April 18, 2015
Book Interlude: A Visit to The Book Barge
Today was absolutely a magical day. I’ve been hoping to visit The Book Barge ever since I read Sarah Henshaw’s memoir, The Bookshop That Floated Away, in December. For the time being, she’s currently moored at the marina in the village of Barton Under Needwood in Staffordshire, open Saturdays from 10-4, and so we left early this morning with our hopes as high and bright as the sun was. We arrived to find the marina bustling and beautiful, the canal boats gorgeous to behold and putting me in mind of what they said in the Wind in the Willows about messing about in boats.
The Book Barge was wonderful. Can I convey that? That a single thing really could be worth a trip halfway around the world and down the motorway. The boat was crowded, and there is nothing quite so fine to my mind as a crowded bookshop. Cheap books were for sale in cabinets on the roof, enticing customers, and then we climbed down below where Sarah had tea and cake (Victoria sponge!) ready for us, china cups on hooks on the wall. She was lovely, and it was a pleasure to meet her, as well as her partner, Stu, whom I knew as a character in her book, which was doubly exciting. Harriet and Iris played with old typewriters and petted the shop bunny, who was driven underneath the sofa to escape baby paws. The feeling of the boat moving on the water was magical, and walking about on solid ground was a little boring after that.
And the books! It was an exquisitely curated bookshop, a pleasure to browse. (I will have better pictures once I get them off my camera—these are just the ones I took on my phone.) I picked up The Language of Flowers simply because it was beautiful, and opened to the section on the Anenome, which features the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Come Harriet! Sweet is the Hour,” and then I knew I had to by it, because it would features irises after all, and rare is the flower book that features both my daughters. I also picked up Simple Pleasures: Little Things that Make Life Worth Living, because I appreciate such things. And Pies: Recipes, History and Snippets, because who has been eating all the pies this week? We have. A copy of Sarah’s book for my mom, who is going on her own canal boat adventure later this year. Magpie Treasure by Kate Slater, a gorgeous picture book we all like very much. And I got Look at Me by Jennifer Egan, because I fancied it.
And good news! A copy of my own book, The M Word, is now for sale in a certain English bookshop.
And then we went to a nearby cafe, and partook in a bargeman’s lunch.
And if all that was not enough, our adventures were only just beginning. (Happily, Stuart’s intrepid sister, Jenny, was along for the journey.) When we left Barton Marina, we drove northeast into the Peak District, through the breathtaking A6 road in Derbyshire to Chatsworth House, which is a place that’s dear to me. I visited in 2003 at the height of my Mitford mania whilst suffering from a throat infection and was so sick I ended up lying in the grass among the sheep poo, and this didn’t dint my appreciation of the place one bit. I tried to go back again before we moved away from England, but the busses were on strike, and so it’s been 12 years since my last visit and I’ve been longing for it, though it was a bit sad since Debo has died, but alas, she led a good life, and we shelled out a small fortune for the privilege of exploring her gardens for a while and it was worth every penny. Plus there were small carts selling tea and ice cream. At one point, we turned a corner and Iris looked up and said a new word, which was “Beauty.” It was the most stunning landscape, and the children were tired and whiny, but that’s required when your parents have forced you to visit a stately home. They did have fun running around on the green green grass though, and I felt the sun on my face for the first time in months and it was glorious.
We drove home through the Peaks, which was terrifying and incredible, and I am well versed enough in English driving now that a windy cliff’s edge at 50 mph doesn’t faze me. The world was green and huge, and each turn brought a visit more stunning than the next, and we ate scones from the Chatsworth Farm Shop for dinner, which were delicious. The sun sunk lower and lower, a bright glowing ball, and didn’t quite disappear over the edge of the horizon until we were nearly home again, swoony and tired with feet still unsteady, a bit drunk on a wonderful, unforgettable day.
