Vuosi sitten täytin neljäkymmentä ja päätin sen kunniaksi polkaista käyntiin blogini ensimmäisen oman lukuhaasteen. Elämä, kerta kaikkiaan! -lukuhaasteessa luettiin laajalla skaalalla elämäkerrallisia teoksia. Luin haasteeseen yhteensä 23 kirjaa. Nyt kun katson kirjalistaani, sieltä puuttuu kokonaan kirjakauppojen elämäkertahyllyjä yleensä dominoivat julkkis-, urheilija- ja poliitikkoelämäkerrat, siis ne miesten kasvot mustalla taustalla. Lukemani kirjojen sankarit ovat toisenlaisia. Vain […]

Tuesday, 8 July 2008 The phrase ’rollercoaster of emotion’ gets a lot of airtime in obs and gynae but I’ve never seen the big dipper hurtle round its loop quite as fast as today. Called to the Early Pregnancy Unit by one of the SHOs to confirm a miscarriage at eight weeks – he’s new […]

If the fashion in which I applied to and signed on for the Mongol Derby was characteristically thoughtless, the event itself would, perversely, leave me deep in thought. Grasses and a blue-domed sky. Bodies and wind and rain and pain. Wide, open prairies, and 25 ponies saying, ’Who are you?’ and ’Who are we?’ By […]

Across the fields in the half-light I could just make out something moving in the distance, a flash of white against the darkening trees. It was a barn owl, flying low through the dusk, following the path of the river, heading straight for the Mill, heading straight for us. I walked back down the long […]

Pian sen jälkeen isäni toi minulle Macintosh-tietokoneen. Hän nosti laatikon takapenkiltä, vei sen huoneeseeni ja laittoi lattialle. ”Katsotaanpa”, hän sanoi. ”Miten tämä mahdetaan avata?” Ikään kuin hän ei olisi tiennyt. Aloin epäillä, oliko hän sittenkään keksinyt kyseistä tietokonetta. Huoneeni kiiltävällä puulattialla oli ainoastaan parvisänky. Ikkunasta heijastuva auringonvalo muodosti suunnikkaanmuotoisia valokeiloja, joissa pölyhiukkaset kieppuivat villisti. Isä […]

All the way home on the train I thought of Dad and the terrible mistake I had made. I’d thought that to heal my great hurt, I should flee to the wild. It was what people did. The nature books I’d read told me so. So many of them had been quests inspired by grief […]

Nearly every person you will read about is deeply flawed. Some have tried to murder other people, and a few were successful. Some have abused their children, physically or emotionally. Many abused (and still abuse) drugs. But I love these people, even those to whom I avoid speaking for my own sanity. And if I […]

Years before, I had had a lover who was a welder. As a gift he once welded me the single most beautiful object that I own. It is a palm-sized box made of Plexiglas, with several stacked layers of blue-greenish broken glass sealed inside. The box, he explained to me, is the love. It is […]

From my father I had learnt that books were to be either adored or exiled. Books that were of God – books written by the Mormon prophets or the Founding Fathers – were not to be studied so much as cherished, like a thing perfect in itself. I had been taught to read the words […]