A Winter Walk

One of the nice things about living near Edinburgh is that it doesn't take us very long to get out into the countryside. There are all kinds of river walks and disused railway lines that have been turned into bicycle and walking trails.

Today B.A. and I went for a long country walk, ending up in the town of Dalkeith. Unfortunately, I spent the first two miles or so having a meltdown about double-taxation. We are hoping to pay off the mortgage early and invest for retirement with my salary, but so far my salary seems to be subject to the taxes of two countries, plus National Insurance contributions for them both.

My meltdown was caused by B.A.'s tax statement, which said that both he AND his employer had contributed to the National Insurance, the combined sum being larger than his taxes. As my North American employer, obviously, doesn't contribute to the British NI, how much NI am I going to have to pay?

It makes me frightened and angry and sure something must be wrong. Canada and the UK have a tax treaty, apparently to prevent people like me from being taxed twice. I got an (expensive) accountant to cope with the UK tax laws, and now I think I'll have to get a (guaranteed less expensive) tax firm in Canada to wrestle my money back from Revenue Canada.

Meanwhile B.A. swears up and down that the UK National Pension will not disappear when we are old and that being a pensioner is not the same thing as being on "benefits" (i.e. welfare). "We're paying into the system, and it's our money," he says.

B.A. clearly has never tried to draw on unemployment insurance, which I used to believe was "our money". I have, in Canada, and it was an utterly humiliating experience. I also worked in a Canadian welfare office, and I probably signed a confidentiality agreement*, so all I'll say about that is that you never, ever, ever, want to be dependent on The State for food, warmth, and a roof over your head.

Meanwhile, ending up in a nursing home can also be very unpleasant, not only because of neglect but also because of this.

Anyway, B.A. begged me to stop ruining our country walk with catastrophic thinking, so I turned off that part of my brain. Naturally I wish I hadn't stopped caring about money when I went to theology school, but regrets don't reduce taxes.

It was cold, but the countryside was nevertheless green and beautiful, for this is Scotland after all, and eventually I cheered up. We reached Dalkeith (chipped but charming to Canadian eyes) and looked around for somewhere to get bacon rolls. Greasy spoons being absent from the High Street, we investigated the in-store cafe of Morrisons, which is a national cut-price grocery chain. Result! Morrisons was serving breakfast items (like bacon rolls) until 3 PM.

We got our bacon rolls, a pot of tea, and a mug of cappuccino for the low, low price of £7.60 ($13 Canadian), which might not strike you as a low, low price, but this is the UK. And the amusing thing, when we looked around, was the large number of couples also amiably munching on breakfast items and drinking from mugs. Many were old, but some were middle-aged, and it struck us that this could be the Saturday afternoon "dating" venue of choice for the married denizens of Dalkeith.

I didn't think it was a particularly tasty bacon roll, but I did enjoy the idea that married couples can contentedly eat out as cheaply as possible whereas dating people have to stick to sophisticated joints, so as not to look cheap, or indeed like the sort of boring people who will end up eating bacon rolls in Morrisons.

(Incidentally, the next-door-neighbours, who are long-term renters, are loudly singing pop songs again. It must be Saturday night.)

Anyway, as B.A. says, we have at least another 20 years of employment before us, so I should not worry about being taxed into poverty or sexually assaulted in a U.K. nursing home before I am inevitably euthanised.  Also I admit that getting the old-age pension from the government cannot really be like collecting Canadian unemployment insurance benefits because nobody chivvies the elderly to go back to work ASAP.

Bus fare home was £3.40 (£5.80 Canadian).

*Update: Worst memories from working in welfare office:

5. A  male cop supervising cheque day told me that one of our clients, a pleasant woman, used to be a "crack whore."

4. A man I knew was on trial for murder that day showed up at my window. (Manager: "So why do you need a break now?")

3. Realising that the shell of a woman at my window was the mother of a famous murder victim.

2. A formerly employed, formerly solvent woman, now very ill, saying over the phone, "But that was my nest-egg" after learning that as a dependent on the state she wasn't allowed to keep it.

1. A female cop screaming at a lunatic to "apologise to these ladies" for his bad language when we had the situation well at hand, thank you very much.

