Choosing a pinpoint
And a book recommendation.
I was thinking that I should put together some plans and goals for September and October. Then I realised it had been September for the past week and a bit. What a time to be living through! Where we seem to have so much of it but then the hours and days leach away in a blink. Of course, if I spent less time looking at little screens and stopped giving my neck slashes of Saturn’s rings, I’d have powered through all I intended to do. That’s how being virtuous works, isn’t it? Rewards and favouritism rain from above.
In various jobs, I’ve worked with the calendar. August and mid-term breaks are bad for female stakeholders. When the weather’s good your KPIs usually take a kicking. Relish that. Don’t worry at all about December. No one cares. That’s Lindt season. This year, every day feels like Monday, or worse, Tuesday or that true morass: Sunday night.
Last weekend in a garden centre I bought a green mug and matching placemats. They had a robin design. A little fat adorable bird, feathers all puffed up like an immersion jacket. There was a spider racing inside the mug. I shook him out. Let’s pretend I hoped he found shelter in another pot. Maybe some part of me did.
Apparently, the placemats were being bought by every second person in the shop. “That’s because of Christmas,” I said to the lovely shop assistant. He was possibly lying to me. Probably. But it was because of Christmas, for me. I saw something pretty that reminded me of a season where we treat the drinking of mulled wine, and accidentally swigging its sediment, with the same obligation of blessing ourselves as we pass a graveyard or an ambulance.
There’s a 2011 romance novel from Sherry Thomas called His at Night. (Links to purchase and description here. Her debut, Private Arrangements, has one of my favourite story structures of all time.) His at Night is set in the Victorian era so it should come as no surprise to learn that the main antagonist is a Dastardly Uncle, who effectively keeps his niece under lock and key. Elissande, the novel’s heroine, spends her interior life imagining a future where she roams the isle of Capri a free woman. Throughout her various ordeals, she recalls passages from travelogues to calm herself. In her mind, life will begin off the coast of Italy.
Elissande ends up not needing Capri. She finds that security in the English countryside with a man she dupes into marriage and with whom she falls in love. Of course. They defeat her uncle together. She survives.
I left behind a small fake Christmas tree in the garden centre. Too soon, I told myself. Also, my sister would have lost her mind at the trail of glitter it would have left in the car. But soon, I told the fake plant. If you can make it there – Malta or Christmas – perhaps you’ll make it anywhere.
Some initiatives for your € consideration if you have €€€ to spare:
Enable Ireland, who had a lot of their services disrupted by the pandemic.
TheJournal.ie’s Noteworthy, where you can fund investigative reporting
Heyday, a newish publication aimed at and created by women in their midlife - Jessie Collins’ articles should be your first port of call.