Author Archives: lesleyjonesberry

Palimpsests

Posted on October 16, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

At my mum’s funeral, her best friend Joyce looked at my daughter and thought ‘that’s her, that’s Pat’. My daughter, then 18, was about the age mum had been when this friendship had kindled, and family likeness did the rest. … Continue reading →

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Solitude

Posted on September 11, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

Before I start, I must distinguish between solitude and loneliness. We never choose loneliness, which is painful and – what is the word? – ‘unhealthy’, meaning health as in wholeness; ‘unnatural’ in the sense that we are inherently, innately social … Continue reading →

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Listen

Posted on August 28, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

Hamlet is driven by a meeting of Hamlets: the prince and his father’s ghost. The melancholy, rootless ghost of the murdered king beseeches his son to leave his companions and follow. In the slightly truncated archaic Elizabethan language, the line … Continue reading →

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Recovery

Posted on July 22, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

The word that came to mind was recover.  And I hesitated, to become sure of what it means.  Recover can be read two ways:  to heal, or to replace a protective layer.  Difficult as things are, I don’t want the … Continue reading →

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Living with yourself

Posted on June 21, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

Presently (as my son would say), I live alone.  The closest I’ve come to this before was as a fledgling undergraduate.  Term times in a small self-contained College room, home still a safe refuge.   There followed many years of shared … Continue reading →

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I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be

Posted on June 5, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

I encountered T.S. Eliot when I was about 17;  Shakespeare I’d known a little longer.   Lines like these – allusions which I could actually catch (and Eliot was hugely allusive, especially in his earlier work) – played a part in the thrill of recognition I felt on first reading him.  I still, vividly,  remember starting to read the Four Quartets for the first time – at home, in the ‘front room’ as we called it (a whole socio-economic digression possible in that term.  I will resist). Continue reading →

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This House

Posted on May 30, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

At the start of the Zeffirelli film of La Traviata, the overture plays lushly on the soundtrack, while Violetta drifts through deserted rooms like Miss Havisham. At least she does in my head – I haven’t watched the film for … Continue reading →

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Lachrymosa

Posted on May 17, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

Presently, my days are filled with tears.  As children, we cry easily.  Perhaps, as Shakespeare says, ‘we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools’.  Babies cry from frustration, from pain, from fear, and this is largely … Continue reading →

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It goes without saying

Posted on April 15, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

I often feel that I talk too much and, indeed, I often do.  Some of this is innate, I think:  I have such an urge to try to express things, I gain such relief and pleasure in my quest to … Continue reading →

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Like Breathing Out and Breathing In

Posted on March 26, 2022 by lesleyjonesberry

I have been present at first breaths, and last breaths.  Only at those most intimately connected with me: my children’s births and my mother’s death. And since, in female babies, the eggs of their potential children already nestle in their … Continue reading →

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