We dealt with homeless people, mentally ill people and actual crooks all the time, but the only client who upset me as much as those two cops was the killer. (He was acquitted--to the shock of almost all involved--minutes before he arrived at my window.)

Update 2. The killer suddenly died a year to the day of his acquittal, I have just discovered.

Hats vs Minimalism (+ Chocioły)

Chochoł

This week I read Goodbye, Things by a Japanese minimalist named Fumio Sasaki. It is an entertaining read, and I suspect it was cobbled together from his blog.  The photographs are inspiring, too: Saskaki shows what his bedroom looked like when he was a miserable materialist, then what it looked like when it was down to simple furniture, and finally what it looked like when he got rid of all furniture except a fold-away futon mattress and achieved tranquility.

I am somewhat envious of Sasaki--especially as his apartment has honey-coloured wood floors throughout. Our flat has wall-to-wall carpeting, and B.A. says it must stay for the sake of our downstairs neighbour. According to the internet, the noise of upstairs neighbours thumping around is one of the most niggling strains in British community life.

Nevertheless, I am doing what I can to rid ourselves of all unnecessary belongings. This week I made two trips on foot to a charity shop with bags of books, bedding and kitchen utensils. A suitcase of summer clothes now lives in the shed. The sitting-room is still, however, festooned with artificial owls: owl prints on the walls, owl cushions on the chairs, brass owls on the side table, ceramic salt-and-pepper shaker owls on the kitchen table, painted owl on the china coffee cup on the leather-topped side table I said we could keep after all.

That the leather-topped table survived the purge is evidence I love my husband more than minimalism. Meanwhile, he finally glued the pieces together so that the table would stop falling part every time I touched it, so I am feeling more friendly towards it.

I also seem to love hats more than minimalism although the fun of buying two new winter hats online (on special!) wore off almost as soon as the postwoman delivered the box this morning. Still, one must have winter hats, and I have a bad habit of losing at least one wool beret every year. For a less formal/old-lady look, I also bought an olive-coloured corduroy fisherman's/fiddler's cap. At 59 cm it is a bit snug, but "extra-large" (61 cm) was too big.

This morning I looked at the hats crowded in our bedroom closet with some dismay. They are as following:

1. pale-green and black bespoke mini-hat for cocktail parties and weddings;
2. large royal blue straw hat for weddings;
3. enormous brown "straw" (actually starched paper) hat for hot climes;
4. navy blue French Scout hat for hiking (at 60 cm just a touch too big), except it looks out of place everywhere except in France or at super-trad Girl Guide camp;
5. delightful confection of black straw, black net, and blue-and-green feathers for cocktail parties and weddings;

 plus

very posh-looking pink hat my youngest sister bought for a wedding in England and I am keeping for her in case there are other English weddings; and
white Panama hat I bought B.A. for hot climes

In addition, I have 6. an open-work crocheted beret which is totally unsuitable in wet or cold weather,  7. a blue beret my mother knitted and now 8. a new forest green beret and  9. this snazzy fiddler's cap.

B.A. has two green tweed caps, size 57 cm. I feel vaguely ashamed that my head is 2.75 cm larger than my husband's. My theory is that he was built along nimble Pict lines, whereas I am a lumbering (if short) Viking woman.

Meanwhile, it is very difficult to find women's hats that fit my large head, the principal reason why I am loath to get rid of any of my occasional-wear hats. I haven't been to a cocktail party in years, but there is a chance more of my friends and acquaintances will marry.

Come to think of it, I may rid myself of the bepoke mini-hat, for anyone with as big a head as I do, let alone the bizarrely thick hair, has no business wearing a mini-hat. The phrase "organ-grinder's monkey" comes to mind.

I am also reminded of the Chochoły from a Polish play called Wesele ("The Wedding Reception"*). Chocoły are either animated bushes wrapped in straw or living haystacks. I love the concept for they epitomise the strangeness of Poland and other countries east of the Oder: the unfamiliar kings and queens, the bizarre new monsters, Christmas trees hung upside-down, fearless mushroom-picking, etc. Wesele is pleasantly weird, too, as you will discover if you watch the film.

