History – Nastasya Parker

Quaint Customs

This Week’s Bit of String: A world of queens

Years ago my kiddo emerged from a swimming pool changing room and treated me to this fabulous idea:

“The reason I took so long was because I invented a new musical. It will use the music of Queen and be all about if history had queens instead of kings.”

How would the British empire be different as a matriarchy? If there had been a Henrietta VIII, for example, would she have gone through 6 husbands? Some of the queens they did have were pretty brutal. Would they have felt less pressure to be so if they weren’t sandwiched between kings?

I suspect the ruthlessness lies not in gender but in unquestioned power, in the philosophy that there’s a divine right to rule for a particular bloodline. How then could a monarch, male or female, not believe they’re better than everyone else? Why should they genuinely take interest in what goes on for any of their subjects?

*I mean, it’s fun to see something a bit different…*

I can’t help thinking about these things with the coronation of the new king. It’s a rather inescapable affair. As an immigrant living in Britain, I was initially bemused by the knitted crowns on top of Royal Mail letterboxes and the bunting strung across main streets. One of my favourite cottages to walk past put up signs saying, “Party like royalty.” Cute.

Then there were £10 souvenir brochures for sale, and you can’t get a chocolate bar without a shiny crown stamped on it, and the public are offered the “opportunity” to participate in the coronation by swearing allegiance to the king… It became unsettling. Especially considering the monarchy’s cruel legacy of colonialism and the slave trade, and the current cost of living crisis.

Class Differences

When the queen died, it was a day or two after the Conservatives made Liz Truss prime minister, and during the first week of school. When you’re running around making sure your students actually have lunch to eat, swapping in new unelected leaders for old ones does not impress you.

I don’t begrudge people whatever small pleasures they find in life. Clearly some people enjoy celebrating the monarchy. I wish they could get that feeling from other things. It’s like my Year 12 student not wanting to join a cooking class in making burgers, because she’s convinced nothing can be better than MacDonalds.

Shouldn’t bluebell-carpeted woods, chips from the local takeaway, maybe a trip to a local production of ChittyChittyBangBang, make Britons feel proud of their country rather than a random guy donning ridiculously expensive headgear?

Many are concerned about the massive cost of this event. I’m happy for the children of our parish if they enjoy the hula hoops our council decided to gift to every schoolchild to mark the occasion. I’m glad if people like getting together for town-funded street parties. But the district Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, for example, has a waiting list of more than 200 young people with acute needs. Hula hoops are fun, but so’s cake and there’s a reason no one liked it when French royalty said, “Let them eat cake.”

Story Selection

I don’t read much about the royal family. I got fed up with it as an adolescent in the mid 1990s when Princess Di or Fergie or the American equivalent, JFK Jr, were constantly on People magazine covers. I do think it’s fascinating how being born to that level of privilege and scrutiny would affect a person and their relationships. There’s a wealth of opportunity for stories there and many have utilised it. For me though, other stories are so much more crucial.

I hope everyone remembers that the queen wasn’t the only person who sacrificed and toiled in WWII; pretty much everyone I cared for in my nursing home job a decade ago did. King Charles isn’t the only person who helps with good causes. So many unsung heroes work hard, or run food banks or volunteer at youth centres or take in refugees.

I’ll spend much of today on housework and editing my novel’s penultimate chapter, featuring the voice of a refugee girl struggling in a new land. It is different from the chapters told by Eve herself, and I must make this extra, incredibly important voice work. I also plan to visit the swimming pool. It probably won’t be too crowded today while children are forced to sit at home near the telly. I hope they come away with wild ideas about how things could be different.

Will you be celebrating anything today?

Et Tu?

This Week’s Bit of String: Big wheels and street songs

We camped near Stratford-Upon-Avon over Easter weekend, our first visit there in nine years. A pretty Cotswolds town fiercely proud of being Shakespeare’s birthplace, it’s added a Big Wheel to rival the church spire and the tower of the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre.

People snap selfies with the statues of famous Shakespearean characters surrounding his statue in the park. Lady Macbeth’s knuckles and the pate of Yorick’s skull are worn smooth by 150 years’ worth of tourists rubbing them for luck. Narrowboats mass on the Avon in front of them, cherry blossoms sway, and a street musician sings “To Make You Feel My Love.”

What would the Bard think of it all? I suspect he would have been okay with most developments, as long as they bring money in. And it wasn’t as if he was humourless. The range of topics he covered in his plays, he doesn’t seem completely traditionalist either.

A Theatre Trip

*Does contain spoilers for a centuries-old play about millennia-old famous historical events

My husband and I went to an RSC production of Julius Caesar while in town. It’s fascinating to me that Shakespeare chose to write this play, and frame the Conspirators with nuance and sympathy, even admiration, when he lived in a strictly royalist time. What could the preservation of democracy mean to him? This play contrasts with the anti-regicide message of Macbeth later on, for example.

We were completely engrossed by the show, although checking online later, it’s had a few sniffy reviews mixed in with decent ones. The director went for fairly plain costumes and set. There was a solemn, black-robed chorus between some scenes, just as the Greeks and Shakespeare would have intended. Between others, there were choreographed group scenes a bit like marches or parties or riots.

*Daft, I know, but I had to get an “Exuent, pursued by…” photo with this Bear at the RSC Theatre*.

