I know. One cannot start a story “During the pandemic…” because one of us always has to raise a well-now finger and say “Well, now… the pandemic is STILL ongoing…” and we will know they will be right so we will say “Well, yes, of course, the pandemic IS still ongoing, but I meant during the lockdown, we…” and then we lose our thread while we get lost in thoughts about whether our lockdown was the same as their lockdown, and who was locked the downest, and how quietly, and for how long, and how that felt, and who got the most despondent, and who cried the most often and who wondered what they’d been doing with their life and whether it’s ok to ask if they’ve worked it out since…

…since…

…or still? During? Because well now, the pandemic is ongoing… And well yes, of course, it IS still ongoing but…

I am aware of how much things shifted, socially, personally, culturally, in the last few years.

Ironically, I know — I knew at the time — that it was perfect blogging fodder. It should have been. But the fact is, in the days and weeks and months and hours and nights and eons of 2020, it would have helped me to write all the feelings down, and out, and away… but doing so would have meant admitting a) that it was happening, but b) that I knew somehow that it was temporary and therefore worth writing about… and not just v) a new normal, the life that life was, is now. Indoors. With only these people.

And we didn’t know what of that was true.

We still don’t.

But I am just putting gentle pressure on this door because I know I want to tell the stories of how we changed, how I changed, during that time (this time? Gah!) and I needed to do that, at some point, without a whole bunch of throat-clearing in the posts themselves. So this is a post of throat clearing, instead.

I just want to be able to talk about it.

I did not mean the previous post to be 1500 words of finger-spew about all the terrible holiday movies I have seen so far in December. It turned out to be a lot. And we’re not even through the first week of December. Anyway, that’s not what I intended to write, but it was what I ended up writing, so in case this post comes to you in a feed and I’ve managed to help you avoid it, you’re welcome.

I’ve been trying to work out, over the last while, why it is that I feel so very drawn to murder.
As a subject, not a pastime.  As a pastime I am mainly ambivalent toward it. 

Like many people, as we sunk into lockdown, I reached for objects and activities that would offer some comfort. Y’know, like murder. Mainly in podcast form. Anything that I could plug into my ears to shut out the sound of remote schooling and the racing, buzzing thoughts in my own brain, and keep me occupied while doing jigsaw puzzle after jigsaw puzzle after jigsaw puzzle, when not working. Cold cases, forensic things, any podcast that retold the sad story of a real person’s very sad demise at the hands of another, I was THERE FOR IT. 

Not JUST murder, of course. I also found great solace in con artists, cults, and tales of corporate malfeasance, because I know how to party. But more of that anon. Murder was the meat of it. As Morrissey didn’t quite say wayback-when but probably would say if talking about his pandemic podcasting habits. 

And it wasn’t just me. I’ve heard the same from others. But why? Why did true crime become such a grizzly little teddybear at that particular point? Or a tidy little grizzly bear? Whatever. SO!…Read More »

Gosh this really is like going straight back into it. I’m already creating whole posts of caveats and apologies.
Please skip if you’re not into indulging free-floating britishnesses.

Read More »

Slight, brief pause between posts there! Again. Whoopsies! I know I’ve said this before, but I didn’t mean to go without posting for so long, I had come posts lined up, then other things happened, that made them not quite so relevant and then things got a little busy at work and before I knew it it was… [checks date]… almost nine years later.

More of a hiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatus. Hiages. Highatus? Whatever.

Never mind. This thing still works does it? Well, it does now. And if it doesn’t entirely, it will soon.

Hello blog. It’s nice to see you.
Everything old is new again. Apart from us. We’re still old. Older, in fact!
Sorry probably didn’t need to sound so jolly about that. 

“You can sing, you can talk, you can read, but please stay in bed. It is bed time. Just stay in bed. I love you, good night, see you in the morning. You can do whatever you want, but I do not want you to leave this bed, do you understand?…” turn out to be really stupid words to say to a creative but poorly two-year-old with enough raised temperature to be under-exercised and bored but not enough to be floppy and sleepy.

Still, when I went back in an hour later and found him in the middle of leaning out and lifting a large foam cube into the bed, with everything else that had previously been within arms reach already piled in a pyramid in the middle, proudly presenting it when I opened the door with “Mama! It a SQUARE!” I really wasn’t able to be angry, because if nothing else, for once, he had totally listened and done exactly what Id asked. He had not once left the bed.

It was just that everything else in the room had joined him in there.

We’re sitting in the car. We’ve been sitting in the car for four hours, and the toddler is getting quite bored of this situation.

We are playing a version of I spy that fits an almost-two-year-old understanding of how things work, where one person names things and then the other people shout when they see that thing. Usually things they know are going to be coming up on this kind of road trip. Like…

Read More »

1. Hello. Hello! Is that a thing? It is now. Unless it isn’t.
   
2. As a small handful of people noticed (and I am very glad it wasn’t more, I couldn’t stand to think there are many still out there, still checking whether I’ve written anything, only to find I haven’t, still) the blog went down for a while we’ve got it back up, though it still needs a lot of love and quite a bit of rejigging if Im going to continue to have it, which I’ve set aside as a task for my beloved and I over the the Christmas holiday. Happy Christmas, darling!
3. We have moved back to San Francisco, which is nice for lots of reasons, but mainly, obviously, because the background of the blog is finally correct. Which is clearly among the most sane reasons possible to move your family across the world.
4. Programmes I have watched on American television and immediately feared for the sanity of humanity: Buying nude (in which nudists search for houses to be nude in, in the nude. And Best Funeral EVER which is precisely as tasteful as it sounds.
5. At the age of almost-two, Doozer has just learned to play the harmonica and is busy composing original works. So far he can play The Really Long Song, The Song The Daddy Likes and The Last Song, Seriously, Because It Really Is Teatime Now, and his popular encore Honey, The Harmonica Is Not a Fork.