April 17, 2015
Vacation Book Number Five: How to Be Both by Ali Smith
There were weird weird connections between Susan Hill’s I’m the King of the Castle and Barbara Comyns’ The Vet’s Daughter—they were different in tone and time period, but both had a gothic sensibility, animal imagery, featured powerless women and had similar, devastating deaths at the end. Comyns was funnier though. Still, it’s always so odd how certain books to one another, uncovering layers of meaning that would not have otherwise been deciphered. And now my next book is Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, which I’m just about to start. It’s on the Baileys Prize shortlist, and I’ve heard so much about it. Though I won’t have much time to read tomorrow—we’re driving to the Midlands to visit the Book Barge, and then from there to Chatsworth House, and home via the Peak District (with a Bakewell Tart en-route, I hope). Which promises to be an epic day, and I am very excited.
Today we stayed closer to home, with a trip to the Dewlay Cheese Shop, where we got some famous Garstang Blue and other deliciousness. We visited a nearby farm soon after so the children could see sheep not just through a car window, and they had a tea shop, of course, so scones and jam were had, and that was excellent. After Iris’s nap, we took advantage of having the sea at the end of our road, and went to the beach, building sandcastles, digging holes, collecting shells and stones and washing them off in the tide pools. The sky is enormous here, horizons stretching forever. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
And what have the children been reading, you might wonder? We got It’s a New Royal Baby, The Big Katie Morag Story Book, Alfie’s Shop, and Hairy McLary, Shoo. Harriet and Iris have also enjoyed watching the Katie Morag TV series on the BBC, which is wonderful and the most remarkable adaptation of the storybook illustrations. Plus their Nana bought them the Paddington movie on DVD, so there has been plenty of entertainment all around.
April 16, 2015
Vacation Book Four: The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns
Today was glorious! We left the children behind and took a trip to Yorkshire, to the wonderful town of Ilkley, which we visited when we were here four years ago. The appeal then was that I was reading Burley Cross Postbox Theft and Ilkley was fairly close to the fictional Burley Cross, plus I’d been reading about Betty’s Tea Rooms in Started Early Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, and I wanted to visit one. Today we wanted to do it all again, and also pay a visit to the excellent Grove Bookshop, and what a joy to finally visit an independent bookshop. The Waterstones in Lancaster is beautiful, but they’ve failed to have the books I’m looking for in stock. (This tweet should also set you as to what’s wrong with Waterstones, and why you should support your local independent bookstore ALWAYS**). The Grove Bookshop, on the other hand, had everything I wanted in stock, and more—a lovely display for the Baileys Shortlisted books. I got Outline by Rachel Cusk, How to Be Both by Ali Smith, and The Secret Library by Haruki Murakami because the design was amazing—it has an actual library pocket on the cover!
We spent lots of time browsing at the bookshop, appreciating their excellent displays, fantastic selection, chatting with the staff, and admiring the bunting in the window. We were also delightfully full after afternoon tea at Betty’s, which was a terrific treat. I am definitely enjoying combining my scone and book-buying experience on this trip. And then we walked around Ilkley, which was so green and gorgeous, cherry blossoms in bloom. We bought a pheasant pasty from Britain’s Best Butcher, and had another cup of tea at The Toast House across the street, which I loved because they had a copy of one of the most delightful Canadian picture books ever in their kids’ reading nook, and also because they used bundt pans as decoration. We decided that next time we come, we’re definitely going to go up on Ilkley Moor, and if the children don’t whine (much), we’ll reward them with afternoon tea for afters.
The last time we drove to Ilkley, the car in front of us exploded on the motorway off-ramp, but nothing so eventful happened this time. We drove home down winding roads, and were so pleased to come home to happy daughters and a not entirely exhausted Nana who was triumphant in having put Iris down for her nap (all of whom were made all the more happy by the fact that we bought treats back from Betty’s). And now I am going to have a bath in the most luxurious tub in the Northwest and read some Barbara Comyns whose Our Spoons Came From Woolworths I loved so very much.
Tomorrow we have no plans to visit a bookshop, but we are going to a cheese shop, which should be just as good.
**Speaking of Independent Bookshops, I’m happy to be taking part in Authors for Indies Day on May 2 at Book City on the Danforth. Between 2-4, I’ll be guest bookselling, talking up my favourite titles. I hope you will come and visit! And if it sounds good but not local, I am sure you can find a similar event going on in your neighbourhood. It’s going to be great.