When Polish Pretend Son was planning his wedding, I asked if there would be a Chochoł to haunt the proceedings.

"You will be the Chochoł," said PPS, and so I was, only in blue, not straw.  

Chochoł

*This is usually translated as "The Wedding", but that is not strictly accurate.

Update (noted in hall cupboard): 10. Faux-fur winter hat for east of Oder--or west of Yonge Street--only.

Update 2: I have taken the mini-hat and enormous brown hat to a charity shop, along with a potato peeler, a silk Chinese blouse, a few owl figurines, and a large, rolled-up, deep-pile green rug. B.A. hated the rug, so he is delighted.

Dinner Party Reflections

We had a belated Martinmass dinner last week (without the traditional goose, however, as they are raised hereabouts solely for Christmas) with four guests.  One  guest explained that he would not have seconds of soup because he followed Stoical practises, and I was delighted to have met a practising Stoic. I have been reading William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, and I think a return to Christian Stoicism is the way to go.

I think this in part because I complain much too much lately, but also because I have been battling some sort of eczema for the first time in my life, and it makes me feel like Job. Poor old Job lost everything and everybody except (irony) his annoyed wife and a few judgmental friends and THEN was afflicted with boils.  

For the first time in my life, incidentally, it occurs to me that Job's wife lost everything and everybody, too. She wasn't afflicted with boils, but she probably had to wake up to the sound of Job scratching away at his boils. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Horrible. 

Fortunately we have bought two nice secondhand bookcases and have finished putting all our possessions away and have hung up our pictures, so I have less to complain about. Also, I have been following the Stoic advice to imagine the flat burning down, so as to feel more grateful for it. In order to appreciate what you have, it is a good practice to imagine how much worse life would be without it. When my eczema clears up, I will think about having had eczema, so as to even more enjoy not having it. 

This negative visualisation works with people, too. On my father's 40th birthday, I was suddenly seized with a terrible fear he might die of old age at any minute. He's still going strong in his late 70s, but for over 30 years I have not allowed myself to take this for granted. My mother had a stroke at 50, so for over 20 years I have also not taken my mother's life for granted, either.  I hadn't realised that this was considered a healthy Stoic practise, however. 

In the 1980s, we were occasionally reminded by priests that we could die at any minute, and indeed we were all still alarmed by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust. Middle-age should therefore taste sweet to the children of the 1970s and 1980s, for it was not certain then that we would ever attain it.  Meanwhile, one of the most stupendous moments of my life was sitting in a Catholic radio studio in Warsaw being interviewed about Seraphic Singles (or, actually, Anielskie Single) because such a thing would have been beyond my wildest Iron Curtain-era dreams.

Another Stoic discipline suggested by A Guide to the Good Life is to eschew luxury and to value poverty. At the same time, however, you have to work hard serving humanity in one form or another, doing the best you can and becoming the best you can be, which often translates into having enough money for at least a simple existence. 

The emphasis is therefore on what you have, rather than what you haven't, with a primary interest in one's character. So I am going to try to become more Stoical by giving up complaining--which will be easier if this new steroid cream works and the dust mites, which I am currently slaying, really are to blame for these horrible spots. Scratch, scratch. 

Legal in Poland

Emptying the Attic Flat in the Historical House, aka Our Home of Nine Years, has been a difficult and painful job. Thank heavens I read Marie Kondo in 2017 and spend considerable time and effort getting rid of as much stuff as I could part with. Had I not done this, emptying the Attic Flat, which is at least twice the size of our new flat, would have been even more daunting. 

So far we have called a Man & Van service twice, a dear friend has brought over 2 carloads of stuff, another dear friend has helped move boxes of books down the stairs, into her car and then into her own cellars twice, and this morning three young men from a removals company turned up and took away everything we didn't want. 

By then the Attic Flat was looking rather empty. As B.A. showed the men around to tell them what not to take away, I suddenly remembered Something Illegal I had hurried shoved on the bedroom shelf weeks ago.

"Ahem," I said. "We have um, an illegal thing from Poland, that was left by a Polish guest, that um, forgot it was illegal here and um...."

