Hannah Swithinbank

Of babies and life choices

I am just back from a weekend in Leeds visiting old university friend and her husband, and meeting their 10 week old boy. It was a very nice weekend, with catching up and the chance to read three novels, but frankly, having watched her parent wee George, I have come to the conclusion that I am clearly not unselfish enough to have children and actally raise them properly (as opposed to packing them up in a wicker basket and popping them on a bus across Africa with me).

I really do just like my lifestyle of being able to trot wherever far too much. If a suitable consenting adult would like to sign up to come along, I would be ok with that, but children aren’t so much consenting as dragged. I was listening to Fi talking about how she only wants to go back to work part-time, and would rather not go back to work at all than go back full time while he’s small and my head was just yelling, “I could never do that.” And I barely have a career (this PhD thing is supposed to help with that, though).

So I broke it to my parents on the phone that I thought they might not be getting grandkids. My father laughed and told me I’m clearly not maternal. My mother suggested I might change my mind sometime soon. Then amended her statement and removed the soon as she heard the raised eyebrow down the phone. I remainded ho hummingly non-commital and said, I thought if I had children I’d like to get them when they were two or three, and could be left in nursery for a few hours a day while I had a job/life. To which her response was, “Well, you have them, and we’ll look after them till they’re two or three, and then you can have them back.”

Not exactly what I was expecting…

Things I discovered last year…

1. There’s tension involved in travel, even when you go on your own. The ‘why am I here’, ‘what’s my purpose in life’, am I just jumping through tourist hoops’ kind of tension. I think it happens every trip, and yet, when you come back you just sort-of forget about it. So, just learn that when it happens you should consider stopping seeing the things you’ve got on your list that you want to see – even if you really really really want to see them – for an afternoon and find a park or a sofa to sit and read a novel, or write screeds of nonsense working through your tourist-monkey issues, or email all the folks at home. And then go out the next day and get over it – chances are you’ll find something wonderful that makes you think that even if you are being a tourist-monkey, it’s probably worth it (hello, Kinkaku-Ji and Nanzen-Ji, Kyoto.

2. There’s more tension involved in watching other people travel – especially to historically sensitive places like Auschwitz. You have to work through that too – normally with the aid of pen and paper, but you’re allowed to talk to other people about it, ‘cos it’s not just emo-esque self-indulgent wank. It’s something worth thinking about. What kind of photos should you take in such places?

3. Japan. Despite the emo-tourist-monkey-ing moment, and the wearying aspects of spending three weeks in what is, pretty much Wonderland, with only a very few people to speak English too (damn my lack of Japanese), it was wonderful. And though when I came back I initially thought that it probably wasn’t going straight to the top of the list of ‘Places I’ve Been, Loved, and Want to Go Back To,’ it’s rapidly moving up the list. Mostly, I want to see Hokkaido.

4. David Mitchell. This is a vague corollary to the above, since I initially picked up Ghostwritten because I was looking for stuff to read about Japan before I went, and its first chapters are set in Japan. And then I fell in love with this wild and wonderful author, and found myself reading all four of his books (Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas, number9dream, and Black Swan Green) between about March and September.

5. Various other authors, but most particularly Iain M. Banks and David Foster Wallace. I read The Algebraist at high speed whilst in Bulgaria for a wedding, but did at least manage to put it down for the duration of said wedding. Now I have a pile of Banks’ sci-fi to read, and am currently deep in The Player of Games. I came to DFW at the end of the year, sadly. Having heard so much about his work after his suicide, and hearing Joe mention that he was reading Infinite Jest, I borrowed a book of non-fiction essays from J, which contatined ‘The Host’, a DFW essay about conservative talk radio in the States. I’m hopelessly hooked, I’ve just finished Consider the Lobster, and ordered Infinite Jest, and I’m so sad that ever thing of his that I read takes me one step further to there being no more new DFW to read. I wish I’d discovered him earlier.

6. That despite the above, and my generally cultural snobbishness (Whaddya mean, you’ve never read Dickens???), I do have a soft spot for cultural candyfloss to leaven the load from the old brain-pan at times. It’s probably no coincidence that my affection for the awfulness of the Twilight series, and the insane camp colour of High School Musical Three: Senior Year hit me mid-supervisory crisis this autumn and further developed as I reached a point by Christmas where I was, quoth supervisor, “Written Out.” It’s also no coincidence that after a week away from the PhD I’ve started devouring non-fiction essays, high powered sci-fi and Simon Schama’s latest book, The American Future: A History.

7. Rhetoric isn’t ‘just words’. I knew it already, but after nine months of watching the US elections whilst concurrently writing a doctoral thesis about political thought and expression, all of which involves rhetoric, I have a much better understanding of it and what you can do with it, and what I don’t want to see the people running for things doing with it.

8. Economics matters. Still don’t understand it though. Paul Krugman is my guru. But I should probably pay more attention.