April 15, 2015
Vacation Book Three: I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
I love the cover to Susan Hill’s I’m the King of the Castle, designed by Zandra Rhodes as part of Penguin’s Decades series. I’m halfway through it now, although my book a day record is about to be stymied by us actually doing things other than spending the afternoons reading. (I know!!!) Today we went to Lancaster where my sister-in-law lives in an adorable terrace with a park across the street. “This house only has two rooms,” Harriet whispered when we went inside, and then Iris literally somersaulted down the steep staircase and now half her head is purple. It was terrifying for everybody involved. Lancaster is wonderful because they have an amazing Waterstones, an Oxfam bookshop, a castle, and a market with stalls and stalls of meat pies on sale. Unfortunately, all the books on my list don’t seem to be in stock anywhere—”They’ll be out in paperback in September,” I keep being told, which isn’t very helpful. I want Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey and Rachel Cusk’s new novel Outlines, or anything from the Bailey’s Prize shortlist except the novel from the perspective of a bee. But I did get The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns (who wrote Our Spoons Came from Woolworths) and I have high hopes for stock at The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley tomorrow and the London Review Bookshop next week. I shall not go bookless, rest assured.
April 14, 2015
Vacation Book Two: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
This morning we went to Kirkham, which is about 30 mins from here, to Silverdell Books, which is more than just a bookshop—it’s an ice cream parlour too! With teas and cakes, and even chocolate. Perhaps Florence Green in Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel should have pursued the confectionery end of things and she might have been more successful. I learned about Silverdell Books from The Bookshop Book, and we were pleased that it lived up to our expectations. I got a copy of Susan Hill’s novel I’m the King of the Castle, as well as a book for Harriet. Kirkham was a pretty town and the sun even came out for a little while. Yesterday we ate ice cream on the beach whilst shivering in the sea air, and made a trip to the local library for books for Harriet and Iris to read while we’re here, and they had some good ones, plus the bookshelves were a train, so that was super exciting. And now Iris is having her nap, so I’m going to seize the chance and go away to read…
April 6, 2015
Departures and Arrivals
We leave for our trip this week, and I keep waiting for that lull between our departure and the time in which nobody in our family is sick, but the window for such a thing is disappearing, and I am so very tired. And sick, again. There was about five minutes on Friday when I wasn’t, and then cold symptoms returned on Saturday morning shortly after my child threw up in a shoe store, which was a brand new milestone for all of us. But nevertheless, Easter was had, a holiday we celebrate for its pagan roots and not the Jesus bits. We’re all about the eggs, and the new life that comes with spring—I met a baby today who turns two weeks old tomorrow, and she was a miracle unfolding. We had a lovely visit with my parents, and saw friends on other days, and Harriet and Iris got the new Annie movie on DVD, and Harriet has watched it five times already. There are crocuses across the street. We are assembling our playlist, a CD of driving tunes for the journey from Berkshire to Lancashire (which I’m the smallest bit nervous about, Iris having just now decided that she hates cars. “Car, no. Car, no.”)
Tonight we’re watching the new Mad Men, which premiered last night, but we watch it on download from iTunes so are behind the people who watch it on TV. I don’t know what I’m going to do in a world without Mad Men, a show that has been such a huge part of my life for years now and which has seriously informed my reading life too. It’s a good time to re-share The Canadian Mad Men Reading List, which I made last year, and am seriously proud of. Oh, Stacey MacAindra. Maybe I’ll finally get around to finishing The Collected Stories of John Cheever. I still haven’t read “The Swimmer.” I’ve been saving it, I think, of the post-Mad Men world. In which I am probably going to go right back to Season One.
Today I found a poem about motherhood, bpNichol Lane, Coach House Books and Huron Playschool, written by Chantel Lavoie for the Brick Books Celebrating Canadian Poetry Project. I find myself struck by the poem and the various ways it connects with my life, and how literature and motherhood and the fabric of the city are all so enmeshed. Particularly in this neighbourhood.
