The final voyage

Posted on March 12, 2017 by lesleyjonesberry

In November 2010, we went to hear Stornoway at Southampton Students’ Union.  Our then-teenage son had sparked my interest in contemporary music after a gap of many years.  He introduced me to live gigs and this was our first “family” outing.  We saw this quirky, quality band every couple of years, in different combinations – the children at a Festival, my husband and I in a tiny Salisbury Arts Centre; three of us sometimes, but never all four of us together again. We always reported back in the same way: we “had forgotten, somehow, just how incredibly good they are”. Continue reading →

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Meet and greet

Posted on January 30, 2017 by lesleyjonesberry

mark-rylance-nice-fishOn Friday evening I went to see Nice Fish.  A whimsical, delicate piece developed by Mark Rylance in collaboration with Louis Jenkins and based upon the latter’s prose poems.  In addition to the sheer joy of seeing Mark Rylance on stage – no-one else is quite so relaxed, so playful, endearing, gracious – the piece offers a meandering meditation on living (it’s irresistible to compare it with Waiting for Godot).  And on Sunday morning I went to Shakespeare’s Globe with a view to being a volunteer steward this summer.  Continue reading →

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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.
Continue reading →

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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.
Continue reading →

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