"Oho!" exclaimed the leader of the removals gang, who all had Easter Road accents, such as I personally only ever hear in the Easter Road football stadium. "Whatever you do, don't give it to---."

But it was too late for an eager hand shot up and seized the Illegal Thing and curious eyes looked briefly at the word "Policjny" on the label before the Illegal Thing disappeared into a deep pocket. And I seriously hope it has permanently joined nunchucks and a ninja star and various other curios on a shelf or box for showing off to friends instead of being earmarked as a Friday night companion. 

The other object of interest to the removals gang that I know of was also left by the Polish guest. The leader of the gang found it on a shelf in the now ex-library and asked me if I wanted it. It was a small white statue of a famously ugly philosopher having a think, and I did not want it. 

"Who is it?" asked the leader.

"Socrates," I said. 

"Who?" 

"The Greek philosopher."

"I like it," said the mover. "I'll keep it on my desk." 

It is amusing to wonder what other flotsam and jetsam disappeared into pockets as I knelt in the ex-dining room wrapping up wine glasses. I was called in to examine the hall wardrobe (which belongs to theHouse and when we finally found the key, we found an elderly newspaper inside) because it was filled with too many nice jackets. There were at least four fleeces and three tweed coats, a moth-eaten university scarf, a pair of old shoes and a rather good brown waxed jacket.  I was pretty sure that B.A. had abandoned them, but the leader of the moving gang thought they were too good to throw away.

"My husband hasn't thrown any clothes out since uni," I said but phoned B.A. anyway to be sure. He was sure--he had already brought as many tweed jackets, shoes, scarves, etc., that he thought would fit. So it is also amusing to imagine the gang in front of the House trying on B.A.'s pale green tweed jackets for size. The boys were wiry rather than muscular, so they might actually have fit. 

And now the Historical Attic is empty, save for two piles of stuff (mostly wine-glasses), the repro-Jacobean sideboard, the china cabinet and nine blessed palm crosses we haven't burnt yet. Blessed palm crosses are a pain as one cannot just throw them out, of course. Some years ago my mother banned them from her house, and now I can see why.   

Good-bye to the furniture...

Today the antique dealer's Polish boyfriend and his equally strong buddy came by the Historical House to take most of the nicest pieces of furniture we still have in the Historical Attic. I wasn't there for the epic removal down three flights of very old stairs, but B.A. said it went very smoothly.

I was there this morning, cleaning out drawers. Although I am becoming minimalist and there is no space for it, I am a little sad thinking about the loss of B.A.'s great-grandmother's old desk. It wasn't a grand desk--the very thin veneer was flaking off,  ]the original drawer knobs had long since disappeared, and it was too small for a full-time journalism job. But it was my first desk in Scotland, and I wrote an awful lot on it, and it was B.A.'s last piece of his family's furniture.

What else went? An oak chest of drawers with a mirror, a painted screen, the cane-backed chair that lived in the bathroom, two inlaid tables, a glass-topped coffee table, a pine chest of drawers. a Victorian kneehole desk that was really too low but fit in the guest room, an elm stool.

Mostly I feel badly that B.A. had to give up his furniture.  However, there is some comfort in the fact that he will get some money for it, and it will presumably go to homes, good or bad.  B.A. was adamant that the furniture was not going to end up in a skip.  When I tried to get rid of our good dining-room table a couple of weeks ago--it wouldn't go through the hall door of the new place---my kind friend helped me stuff it in the back of her car and drove to charity shop after charity shop in the rain.

I couldn't find a charity shop that would take it. My pal would have driven me to the dump, but I couldn't bare the thought of telling B.A. we had thrown "such a good table" in the landfill. So we took it back to the Historical House, and I put it in an outbuilding. Hopefully someone will be able to take it apart, and then we will be able to get it through the door.

Another reason why I don't like losing the furniture is that it makes me think of families on their way down, like James Joyce's family. However, as property owners we are presumably on our way up and really have lost only our Historical House-derived delusions of grandeur. When you are the sole tenants of a 17th/18th manor house, it is very easy to feel like you own it!

As always I am comforted by the thought of the garden. Although we don't have room for flocks of furniture, we do have room for two people---especially with a long garden rolling out below our windows.