9. See above, re. physics and maths, which are really interesting, especially at that point where they meet theology and philosophy, but you need to have the basics down first. If only all physicists could write like Neal Stephenson did in Anathem.

10. It can still be hard to work out which friends you should make the effort to hang onto, and which you probably shouldn’t, but you shouldn’t get out of the game all together. Every so often you end up with the ones who come to visit for New Years and spend time drinking tea, reading novels and making up ludicrous top trumps games with you.

Happy New Year

The Maternal Unit apparently has no words to describe the slackness and old age of me, Mel and James, for we spent New Years Eve curled up in my sitting room with a large pile of books each, and several mugs of tea. We waved our arms vaguely in the air at midnight, read another chapter and went to bed. Oh, and we introduced James to High School Musical, mwahahahaha.

We did do stuff during the day yesterday. We went to play on the beach for a bit, and then went to Waterstones and Starbucks, as we do. For evidence – pliz to see photos.

Today, we have made approximately no plans, but there are still books… Best New Year ever.

Happy New Year to you too.

Bulgarian Weddings

I wholeheartedly recommend Bulgaria as a holiday destination. I wouldn’t recommend driving in Bulgaria quite so much, unless you have nerves of steel and enjoy driving on long windy pot-holed mountain passes where drivers (including articulated lorries) overtake at will, despite imminent hairpin bends. Those hills in the background of that shot, in fact. On one day trip, from Gabrovo to Plovdiv, we passed an overturned lorry on the way up and over the Shipka pass – fortunately (ha!) it just seemed to have overturned under the force of gravity rather than actually smashing into anything. Our return trip over the pass was made more interesting by and “automobile catastrophe” (pronounce it like it’s French, please), which meant that, in the dark, we had to go up and over the longer, windier, worse laid, older pass next door. So buses, they’re the way forward, especially since they’re often coaches, and you can shut your eyes and pretend that cars aren’t driving straight for you. Anyway, apart from the driving. Gorgeous scenery, stunning weather – pretty much 30-34 degrees everyday we were there – fabulous people. Plus, we got to stay at a place with a pool with a view.

So, the wedding. SO much fun. My mum’s godson Sean, who’s a South African, was marrying a Bulgarian girl. Therefore the FamilySwiv, plus G. as my plus one who wanted to come to Bulgaria, and the FamilyMurray travelled from their various locations in the UK and South Africa and descended upon a small village in central Bulgaria for the wedding event of the decade. It started at 8am, with the arrival of the groom (who’d been up at five to watch the Olympic swimming because he’s a Crazy Person) and best man, followed by the band, to start the party with music, rakia (the 40% proof Bulgarian brandy) and snacks. From there we processed up the road, after the band, to fetch the bride’s godparents to the wedding. The godparents do all the important wedding stuff for the bride in the ceremonies in Bulgaria. Then there’s more rakia and snacks, plus dancing – so the FamiliesSwiv and Murray were taught to dance Bulgarian style- hold hands, prance round in a circle with occasional steps flung in. It’s fairly straightforward, and quite a lot of fun – though more exhausting than you think it should be. Post-alcohol and chocolate breakfast, it was off to barter for the bride, piling into a fleet of cars, trundling up the road horns tooting wildly.

Sean and his best man had to barter for the bride to get her out of the house – I think they had to fill a shoe with chocolate coins and cash. Then Mischa had to do her own rituals, the ceremonial kicking over of a bucket of water, and smashing a plate full of barley and sweets (I have no idea why, but apparently she enjoyed the smashing) before we could head off to Gabrovo for the ceremonies. Yes, ceremonies plural. A civil marriage, followed by a church ceremony. All in Bulgarian, of course, which was funny ‘cos Mischa had to translate things for Sean so he knew what he was doing and promising. There’s a lot of ritual in both ceremonies – the same things too – candles, crowns, drinking from silver goblets – which is interesting, since it suggests that whoever came up with the need for the civil ceremony didn’t want to get rid of all the ritual along with the church ceremony. Not understanding, for anyone who didn’t have to promise anything wasn’t really a chore - a wedding is a wedding, despite differences in the ritual, and the singing in the church wedding was wonderful to listen to. And, apart from all the stuff the bride and groom, and the godparents had to do, it was remarkably informal in the church – without pews or many seats, the ‘congregation’ is free to move around and watch the ceremony from whatever angle they want.

Then of course, post-ceremonies it was reception time. Food, dancing, drinking, and so on. Except it wasn’t food and drink, then dance, with intermittent drinking, it was food, drink and dancing interspersed with each other for the whole of the reception, which means no getting full, and then dancing and feeling like you want to vomit. Huge amounts of fun, and of course the party went on back in the village after the reception officially ended. Late into the night. Naturally the next day was spent mostly by the swimming pool with a good book.