This aspect was quite different and a little confusing. I’d looked at the cast list already, though, so I could pick out Brutus and see that her motions represented her inner conflict. I do wonder if some of the same people who criticise the choreographed segments as being too gimmicky, too distracting or confusing—might those not be the same people who advocate for opaque literature, for leaving things up to interpretation? So, I have interpreted it, and find it interesting, and thoroughly believe I would pick up more detail if I had the time and means to see it again.

Both Brutus and Cassius were played by women, which I felt made their friendship more moving, particularly in their parting scene. They were sisters-in-arms. Maybe I’m being egocentric and enjoying a chance to see my gender reflected more in traditional theatre. But perhaps there’s also an objective poignancy in seeing two women take on the accepted power structure, rather than two men do it.

At least one reviewer, as well as an elderly theatregoer my husband overheard, complained about how these two leads kept male character names while using female pronouns, and also kept some lines referring to the characters as men. I was not flummoxed by this. When Mark Antony repeats in his famous speech, “But Brutus is an honourable man,” it’s obvious who he’s referring to.

I wonder again if people who quibble over the lack of matching names/ pronouns/ gender language will wax lyrical about symbolism and analogy in Shakespeare. I suspect they know he’s not always literal. Maybe they just have certain buttons that get pushed when a young Black woman plays Brutus.

Death Scenes

The actress playing Brutus is Thalissa Teixeira, and she was riveting, with a cool elegance befitting an honourable soldier, and moments of passion which showed why she would have such loyal friends. She has ties to Brazil, and you can read how that influenced her portrayal of political upheaval and rebellion.

Brutus’s servant Lucius was played by Jamal Ajala, a deaf actor of colour. So some scenes at Brutus’s house were signed as well as spoken, and the director Atri Banerjee chose to have Lucius reappear in the final scenes as the friend who assists Brutus’s suicide. Brutus’s request to him and his acquiescence were completely silent, only signed. This made it much more striking.

I had to read a lot of Shakespeare in my American high school and university years, much more than the strictly exam-based curriculum in Britain demands. Having been inundated mainly with his tragedies… they get a bit samey. There’s a lot of hand-wringing leading-up-to-death scenes, and this version put the hands to good use. For a taste of what I mean, here’s a video of Jamal Ajala performing Hamlet’s soliloquy in British Sign Language.

Shakespeare bestows an element of control on his characters’ deaths. People get to have little speeches and even Caesar, after he’s been stabbed by several people, doesn’t die until he’s sort of consented to do so: “Let fall Caesar!” This must have been how Shakespeare wrestled with the brutality of life in Tudor/ Jacobean times, when there probably weren’t many poetic farewells. Not during executions and plagues. I doubt he would have begrudged today’s directors and actors using his work to make a mark on society, to make it more inclusive and diverse.

What do you think about Shakespeare, and about reinterpretations of it? Is adding a Big Wheel to the literary landscape a betrayal tantamount to what Brutus did to Caesar?

The Value of Ordinary

This Week’s Bit of String: A blue dress in an empty village

We take somewhat unconventional holidays. They’re often centred around seeing family, since no one lives near us, or else we’ll make it to another city or even country but only find affordable accommodation in the outskirts. Most recently, we combined both these by visiting Malmo, Sweden, where our son had travelled from the US for a gaming event.

We stayed in a hotel a few miles south of the lovely old town and castle. When we hiked there, or to the sea, we passed apartment blocks. Some older, used by immigrant communities, with Ukrainian flags or halal pizzerias. Some with separate car parking space and bike lockup for each flat. We passed allotments for veggie gardens, quadrants of circles carved out of parkland. There was a whole, mid-city village of “summer houses,” too: painted huts with little shared gardens, hammocks, berry bushes, barbecue grills, all vacant for now. Some had small glassed-in porches; I saw a pretty, short-sleeved blue dress hanging in one. Waiting for a party?

*Horse-drawn cleaning cart for the high-rise outbuildings. Hyllie, Malmo, Sweden*

It might be nice to stay in luxurious resorts or in city centres where you can just step out and go to the theatre or something. But I maintain that no vacation is complete without a day when you’ve walked at least ten miles, and seeing a dress in an empty summer house window or passing a preschool blasting out Moana while rosy-cheeked, blond kids in full snowsuits sniffle and shove at each other are every bit as fascinating to me as a museum or a palace.

Checking Out the History

Not to say that I don’t enjoy cathedrals and castles and all that. They’re intriguing glimpses into history, and more and more they try to reflect the wider experiences of citizens. We visited Malmo Castle, and learned about the strife between Denmark and Sweden in the 17th century, reading about the people caught up in it, military and civilian, from both sides. There was also a very creepy recreation of a plague town from the early 1700s, complete with sound effects of children whimpering, because some people believed if you buried a child alive, the whole village would be saved from disease.

And there were horrific tales of torture and execution from the 1800s when the place served as a prison. There was an outline on the floor where a boy would have been beheaded, and child executions trigger me worst of all. Such a horrific lack of empathy.

On a slightly more hopeful note, the building later served as a shelter for refugees after World War II, and we saw one of the Swedish “white buses” which rescued thousands of people from concentration camps before the war ended, made possible by an agreement with Himmler—behind Hitler’s back.

I think travel, even when it’s not glamorous, serves to remind us of stories happening all around, at every echelon of society. It pricks my curiosity for how others live their lives, whether in a castle or in a high-rise apartment.

