she had changed her skin

We started our NCT classes last night so this quote felt right.

'After Molly's birth, Lorna lay on her side and gazed at the baby, and Molly stared back with wide-open eyes and the strange unearthly look of the newborn, as though, Lorna thought, she had just arrived from some mysterious place. But when Lorna got out of bed and crept over to the chest to get a glass of water she glanced at herself in the mirror and saw that she too had that look, she was not the person that she had been yesterday, she had changed her skin.' Penelope Lively Consequences

baby

come what may

We're slowly gathering our thoughts on what we need for TT and as this increases, and my tummy it's all becoming more real. I'm very glad pregnancy is nine months.

'Lorna could not imagine this baby. The world is full of babies, but she had never much noticed them. In nine months time - no, less, there would be a baby that was of immediate personal relevance. Her baby, their baby. And she could not grasp the fact, she could not conjure up any baby. Her body was in a state of disorder: no monthly bleeding, swollen and tender nipples, she began to feel nausea. It was as though she had been taken over by an alien force, and was now headed in some unimaginable direction, programmed to bring this about, come what may.' Penelope Lively Consequences

baby

Sunshine & Campari

Slightly summed up my birthday weekend...

"The thing is,' she said, high on sunshine and Campari,' Penelope Lively Consequences


sunshine
Hoping your weekend is full of sunshine and....

A Partnership of Delight

Four years ago today Warmth and I had our first date...

'In the weeks that followed, Molly walked into another life. There was then, and there was now. Her entire past self seemed like someone else. a person who had been fine, who had been content enough, but also quite ignorant, who did not know. Now, she was the person who knew, who knew how it was to be one of two, half of a partnership of delight, who knew the exquisite pleasure of anticipating the phone call, the uprush of joy when you saw him coming down the street or stepping off a train, or looking at you from the bed.' Penelope Lively Consequences

are so happy

And in another year everything will be different yet again.

A quote for New Year's Day.

'She thought a year ago I would never have dreamed...that we could be here, like this, that I would feel as I do, that I could have become a new person. And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.' Penelope Lively Consequences

reflections

How do you feel about last year?

I shall take a building

Visiting lots of churches, walking around a corner and finding another church made me think about this passage.

"So how am I to present Him - this invisible all pervasive catalyst? How am I to suggest to my reader... The extraordinary fact that for much of recorded time most people have been prepared to believe in the presidency over all things of an indefinable unassageable power?
I shall take a building. A building shaped like a cross, furnished neither for habitation nor defence. I shall multiply this building by a thousand, by ten thousand, by a hundred thousand. It may be as small as a single room; it may soar far into the sky. It may be old or it may be new; it may be plain or it may be rich; it may be stone or it may be of wood or it may be of brick or mud. This building is in the heart of cities and it is in the wild places of earth. It is on islands and in deserts and up on mountains. It is in Provence and Suffolk and Tuscany and Alsace and in Vermont and Bolicia and The Lebanon. The walls and furnishings ofthis building tell stories; they talk of kings and queens and angels and devils; they instruct and they threaten. They are intended to uplift and to terrify. They are an argument made manifest." Penelope Lively Moon Tigee

After the wedding

'After the wedding, they had left London. There they had learned one another. They had learned every inch of their bodies; they had learned every look, every tone, every inflection of the voice; they had learned one another's tastes, thoughts, responses.' Penelope Lively Consequences @
One year on from our wedding we've moved, from West London to South East London. This flat is where we have learned about each other. I have learned about me, I have learned about us.

Sorry slipped back into memory land wth this post, but I do love this quote, and Penelope Lively too.

The Library

'... the library was a place of silent discord and anarchy, it's superficial tranquility concealing a bable of assertion and dispute. Fiction is one student lie - or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is pushing a product. As for autobiography... And all this is just fine. That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return.' Penelope Lively Consequences

library

library

Since reading a biography of Marie Antoinette I've been thinking about fiction, non-fiction, biography. I most definately prefer fiction but I'm coming round to biography. It may take a while to reach non-fiction. How about you?

The second part of this quote also strikes a chord. How true. A good book is one which puts you down somewhere and from whence you never entirely return....

Where are you returning from?