And finally, I am in a peculiar situation book-wise. I don’t know what books to take with me on vacation. Now, on a certain level, bringing any books on vacation is simply stupid because all I ever do when we go to England is buy books. And when I look at my to-be-read shelf now, no contenders jump out on me—nothing good for an airplane, nothing I am truly destined to love, no book with which I’d be thrilled to be holed up with in an airport terminal. You can’t take chances in a situation like this! So I have decided…to bring no books with me. This is truly the wildest and craziest thing I’ve ever done. This year, at least… To pick up a book at the airport, and trust I’ll find the right one there, and then live book to book. No safety net. This is terrifying. And yet potentially exhilarating, rich with adventure. The book nerd’s equivalent of jumping out of the sky.
April 10, 2014
On Sue Townsend and Adrian Mole
I can’t think of many books I loved when I was 8 that I still love now but only 500 times more. The first time I read an Adrian Mole book, I was too young for it, and couldn’t figure out what he was talking about when he was measuring his “thing” and I had a few curious ideas what “spots” were. See, it wasn’t just that I was young, but that the books were foreign, and I didn’t know who Noddy was so really didn’t understand about his wallpaper. Like many young protagonists I read when I was even younger than they were (hello, Holden Caulfield!) I took Adrian at face value and so it took me awhile to realize that Lo The Flat Hills of My Homeland probably wasn’t a very good book. But it didn’t matter, because by the time I figured it out, I loved Adrian Mole, following all his adventures right up until The Weapons of Mass Destruction, which came out in 2004 and which everybody at my workplace in Japan passed around until the book was in tatters.
Adrian Mole was integral in my love affair with England, which was long-lasting and huge with life-changing consequences. I am sure that it is from Adrian Mole that I first heard of bunting (strung up during the Royal Wedding in 1981) though I didn’t know what that was either. I can trace my obsession with commemorative tea-towels back to the Charles and Diana one that Adrian Mole’s dad hung on the front door in lieu of proper festivities. I moved to the Midlands in 2002 because I knew of it from Adrian Mole and I thought it was kind of funny (and plus I had no money so couldn’t afford to live in London). And there I met my husband, whom I dragged to Skegness because Adrian Mole had gone to Skegness and I thought that was funny too (and it was! Stuart hadn’t believed me. English people don’t have as much fun doing ironic Adrian Mole lower-class things as you or I do, but they are totally missing out). I still tease Stuart on a regular basis about his Adrian Mole-ish 1980s Margaret Thatcher childhood. He’s since told me who Noddy is.
Oh, Pandora Braithwaite (who became an MP!). It is from Adrian Mole that I first heard the name Germaine Greer. I love that his mother became a radical feminist, and also that she regretted not naming Adrian “Brett”. Bert Baxter and his Woodbines and beetroot sandwiches and his Alsatian, Sabre. In later years, Adrian would impregnate a woman called Sharon Bott. How bully Barry Kent became a poetry sensation. And Nigel, who started a gay club at school, and Adrian was worried because now everybody would think Nigel was gay. Mr. Lucas next door, and Mrs. O’Leary (who gave a glimpse of her knickers while stringing bunting, if I remember correctly), and Mr and Mrs. Singh and all the little Singhs, and Big and Bouncy and Malcolm Muggeridge. Adrian Mole was so totally subversive, probably the naughtiest books in my school library. I am so glad that nobody ever noticed.
I love Sue Townsend. I read her other novels too, Rebuilding Coventry and Ghost Children, plus The Queen and I, which was terribly funny. I am quite sure I will reread Adrian Mole for the rest of my life, and they will never cease to make me laugh out loud. And so I was sad today to learn that she’d died at just 68. It’s a real loss that feels personal to me.
November 26, 2013
Disaster Series: Our Trip to England
We were already quite sure that travelling to England with two children was going to come with its challenges, and when Harriet threw up the night before we left, it was almost funny. Almost. Like how bad can things really get? It was sort of an amusing way to top off the whole experience, but then vomit turned out not to be the top, no, but instead just the beginning of the experience. She woke up in the morning even sicker, her eyes rolling back into her head. A couple more hours of sleep transformed her back into someone human-seeming, but we knew that we still had trouble on our hands.