The Everyday Moments

The ordinary is worth noticing, not just in the places we visit, but in moments we spend with each other. While abroad, we ate most of our dinners at the shopping centre across from our hotel, treating our kiddo as well. In turn, we were given guest passes to the event so we could watch the game our Bear was streaming. It was a fun setup—arcade games, swinging chairs, soft serve ice cream. We cheered and readily made fools of ourselves as fans.

*City view through a window of the Castle’s cannon tower*

Later on, other gamers recognised my husband and I, saying how great that we’d come. It made me wonder, don’t their parents at least tune in virtually for their events? But a lot of people dismiss videogaming. I’ve never had time (or coordination, if I’m being honest) to do it myself, but I always tried my best to listen to the play-by-play accounts from my kid, so I could share in the successes and frustrations of one of my very favourite people. And look where it got Bear, having a blast in a city overseas, a break from the day job. It saddens me thinking how lonely some gamers must be at their families’ indifference, and how much their parents miss out. If people can’t summon the will to listen to their own kids’ interests, what hope for human empathy is there?

Now that I am separated from my child, living on opposite sides of the Atlantic, I miss quick conversations after work, the opportunity to provide a cup of tea or sandwich or cookie and be repaid with a smile and cuddle. I miss Bear popping down while I’m cooking or washing up. They would stand with one foot propped up behind the other knee like a stork, telling me about this or that game, how they might arrange the music, which gamer friend runs it, what time they hope to achieve speed running.

C.S. Lewis, in his memoir A Grief Observed, mentioned how he missed the “heartbreaking commonplace,” and that line has always stuck with me. The ordinary is so important. It’s the stuff we learn from, long for, and it’s vital for empathy, because when we talk about walking a mile in someone’s shoes, we don’t just mean their Sunday best.

Have you gained insight into people’s everyday lives from travel? Has it been useful for your writing or art?

Learning Something New

This Week’s Bit of String: What poems, jellyfish, and King Tut have in common

I am starting 2023 building a new habit. I feel like that sounds more promising than a resolution, what do you think? Anyway, this habit is to learn something new every day.

I think we all learn stuff most days. Part of the reason I relish daily scribbles is because it teases out new information I glean without necessarily noticing. It’s also why I stop after each book I’ve read and write down my favourite quotes, instead of charging on to the next one. Just a little bit of reflection time. Because my mind’s always leaping to the next thing I absolutely MUST get done; the next book to tick off the To-Be-Read list; the next job to cross off from my planner. I’m very susceptible to the look-at-all-the-things-I’ve-done narrative on social media and I have to force myself to stop and reflect. I had to make it a part of my routine, a habit.

My dad used to ask us at the dinner table, “What did you learn at school today?”

We hated it. On principle, we often insisted we’d not learned a thing. And that may have been true some days. We expected that anything learned would be unmistakably gifted to us, not always understanding that we might need to flip through the resources and find what needed to be learned.

So with this learning habit I’m working to develop, the rule is that the Something I learn for the day can’t be part of my normal reading. It has to be something extra, something I take time to look up and find out about. It IS allowed to be a poem or short story outside of my pre-planned reading list, for example delving into an online literary magazine, as long as it’s not just because I’m prepping my own submission for it.

The idea is to take in information or art for its own sake, free of agenda. To shake myself from the constant bridle of Getting Things Done, and just stretch my brain.

It’s also to repurpose scrolling time. As I mentioned earlier this year, I want to waste less time on social media. I haven’t been terrible about scrolling and spending time online, but I could do better. Instead of scanning Facebook and Twitter, brain on autopilot, just waiting for something salient to jump out at me, I will go and seek salience myself.

So far, my new habit has entailed:

Finding out about early British underground buildings like fogous and souterrains, because for her novel my student has created a Secret Hunting Society which lives in a village hidden underground.

Cooking dinners ahead for the week while listening to these fantastic Intelligence Squared videos featuring William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy

And this Intelligence Squared Dickens vs. Tolstoy debate, Simon Schama arguing on the latter’s behalf and sharing this Tolstoy quote: “The aim of the artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its manifestations.” (Makes it sound a bit simpler and more feasible, do you reckon?)

Research on jellyfish because I made a little ShrinkyDink jellyfish while crafting with my sisters over Christmas and I added it to my keychain

Reading some lovely poems from Plume Magazine— I particularly loved “The Classics” by Christina Lee and “Cathedral” by Kwame Dawes

Finding out about aphantasia, since another student believes she has it. People with aphantasia don’t see imagery in their minds, which makes it harder for her to connect with material she reads.

Researching Tutankhamun because the latest Royal Mail stamps for sending letters abroad have his possessions on them, and I was wondering… Do those really belong to this country?

Looking more deeply into a January 6, 1853 train accident that claimed the life of President Franklin Pierce’s only child just two months before Pierce’s inauguration, because it was alluded to in A Worse Place Than Hell, the book I’m reading. Pierce was the only president to ever hail from my home state, and it surprised me I’d never heard of this tragedy, when it must have heavily influenced his actions during a pivotal period.

Also, trying to find out about women runners in the 19th century because this nonfiction work mentions Louisa May Alcott going running in the early mornings before her long shifts at a Civil War hospital. I’m very curious about what women would have worn for morning runs in the 1860s, and I’ve found some interesting facts about the history of women runners but nothing that illuminates this passage, so if you know anything about it, do let me know.

