Early morning walks

While daily walks have become a non-negotiable for me, I would love to be the person who goes for a walk or a run first thing in the morning. Especially when working from home, as a pretend commute. And on days off.

At least once a week over the past three months I have got a sense of what it feels like to be that person. I was offered some part-time work in a neighbouring village for a few weeks on the days I would normally work from home (saving up for that external wall insulation!) that mainly requires me to just be there, so in the 90% of quiet time I can do my own (portable) work.

Since we share a car and the village isn't within walking distance, John drops me off on his way to work, meaning I arrive almost an hour early, and in that hour I walk to the next beach. It is wonderful - I get all the benefits of a walk and the sound and smell of the sea and the sublime colours of winter sunrises. The days I do this I feel less lethargic while sitting at the desk. And yet I haven't done it once on all the other days when I didn't have an extra hour 'imposed' on me in this way.

Habits take months to form (the 21 days is a myth, sadly), and this job will come to an end before that magic turning point might arrive, so I will need to rely on my willpower and overcome my 'inner pigdog', as the German language calls the lack of the former, to make it happen. I am a morning person, after all.

Wheelbarrow and bird house

The sun has been splitting the stones, an incentive to do the very few January jobs there are in the garden (this gardening column advised to simply take this month to read gardening books - sadly I am still very far from calling myself a gardener, but nearly all the books she recommends are on my to-read list). John's father gave us a new clothes line, which we baptised with four of my hand-wash only clothes, a dance of glittery silky dresses sparkling in the winter sun.

He also gave us a bird house, and John painted it with non-toxic paint, but so far there are no occupants. We may well have to find a new location for it among some yellow, as this colour, though muted, could attract predators where it is now.

I am sketching in my one-sketch-a-day and my regular sketchbook, but the only painting I have been doing lately is on skirting boards and walls. It feels overwhelming when I think of the entire house, but breaking it down into rooms and single-task thinking helps. Last week I became obsessed with caulking - who would have thought that fixing loose architraves and skirting could have such a grounding effect. I guess living in a house exposed to the West of Ireland winds tunes you in to the impermanence of anything man-built, and gaps and cracks and looseness heighten that sense.

A year ago the builders were at work, and progress since then (us left to our own devices) has been slow. The next six weeks will be the busiest of the year in my day job, coupled with a new illustration project with a very real deadline, which explains why I suddenly have this urge to get everything else done.

Books | The letters between Astrid Lindgren and Louise Hartung

 The German edition of the correspondence

 Louise would send Astrid pressed flowers and numerous gifts

The photo on the back cover shows the two women with an actor as Pippi Longstocking

This book of letters between the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, without whom my childhood wouldn’t have been the same, and her German friend Louise Hartung (who worked with children and was instrumental in Lindgren’s success in Germany; her vision was to heal a traumatised post-war youth with high-quality literature) was published last year*. 

A lot of the media reaction focused primarily on Louise’s open lesbian love for Astrid, which was never reciprocated. It is heartbreaking to read Hartung’s passionate and at times needy pleas to her friend, which were met with a detached response. Yet they continued to share a deep bond, formed when they traversed the ruins of Berlin, Hartung's city, together. Both women suffered episodes of melancholy and depression and both were capable of rapture at how wonderful life could be, and these feelings go hand in hand in these letters. The topic of death and the meaning of life comes up repeatedly, often triggered by a wry observation of Lindgren’s.

In general Lindgren’s letters are more measured and more in the traditional epistolary form initially, though she later opens up. Hartung’s letters are intense from the start. A bohemian intellectual and former singer, she had lived through two world wars and done extraordinary things: she was part of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s circle and involved in their Threepenny Opera, had hidden Jews in her summerhouse, been bombed out of her house in Berlin - a life story Lindgren, who thought herself ordinary, marvelled at from calm, neutral Stockholm.

