A Month in the Country

Doesn’t THAT sound nice? Instead we are all frantically finishing off work that’s got to be done before Christmas (or are we? I’ve kind of given up) and choking in bushfire smoke again (if you’re in Sydney).

Anyway. Hi! This is newsletter number 4, and you’re receiving it because you signed up for it here. Feel free to unsubscribe if you’d rather not get these missives!

But before you do that (or, hey, INSTEAD of doing that!), let’s get to that roundup of what’s going on.

News

Baby, there IS no news. (That I would like to talk about. What UK election? Never heard of it.) It’s Christmas and I am off to the beach for the next few weeks. Back in your inboxes on Friday 10th January.

The shoot for work I’ve been talking about happened on Saturday - it went swimmingly and I’m overjoyed with the photos. Will share them - and the interviews with the amazing subjects I did - in Feb!

And we went away to Patonga for the weekend, which was blissfully smoke-free and mainly consisted of eating too much, swimming at the beach and snoozing on the veranda. And occasionally sneaking a peek at the photos I was sent from the shoot.

What I’m reading

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr. Just LOOK at that gorgeous cover - I don’t think I’ve seen a nicer one for ages. Though there’s a glaring typo on the back cover that I can’t bear to photograph.

I was alerted to this delightful novella by the very first episode of the wonderful Backlisted podcast (sidenote: revisiting this reminded me of the fabulous “Leavis and Butthead” pun with which the hosts initially described themselves). It’s set a couple of years after World War I and is narrated by a conservation expert, still recovering from the trauma of the war, who’s got a job restoring a medieval mural in a church in the north of England. Spoiler: it’s not just the mural that ends up restored.

It’s a beautiful portrait of a small village coping with the introduction of a stranger - and the stranger coping with them, with all their quirks and oddities. There’s a lovely nostalgic haze over it, because it’s written from the vantage point of many decades after the events it describes. But even allowing for that, the perfect summer it describes - a sunny countryside Sunday school picnic glows jewel-like in the narrator’s memory - has all the characteristics of an idyllic moment in time. It never strays into sentimentality, though - Birkin, the penniless conservation expert, lives in the church’s belfry while he works on the mural, and Carr takes care to explain the toilet arrangements, which he has the vicar explain with great awkwardness. There is not, in my opinion, enough loo chat in most novels. I am ALL FOR IT.

Birkin’s work is described in delicious detail, and although he falls in love with someone beautiful and highly inappropriate, it’s the one-sided relationship he develops with the long-dead muralist that stands out, as the beauty and skill of the work reveals the mind - and fate - of the medieval painter.

Perhaps my favourite element of this novel is its understated humour (the church’s porch is furnished with stone slabs “polished by five hundred years rubbing by backsides of funeral parties faint from incense or remorse”).

I wish I could live in this book for twice as long - it’s so very short - but it shines, a perfect gem, just as it is.

There’s a 1980s film of it starring a young Colin Firth, as well as Kenneth Branagh and Natasha Richardson, which I must contrive to see some time.

Where I’m walking

Patonga. Although I wasn’t walking when I took this photo: I was lying on the outdoor sofa on the veranda and halfheartedly reading a book. Total relaxation.

I haven’t really been listening to any podcasts this week, so I’m going to leave it there. Happy Christmas and see you in January!