The different types of attention that may be compromised by social media use, as outlined by Johann Hari on Jon Favreau’s Offline podcast. It rather motivated me to keep going with this little habit of mine!

Do have any suggestions of things I should learn about? What sorts of things have you sought to learn?

Buried

This Week’s Bit of String: A dentist’s rocking horse

My Grandma once told me a story about going to the dentist as a kid. She needed a cavity drilled, and the dentist promised if she was good, she’d get to ride on the rocking horse in his waiting room.

He then commenced to drill her tooth without numbing it. She found it very unpleasant, and was told afterward that she was not good, so no rocking horse ride for her.

I wish I remembered the context of why she told me about that. It’s funny how we can be bitter about rules, but still play by them, because I think she worked very hard to stifle all kinds of fuss.

There are times when uttering a complaint or even an honest dissent won’t be much use. Everyone’s got problems, so why would we expect other people to listen to ours? But how much we express ourselves is not a mark of how “good” we are.

Martyrs

I was reminded of my grandmother’s story while I wandered around Exeter Cathedral this week. I like reading the different memorial plaques and trying to imagine who these people really were. What were their daily lives like?

I seek words on women’s graves particularly. They don’t often get much. Birth and death dates, husband’s and father’s names. Most common adjectives are “beloved” and “amiable.” Those with their own plaques get an addendum about which male relative cared enough to commission it. Lends it credibility I suppose. And if any suffering is admitted, we’re assured she bore it with Christian fortitude and never complained.

Whew, because that’s what I REALLY wanted to know about the deceased: did they keep their mouth shut while wasting away?

If the women who suffered patiently were from families wealthy enough to afford marble plaques in cathedrals, they may have been able to afford laudanum or something. It might not have been just Christian fortitude. Plus, they were probably so indoctrinated with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, it might not have occurred to them they were allowed to complain.

A narrative of good versus bad lends purpose to chaos. It must have strengthened survivors to perceive fatal illness and injury as a test which their loved ones passed.

One striking 1800 memorial to a 19-year-old wife portrayed her as a martyr for getting immolated in her own clothes. She was afraid the fire would spread to her baby, so she ran from the room. It leaves the story there, focusing entirely on her “self-sacrifice,” and shocked me with its bleakness. There was nothing else to be done once her clothes caught fire, but die? The only choice she had was how many she took with her? Damn.

Change

There’s almost a palpable air of acceptance around all these things. If men had to wear wide skirts and petticoats and work close to the fire, would things have changed a bit quicker? Maybe it was easier for a few to dish out some cash for nice plaques than for them all to alter the hierarchies of domesticity.

*Prayer pose: Medieval carving in the choir stalls at Exeter Cathedral*

All this reminds me not just how fleeting life can be—one woman came back from several years accompanying her husband on duty in India, to die of illness [silently-withstood, of course] three days after her long-awaited return home—but also to check that full stories are being told, and voices being heard. This is especially relevant as elections loom in the U.S. and as we long for them in the U.K. after getting our second unelected leader (third if you count the new monarch!) in less than two months, as Iranian women and their allies risk their lives just to dress how they want to and Ukrainians face a winter under attack.

There’s no rule that says we have to accept corporate greed, rampant gun culture, environmental degradation, lack of medical care, and falling education standards. Tax breaks offered by conservatives are just a rocking horse ride in the waiting room and they’ll offer no anesthetic for government regulations of bodily autonomy, for privatised essentials, shameless racism and lack of gun control. It doesn’t take much sacrifice from each of us to ensure other people are looked after.

Paying more in energy bills can help keep sanctions on Putin, and paying a bit more in taxes might help provide relief for those who struggle with price hikes. These are better than sacrificing Ukrainian independence or consigning people to poverty or forced pregnancy. The world’s clothes have caught fire but we can still contain the damage.

Yes, some of the options suck, sometimes we’re stuck with the lesser of two evils, but you know what? You don’t have to suffer them in silence. Make some noise and maybe next time the options will be better.

Engaging in Speculation

This Week’s Bit of String: Rainy day photos

It’s coming down hard outside. The school has a plastic, greenhousy roof and when it rains hard, it sounds through the whole building as if we’re barrelling down Niagara. On the bottom floor, in the Sixth Form Atrium, my student’s ears perk up. She wants to get some good, rainy pictures for Photography class, to convey the wrath of nature. So we leave behind the practice English paper I was scribing for her, and head for the doors.

“If I drown, give my regards to my sister.” She’s off into the downpour.

The wending row of young acers behind the school stand like candles in the dreary grey, their red leaves tapered to disappearing at the treetops. Paving stone puddles reflect the brightness, blurred by the pounding fury of more water.

As it calms down, I join my student taking pictures near the Music Block. The ground squelches beneath us and a budding saxophonist attempts “Mack the Knife” from the other side of the brick walls.

Later she asks me, “If photography didn’t exist, what would the world be like?”

She means it rhetorically, a comment of pride in her work. But, as is often the case, I find myself reflecting on this later. There are times when photos, or the flagrant absence of them, have swayed the species enough to alter history. A Vietnamese girl running from a napalmed village; police bodycam footage.

