To the sound of trumpets in thrusts March
hello,
Five things:
Ronald Blyth writes about the end of February and the beginning of March in Next to Nature:
“The colours of Christmas have been exterminated and New Year resolutions are seeping away in to grey and hopeless damp. No colour anywhere. Then to the sound of trumpets in thrusts March. Triumphant. Purple fields, the trees still black and naked, the green shoots of life piercing and rising-up through the earth. It is sexy, this surge of sap. Optimism is reborn. There is clear light and plenty of bracing air in which to walk. And mud to negotiate. Suffolk mud is a strange mixture of clod and water, making each step uncertain and exciting. The sky lowers darkly while clouds speed across. The sun suddenly appears. March contains the dark of winter and the light of summer almost simultaneously. After the hibernation of February, eyes closed, there is a shock awakening of all the senses, eyes open."
Denise’s Walknotes are always wonderful. Like Ronald Blythe with buses. In this episode she quotes Claire Keegan:
“There’s a wonderful letter Chekhov wrote to his brother Alexander about the meaning of grace, how grace is when you make the least number of movements between two points – and that type of athletic prose has always appealed to me, coupled with light-handedness and restraint. Elegance, to me, is writing just enough. And, as James Baldwin said, in his Paris Review interview, ‘the hardest thing in the world is simplicity’.”
Speaking of simplicity. I’m reading Tim Shipman’s Out; about the Tories and Brexit and all that. It’s depressing, mostly because everyone is just so awful at their job. But, in amongst the disasters, there are great examples of people being refreshingly clear-eyed about how to communicate, and about what’s communicable:
On Jo Swinson, leader of the Lib Dems:
“With no policy, the communications team got broadcast and newspaper coverage for Swinson by focusing on a ‘visual of the day’. These saw the leader start a fire at a kids’ camp, don boxing gloves (a trick borrowed from Boris Johnson), drive a digger and go up in a crane. This was in the best traditions of Lib Dem comms. When Phil Reilly ran the party media operation under the coalition, he told his team: ‘We need to be first, funny, or interesting.’ Umunna, who sat on the campaign committee, disagreed. ‘His view was that we should do serious, weighty press conferences,’ an aide remembered. Rathe explained, ‘We can’t do that because no one will care because we are the Liberal Democrats.’”
On Boris Johnson:
‘He’s just not that interested in governing. You’d get these occasional spurts of exertion, particularly during the summer of 2020, where you’d get these long emails in the middle of the night from him with titles like “My Priorities”, and there would be a list of fifty things, but not in priority order. He’d say things like: “schools … make them better”, no mention of how.’
I don’t believe in magic. (Obviously. Do I need to say that?) But I believe in people believing in magic. And finding it useful. And this is the best explanation I’ve seen of its efficacy.
“I really believe in doing things with an intention and then attributing whatever good thing happens to that intention. For instance: quitting smoking. I said: I’m going to give up this thing I love so it will make room for other things that I might love even more. Or running. I just started training for a marathon, as a confirmed non-runner, do-not-want-to-run type of girl. And when I started I said: by investing in yourself in this unpleasant way, you are casting a spell of loving and believing in yourself that will bring those same things back to you. When I was 7 I threw a ring I loved out of a car window as we searched for my dog who had run away, as an act of sacrifice to get her back. Well, guess what? She came back. And I’m still doing little spells to this day 😈”
That’s Mackenzie Davis.
Flora and I are going to start doing a podcast. You can follow along here. Here’s the vibe. Send us a question! It’s a way of having another useless conversation. Here’s Hanif Kureishi:
“Conversation is useless in the best sense. It’s anti-capitalist – you don’t make money out of it; there is no material gain. There is only the pleasure of sitting with another human being, of listening to them, of an ephemeral exchange which has no meaning beyond a shared temporary gratification. There are laughs, jokes, teasings, and serious questions. It is better, less trouble, more fulfilling and longer-lasting than sex.”
PROMOTIONAL NEWS
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I’ll give you back your day.
russell
(There are 992 of you. Squadron 992 describes the training and operations in 1940 of No. 992 Squadron RAF, a barrage balloon unit. You can watch it on YouTube.)