The flight itself turned out not to be so bad, and Harriet threw up again just once. Iris was fine, and doesn’t sleep for long periods anyway, so her short naps in the carrier were to be expected. Neither Stuart nor I slept at all that night, but we arrived in Amsterdam pretty proud of ourselves for having survived the longest part of our haul. We had breakfast in the airport, bought Holland souvenirs, and arrived to board our connecting flight in plenty of time… when we realized that we were missing our passports.
It was all very curious. I’d kept all our travel documents together, and we still had the children’s passports. We couldn’t understand where ours had gone. Operating on sheer panic (and completely no sleep, remember?) I raced through the airport to see if we’d left our passports in one of the shops we’d visited. At the gate, Stuart and the very kind airline staff unpacked our carry-on baggage three times. They were as desperate as we were that we get on the flight, but when the passports failed to turn up anywhere–no dice.
We missed the flight and were sent to file police reports for our missing passports. With the police reports, we’d be able to leave the airport in order to go to our respective consulates and obtain emergency passports. To make things even more complicated, our respective consulates are in different cities. This was the point at which we thought perhaps we’d have to live in the airport forever, which seemed so much easier than running after consular officials. We were totally exhausted, and then had to call our family in England to let them know we wouldn’t be arriving that afternoon.
We had to wait for the real police to arrive after the immigration police called them about our predicament. They were kind but a bit incredulous, which we understood because the story of our missing passports made absolutely no sense. “I”m going to have to ask you to unpack your things one more time,” the officer told me, which I thought was completely ridiculous. There is only one place where our passports could have been due to my impeccable organizations skills, plus we’d unpacked our stuff three times already.
Or rather, the airline staff and Stuart had unpacked our stuff three times already. I hadn’t unpacked them once, and when I did, the first place I looked was inside the pocket of my new computer bag, and there are passports were. “Thank fucking God!” exclaimed my husband. “I knew they were there,” said Harriet the Horrible. “Every time,” the police officer said to me, “they’re somewhere in the luggage.” Me, I was relieved, but now a bit disappointed that the ending to this story had been so incredibly stupid, that I’d never be able to write an essay about the time I wandered around Amsterdam without a passport like Theo Decker in The Goldfinch, that our passports hadn’t been pick pocketed by a Russian thief called Boris, but instead, I’d just packed them somewhere dumb.
With the problem solved and no one having thrown up in ages, we raced to the flight counter to get on the next flight to Manchester. On the basis of our looking exhausted, and schlepping two small children, airline staff took pity on us and booked the next flight, charging us for administrative costs only. We had breakfast again, and within a few hours, we were in the air again, flying to where we were supposed be. And we even got there!
Only problem was that our luggage didn’t, which would have fine, except that our luggage included the carseats without which we couldn’t leave the airport. And so we had no choice but to wait for our stuff to arrive on the 5pm flight from Amsterdam, sitting in the Arrivals area at Manchester Airport, whose sliding doors open and open and it’s so cold in there. And because this is the north of England in November, it wasn’t long before the sun went down. We hadn’t slept in oh so very long, and when the luggage arrived, we still had an hour’s journey by car ahead of us. I drove while the children cried, and my eyes ached.
We arrived though, and fortunately we were in a land where I wouldn’t have to cook or do laundry for the duration of our stay. The next morning I even got to sleep all morning without a single child in my bed while wee Iris was held by her grandmother. I ate Dairy Milks for breakfast, drank strong strong proper Northern tea, had a full English breakfast and afternoon tea in a single day, bought too many books, was terrified while driving down oh-so-narrow windy roads at 50 miles per hour but never once crashed into anything, breathed in the sea air, walked on cobblestones, had fun with family, celebrated Stuart’s birthday, read lots of books, and decided that chocolate-covered digestives are the food I love most in the world.
It was exhausting though. Harriet continued to be ill, and then passed her cold onto Iris who is far too little for such a plague and now she’s still sick with the most agonizing cough. Iris also refused to sleep in her own bed at all, and so she was basically on me for most of the week, and one gets tired of such things quickly. Halfway through our stay (and mostly because of jet-lag, I think) Harriet started coming into our room in the middle of the night and crying that nobody loved her, which had the effect of making nobody love her. I was crabby, and nobody loved me either.
