My husband bought the Kasabian album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum from a charity shop while I was away in India. He put it on in the car after picking me up from the airport on my return to the UK a few weeks before lockdown.
The album became the soundtrack to our lockdown. Track one, Underdog, below, for driving to work when most people were at home, the roads were quiet and everything felt slightly surreal:
This, Take Aim, for dancing in the boat. In spite of everything, we’ve danced and sang and laughed so much throughout the lockdown:
Oh, and this, Happiness, is my driving home from work love everyone sing along song. Altogether now!
At its heart is the mother daughter relationship, the experience of being mothered and of mothering.
The book vividly describes a tough rural childhood, the feeling of being confined within the home and to home activities, and the physical experience of childbirth and periods.
As well as this vivid physicality there is a kind of underwater feel to some of the book which matches the obliqueness of memory and the numbing effect of trauma.
The book explores the effects of unresolved trauma on relationships and shows how it’s very difficult to parent in an open and honest way if you haven’t been parented that way yourself.
But ultimately it shows how you don’t have to know what to say or have everything dealt with, you can just tell your story, as honestly as you can, and that can be healing both for yourself and those who have been affected by you.
‘Back to the beginning, with illumination,’ is one of my favourite sayings, and is kind of how the story of the book felt to me.
I thought the scenes involving sex were well done. I liked the way every day things (feet when sleeping) or things which have been covered in stories many times (the peak of a relationship crisis) were described in a new and original way:
‘Sometimes I woke in strange places: at the top of the stairs, my toes caressing the abyss;’
‘…I wished for him to stop driving this long dark road, turn on the light and remake me with his gaze.’
Molly’s Instagram @molly.aitken is a good account to follow if you are interested in reading and writing, she shares details of the writing and publishing process in a very generous way.
Practising non attachment doesn’t mean you don’t love people or things. It means holding everything with an open hand and letting it/them go with as much serenity as I can.
I haven’t started watching the final half of the final series of BoJack Horseman, so no spoilers in the comments please.
If you haven’t watched BoJack yet, I envy you for the long hours of pleasure ahead. While my husband was away I rewatched everything from the very first episode through to the end of the first half of the final season. Then I watched one of those last episodes again, twice. And listened to the end credits songs on youtube. And cried.
Please don’t shy away from the show for reasons which may mean you miss out on something you might grow to love. Like how I refused to entertain the idea of watching Battlestar Gallactica because it was Sci Fi but it turned out to be one of the key enlightening media experiences of my life.
I might have assumed I would not like BoJack as it was a cartoon and the concept might have sounded silly at first. But I overheard it whilst my husband was watching it and my interest was piqued.
I watched it, started again from the beginning, and fell deeply in love. The opening credits, with their warm yet bright pastel colours and languid music which sounds kind of like bubbles popping, have brought me into the present moment many times:
Ill in bed in my peaceful white room, alone in the house, the beautiful colours on my tablet the only colours in the room. On a train in India, the emotions of this thing from home being with me everywhere bringing tears to my eyes.
What about the content? Depression, fame, Hollywood, consumerism, addiction, guilt, loneliness and despair…
It is also very funny.
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, feminist, vegan, and all round good guy.
Wasn’t this post about non attachment? I haven’t yet started that final final part. I am re watching the first part of the final season again with my husband first. (I think he’s indulging me) But I’ve already un-followed all BoJack related accounts and hashtags in preparation for when it’s over.
Fall in love, fall deeply in love, but when it’s over it’s over. Cut the cord and float up and off untethered and unbound, ready for whatever it is that you are going to do or be next. (Also works for clutter, clothes, hobbies, routines, ideas and beliefs.)
This weekend (from Thursday-Monday) I will be at Harlequin Fayre so am scheduling Friday’s and Sunday’s blog posts in advance. You can read about my previous experience at Harlequin Fayre HERE and HERE. Harlequin Fayre is modelled on the old East Anglian Albion Fayres which I used to attend as a child.
