I have quite a severe disability caused by an annoying bundle of incapacitating chronic illnesses that are slowly getting worse over time. I don’t have any qualifications and can’t manage a job outside the house, so I’ve had to get a little creative with my career. Writing is the one thing I’ve ever felt any good at. I’ve been writing copy for all sorts of people for years, but desperately wanted to do something more off the wall and in line with the writing I love. Something more me. I have a strong, unusual voice and I thought it was about time I gave it a chance. I couldn’t afford to take unpaid time to write a book, so I came up with Wonderland as an alternative.
What’s your perfect breakfast/lunch for a workday?
(What do you actually have for breakfast/lunch?)
I’m not really a breakfast person. A big cup of tea and maybe some porridge does me fine. I’m a gluten-intolerant vegetarian who has to sit down to cook (I know, what a pain in the arse) so lunch is often some quick combination of vegetables, cheese, rice, potatoes and/or quinoa, which I still never pronounce right. My perfect meal? That would be anything that I didn’t have to cook.
What’s your alarm sound?
My 8 year old son asking me a question.
Do you have a set morning routine?
Very much so. When you have a duff body, routine is extra important else you can just grind to a halt. I’m up by 7.30am, then out the house an hour later to take my son to school. Because I can only walk a few steps, I use a mobility scooter which makes me something of a novelty in my neighbourhood (I’m only 35). Going anywhere involves lots of waving and good mornings, and I take my responsibility of being “that smiley lady” very seriously. Once my son is dispatched, it’s home and, ideally, straight to work. I write freehand on anything I can think of for an hour, then get going with everything else.
Do you have a dedicated/preferred space for writing? If so, what does it look like?
My son and I live in a tiny house that only has one decent flat surface - our dining table, which is pushed up against a window. I write here, and eat here and knit here and supervise homework here and plant seeds here. It’s the heart of my house. I can look up and out at my much beloved courtyard garden and watch my cat eyeing up the pigeons. It’s my favourite place.
Preferred stationary/tools of the trade? Essential work items?
I do absolutely everything with a cheap netbook, an old Sheaffer fountain pen that my ex boyfriend got free at a conference, a bundle of Uni-Ball writing pens, and endless spiral notebooks. Oh and highlighter pens. I do a lot of research and highlighting is the only way the words go in.
What are your work hours like? Do you try to create a routine for yourself or is that impossible given the nature of your work?
Officially, my working hours are only part time, although I’m always thinking and scribbling. Because of the nature of my disability, I get a lot of unpredictable pain and fatigue and often struggle to be upright for long, so I have to work in little bursts, spread out through the day. I’ll do an hour or so, rest for a little while, then do some more and repeat. On the very worst days, I have to work propped up on loads of pillows and some days I can do nothing but lie down and think. However the day has gone, everything stops at 3pm when it’s time to collect my son from school, although I’ll often sneak in an extra hour once he’s home if I can.
Do you work with fixed goals in mind or take it day by day depending on what comes up?
I publish and post out Letters from Wonderland on a monthly schedule (I’m currently working on the sixth instalment), so my month’s activities are quite specific and fixed to a timescale. I have a list of tasks that I need to complete to deadlines to get the Letters researched, written, printed, packaged up and posted out to my 180ish subscribers by the end of each month. It is always a real challenge to get it turned around in time, but I’m getting into the swing of it now, kind of. (Just don’t come visit in the 4th week of the month as I’m usually crying into a huge pile of envelopes.)
What inspires you?
Honestly, I know it sounds a bit twee and soft, but absolutely everything inspires me, which kind of sums me up. I find everything fascinating and I write about everything I see and think of. When you can look close enough and find enough of a connection with something to express it on paper, everything starts to seem a little magical. So, the act of looking and writing inspires me, I guess. Nature and stories are my big loves, and poetry puts fire in my bones like almost nothing else, so I’d list them too. I’m also a Buddhist, and that feeds every step I take too these days.
What’s your favourite thing about your job?
The fact that it’s not really a proper job in anyone else’s eyes. I feel like I’ve cheated the grown up system that I get to write about lichen and graveyards and dust and pebbles for a living.
Least favourite?
It looks like all play from the outside but the club is a product I have to manage and sell and all that, it turns out, is a LOT of work. The administration of it all is a bit of a nightmare, and there’s just me, so if it needs doing, I have to do it.
What do you do to get through days when you just don’t feel like it?
I sing at my walls, potter in my garden, talk to my friends, read something new. My rule is that if I can’t get going, I just have to do something, ANYTHING, to keep moving. It’s the momentum that’s key. It’s like pushing an old banger of a car patiently along the road. Eventually I will start.
Do you have a go-to treat to get you out of a slump?
New yarn, new plants, or a new book usually does it. I wish I could find a deslumper that doesn’t involve spending money, but oh god it works so well.