Beyond that, though, what would our society be like if we were not constantly confronted with extra images? If we didn’t have framed photos of the past, and we didn’t worry about how we looked when captured for posterity, I wonder if we’d be better at focusing on the present.

Considering the What-Ifs

This week I helped host the Women Writer’s Network Twitter chat on speculative fiction. We had some great conversations, which can be followed here. Margaret Atwood defines speculative fiction as “literature that deals with possibilities in a society which have not yet been enacted but are latent.” It can be science fiction, political thrillers, fantasy, multiverse… all sorts of things.

I like to think of it as entering parallel universes, branching off from a point, recent or historical, in the known timeline. I’m not fantastically imaginative, so most of my stories are written like this anyway, by rubbing at the edges of reality. I might consider people I’ve heard of and shade them into fiction, or in the novel I’m currently working on, I’m taking a well-known story and telling it from an alternative point of view.

Sometimes, what-ifs plague our personal lives and can make us anxious. It’s a relief to turn the tables on them and create our own hypotheticals from the past or present rather than cower under worries about the future.

Kids’ Questions

Our students, when they leave their this-is-boring, I-hate-school ruts, like to distract themselves by speculating about alternate realities. They’ll ponder how WWII would have gone down if Hitler were Jewish, or lament the lack of natural disasters like volcanoes and earthquakes in the UK (until I reminded them that those might be accompanied by loss of power and wi-fi).

*Some almshouses built for the “deserving poor” would have been funded by the slave trade.*

The other day when we learned the prime minister had resigned, my Sixth Form student said: “If the next prime minister is crap again, I’m going to march to Winston Churchill’s grave and find a way to bring him back to life so he can sort this out.” I’m pretty sure he’s not the inclusive, progressive leader we need right now, but I do like imagining past figures reappearing to witness the world today.

Imagine if James Madison came back to life just to stand in the front row while Lizzo played his flute. We’d see him swoon like a slaveholding snowflake, or maybe he’d applaud politely like a mature and intelligent human being and accept that he was wrong about certain things. Either way, I wouldn’t mind seeing it.

I wrote a piece a few years ago about Edward Colston randomly coming to life on a Saturday night in the centre of Bristol. Colston contributed toward Bristol’s prosperity in the 17th and early 18th centuries (even though he lived out of Bristol for most of his life). Much of his wealth came from trafficking human beings, so his legacy is corrupted. I liked picturing his confusion at the noise, colour, diversity, and excess of a Bristol weekend.

Where have the What Ifs taken you lately? Is there a point you’d like to stray from on our timeline?

Literary Locations

This Week’s Bit of String: Under the patchwork quilt

My grandparents’ guest bedroom was one of my favourite places. A rocking chair in the corner, a handmade crazy quilt on the bed. Shelves of AMC magazines that my Grandpa kept, unwilling to throw away anything with portraits of cinema’s Golden Age stars. The nightstands, under the dropped eaves, were metal and wire 1970s pieces loaded with books.

The books would change, and I never delved into how or why. Was my Grammy exchanging them with her sisters? Did my older cousins swap them out? However it happened, rootling around in this bedroom was where I discovered Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

*This is the quilt from Grammy’s house, in a writing corner I briefly had here before some, erm, home “improvements” commenced*

It was an abridged version, still hefty, a yellow hardcover with that plastic that peels off in satiny strands if you pick at it distractedly while you read. There were a few black and white illustrations, the sisters each given distinct appearances.

I was 9 or 10 when I found the book and read a few pages while my siblings ran around. The opening image of Jo stubbornly tomboying, sticking her hands in her pockets and whistling, made me laugh and I read it to the others and we all mimicked the gesture.

Family Home

At that point, my grandparents had lived in their Vermont house for at least 50 years, raising 6 children there. A pastiche of wallpapers, AM radio, the smell of American chop suey or home-baked donuts, and all objects well-worn, softened at the edges. Keeping the same house for so long felt magical, as if the air we breathed there was different, the atmosphere more sustaining.

During my latest summer visit to New England, I took a trip with my two sisters down to Massachusetts to see Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived with her family (after they’d moved dozens of times, due to financial struggles). It was a hundred degrees out, with a major heat warning cautioning everyone to stay inside. Fortunately for us, Orchard House is gently air conditioned, preserving the many artefacts within.

We were amazed at how authentic the place still is. Nearly all furnishings were used or made by the Alcott family. Paintings by Louisa’s youngest sister May (aka Amy), doll clothes stitched by Lizzie (Beth), crocheted bedspreads and even the wedding dress of the oldest sister Anna (Meg). We were quite awestruck.

In the master bedroom, there was even a timetable devised by Mrs. Alcott (Marmee), allotting how many hours the girls ought to spend on learning, on chores, and on other types of enrichment. It reminded us of the chore charts our mother would create to encourage the three of us plus our brother to each do our share.

A Room of One’s Own

While my clever and crafty sisters took great interest in different crochet and knitted pieces, I geeked out over Louisa’s room. She had her own writing desk, a white, rounded table her father built her. It jutted out between two sunny windows. This was exceptionally rare, for a women to have a desk.

The desk was ornamented with a nautilus-shaped inkwell, very Transcendentalist, and pens given to Louisa by her mother. Mrs. Alcott had composed a little poem to go with them, a prayer that the Muse would keep Louisa’s creative fires burning. Such obvious support really moved me.