The Indestructible Denim Maxi-Skirt of Feminine Traddery Redux

A bad thing happened to the Indestructible Denim Maxi-Skirt of Feminine Traddery while we were in the New Town: I put it in the dryer.

Alas! Somehow the zipper got terribly stuck afterwards, and when B.A. tried to unstick it, it broke.

Quite apart from my affection for the Hitherto Indestructible Denim Maxi-Skirt of Feminine Traddery, the accident had serious ramifications for my minimal wardrobe. I find those "capsule wardrobe" posts on minimalism blogs quite amusing, for they contain many more clothes than I have now.  

That said, I envy nuns their habits, and my ideal is to have one hard-wearing skirt and 6 T-shirts for week-days, one nice dress for Sundays (per season), one suit for the very rare occasions I have to dress professionally, and a knock-out dress for evening parties.

How far I have come from my seventeen magazine reading days when my dreamiest daydream involved a walk-in closet decked with an endless array of designer clothes.

The trad women I know best my age or younger prefer to always wear skirts and never trousers*, and I have felt like a traitor wearing grey summer slacks for the past month, but I more-or-less had to because of the gaping wound in the Hitherto Indestructible Denim Maxi-Skirt of FT.

After pawing through racks in charity shops and looking online for another one, preferably the exact same make and size, I decided that the most economical and simple thing to do would be to take out the broken zipper and put in a new one.  So I took out the old zipper and bought a new one (£2.05) and have been putting it into the IDMSFT with the running backstitch.

The fact that I am sewing is evidence of how badly I want to be frugal.

While putting in this zipper, though, I see that the denim is actually wearing thin here and there and so even with  the new zip the IDMSFT really isn't I. Therefore I probably won't go the whole hog and attempt to dye it back to its original indigo.

Garden Note: I read last night that sitting all day is terribly bad for your health, so today I spent 2.5 hours in the garden--two hours before work and half an hour after--and maybe half an hour grocery-shopping. To my surprise, I had one of my most productive workdays ever.

Update: This trouser-hate is very NICHE, by the way. In Scotland, as in other places in Europe, women wear trousers to the Traditional Latin Mass unless there is a sign around saying not to. Many women don't wear mantillas. Some women go bareheaded, which is especially common in Germany and France.

Diary Hoarder

Having revealed spousal and familial hoarding habits, I should admit that I cannot get rid of my diaries.

This may be unusual. Many women, upon finding a teenage diary, have a quick look, shudder and tear it to bits. And I do understand this impulse, as last week I found an excruciatingly not-to-be-sent letter I wrote to a young man I had had a crush on. Happily, it was clearly an attempt to write my way to sanity, but all the same I tore it up and divided the pieces between two trash bags.

But  I would never rid myself of my teenage diaries, for I don't want to lose the funny, innocent girl who used to be me. For one thing, I took an oath as a child that I would never forget what being a child was like, and if you have your diaries--and I began my first at 7--it's harder to do that.

I actually do have a look at those diaries for time to time, for now that I have friends who are up to 20 years younger than me, I enjoy having a look to see what I was doing when they were born. In Polish Pretend Son's case, I was either at a dance, sleeping or writing about the dance. I keep forgetting to ask his Polish Authentic Mother about the exact hour.

But I have been tempted to burn all diaries written in the 1990s, for I never read those. When I mentioned this to my dear friend Trish, she said that would be very sad. And I think she is right, especially as they are my last link to the person I was--and the person Trish was--in the 1990s. In the 1990s we both struggled to become proper artists, to conquer depression and to find happiness. I found it very, very hard----another reason why I don't want to burn those diaries. It would be like drowning those young women in the middle of their desperate swim for unseen shores.

(Graduating from a Canadian university in the mid-1990s was like being shipwrecked. Discuss.)

Then there are the diaries of my three-year theological training, during which I was usually happy and life was both structured and interesting. A professor passed along a request from the Catholic Register to review a book, as she hadn't the time, and that is how my career in Catholic media began.

