A Useful Day

Tuesday, which was supposed to be sunny and bright, trickled in, a smir of cold, wet mist and haar.  How very grey-white and useful of it. 

A good excuse to stay home and read books.  A day out is wonderful, two fabulous, but staying home on a day that’s full of November, is one of my favourite things, and anyway, there were chores to be done. 

Have recently bought two new (to me) books by Alan Garner.  Honestly, I had assumed he was no longer living, as I had read his books so long ago.  ‘The Owl Service’ was one of the first school books I carried on reading past the chapter set for homework.  I wouldn’t say he was a favourite author when I was a child, more a beguiling one.  His books didn’t exactly frighten, but they gave a weird mood, a weird feeling after reading them.  Like they had captured you, in some time-stopping way.  Pulling you in, like Alice, falling down the hole.  (What was she thinking, drinking from that bottle?)  Vortexing into another world, you didn’t really want to be involved with.  They made you day-dreamy and pensive, staring out of windows, watching the green men faces in trees.  Like the psychogeography of ancient places, something calling that you can’t quite make out, can’t quite hear on the wind.  Something that could make you shine or swallow you whole.  Often, they made me feel like I was trapped, immobile, something taking my will away. 

They still do. 

Am curious to read those early ones again.

‘Treacle Walker’ and ‘Thursbitch’.   Quick and moody useful-day reads.  Something melancholic in them.  Just the thing for a wet-mist Tuesday while Davey pressures the stew into submission. 

“It was a blue-grey day.  No use to anyone”. *

Totally get that.

*Credit ‘Treacle Walker’, Alan Garner. 2021.  4^th Estate.  2022 edition, Pg53.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmlSjTv-3Gw

Credit: ‘Thursbitch’.  Alan Garner. Vintage 2004. 

Credit: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. Lewis Carrol.  McMillan.  1865.