I’ve now read Little Women more than once, unabridged as well as that old abridged version, along with some of Alcott’s other works. If you’ve also read it, and/or watched the film adaptations (two of the more recent ones were filmed at the actual Orchard House so it is instantly recognisable), you’ll remember that Jo (aka Louisa) writes up in the garret, and stores her pages in a disused tin kitchen. However, Orchard House doesn’t have an accessible attic.

*Schoolhouse behind Orchard House where the Alcotts and other Transcendentalists educated newly freed people from Missouri.*

Much of Little Women is based on Louisa’s life, and I’m sure in the dozens of other places she lived while growing up, she did write in attics and in all kinds of nooks and crannies. I wonder if she looked back on those corners with the most nostalgia, and perhaps even found them more inspiring, despite the wonderful space she ended up with.

Certainly, creating a writing garret for the character of Jo was a brilliant authorial choice. Think of how many young, non-affluent readers Louisa made writing feel accessible to. You don’t need a desk, or a view, or a room of your own to write. Not according to Little Women, anyway.

That was something that I loved about the book growing up, and the Winona Ryder film version that came out when I was in high school. Thoughts of Jo, bundled up against the cold, writing through the night really motivated me to work harder. Whether it was under that quilt on my grandparents’ guest bed, or in a basement corner on a typewriter that cost $5 at a yard sale and that I later abandoned after finding a snake in it, or in countless notebooks on bumpy bus rides or squishy sofas or prickly theatre seats at dress rehearsals; whether it was with shouting children or my husband trumpeting upstairs; whether it was scribbling at a bar between taking orders from customers or in the back of a woodworking shop while my students were learning new skills on a field trip… Sometimes, the most unlikely writing places are the ones that stick with us. They yield the hard-earned words, they witness the flood of the ideas that simply will not be kept back.

After all, a main message of Little Women is how hard work makes life feel more meaningful. It was nice to see this backed up by the many loved, homemade objects in the Alcott house, just as I remember them being in my grandparents’ home.

What sorts of places have you written in, and who are the writers or characters that have inspired you to do so?

Straying from the Original

This Week’s Bit of String: Ready for the close-up

To prepare for her A-Level Photography next year, I took a Year 11 student on a little expedition Thursday morning before the blue skies were completely obscured. We both had our mobile phone cameras and we found a wealth of photo ops right behind the school.

My student is a fan of the big picture. She stands back to get everything in one photo. I’m rather the same. It’s challenging to look at a whole panorama and remember to consider whether it would be even more striking from other angles, or broken down into close-ups.

Bit like writing, really.

So we were trying to get examples of low angles, high angles, and macrophotography. I found myself in a much more creative frame of mind, running around going, “Ooh, what if we tried this?”

My lovely autistic student started out not doing close-ups. I showed her examples of macrophotography, but her method was to say, “Out of the way, I’m going to take a picture!” She’d take one from really far, zoom in as much as possible, and crop after. The resolution of doing it this way is not ideal.

What the Framers Had in Mind

Framing is important. Proximity is, too. We’re working on Photography before Year 12 has officially started in order to ease this young lady into new ways of doing things. Whether we’re neurodivergent or not, we all need time to break habits and see new perspectives.

When it comes to running a country, the United States had a real headstart. The revered U.S. Constitution is pretty much the first of its kind, and is now about 234 years old. Did you know almost every other country in the world has a constitution now, and most were written in the last hundred years?

*My favourite one I took. It’s through a table tennis divider.*

Needless to say, that encompasses a vast array of nations with varying success at the democratic experiment. But some of those countries are doing just fine, and are not in any way less free, equal, or prosperous. Which is weird, because who knew a people could derive liberty from a document NOT written by a few white guys in powdered wigs who thought not-white and not-male humans could be property.

As ever, much Supreme Court controversy comes from how “originalist” its Justices want to be, or not. Must all US legislations still be measured against the words of the original founding documents, or is there room to grow?

The thing is, even originalism is very much up for interpretation. If a law pertains to something not referenced in the Constitution, then is that thing not allowed to exist at all? Or does it mean we can do what we want with it? And there are many angles to originalism, and different approaches have been developed over the years.

Now What I’m Gonna Say May Sound Indelicate

The Founders themselves were not exactly orginalists. They included Amendment 9 to ensure that “unenumerated rights” which they might not have known about could still be allowed to exist, much later. They also went and added 2 more amendments in less than 20 years. I wonder if they envisioned that 234 years later, a top state official would explain before Congress that he believes their Constitution is “divinely inspired.” Particularly given most of the Founders were more interested in Locke and Rousseau than they were in the Bible.

When Edison invented his light bulb, did he expect we’d still be using the exact same version a century later? Because I don’t think we are.

I say we get a whole new Constitution. Give the thing a good edit; keep it broad yes, but maybe offer some clarity. Schedule it in for a full-on maintenance every fifty years maximum, to be carried out by a mix of scholars and ordinary people selected like jury duty. Look at the nation from new angles, get up close and see rather than continually trying to crop and fit the vision Jefferson et al. had. The resolution from how much they’d have had to zoom in to see us now, and vice versa, is just awful.

*Just put a little effort in. One of my macro shots on Thursday*

A new Constitution would never happen, I know. America has far bigger problems (although a lot of them stem from extreme constitutional interpretations) and too little time and money.

