I hit the ground running with my reading list this year, since I am not a professional literary critic I can generally enjoy things in a simple unaffected way - apart from the annoyance I feel with the way other people write better (or sometimes worse) than me. However, I now seem to have slowed to a crawl - this is partly because I am on full writing mode... so reading is a bit obtrusive, and partly due to my addition to banal games on the computer.
What is it about the human brain that it would rather run through endless games of sudoku on its android phone, rather than read a good book? I find it distressing, I think I am getting brain wilt. But those little numbers, slotting them into position, or playing various forms of computer patience are terribly absorbing. In truth, in the past, I have enjoyed repetitive games of real patience with cards, when I was in a low mood. And activities such as making tapestry cushion covers are another thing I've done. All these are things that can be done while listening to Radio 4 (other stations are available). So one's hands, ears, eyes and brain are fully occupied - no nasty thoughts can leach in (unless there's a particularly harrowing episode of You and Yours) and you are safe from the accusation of idleness.
And yet, what I truly long to do many mornings, is lie in bed with a book - and read for an hour or so. It was in this manner that I passed many of the better years of my youth - including the dreadful months of 1977 when I lived in an unheated squat in Islington and was too inert (depressed?) to go to my lectures. That was a tremendous year for reading - which continued in 1978 when we moved to an equally basic house in Walthamstow (with the luxury of electricity, but no hot water). Sometimes my inertia would seize me during the long walk down Selborne Road to the Tube station, and I would return to bed and books for the rest of the day, and again miss a lecture or a tutorial.
However, lying in bed with a book is a manifestation of Pure Idleness - I am 50 something years old, I do not have a full time job, yet I am expected to get up and minister to assorted persons who are perfectly capable of administering their own breakfast, rather than stay in bed and finish a novel.. If it wasn't for those pesky kids I might have finished reading The Brothers Karamazov by now. Quite how someone raised a Catholic is so afflicted by the Protestant work ethic is a mystery to me. I blame my Irish grandmother's Welsh upbringing - in the kind of village where you weren't seen as decent if you weren't out scrubbing your front step at cock-crow.
People still marvel at the house - its beauty and its slightly grimy air... I marvel that anyone would think I could spend all the day cleaning it. My alternatives to reading also include some housework, and a lot of cooking and washing. These can be done while listening to Radio 4 - so are not completely wasted time! What housework do I do? Periodically I wipe down surfaces in the kitchen, some of the vitreous enamel in the bathrooms, about once a year I hoover - I do quite a lot of pruning and weeding in the garden, I dust the sitting room, I tidy the bedroom in a futile effort to maintain mastery over the ocean of textiles that swirls around the floor and sofa in a cycle of unending washing and drying. I am tempted by the thought of having a full on house cleaning team to come in while we are in France and do the house so that we can start anew.
When not sitting at the desk, I am frequently wiping things, and rescuing things from the fridge for re-use. When I am depressed I just stare at stuff, when I am not, I clean it. Life is too short for housework, it is a repetitive strain that injures my mind. Many writers I know find themselves washing their kitchen floors to avoid writing. I write to avoid washing the kitchen floor. I am seen as working - but in truth I would probably rather be reading.
What is it about the human brain that it would rather run through endless games of sudoku on its android phone, rather than read a good book? I find it distressing, I think I am getting brain wilt. But those little numbers, slotting them into position, or playing various forms of computer patience are terribly absorbing. In truth, in the past, I have enjoyed repetitive games of real patience with cards, when I was in a low mood. And activities such as making tapestry cushion covers are another thing I've done. All these are things that can be done while listening to Radio 4 (other stations are available). So one's hands, ears, eyes and brain are fully occupied - no nasty thoughts can leach in (unless there's a particularly harrowing episode of You and Yours) and you are safe from the accusation of idleness.
And yet, what I truly long to do many mornings, is lie in bed with a book - and read for an hour or so. It was in this manner that I passed many of the better years of my youth - including the dreadful months of 1977 when I lived in an unheated squat in Islington and was too inert (depressed?) to go to my lectures. That was a tremendous year for reading - which continued in 1978 when we moved to an equally basic house in Walthamstow (with the luxury of electricity, but no hot water). Sometimes my inertia would seize me during the long walk down Selborne Road to the Tube station, and I would return to bed and books for the rest of the day, and again miss a lecture or a tutorial.
However, lying in bed with a book is a manifestation of Pure Idleness - I am 50 something years old, I do not have a full time job, yet I am expected to get up and minister to assorted persons who are perfectly capable of administering their own breakfast, rather than stay in bed and finish a novel.. If it wasn't for those pesky kids I might have finished reading The Brothers Karamazov by now. Quite how someone raised a Catholic is so afflicted by the Protestant work ethic is a mystery to me. I blame my Irish grandmother's Welsh upbringing - in the kind of village where you weren't seen as decent if you weren't out scrubbing your front step at cock-crow.
People still marvel at the house - its beauty and its slightly grimy air... I marvel that anyone would think I could spend all the day cleaning it. My alternatives to reading also include some housework, and a lot of cooking and washing. These can be done while listening to Radio 4 - so are not completely wasted time! What housework do I do? Periodically I wipe down surfaces in the kitchen, some of the vitreous enamel in the bathrooms, about once a year I hoover - I do quite a lot of pruning and weeding in the garden, I dust the sitting room, I tidy the bedroom in a futile effort to maintain mastery over the ocean of textiles that swirls around the floor and sofa in a cycle of unending washing and drying. I am tempted by the thought of having a full on house cleaning team to come in while we are in France and do the house so that we can start anew.
When not sitting at the desk, I am frequently wiping things, and rescuing things from the fridge for re-use. When I am depressed I just stare at stuff, when I am not, I clean it. Life is too short for housework, it is a repetitive strain that injures my mind. Many writers I know find themselves washing their kitchen floors to avoid writing. I write to avoid washing the kitchen floor. I am seen as working - but in truth I would probably rather be reading.
