A Brave New World

The Fourteenth Sunday COVID Blog.

I really wasn’t sure where to start today, it has been a strangely lethargic week in the sense that I have found any thing other than work difficult. I did however manage to finally finish reading two books.

I have been reading the Sally Rooney bestseller ‘Normal People’ I have family and friends who have extolled its virtues and I recently watched the adaptation on BBC Three. It was a novel that I read in stages, I think perhaps I was expecting the language to be of a different landscape.

I know I am not alone in highlighting words and quotations in books, my copy of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird Bird’ is covered in highlighter pen because the language is so beautiful. I also have a book in which I write quotations. These phrases are from many sources; family, friends, acquaintances and strangers and I always write the author’s name next to their words. I often write the meaning behind each offering too, especially if it belongs to a humorous story, just in case I forget. I have such a quote:

“I don’t know why I’m worrying about my hair, when my face looks like a tomato!”

There is a whole back story but the main point is that a friend of mine blushes very easily, when I read this quote I immediately smile because the whole incident ended in peels of laughter, words matter.

I treasure language that evokes an emotion, everything from happiness to sadness and anything in between. I think this novel took me a while to read because the narrative is so destructive, I feel the same about ‘Wuthering Heights’ another novel I needed to read in sections, which proves they are defining and magical stories.

Although I did not highlight as much as I expected, I did highlight several phrases in the closing paragraph. One being a ridiculously simple sentence which I know has been said before, but it has never felt more important at this present time.

“People can really change one another”

I am hoping our world will listen, I grow ever disheartened at the media and humanities inability to be kind, to change, and to follow rules. However, in between the cracks I continue to search for the flowers and as always, they are there.

The second book I finished was a novel called ‘Money to Byrne’ a play on words by the author David Byrne. Not my usual genre at all but I was at school with the author, we shared classes and a Form Class. When I began to read, it reminded me of something I had told the students in my Tutor (the name now given instead of Form) when I first met them in Year 7 (their first year). I asked them to look around at each other and explained that for the next five years, these would be the faces they would see every day. I continued explaining that the next five years would go quickly and that when they left school, they may not ever see each other again or necessarily be friends, but they wouldn’t ever forget sharing this experience.

The reason I gave this little speech was in homage to my own Form Teacher who said the same thing when we too, were tiny ‘First Years.’

My lovely Tutor left school this year and although I lost a few pupils to other classes and a change was made in their last year, on the day they left, one of my original students said “Miss I haven’t forgotten, it went so quick.”

So reading this book evoked those memories and it was odd to think that I once knew the protagonist in the story which is a true account of a documented financial scam that ended in Asia, in a police cell and sounds like the back drop for a movie. There was a lot of financial wizardry that I didn’t fully understand, not because it wasn’t explained but because I’m far more at home with Shakespeare than the FT and the Dow Jones. This despite once being a member of ‘The Stock Exchange Operatic and Dramatic Society’ that however, is another story…

We all live such different lives which makes us unique but we will always share a part of our lives with others, we walk in different directions but occasionally those paths cross before we then continue.

People need people and we need to look after each other in this ‘Brave New World’ brave, because we still do not understand nor can we fully comprehend the future which now we seem, to be slowly unraveling.

Stay safe along each path,

Joy xxx

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