By the way, money features a LOT in the Constitution. Imports, duties, trade. War’s in there a fair bit. It’s true that women and God are never mentioned. Males are mentioned, and in fact Article I Section 8 mentions pirates! Ooh. So if you want to be super originalist, the Supreme Court has a lot more basis to rule regarding pirates than regarding women.

I really like some of what I’ve written, but I wouldn’t want anyone to base how they live their entire life around them, let alone how a whole country has to live. Though it’s exhausting work, the power to edit and evolve is a great relief and, well, freedom; as is the ability to learn from new people, whose voices may have been stifled before.

My student did start taking close-ups at the end of our session, by the way. She saw a single, white bindweed blossom grown up through a bush and charged right in through the branches to capture a shot of this “lonely flower.” I’m excited to see what else is going to inspire her, and learn from that myself.

Imagining What Can Save Us

This Week’s Bit of String: Miners and runaways

A hundred million years ago, according to geologists, the Southwestern region of the UK was underwater, populated by sea urchins and other such creatures. As the seas dried, the remains of those little shelled beings were compressed through extreme heat into our incredible coastal cliffs.

The same coast which Roman soldiers breached a couple thousand years ago, undoubtedly bringing with them enslaved persons from various corners of their territory. They discovered the cliffs near Beer, now a lovely seaside village in Devon, and began to quarry the stone, building arches underground to access it.

From Roman times to the 1500s, the method of extracting Beer’s pale, chalky limestone didn’t evolve much. Workers picked clear the top of a chamber, a crawlspace about 3 feet high, then climbed in and, in the cold darkness for up to 14 hours daily six days per week, they picked downward to carve blocks, 4 tonnes at a time.

When the Church ran the quarry, in the Middle Ages, they even forced miners to buy their own candles. And if a block had flint or a crack in it, the miner didn’t get paid for that day.

These blocks, made of ancient crumbled seashells and dug out by men in harshest conditions, have been used in more than half of Britain’s cathedrals, and around the world.

I learned about Beer’s miners on a quarry tour last weekend. I wondered, how on earth could people keep living with such a laborious, unrewarding existence?

One answer, apparently, is that the miners drank lots of rough cider. And probably they were pretty friendly with each other even while deafening one another from the echo of their picks. Maybe they had nice families waiting for them at home.

But they must also have been picturing themselves somewhere else. It’s hard to imagine a life without imagining, isn’t it?

Of course, we are lucky now to access books, travel, music, and things that clue us in to alternative existences. Before all those, there still would have been storytelling and songs, there would have been starry skies and vast seas and the people who sail them. Even medieval people might have had something to distract them as they worked. Did they know about the Romans before them, and imagine proving themselves in a gladiatorial ring, marching into a hot ancient city to a hero’s welcome?

Descents of Fancy

The day after visiting Beer and its caves, we went toward Lyme Regis and looked for fossils. There’s a whole beach where the Jurassic layer has shifted from under the cliffs, creating the “Ammonite Pavement.” Vast slabs with prehistoric squid shells perfectly visible.

I used a short thin stone to pry loose part of a clay underlayer, with lots of little scallopy fossils. As I pounded the edges of my chosen rock, I imagined I was a miner with my pickaxe, providing cathedral material.

*I can picture this tree lifting its roots and just shimmying down the cliff*

Do other creative people sometimes imagine a tougher existence rather than a rosier one? It’s like when I was little and my sister and I pretended we were running away from a Dickensian workhouse or a slave plantation every time we packed for an overnight at Grandma’s.
By picturing ourselves in those situations, we weren’t trying to claim the suffering others went through, or minimise it. Maybe we were a little callous to inject this sort of peril to make our lives more exciting. But also, I think that spending mental time in such stories helped make us more empathetic as we grew up. Possibly, hopefully, it makes us a little less dramatic about the trials we have in our own lives.

When I chisel a fossil free, I’m just taking it home so I can glance at it occasionally, and smile remembering a sunny little adventure. It’s not going to form the grand arch of a cathedral or the dungeon stairs in the Tower of London. Those Beer miners, for all their struggles, at least were part of something great and I’m so glad their contributions are now recognised, in the Quarry tour and in our imaginations.

Building Great Things

When I think about people like those miners, or when I stand in a Remembrance Service and listen to the names read out of terrified young soldiers who died in battle, I concentrate really hard on who they might have been as humans. This is probably silly, even delusional, but I hope the waves of my empathy somehow make it back to those people. So that, for an instant, they sense they’re not forgotten.

*More imagination fuel–this rose must have some magical power, right?*

Obviously it’s not enough to just imagine what people’s lives were like in the past; there are people struggling now and we need to donate, amplify, and vote in ways which benefit them. I think imagining is a strong motivator though.

Our ability to imagine, and then to empathise, may set us apart as a species (although, have you ever watched a cat slink around outside? I think our feline friends have some extremely melodramatic fantasies…) but at our core we are self-interested. In order to care about someone else’s plight, it helps to picture ourselves in their stead.

In the aftermath of 2001’s terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was banned from radio stations. Because if people are using their imaginations, that might not be so good for the weapons industry’s profits.