And there are even diaries from my time in an American PhD program, which I sometimes think I could turn into a novel, if I could summon up the courage to return deeply into the horrors. The one great problem with my wonderful faith-filled Canadian theologate was that it gave no preparation at all for the shark-infested sea that is (or was) American academic theology.

Finally there are diaries from my surprising new life in Scotland although the written records are rather patchy as by the time I met B.A. I had been blogging for two years and I have blogged ever since.

The physical result of all these diaries is four large boxes jammed with hardcover notebooks. Had I become part of some amazing literary circle they would hold some interest for future scholars, but so far I haven't,* so I strongly doubt it.

There is little of historical interest even in my teenage diaries, as I recorded very little of the worldwide events and cultural novelties around: an excited reference to the whole family getting a DVD player one Christmas, a colourful illustration of the outfit I wore to a dance, a haircut based on that of Veronique Beliveau, the casual description of Italian-Canadian slaves to teenage fashion, as "Ginos" and "Ginas".

That's rather embarrassing now, come to think of it.  

I suppose it may interest some that there was a nostalgic 1960s revival in the 1980s and that bubble-dresses made a brief reappearance. (My mother made me one, and it was awesome.) It may even be of interest that there were still enough women religious working in the "reference library" of my all-girls high school that my then-best friend Tashie and I made up cruel nicknames for them all.

However, I suspect that this will be of interest only to me, and that my heirs will burn my diaries without a qualm--or even just shove them into trash bags, the horror.

*This is now an arguable point, however. Since I married I have become part of the Catholic traditionalist movement, and that does have some very well-known authors and journalists associated with it. It is hard to say, however, what kind of lasting influence any of us will have, and I myself am a very small potato. I might not even be a whole potato. I may be a single french fry--or a tater tot.

May We Dispense with Our Husbands' Stuff?

Benedict Ambrose had a day off work yesterday, and when a friend agreed to store some boxes of books for us, B.A. went to the Historical House to carry them down three flights of stairs. I was a little worried about his ability to do this and so was vastly relieved when he phoned to say he was okay.

Our friend appeared at St. Benedict Over the Apple Tree (our new home), our first guest after our solicitor, with two beautiful plants for the garden, and we drove off to the Historical House. It was a warm and sunny day, and it was wonderful to be outdoors.

We met B.A. at the bottom of the stairs.  He looked like an exhausted cockatoo. He's still very thin, and of course half the back of his head is still shaved or bald. He was drenched in sweat, clutching a box and staggering a little.

"I've carried down twenty already," he said, panting, as I clucked like a hen and ordered him to sit down. He collapsed into a garden chair in the sun, and J. and I and B.A.'s co-workers carried the boxes to the car. They're relatively small boxes but heavy.

Ignoring my system--the most elementary division of books into most valued and less valued--B.A. had just started with "the books in the hall", which means the "most valued" books are now in a cellar in the New Town. But the good news is that the least valued books are still in the Historical Attic, which means we can more easily banish them to a charity shop.

When our friend's car was thoroughly packed with "most valued" books, I suggested to B.A. that he sit amongst the "lesser" books (mostly novels) and choose which ones should go to the charity shop. He responded with faint wails of horror and exhaustion. The mental energy this would take was simply beyond him.

To put this into perspective, B.A. has neither read Marie Kondo's The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up nor surfed the internet in search of inspiring Minimalist blogs. And as hoarding goes, he is nothing to my mother, who still has a few pairs of my great-grandmother's spectacles. My great-grandmother died, I believe, in 1978.

Actually, a list of the hilarious objects dating from before 1980 to which my parents have granted houseroom would make for a very funny post. Meanwhile, my great-grandfather and grandfather each brought back a German helmet from their respective World War, a grisly reminder that our their* Iron Age ancestors used to fasten the skulls of their enemies to their door lintels.

B.A. doesn't have any helmets, let alone skulls, but he has had an awful lot of junk which I began throwing away after maybe five years of marriage. I think I waited five years. For a very long time, I did not think I had any right to throw away any of my husband's belongings, including worn-out trousers. Now that we have been married for almost ten years, I realise that the secret of unburdening my husband of objects he has not seen for years is just to make an executive decision and throw them away without mentioning it.

