Sunday Culture
I am in a flare of my chronic health condition at the moment but taking some solace in writing and soaking up bits of culture where I can. My health and trying to constantly manage it has been a bit like the Fringe- relentless pressure to 'go go go' with little let up and in the start of September my body has reminded me (much like the city of Edinburgh) that I need space to breathe and recover.
What I have been reading
I am racing to get through the relevant books in Mick Herron's 'Slough House' collection before series 6 of the TV show is released later in September. I've ploughed through the audiobook of number 6 'Joe Country' and am in the middle of number 7 'Slough House'. They are deliciously written and the stories of the inept MI5/MI6 rejects hook you from the start. I have laughed out loud in public from some of the obscene Jackson Lamb one liners that crop up. Despite the fact that the narrator of the audiobook (more RP gruff elder statesman) sounds nothing like Gary Oldman's (scruffy Cockney lad) televisual interpretation, the character is one and the same to me. Probably because it is so well written. I use my local library's audiobook service (uLibrary) and it is a gift.
Another generational gift we have been granted this week is that my cousin's eldest has started reading one of our favourite haunting books from childhood in their school. The book in question is 'Under the Hawthorn Tree' by Marita Conlon-McKenna and it seems it continues to traumatise the youth of Ireland through its moving yet horrifying story of a young family trying to survive the Irish Famine of 1845-1849 (An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger to give it the most accurate historical descriptor). My cousin and I rather charmingly (but admittedly a bit weirdly, who cares, I long to have this creative freedom once more) used this famine and this book as a theme for our play when we were kids. By play I mean literally playing, like you would with a Barbie, we didn't write a play. Then we would go back to our middle class lives and get a takeaway as Ireland has moved on from the famine (even if the population numbers have still not recovered to their pre 1845 levels). There's a metaphor in there that I don't even need to reach for. Bless our little strange creative brains and we are watching with bated breath as to how the next generation will respond to this novel.
What I have been watching
Any new BBC history themed programme is catnip to me and I have devoured the latest series of 'A House Through Time'. In it, Professor David Olusoga traces the history of a house and the people who inhabited it. This time round it is set in Edinburgh and follows two properties on Calton Hill. It has inspired me to trace the history of the tenement flat I own and I have fallen down a Census rabbit hole. In 1901, our building had three households, one of whom was a local bootmaker. These records are relatively easy to find through publicly available documents and in Scotland the records have been meticulously kept over time. This is in a bit of stark contrast to similar records of perhaps my own family history in Ireland as some of those records were destroyed. But perhaps, all has not been lost...
Rory Carroll
What I have been listening to
I managed to get in to a near trance like meditative state listening to Tool's 'Lateralus'. A 5/4 time signature does something to my brain that I fix on and try, often without success, to follow the rhythm of. There's another screaming metaphor in there about just letting things go and relaxing the mind. Turns out Tool is that, ahem, tool for me.
Life is busy. If you can this week, take a deep breath and just be for a minute.
GRMA for reading,
Deirdre x