Of course, running alternate scenarios in our heads also just makes things more interesting. When I have to sit quietly with my students in their exams, I can pretend I’m actually in the Great Hall at Hogwarts taking O.W.L.S. tests. If stress is keeping me awake at night, I play a comforting memory of my Grammy’s voice. And I probably won’t use the miners of Beer in a story, because their reality feels so extreme I don’t think I could do it justice. But it’s inspiring to contemplate the many layers of history that have unfolded on the very earth beneath our feet.

What daydreams have you embarked on lately?

2021 Reading Round-Up

This wasn’t my most prodigious reading year, but I’m incredibly grateful for the books I did get to read. There were some long-anticipated hits, and some delightful surprises. In my top ten alone, there’s quite a range from comics to inspiration to memoir with of course plenty of forays into fiction.

As always, I’m including a favourite quote from each book. That’s the best bit! Previous years’ top ten lists are here, here, here, and here.

Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy

This is a quick read, meandering through episodes of Levy’s writing life. From the riveting opening sentence through travels in Majorca and flashbacks to Levy’s childhood in apartheid South Africa, I was engrossed in her reflections. As she crosses geographical borders, she also investigates the borders between secrecy and sharing. How deeply can women writers afford to feel?

*I read **The Midnight Library** while visiting London after Christmas*

“Smiling was a way of keeping people out of your head even though you’d opened your head when you parted your lips.”

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

An exploration of the multiverse that can result from a single life, Haig’s popular novel is like having someone read you a choose-your-own adventure book. The protagonist gets to pick different volumes off the shelves and read herself into alternate lives. It culminates with satisfying vibes of “Merry Christmas, you beautiful old broken down Building and Loan!”

“She had shrunk for him, but he still hadn’t found the space he needed.”

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

Another volume of her irreverent, candid, hand-illustrated memoir. My whole family loves Brosh’s work. I laughed hysterically reading about how she raided her neighbour’s house as a child, and then later in the book I cried at her struggles. She champions her uniqueness while also being incredibly relatable.

“Because that’s intimacy, Buckaroos. Somebody who understands exactly how weird you are, and you understand how weird they are, and you’re sort of in a mutually beneficial hostage situation.”

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

One sister stays in Bangladesh and tries to earn her living in a garment factory and then as a household servant, while the other comes to London as a Muslim bride, speaking no English. Multifaceted characters, perfect descriptions, a plot spanning two continents and volatile periods in recent history.

*Finished **Brick Lane** while headed north to the Lakes District in the summer.*

“Outside, mist bearded the lampposts and a gang of pigeons turned weary circles on the grass like prisoners in an exercise yard.”

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

This is a pivotal read for shaking up your routine, challenging yourself, and making the most of life. It helps you believe in the positives—not just in yourself, but in others. I loved the “Giving an A” chapter, promising students an A in a college course provided they write a detailed letter at the start on what they’ll do to earn it, and then follow through.

“It is only when we make mistakes in performance that we can really begin to notice what needs attention. In fact, I actively train my [music] students that when they make a mistake, they are to lift their arms in the air, smile, and say, ‘How fascinating!’ I recommend that everyone do this.”

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

An award-winning debut novel tackling race and class, and having to grow up. I loved the depictions of friendships, and child-rearing. The main characters are a baby-sitter who loves her charge so much it brought tears to my eyes, and a mum who is still not comfortable enough in her own skin to genuinely care for a pre-schooler who may have the same insecurities.

“‘You get real fired up about what happened that night in Market Depot. But I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just, like… happens.’”

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

This is also a dual narrative about race and class, but it’s set in the American South before the Civil War and Emancipation. The enslaved characters try to keep their culture alive and their family bonds unbroken. I read it fearing for their safety, but also admiring the spirit of the main character, Handful.

“You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you’re near twenty years grown, and you still don’t know what haunches in the dark corners of her.”

Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

A mystery, almost a thriller, as well as a fictional journey of self-discovery. The narrative voice is so compelling, you feel for her and want to protect her even as she self-sabotages her quest for companionship by being harsh with those around her. It’s uplifting to read about Elinor coming to terms with not being completely fine.

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing so horrifying you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”

*Springtime back garden fun with these floofs, reading **Brown Baby**.*

Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla

Reading this memoir is like spending a day with your best friend. I really wanted to turn up on Shukla’s doorstep and ask to go walking together or something. This is a memoir about the sacrifices and joys of parenting, about raising a small person of colour in an unwelcoming world, about grief and making connections with the family you grew up with. He puts everything in it really, and writes with such warmth and humour.

“If you sleep when the baby sleeps, you have effectively given up. You live by their routine. You are pandering to their tyranny. You’re never sleeping longer than an hour anymore. And you’re wearing dirty pants.”

The Dig Street Festival by Chris Walsh

This hilarious and lovely novel comes from independent publisher Louise Walters Books, and I will be grateful to Twitter forever because without it I wouldn’t have heard about Walsh’s book. Very British and quirky, it takes an endearing, well-meaning protagonist with a Dostoevsky-ish inner monologue through Kafkaesque plot twists with a Dickensian cast of characters. Honestly, it’s just mad fun; please give it some love.

“The trouble was, our minds were hard-wired to find patterns in any thing, and to lock into them like meaning-seeking missiles. Not only would we hungrily identify patterns, we would immediately adopt them, fatten them up, farm them, breed and multiply them.”

If you’ve already discovered any of these stories, let’s talk! If you haven’t read them before but decide to give one or two a try, I hope you just love them.