real magic

Last year while my dad was still in hospital recovering from the virus that almost killed him I became desperate to go to Paris. I was reading Deborah Levy, Lauren Elkin and Jean Rhys and Paris felt so present, so close. It was so close. Just a two hour train journey away. And though I did think about booking a trip for a coming weekend, in late November (but ultimately concluded I was being a little too impulsive while chaos continued to rage at home), it was there—the promise of Paris. And what a gift that was. To think about a future in which I might have fun, feel lighthearted enough to sit by the Seine at dusk with a bottle of red wine and talk about books and films. To have something to look forward to so purely. As I read about other women walking the streets of Montmartre or visiting galleries and old cinemas, or Levy’s sparse apartment in Monteparnasse where she wrote and cooked for new friends, I was able to escape my current reality and enter their’s. They offered me the gift of anticipation.

Christmas last year was such a strange time. We, as a family, were so relieved that dad was going to be okay that the word ‘relief’ doesn’t exactly capture the emotion. It felt like a rebirth. To genuinely believe one of your favourite people is going to die, to think about his funeral and where your mum is going to live without him and that you are going to need to invest in a huge amount of therapy in the year to come, and then to see his eyes open and his body grow stronger and his sense of humour return. It is the closest thing we can ever get to actual, real magic, I think. A miracle.

Even so, he was in hospital and I was so unbearably aware of the weight of loss we had globally experienced over the past two years. On Christmas Eve my mum, my brother and I watched the carol concert at Westminster Abbey on the television and I wept. I went to bed early that night, wrote in my little notebook how sad and heavy I felt, and fell asleep listening to Friends episodes, blurry headed with wine and a sleeping pill. On Christmas Day we went to the hospital to give dad his presents. We were only allowed inside in twos so whoever wasn’t in his room stood outside, waving through the window, looking after the children (my niece, 2, and nephew, 3 months) who were cold and really wanted to be at home with their presents.

This December I have been holding my breath. Desperate for only good things.

And reflecting. As we do when we approach a full stop.

I did go to Paris. T and I got the Eurostar from London St Pancras to Gare Du Nord on a bright morning in May and my dad drove us to the station. A satisfyingly full circle. It might have been quite moving if I wasn’t so worried we were about to miss our train and frustrated with my dad’s lackadaisical attitude to time keeping. In Paris we drank wine on little tables that faced out into the street, we walked along the Seine and had a picnic under the Eiffel Tower. I got too hot in the Louvre and was bemused by the queues to see the Mona Lisa. I loved slowly walking through the airy rooms in the Musee du Orsay. On the evening we arrived we dropped our bags at our hotel and walked through the Latin quarter, past Shakespeare and Company bookshop, over the bridge near Notre Dame and into Marais to find somewhere for dinner. The sun was going down and the sky was a perfect pink, impossible to replicate. I was completely happy. The next day I bought an old copy of some collected Jean Rhys stories from a bookshop and was able to clutch the book to me as I pictured her sipping coffee in the back of a cafe in Monteparnasse, collecting ideas for characters that would fill the pages of her novels.

I went to New York, too, after having the trip cancelled two years before in March 2020. It was, most probably, the best thing I’ve ever done. I have wanted to go to New York since I started watching television and films and reading endless books set in the cultural, literary, vibrating hum of the city. I wrote about the trip in another newsletter so I won’t go into it extensively now—but it made me feel like life was open to me. I hate flying and I get very anxious when outside my safe spaces. And yet I did something scary and brilliant and felt more alive than ever.

This year—2022—was a year of feeling alive. Of saying yes to things because saying no would be doing a disservice to my rebirth. I turned 30 and celebrated with my favourite people, bottles of Cremant, smoked salmon crostinis, games of Boggle in the garden with glasses of cold white wine, and swimming in the Scottish and Norfolk sea with jellyfish and seals and my new wetsuit. We went on our honeymoon to Italy and experienced the Tuscan hills for the first time. My breath was clean taken away by the cinematic views of poplar trees and sun-bleached villas. I spent time with my family in the South of France and was giddy when my mum and dad appeared through the Arrivals gate at Nice airport.

I am still deeply afraid but realising that that is just part of being and feeling alive. I know that, ultimately, the people I love and the art I consume will get me through anything. Reading books while my dad was in hospital somehow created a little space in my miserable brain that was only for looking forwards. I am growing that little space and gathering things to put in it. A writer’s description of a hot bath, a conversation between perfect strangers, the steam billowing from a cup of tea drunk outside in the cold air, provides a moment for the reader to contemplate the simple pleasure of being alive to bear witness to these things. The mind relaxes, as the images and words bury themselves inside. They say ‘I’m here. We’re here’.

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Happy Christmas. I truly hope you have a joyful one but, if it isn’t, that’s okay too. And then there is next year.

My plan is to upload a books in 2022 newsletter before the end of the year—hold me to it!