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.
Continue reading →

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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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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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A new winter coat

Posted on February 7, 2016 by lesleyjonesberry

My parents are both dead.  I loved them both and they were good parents; I was lucky in my relationships.  My mum, in particular, had an ability to accept mortality and this was a great gift to my brother and me, helping us when we faced bereavement. Indeed, when dad and, later, mum died, my feelings included not only acceptance but even relief, alongside loss and sadness, Continue reading →

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ResearchEd again, naturally

Posted on September 5, 2015 by lesleyjonesberry

researchEd2015I am off to the national ResearchEd conference for the third time. Last year I said I wouldn’t do this: the date clashes with my local agricultural show, a major community event, and I am no longer an Education student. My MA is finished.
But here I am on the train at an unseasonably early hour again. Continue reading →

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Farewell, my dear

Posted on July 13, 2015 by lesleyjonesberry

We are three quarters of the way through our Roger Rees memorial viewing of Nicholas Nickleby. For those unfamiliar with the work, this means 6 hours down, 2 to go.

Continue reading →

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Ebacc pigs

Posted on June 28, 2015 by lesleyjonesberry

You don't fatten a pig by weighing itI see they have started making “Gove – the sequel”. It happens. A character has such impact that the producers cannot resist reviving him. Often the villain or monster, he wreaks such devastation in the original, that repetition of the storyline in a whole new setting is, apparently, irresistible. Watch out for the franchise and pity the lawyers.

Meanwhile, to my extreme discomfort, I find I may agree with Michael Gove about something. Continue reading →

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