In 2004-2005 I spent a year in Wellington, New Zealand. I worked for a community mental health team and my son went to school. I didn’t write a book but the year had emotional highs and lows and rich personal, sensory and creative experiences in some ways similar to the year just gone.
I went with a boyfriend, we split up and got back together during that year. We lived for a while in a shared house with a vegan couple and their little girl and new baby. The little girl would knock on our door every day to come and say hello. We did communal shopping and cooking, it gave me the idea of why do we all live in separate houses as we get older.
I got close to and fell out with a work colleague. I did evening classes in creative writing and in-line roller skating. I wrote a blinding piece of writing- a rework of Beauty and the Beast set in a New Zealand biker gang (we lived opposite the biker gang house but we never met!) I wrote a wistful poem about Wellington harbour. I met Sam Hunt (a New Zealand poet- yes he was drunk and flirtatious.)
I performed at an open mic, an eight minute piece learned off by heart about the three craziest boyfriends I’ve had, and later, some poems including Divorced man in a Ford Mondeo. I can still remember a fellow poet’s work: Beauty lies in the sink of dirty dishes… A cartoonist drew me a cartoon. I experienced a small earthquake. And a terrible haircut.
I fell in love with Wellington and the pretty wooden Newtown houses– our photo albums from New Zealand are full of houses- and New Zealand people’s energy and friendliness. My manager invited us to his house for dinner and lent us a three piece suite as we had no furniture. Phoning us up to arrange dropping it off, he called at eight am on a Saturday. ‘What, you’re still in bid?!’ he said. New Zealanders pronounce our short ‘e’ sound as a short ‘i,’ as a child my mum had a New Zealand friend who asked her where she kept the pigs. ‘The pigs?’ My mum was baffled. ‘Yes, the pigs, for hanging out the washing,’ her friend said.
The UK seemed so depressed in comparison when we returned. At least it helped to prepare me for what coming back after a year in South East Asia would be like.
Bic Runga is music royalty in New Zealand, and you may well know Lorde.
I used to listen to this (above) whilst writing. It often made me cry.
Lorde’s Team was one of the songs in my YouTube favourites I used to listen to during yoga at home or when getting ready for work or when mourning my cats link to blog post about that
I was dressed for success But success it never comes And I’m the only one who laughs At your jokes when they are so bad
And your jokes are always bad But they’re not as bad as this. Come join us in a prayer We’ll be waiting, waiting where
Everything’s ending here.
From their debut studio album Slanted and Enchanted, released in 1992 when I was twenty two. Pavement were/are one of my favourite bands and their albums formed the soundtrack to my twenties and thirties. Now forty-nine (and much happier than I was in my twenties and thirties) I still sing this song to myself even if I don’t play it that often anymore.
Thank you very much for reading (and listening!)
About the author
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
In Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia we were plagued by chart music we’d switch off at home, and the same few songs were played over and over. I hope I never hear Perfect by Ed Sheeran again. He seems like a nice guy and I saw him at Latitude (a UK festival) years ago and enjoyed his set but that particular song was played everywhere we went until it drove us half mad.
But by the time we were at the end of our year long trip, which ended in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, I’d started to have a ‘If you can’t beat ’em join ’em,’ attitude and just gave in to singing ‘What are you waiting for!?’ (from the song above) several times a day. This is called Stockholm Syndrome, I believe. The other day I heard it on the radio on the boat and found out who it was for the first time. It has had 1.9 billion views on YouTube. In spite of having previously been driven crazy by it I was happy to hear it for what felt like the billionth time…
One more: this too was in my head every day for the last part of the trip:
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for va year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
Listen to the whole album all the way through for the perfect accompaniment to your Sunday morning/afternoon housework/dancing around the house with a duster pretending to do housework…
Released in 1972 when I was two years old. Of course I didn’t discover it until several years later, maybe around the age of seventeen. I can remember listening to it at that age anyway, lying on the floor in a room in a house I was babysitting at. It’s one of the few actual moments and places I can remember from the past.
‘As meditators, we had prepared for this – how to move the energy up from the belly and into the heart and out through the head. I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou’s as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn’t afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.’