This should not be treated as a universal rule. Still, it might solve a major household headache if the minimalising spouse asked the non-minimalising spouse if the way forward is just to proceed with a closet/attic/basement purge without telling him/her what had disappeared.

There are limits, of course. Although B.A. doesn't listen to his large collection of compact discs, there exists a possibility that he may in future want to listen to a specific contact disc. Therefore, I have not eliminated his contact discs. Nor have I got rid of the DVDS although their days are numbered.

Lest the frequent reader think I hate all my husband's stuff, I should mention that I admire B.A.'s taste in antique and mid-century furniture and very much like all but one of the pieces we have already transferred to our new home.

*I say "their" because only my mother's ancestors were 100% British. My father's were also Irish and German, and I don't know what they got up to during the Iron Age.

Why Keep Books?

Today I went to the Historical House and filled boxes with books.  When I first started this gargantuan task, I decided to start with books I didn't want anymore. The problem, as I may have mentioned, is that I don't feel comfortable getting rid of B.A.'s books. And I definitely do not want the vast majority of B.A.'s books. Did he really read Justine? Will he ever read Justine? I have my doubts.

However, the very thought of choosing between his books made my poor, radiated husband feel very tired, and he shouted "What?!" when I said I didn't think I needed the Latin-language version of the Summa Theologica anymore.

The problem with books--and we have hundreds--is that too many are relics of one's one past and very often represent destroyed dreams. For example, I have dozens of theological textbooks which I bought and kept because I sincerely believed that I was going to be a professor of theology and would need them. That is why I have, for example, most of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, not to mention the Summa in both English and its original Latin. I even have Mary Daly's Beyond God the Father--or had, as I have binned it.

I also have quite a few books I have never read and may never read and many, many books I have read but may never read again. Therefore, it seems mad to keep them around.

Poor B.A. countered that he has books because he likes to sit in a room surrounded by good books into which he can dip when the mood strikes him.

I did not point out that he has not sat in such a room for over six months and, like me, does most of his reading on the internet and, because computers impede sleep, goes to bed with the Spectator. I even stopped nagging him about discarding books. He was sitting on the edge of the soon-to-be-abandoned sofa bed in what used to be our library, half the back of his head shaved or simply bald. He looked as weak as a kitten.

So I spent the day putting books in boxes without making judgements and taped the boxes shut. However, I know perfectly well that it may be a very long time before those boxes are every opened again. Therefore I began to fill a big red wheeled suitcase with books I need and read often. And because I am a nice wife, really, I made sure I brought some books B.A. highly values, has read recently and will probably read again.

So here are the books that have actually made it to St. Benedict Over the Apple Tree. Most of them came with me today, dragged half a mile in a suitcase or carried on my back:

Churchy, Liturgical & Theological (mostly B.A.'s)
The Holy Bible (NRSV, Catholic)
Biblia (the Bible in Polish and therefore not B.A.'s)
Chwalmy Pana (Polish prayers & liturgy book)
The Monastic Diurnal
The Penny Catechism 

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (in English)
Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi
CCCB, Statement on the Formation of the Conscience (aka Winnipeg Statement)
Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy
Alice Thomas Ellis, Serpent on the Rock 
Adrian Fortescue et al, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described
Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Holy Mass
St. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, Gardening the Soul
Joseph Kramp, S.J., Live the Mass (1925)
Peter Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness
Father Lasance, The New Roman Missal (1945)
Robert Llewelyn, A Doorway to Silence (super-High Anglican guide to the Rosary)
Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy and the Splendor of Truth

Aidan Nichols, O.P., Critising the Critics
Aidan Nichols, O.P., The Holy Eucharist
Aidan Nichols, O.P., Holy Order
Aidan Nichols, O.P., Lovely Like Jerusalem
Aidan Nichols, O.P., The Realm
Aidan Nichols, O.P., The Shape of Catholic Theology*

Pius X. Catechism św. Piusza. Vademecum katolika (I'm going to memorise it. That's the plan.)
Fr. Jacques Phillipe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace 

Card. Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy
Card. Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World

Henry Sire, Phoenix from the Ashes 
Aelred Squire, Asking the Fathers
Ks. Józef Tischner, Krótki przewodnik po życiu

