The right thing at the right time

I’ve a short story being published in the next issue of Irish literary journal Banshee. It was so much fun to write. I realised after I’d finished it, that I’d been thinking about the French movie Fidelio, l'odyssée d'Alice for about ten years. Also, when that doctor/actor Anders Danielsen Lie had his big year there a while ago I was very ‘I know him! I’ve seen him treated like a rag before!’ Trailer below. Long live the messy bitches.

I’m about two or three years late to Sorrow and Bliss, a novel by Meg Mason, but I’m glad to be late. I had seen people reading the book during the end of the restrictions and all that, but I hadn’t noted anything other than it being a ‘mental health’ story and I guess I was on a ‘is this set in space???’ buzz back then.

I had a small disaster of a weekend afternoon there, where I was wondering what my life’s purpose was following an encounter with a sewn-up someone else. I was asking the great blankness had I squandered various chances and let time eat me up? I was gone a little mad, it all hidden behind big sunglasses and make-up.

Waiting for a bus after the encounter, I popped into a charity shop for a quick glance at the books. I don’t bother looking at the clothes in charity shops anymore. According to the bus sign, I had about ten minutes until the number I wanted would arrive. I saw one very recent release I’d been planning to read and the aforementioned Sorrow and Bliss. Might as well see what all the fuss was about, I thought as I picked up both, paid, threw them in my tote, and got on the bus. Then I got off at the wrong stop and it was pouring rain - the type where you can’t see where you are - and I was wearing sandals and I’d overcommitted to various things and I just felt like getting into pyjamas and closing my eyes. I did some math. I walked up and across the road to the stop back to town. Texted an apology to the person I was cancelling on at the last minute and felt terrible. I’m not usually like this. I live by the diary. But something had to give. I had to admit defeat. I couldn’t stop the clock or the rain. I had to retreat to get back on track.

The bus back to town was slow. And I still couldn’t see where I was. So I started Sorrow and Bliss and immediately saw what all the fuss had been about. In the novel, a woman named Martha recounts the various scenes which have made up her life and the relationships with her husband, who has just left, and her immediate and extended family. I don’t want to say any more on the plot. I’ve been reading it in bed, at bars, on buses. I’ve been neglecting my work, my must-dos, myself. I can’t wait to reread it. It is breaking my heart.

P.S.

• Nicola Peltz Beckham, a billionaire’s daughter, made a movie about abject poverty. It’s as bad as you think via The Guardian.

• I’m running an early summer subscription offer if you want to get more regular dispatches. Although, who wants more emails? Paid subscribers got three extra posts in recent weeks. About the local pub and eavesdropping, career/money decisions, and scent memories respectively.

• I really liked Fallout on Prime. Ella Purnell and Walton are great.