Go-to work sustenance, meal, drink or snack-wise?
I am entirely powered by cups of tea.
What’s your favourite part of the day?
Late afternoon when the light comes at you sideways and you don’t feel entirely here.
Least favourite?
Late evening. My pain levels are at their worst then, my son is asleep, and I often get quite blue and lonely.
How you define a good/successful day?
I’ve got a card propped up on my desk that says “A successful day is not determined by what I’ve left undone: it has to do with integrity, kindness, and a sense of gratitude for what I have received. It has to do with the quality of my attention and the way I treated others. It has to do with presence and purpose.” It was taken from a book about Constructive Living, a Japanese approach to mental health, and it sums up a good day beautifully for me, or at least the kind I aspire to.
What’s been your favourite failure? One that you learnt a lot from, or one that you can look back and say ‘well I got through THAT, I’m unstoppable!’
I mess things up all the time. I get too tired, too scared, I freeze, I run away. I learn something every time though, and I’m getting stronger and wiser, year on year. At least, I hope I am. I fudged up a young marriage in my 20s and was left raising and supporting a toddler predominately on my own, but it turned out to be the making of me. There was no one to pass the buck to, no freedom to make excuses. I think often everything has to fall apart before you can work out who you are.
Any hot tips for the old work-life-balance conundrum?
Goodness no, I’m hopeless. The only tip I have is to see clearly what you do and why you do it. Be really honest with yourself, and don’t let your life constantly be dictated by your emotions and the pull of needing everything to go your way all the time. I think if you can step back, let go and do that, balance has a way of finding itself.
Do you have any hobbies/passions outside of your work?
My work and my passions are all very much jumbled up together. I stare at the world a lot, write about it and grow things. I knit and read and take care of everyone I can. That’s my whole life really.
What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to do what you do?
Just write. Every day, about anything. See where it takes you. The trouble is that no two people and no two paths are the same and you need to let yours take its own shape. All too often we try and squeeze our lives to look more like other people’s because we think theirs is better. But your writing life may not look like everyone else’s, even people you admire, and that’s ok. I’d say to just try and live with good humour, don’t make assumptions about anything, and always be curious. Good things will always follow from that.
What’s the best piece of advice someone’s ever given you? (Or worst!)
To let your curiosity be bigger than your fear. “Be more curious than afraid” is Letters from Wonderland’s motto, and the star I steer my ragged, wonky little ship by.
What are you evangelical about recommending to people?
Meditation. People think they can’t do it or that they’re doing it wrong - keep trying anyway. The Headspace app is great to get you going, but you need to stick with it. You never get ‘good’ at meditation. The whole practice is about being disciplined and having a go. I’d also whole-heartedly recommend all the books by Pema Chӧdrӧn, my favourite non-bullshitting Buddhist nun (who was also the one I first heard talk about curiosity and fear). She’s my hero.
What’s your top tip for getting shit done?
Stop thinking and just do it (damned Nike stole the best one). You have to move your body and act. Just take one step forward, even if it’s the tiniest, tiniest step. Write one sentence, wash one dish, pick up one thing. It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you keep moving.
What music should I listen to this week?
I’m hooked on ‘The Waking Sleep’ album by Katie Herzig, ‘Ponzo’ by Janne Schra, and ‘Bilingua’ by Eithne Ní Uallacháin. To balance out those embarrassingly hipster choices, I should also say that I’ve been playing the Moana soundtrack on loop for a month. Man alive, I love that film.
Josie is one of my very favourite people on Twitter. Everything she writes has the warmth of the sunniest garden patch, with the gentle clarity of luminous moonlight. Also I reckon she has a heart the size of a planet. Follow her: @porridgebrain.
Go right this minute and take a look at the gorgeous website for Letters from Wonderland. It's humming with perfect sentences, like this one: There is only so long that anyone with an excitable mind and hair like a dandelion clock can go on before accidentally falling down a rabbit hole or two, or starting a mysterious postal club.See? You can sign up here.
Unsurprisingly, there's a bit of a waiting list, BUT, Josie often puts a few extra letters on Etsy. I scooped one up from there, and let me tell you: it was everything I was hoping for and more. I was going to include some photos here, but I think that might interfere with the magic, so I can only urge you to trust me. It gave me such a spring in my step I was like a rainbow slinky on stairs.
Some Music
As mulling season gathers pace, the theme of this week’s playlist is: liquor.
