moosifer jones’s lair & grouch – online home & blog of Mags L Halliday

• Rodents:
  Rats – 2
  Mice – 46 47
  Voles – 11
• Birds:
  Sparrows – 5
  Dunnocks – 1
  Robin – 1
  Ringed pigeon – 3
  Uncertain – 10
• Other:
  Frogs – 1
  Unidentifiable remains – 3

Like a Victorian romantic heroine, I’m prone to headaches at the moment. Fortunately, I don’t need to lie in a darkened room, take laudenum, or visit spiritualists for a laying on of healing hands. My attempted solution is instead a reduction in screen time, which means I’m starting to pick up speed again on my reading backlog.

Affinity
Sarah Waters
Virago, 2005 edition

In the time this has spent on my to be read shelf, I’ve read The Night Watch but for some reason this sat waiting until this weekend.

The novel is simply structured: two women are trapped by society. One, a young spiritualist, is literally imprisoned in Millbank for fraud and assault. The other, a lady of leisure, is mentally trapped by her spinster life with her mother in Cheyne Walk. Margaret has been depressed since her ‘friend’ Helen married her brother and her father died. A friend of her father suggests she may find use in visiting the poor wretches in the prison. At Millbank, she becomes drawn to Selina, the spiritualist, and finds her life reawakening as they plan to escape their entrapments.

As with a lot of Waters’ work, she plays with time in order to tell her story. Both Margaret and Selina’s stories are told through their diaries. Magaret’s is set in 1874, as she starts her journey into the prison, whilst Selina’s is set in 1872 in the months leading up to her arrest. The two stories, though, come together to reveal all at the end. I found this more satisfying than the ‘backwards’ narrative of The Night Watch which seemed to fizzle out at its conclusion. This explodes.

The spiritualist elements were well explored, and some of the examples mentioned are historically recorded elsewhere. Millbank prison (a panopticon design) is bigger than I’d previously thought. The choice of Cheyne Walk for Margaret’s family home is perfect: rich enough to hint at the family wealth whilst also within easy walking distance of Millbank. Overall, it evokes the period well, with fogs, snow and restrictive dresses. Margaret reads her mother Little Dorrit: a deliberate nod to another imprisoned Victorian angel. Is the book fast paced? No, but it packs meaning and I couldn’t put it down.

I keep meaning to finish all my annotations to my novels, but never do. Instead, here are some notes on Sovereign (available now in Iris Wildthyme & the Celestial Omnibus). This story started with a classic one line pitch and ended with me bundled into layers trying to write during the coldest winter I’ve experienced since moving back south from Yorkshire. The writing history is here. Some of the background notes – spoiler alert! – are below.
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Last night, Sébastian was being snooty about his food. At first I assumed it was the classic cat tactic of going off a type of food the minute you buy it in bulk to save money. Then I noticed he was sitting at the corner of the sofa, batting at something just out of my eyeline. A little baby mouse. Awww. And, ah well.

There was a bird last week. Well, some feathers and a leg. And a couple of bigger mice a little while back.

My neighbours were saying they have mice in their house at the moment, so I may remove Sébastian’s bell and let him earn his keep. Or kibble.

• Rodents:
  Rats – 2
  Mice – 43 46
  Voles – 11
• Birds:
  Sparrows – 5
  Dunnocks – 1
  Robin – 1
  Ringed pigeon – 3
  Uncertain – 9 10
• Other:
  Frogs – 1
  Unidentifiable remains – 3

I’ve been working on the garden a lot, and pulled a lot of rotting stuff out of the pond this morning. I disturbed at least two frogs, but I think Sébastian has had the usual “never try that again” encounter with frogs and will leave them be.

I always regard Devonian craft fairs with a certain amount of caution. When living in Devon, you get rather used to seeing vile slipware, felt-based things and artisan clothing that only middle class women with a lot of money can afford. However, bigmagpie and I risked a trip to the highly recommended Bovey Tracey Contemporary craft fair.

On the downside, there was vile slipware. I’m sure some people like it. I even have an awesome slipware pie dish that Law gave us as a wedding gift which I love. But an awful lot of it is just dull, and makes a virtue out of being slipshoddy. I’d question it as being contemporary, as well, since the designs were either classic Devonware or 70s hippy. I don’t know if the format is intrinsically reactionary or not, but it’s not my idea of good design.

On the upside, after our initial browse we went on to buy things. It took time to seek out the kind of quirky design work I like, but I ended up buying a year’s worth of stationery from various designers and a piece of art for my stairs.

• Helaina Sharpley does wirework art, and also had some cute cards of her work ideal for sending to a tea-loving friend.
   
• Teresa Green is an illustrator who also prints her work onto home goods such as teatowels and aprons as well as purses and bags. I got some more cards here.
   
• Julia Manning isn’t an obvious like for me, but I liked her bird drawings and her cards featured fragments of her nature paintings.
   
• Janine Partington is an enameller, one of the crafts I wish I could devote some time to as I loved it in metalwork at school. Her cards are again details of her works. I particularly liked her copper series of designs.
   
• Sarah Roberts is another printmaker with an eye on the natural world and a keeness for silhouettes of plants.
   
• Rachel Eardley is another strong illustrator. I toyed with the Tunnocks print for an age before realising I have too many things waiting to be framed already and bought a set of cards instead.
   
• Jennifer Collier’s stand was initially too busy for us to take a look at, but on the second pass of the marquee we got in. I bought a small canvas to hang with another objet trouvé that hangs in my stairs. Actually, most of my first flight of stairs is decorated with objet trouvé including an artwork I made myself. Hmmm… Anyway, her work was a delight and I’ve even taken away an idea for how to store my various hairbands, fascinators and vintage hats.

I came back out with 25% of my budget for the day intact (even after a savoury crepe for lunch and a yummy carrot cake as a mid-afternoon snack). I’m not sure I’d go every year, but it was worth digging around for the good stuff.

Confirmation today from the publisher that copies of Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus start shipping by the end of this very week.

For anyone who has missed previous posts about it, it contains my story Sovereign. I honestly think it’s the sort of story that, when I first started writing, I imagined would flow freely and easily. After two decades of discovering how naïve that was, I did at last write the sort of story I wanted to write. The whole experience was a lot harder – and a lot colder – than I expected but is logged in all its pettiness here. Could it be better? Of course. Every writer looks at a piece once it’s been frozen in print and comes up with a hundred tiny tweaks that they would have made if only they’d seen them earlier.

You can order the collection via the publisher’s website, and it contains many other fabulous stories such as Iris Wildthyme y Señor Cientocinco contra Los Monstruos del Fiesta. ¡Ay, Carmela! Hopefully at some point over the summer I’ll detail the references in Sovereign – every name has a meaning in it.