And if you really can’t listen to the whole album, just listen to this:
Thank you very much for reading (and listening!)
About the author
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
I bought the album just for this song. It’s one of the songs we used to sing in our DIY choir group at work (at a secure hospital)- we used to put YouTube up on the big screen and sing along. Most of us couldn’t really sing but there was one young woman, a patient, who had an especially lovely voice and sang this solo. She was quite shy but when she sang it sounded amazing, and she lit up with the praise.
When my husband was transferring all our music onto an old ipod (bigger memory than the newer ones), a pivotal part of the decluttering we did ready for selling up and going off to India, he found the case but no disc inside. The day after I drafted this post he came back from town with vegan magnums and a copy of the album- he’d hunted for and found it in a charity shop.
But I first fell in love with this song more than a decade ago at an acoustic night above a pub in Wymondham, Norfolk. A brother and sister sang it, it was absolutely beautiful. Wymondham, pronounced ‘Win-dam,’ is a small market town similar to the nearby town of Diss where I was brought up. As an adult, one might think either town is perfectly nice. As a young person, especially if one is a bit different, those kinds of places can be awful for the soul.
Not to mention surprisingly violent, as drinking and fighting provide something to do for groups of bored young men. I looked out of the window of that pub that night and saw a man staggering down the street, his face covered in blood. As Lou Reed sang, there’s only one good thing about a small town: You hate it and you’ll know you have to leave.
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
200 people from all over the world recorded themselves recreating the eulogy that BoJack Horseman gave at his mother’s funeral. That monologue filled the entire length of one episode and fans recreated it in full, many of them in costume, dressed up or with sets. Or just themselves. Clips from the 200 monologues were edited together to create the monologue above; the person’s country and Instagram name are on each clip. The top video is an extract from the original episode.
If you’ve experienced grief and/or difficult family relationships, this may still resonate, even if you are not a fan of BoJack Horseman. If you want to read about BoJack Horseman, I wrote a post about the show. Here it is.
Thank you very much for reading
Thank you to all involved in the Free Churro Project, you came together and did something wonderful.
P.S. What is a churro? A: ‘A sweet Spanish snack consisting of a strip of fried dough dusted with sugar or cinnamon’ (Dictionary) Sounds yummy!
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
At last, a few weeks ago, we got around to watching T2 Trainspotting, released in 2017, the twenty-years-later sequel to Trainspotting, the 1996 film by Danny Boyle about a group of friends (Begbie, Spud, Simon and Renton) in Edinburgh living an alternative lifestyle, shall we say.
My husband said afterwards, ‘Well if you hadn’t seen the first one that would have made no sense whatsoever.’ Which was absolutely true. We enjoyed T2 because we loved Trainspotting and because it was such a big part of our culture in the 1990s (I mean watching the film; my life was not similar, I have to add.) We forgave T2 the lack of much of a plot, forgave the plot holes, the obvious devices and contrivances*, and the unbelievable bits. We forgave it all, and enjoyed it anyway, because we love Trainspotting and because it was them (the original cast of characters played by the same actors.)
In T2 one of the things I enjoyed was Spud telling his stories (every day tales of mayhem from the first movie) to a new character Veronika. ‘I like your stories,’ she says, inspiring him to write them down, by hand on A4, pasting the sheets up all over the walls of his council flat.
Simon and Renton laugh behind his back ‘Whose going to read them?’ ‘Well that’s just it, nobody.’ But Spud is shown with a sheaf of papers, a title is alluded to, the implication being that they become Trainspotting, the novel on which the first film is based (Irvine Welsh’s first novel.)
*A good example is this, the updated Choose Life speech, which was delivered in such an unbelievable way. But it was still good. 2017’s T2 Trainspotting speech above. The original Choose Life speech from the 1996 Trainspotting film is below. Both worth watching even if you otherwise have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. Enjoy!
Thank you very much for reading
About the author
Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Recently arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat. Writing a book about everything…
For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
Rachel 