Oh. Oh.
It would appear that it's been over a year since I posted. And the longer you don't post, the more your hotly-anticipated re-entry to the blogosphere has to be mesmerising, huge, a re-invention, an announcement. (There's a chance that in my head I am Taylor Swift.) See, that's the problem when you spend a lot of time thinking about your blog, and a lot of time actually writing stuff for your thesis. The brain somehow conflates the two and in my mind I've been keeping all (both?) of my loyal readers regularly updated with a string of merry posts about all my doings. And what doings! Due in no small part to Dan's gung-ho-ness when it comes to planning anything, 2023 has been a very full, very busy year. The summer alone took me to Norfolk, Prague, Liechtenstein, Dorset, the Chilterns, the Cotswolds -- a quick look at Google Maps and some slightly shoddy calculations tell me that I actually travelled 4112 miles between June and the start of September, and virtually all of that was on trains. I've not wasted a second; in appropriately writer-y terms, 2023 so far has been an epic, a four-volume novel -- but in hindsight it shrinks down to a pamphlet. This year has just seemed to sneak by without anybody noticing it. (And I'm sure it's an absolutely brand-new, never-before-noticed phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you get older; please, don't rush in the comments to tell me how completely novel and original I'm being.) I'm thinking back to that long, cold winter -- Traitors was on the telly, Christmas decorations were on their way back to the loft, daffodils were right at the front in Tesco where tinsel and Quality Street now bloom. It all seemed set to last until May but it did eventually pass, and seemed more suddenly than usual to give way to floaty dresses and high heels sinking into lawns; suncream feeling slick behind your knees; pressing an icy glass of water to your pulse points; that watery, perfumed smell of strawberries; a sunhat feeling prickly on your forehead and sandals slipping on cobblestones. And now we're back at the two-hands-round-the-mug stage, in the 'I can't believe how dark it is?!' phase; marmaladey light on red bricks in the morning, plastic skeletons stuck on windows; the You've Got Mail bouquets of sharpened pencils; red hawthorn berries that still, even years later, make you think that it's surely soon time for a week off school; standing on a cold kitchen floor and putting the oven clock back an hour. Soon everybody will be posting their Spotify Unwrapped, advent calendar detritus and the leftover Bountys will be cleared away, we'll be doing the BBC News Quiz of 2023 and going 'was that seriously this year? No! Where's the time gone?'. Where indeed? And then guess what? GUESS WHAT. It all starts again. Cold slate roofs, Pancake Day, tiny green buds, then creamy elderflowers and BBQ smoke, garden furniture and seatbelts and train seats all hot to the touch. Then looking round the corner once more to stews and knitwear. It might race past quicker and quicker all the time but there's a real solidity to it. This time always comes again. And you know, if we lived in a world without seasons, a world where the sun set and rose at the same time every day, where time didn't really pass, all this would sound like the most unbelievable fiction. So, if proof were needed that I would be fantastically ill-suited to the showbiz world, this blogging hiatus does not end with a bang; no re-release, no new material From The Vault, no new project imminent.* Just a little potter through a short, roaming year. Buy some Christmas chocolate, throw open your windows to the air that's already freezing and smoky by six o'clock, listen for distant, echoey booms of early fireworks. Soak it all in. *At least... not yet.
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The official website of Yorkshire-made, Oxford-based writer Isabel Parkinson. Want fewer words and more pics? Follow me on Instagram!
(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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