We are such stuff as dreams are made on

Posted on January 15, 2017 by lesleyjonesberry

I don’t believe in ghosts.  But once someone has died, I think they continue with us.  They continue in our memories and through their children (if lucky enough to have them): a tilt of the head or a look suddenly represents them to us.   We hear music, we visit a place, we hold an object dear to them and they are with us once again:  a vivid, piercing, disorientating flash of recollection.  For a moment they stand next to us, sharing our senses, placing their hands on ours.  We feel both joyful and bereft.
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Quick now, here, now, always.

Posted on December 2, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

Moving to London meant leaving my job – obviously – and I am searching for work.  Writing applications is laborious (oh, the irony that hunting for work is itself hard work) and disquieting.  I cannot know how long this process will take;  I never know whether the next application might be the lucky one.  Conversely, if only it were easy to recognise when I am wasting my time.  Each application offers the possibility of a different future.  A different role, a different work place, different people, a different life. Continue reading →

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Masters, look to see a troublous world

Posted on November 21, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

1985-antony-sherAs I tried to find some way to comprehend the US Election result, Richard III came to mind.   I do not suggest that Trump is as evil, or as intelligent, as Shakespeare’s Richard; I wondered rather about the circumstances which allow an individual to become unstoppable in his ascent to power. How does an outrageous campaign, full of bluster and falsehood, confound all reasonable expectation and win?
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Transition

Posted on September 15, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

packing_in_progressI wanted to assert that we are homeless.  To some small extent this may be true – when we left the house in Hampshire, we had no date for moving into the London flat, and we are currently dependent upon the kindness of my best friend to give us shelter.   But we are not really homeless.  Continue reading →

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Books do furnish a room

Posted on May 17, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

Bookcase.jpgThe house clearance has reached the bookcases.   I have known people who say they never get rid of any of their books and feel that disposing of them is somehow diminishing:  perhaps we need to keep the physical object in order to retain the information therein.  While seeing the attraction of this approach – and with a mix of motives, of which intellectual snobbery is undoubtedly and unattractively one – I assert that keeping all the books one has read is simply impossible.  Continue reading →

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Stuff

Posted on May 2, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

StuffIt is remarkable how much stuff we have accumulated.   Things we have been given, things we have bought, things we have inherited, things we have made.  Old stuff and new stuff.  Some of it well-loved and well-used; much of it incidental, trivial, superfluous, redundant.  The contents of this house need winnowing.

I’ve just read 1606 by James Shapiro and so my imagination is strongly coloured by King Lear.  I am not sure it is helpful.
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Leaving home

Posted on April 7, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

HouseWe plan to move in September, from a house we will have lived in for 14 years.  Before we came here, married life had seen us living in six different rented dwellings. We moved round the country and averaged two years in each.  This house was purchased because we – certainly I – felt a strong need to stop and settle.

My parents, by contrast, bought a house soon after they married and lived in it for the rest of their life together.  Visiting as an adult, I slept in the room which had been my childhood bedroom, its changing wallpaper marking the decades. Even now, if I wake in the depths of the night with odd, sleep-laden disorientation, that’s the room which first comes to mind.  It is the ur-bedroom, from which all others are merely derivatives. Continue reading →

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I was not angry until this instant

Posted on February 28, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

SupportJuniorDoctorsOn Wednesday 9th March the Junior Doctors begin another strike. I will be joining them on a picket line. I have never demonstrated against anything in my life before and I have never gone on strike. So part of me is astonished by my own behaviour.

I must declare a personal interest: our daughter is part way through her medical training and will, we hope, become a Junior Doctor in a few years’ time. So part of my response is that of a mother tiger – I feel my child is threatened.

But that’s not the only reason. I have reached a tipping point.
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Thank you for missing me

Posted on February 14, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

Lego SnapeHarry Potter is a significant theme in our house.  The children were at the perfect age.  We read the books together at bed time, conducted intensely excited night-time forays to buy the later volumes at midnight publication, and we relished the films.  I am not ashamed to admit  – although perhaps I ought to be – that our house contains Harry Potter crockery, glassware, cross-stitch sampler and quite a lot of Lego.

As is obvious from these blogs, I also have a life-long love of good theatre, formed largely at Stratford, and – to my great joy – this is now shared to some extent at least by my family.

alanasyoulikeit1This means that the death of lovely Alan Rickman gave us pause.  Continue reading →

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Homeless, with a good book

Posted on February 9, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

I found myself with an enforced absence from home. MrFootesOtherLeg My son had requested a birthday party. He is a young adult, a ‘bounce back’ after university, so he didn’t want us to organise it.  Rather the opposite: he asked if we would absent ourselves while the party took place. Since my husband was already due to be in London during the day, it seemed sensible to suggest he stayed up there. And I was set free.  A wet weekend in January, constrained by practicalities of budget and my desire to keep the dog with me:  perhaps not everyone’s idea of a treat but one that translates well into my scales of pleasure and excitement. Continue reading →

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