Well, I suppose it’s just alcohol really, as there are also lots of songs about beer and wine. But don’t you think liquor is a lovelier, more evocative word? By way of evidence, I submit one of my all-time favourite paragraphs:
For the liquor of Miss Amelia has a special quality of its own. It is clean and sharp on the tongue, but once down a man it glows inside him for a long time afterward. And that is not all. It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harboured far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognised and comprehended. A spinner who has thought only of the loom, the dinner pail, the bed, and then the loom again – this spinner might drink some on a Sunday and come across a marsh lily. And in his palm he might hold this flower, examining the golden dainty cup, and in him suddenly might come a sweetness keen as pain. A weaver might look up suddenly and see for the first time the cold, weird radiance of midnight January sky, and a deep fright at his own smallness stop his heart. Such things as these, then, happen when a man has drunk Miss Amelia's liquor. He may suffer, or he may be spent with joy – but the experience has shown the truth; he has warmed his soul and seen the message hidden there.
― from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories, by Carson McCullers.
On a significantly less elegant note, here's me, realising it's nearly Christmas:
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify here, but listen in the knowledge that yesterday I went to Gregg's for a curative (and crucial) bacon sandwich and full-fat coke, but I couldn't even get over the threshold because the smell was too intense for my ragged little body.
A Poem
Mercifully Ordain That We May Become Aged Together - Tobit 8.7
I was in the Canadian Muffin Company in Armada Way,
waiting for an extra large latte, cinnamon and chocolate
and a white chocolate chip muffin, to take away,
when I saw them. He was helping her get into her coat.
He held it out for her as if the sleeves were winged
while she gracefully turned her back to shrug it on.
At this point he did a little jink, more of an imperceptible
hoick, on the balls of his feet, so the coat lifted
neatly over her shoulders and tucked under her neck,
then he freed her hair from the collar. He must have
done this for years, this exact same thing for years.
I watched him pick up the shopping, she picked up
her bag, and I collected my latte and my white
chocolate chip muffin and walked out into the rain.
Ann Gray, from At The Gate (Headland Books, 2008.)
(I first read this poem on Anthony Wilson's fantastic website.)
Links!
Ever since I read Saffy's Angel (for the first time when I was 13, countless times since then), I have been obsessed with colour names, and always have half an eye out for the printed colour chart of my dreams. For anyone else nurturing a weirdly specific Casson Family fantasy, this Colour Thesaurus by Ingrid Sundberg serves as an excellent placeholder.
If you're into that sort of thing, then I recommend following @colorschemez, a Twitter bot that generates colour combos and gives them astonishingly satisfying names. These are some of my favourites:
interdisciplinary blue blue
alimental charcoal
Froebelian watermelon
polliniferous tiffany blue
messy wine red
Chekhovian cloudy blue.
This Feminist Advent Calendar has had me leaping out bed every morning like a dehydrated gazelle.
I'm not sure if the appreciation rant counts as a genre, but if it is, then it's one of my favourites. Michael Schur's Appreciation/Jealous Rant about Tom Petty and Lin-Manuel Miranda is a real treat.
I think the Agony Aunt column counts as a genre. Again, if so: way up there for me. So imagine my delight when I discovered that Eva Wiseman now has an agony aunt column for i-D magazine. Now imagine my delight when I read it!
Oh but I couldn't possibly mention agony aunts without paying homage - with a properly deep bow - to Heather Havrilesky, otherwise known as Ask Polly. I always adore her column, but this is a recent favourite.
Caroline O'Donoghue has written the piece I've been waiting my whole life* to read: Some Thoughts on Sophie and Vlad, The Secondary and Most Important Relationship in 1997's Anastasia.
I am both insatiably curious to know what the deal is with Sophie and Vlad and absolutely delighted that we are never given anymore information. Context clues tell me that they are both former courtiers in Tzar Nikolai’s old palace, which, oh my god – what have these two seen? How did they survive? Who did these two jolly middle-aged sex-positive panda bears have to see put up against the wall?
*Well, the entirety of my life since 1997. And I'd be kidding myself if I said I was truly living before I heard Bartok say 'Oh boy! Ow. I tell you what, ow!'
My friend Isa Burke is a fantastic musician, and I would trust her taste in songs with my very life. So when I saw that she had made a list called Songs I Was Addicted To In 2017, I didn't even pause for breath before scampering over to Spotify.
If you're flying anywhere over the holidays, check out this magnificent article before you board: How To Maintain Control Of The Shared Armrest: A Guide For Women Flying Alone.
Christmas isn’t about showcasing how much you’ve achieved on a greetings card.
Daisy Buchanan is typically brilliant on avoiding the seasonal comparison game. You’re made of morning runs and hangovers, mortgage instalments that were paid on time and credit card bills that took you by surprise, great hair days and broken boilers and meetings where you killed it and bin days that were missedI absolutely love her writing, and if you missed Daisy's interview in this very newsletter, you can read it here!
And that's it! See you soon!
Love,
KatyaViz Comic, 2016.
The Katch-Up's header illustration is by the brilliant Tamsin Baker.