It was a very good week though, and so wonderful for our English family to meet wee Iris for the very first time, and for Harriet to have her first English visit that she will remember. Fun to be by the seaside and exciting to imagine our next trip back when Iris is a bit bigger, and how much further we’ll all be along by then. (Gulp. This is wonderful and terrible. Six months ago today, we were celebrating Harriet’s fourth birthday and Iris was just over a week away from being born. How very far we’ve come since then. How much road ahead there is to travel, but how quickly it all speeds by…)
I do love England. Land of green, rolling hills, unceasing cups of tea and tiny cars. And of bookshops, oh yes. I’d purchased Love Nina by Nina Stibbe, and it delighted me during my first few days of vacation. (I’d been hooked by a description of the book as “Mary Poppins meets Adrian Mole…”). After hitting the bookshop in Waterstones, I’d bought Mutton by India Knight, whose novels are always such a pleasure. I read that book for the rest of the trip, and will get through the rest of my English stack in the next few weeks. I did make the mistake of reading the Guardian’s Books of the Year piece after visiting the bookshop, and now I mustn’t rest until I have a copy of Hermione Lee’s Penelope Fitzgerald biography for myself.
We were owed something for our flight home, I think, and fate delivered. Harriet watched movies and Iris went in and out of sleep, enough in for me to read an entire novel. A short novel, Alice Thomas Ellis’s The Other Side of the Fire, but a whole novel still. Amazing! And they gave us ice cream en-route. It was great. Our luggage arrived back in Toronto with us, and we took at a cab home and nobody had a meltdown. It was a miracle, probably because our journey the week before had been such a disaster. It all comes out even in the end, I guess. And all and all, it was a very good time away.
April 30, 2011
Project Tea Party
The best thing about being married to me is that you get to spend whole mornings up to your elbows in marzipan. Because I was determined that we would make a battenberg cake for our royal wedding tea party. And today we discovered that just how Queen Victoria got so fat– it’s because you have to trim top and sides off the cake before you ice it, and it takes inordinate willpower to not eat the scraps–they were delicious! The marzipan too, even though it was too sticky. I got Stuart to construct the cake once I’d baked it, because I’m terrible at things that require attention and patience. He did a bang-up job, and the cake was delicious (then devoured). We also served these strawberry jam tarts, which were incredible (and easy). And scones shaped like teapots, which is the best thing I have ever imagined. This photo was taken before we took the sausage rolls out of the oven, and they were delicious too, although store-bought. Tea was served in the big, beautiful teapot I received as a wedding gift and that spends most of its time getting dusty on the shelf because I fear breaking it. So it was nice to use it. I also liked an excuse to pull out my teapot table cloth from Honest Ed’s, and I think the Queen probably has one similar.
And then Nathalie Foy took the (battenberg) cake for hostess gifts, bringing me actual perfume scented like a Barbara Pym paperback: “sweet, and a bit musty, a lot like Pym’s world come to think of it.” I read in the papers that the Duchess of Cambridge was wearing an identical scent yesterday.
April 28, 2011
Royal Wedding Tea Caddy
My mom is nice because even though I refuse to lend her my books (and actually, I refuse to lend my books to anybody), she’d give me anything of hers that I wanted. On this weekend, the anything of hers I wanted was the Royal Wedding tea caddy that her friend had brought her back from England. I am not sure why I didn’t bring Royal Wedding tat back from England myself– I don’t think we ventured into shops that much except for bookshops, and if I’m not mistaken, the tat wasn’t out in full force two months ago anyway. But it did get to be a problem as the big day got closer and closer, and I found myself without a Royal Wedding commemorative anything. And all the Royal Wedding tea towels are are sold out. India Knight has reported bunting shortages all over London. This is terrible! I hardly need this, in addition to the stress of needing to learn to bake battenberg cake by Saturday afternoon, which is when my Royal Wedding Tea party begins (a bit after the fact, I know, but the wedding was never the point anyway. The cake was). So thank goodness for my mom, and for my Royal Wedding tea caddy. Which of course I will cherish now for all the rest of my days.