Reading this book made me regret that I haven’t written more letters and renew my resolution to change that. I used to, but then it dwindled to the odd letter here and there. Lindgren apologises when more than two weeks pass before she writes to Hartung (who is offended when a letter remains unanswered for too long), and it makes me ashamed – make that two years, no twelve years for me! I have no idea how they found the time to keep the correspondence alive. Lindgren was fast becoming one of the world's best-loved writers of children’s fiction and would have had tons of correspondence through her work alone, as well as being there for her friends and family - in fact, she often mentions feeling overwhelmed by and torn between all the expectations and obligations -, and Hartung was equally hard-working and had a busy social life. And yet they loyally wrote to each other, over 600 letters in a time spanning eleven years, until Hartung’s death in 1965, which overshadows the reading of these letters. 

John bought the book for me on our mini-moon in the Moselle Valley, and it was a nice synchronicity to learn that Louise sent Astrid wines from the region, during a phase when the two exchanged excited notes on the many bottles of wine Louise sent from Berlin to Stockholm, disguised as ‘grape juice’ when she realised there were restrictions on posting alcohol. It appears that on one of their trips together they also visited my hometown.

It is all the sensory pleasures these women pepper their letters with that linger with me, the wine, being in nature (Hartung’s love of the sea and her gardens, Lindgren’s solitary walks in winter landscapes), art, the music they described so beautifully, all the books they shared, the thoughtful gifts, all of which often form the starting point for philosophical musings. Their correspondence can be read as a lesson in how to live well (even though both Lindgren and Hartung repeatedly bemoan the fact that they work too much, but of course that work formed an invaluable contribution to the world) - there is so much life and so much humanity in these two very different life stories that happened to converge in such a wonderful way for a decade.

*There doesn't seem to be an English translation (yet), unfortunately. Lindgren's diaries 1939-45 were published in English recently.

New year newness

Tim Lott's column in the Family section of the Guardian last week started with a sobering, though not surprising, observation - according to surveys of New Year resolutions, what people care about is themselves (apart from seeing more of friends and family, the top five concern me, me, me). Now there certainly is some truth in the belief that in order to a better person, we need to look after ourselves first, but it is still depressing (and I am aware I am writing this on a personal blog, which is part of the whole navel-gazing, self-improvement culture we live in). 

I haven't thought up any resolutions, but John set a good template, which consists of three SMART ones (lifestyle, creative and giving back) and one 'fluffy' one (i.e. vague and therefore probably hardest to do), and at least three of them have the potential to include the wider world. I need to think about mine.

The only 'newness' I have incorporated into this brand new year so far is cleaning the fridge, getting rid of paper (the only household chores I have felt fit enough for, as I have the flu), buying new music and starting a new sketchbook. Being sick has meant the luxury of listening to several Desert Island Discs episodes in a row and reading for hours. The programme had me in  tears several times, from George Michael's answer to why he was in a relatively good place (it was recorded in 2007) - "Nobody died on me...in years...it took years for me to believe that these blows weren't gonna keep coming" - to Emma Bridgewater talking about her mother's death, and in general just the sheer humanity pouring out of the guests (I loved Mary Robinson's episode).

It is of course an excellent source for finding or rediscovering songs (and books), and I have been listening to Rufus Wainwright's "Going to a Town" about the Bush administration (very timely again this month), one of George Michael's choices and a song he would later cover.

Going through a pile of cuttings, I ended up looking up different singers, which eventually led me to this heartbreaking video (more on the song and animation here), which includes drawings made by refugee and displaced children supported by CARITAS - all net proceeds from sales of the single go to Australia's ASRC (Asylum Seekers Resource Centre).

My sister knows me well and got me a sketchbook that is asking me to sketch every day, and I have a feeling that with this one, I will. My first sketch is of our small armchair by the stove in the kitchen, with the blanket my sister and brother-in-law gave us for Christmas last year and a cushion knitted by John's late grandmother, which is the object he chose from her house.