Historical
Thomas Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690-1805
William Zachs, Without Regard to Good Manners

Journalism
Associated Press, Guide to News Writing
Emma Lee-Potter, Interviewing for Journalists
Strunk & White, Elements of Style 

Linguistic
Peter C. Brown et al. Make it Stick
Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever

Larousse French-English, Anglais-Francais New College Dictionary

JACT, Reading Greek
Langenscheidt, Pocket Greek Dictionary
Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon
Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek

Collins Concise Italian-English, English-Italian Dictionary
MOIT, Il Mio Primo Dizionario
Oxford, Mini Italian Dictionary
Esplora Firenze con Dante e i suoi amici
Un Giorno in Italia 2

Langensheidt, Premium Slownik polsko-angielski/angielsko-polsku (cut in 2 halves, a sign of love)
Langensheidt, Slownik uniwersalny, Angielski
Oxford & PWN, English-Polish Dictionary
Assimil, Le Polonais
Klara Janecki, 301 Polish Verbs 
Iwona Sadowska, Polish: A Comprehensive Grammar 
Oscar E. Swan, Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar 

Literature
C. Alan Ames, Through the Eyes of Jesus (gift of pious neighbour)
Martin Amis, The Information (accident)
Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
Alice Thomas Ellis, The Summerhouse Trilogy
George MacDonald Fraser, The Complete McAuslan

C.S. Lewis, Książe Kaspian
C.S. Lewis, Podróż Wędrowca do świtu (Polish trans. of below)
C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate
Bolesław Prus, Lalka
Bolesław Prus, The Doll (English trans. of above)

& two poetry books belonging to tutor which I mean to give back soon

Other
Eyewitness Guides, Poland
Victoria Harrison, Happy by Design
Jack Monroe, A Girl Called Jack: 100 Delicious Budget Recipes 
Cal Newport, Deep Work
Matthew Rice, Rice's Architectural Primer 
Simon Sinek, Start With Why
Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog
Kate Watson-Smith, Mad About the House
Lexie Williamson, The Stretching Bible

That appears to be 77 or so. Dear me. And that is the smallest drop in the library bucket.

Why I brought all the Classical Greek books when I am unlikely to be called upon to teach it ever again is a mystery. Lest I appear more high-brow than I actually am, I bring your attention to my must-have English novels. Well, Brookner is eminently respectable (I do think Hotel du Lac is a masterpiece). The others are for comfort (or Polish studies).

I think I have at last answered my question. Some books you need as tools, but others are simply for comfort: mind snacks.

*B.A. really loves the work of Aidan Nichols. He once got me to take at least some of these books to a conference where Nichols was speaking for the learned priest to sign. The great man kindly did so although he seemed a little surprised by the number.

The Historical Sepulchre

Today I went to the Historical House with my trusty backpack and a lot of boxes.  Ugh!

It almost astonishes me that I now dislike so much a place I loved so much. But in the wake of the flood, our exile, the moth infestation, and our ultimate eviction, I really hate going up the stairs to the Historical Attic, smelling the curiously sour air, looking at the dusty wreckage of our former home and shuddering as I squash yet another brown insect between my fingers.

Our life as we knew it ended when the overhead pipe in the bathroom blew up. Naturally B.A.'s brain tumour and subsequent illnesses had already blighted our social lives, but the Deluge put a definitive end to all our jolly dinner parties, Sunday Lunches, and hopes that we'd be entertaining friends at the Historical House for many years to come.

Now, of course, I look forward to picking up the threads of our relationships and welcoming our friends to our new home. It's smaller and has no romantic antecedents--indeed, the neighbourhood has fallen on good times since it was first built for the proletariate--but the ceilings are higher and the garden is our very own.  But I am desperate to keep all the junk and useless belongings that proliferated in the Historical Attic out of the new space.

Two of the worst chores in the old place were vacuuming and dusting. Both were absolutely necessary to keep the moths at bay, but unfortunately we own a lot of little tables and chairs and ornate little bookcases and other hard-to-dust objects. Eventually I discovered that the only effective way to hoover the sitting-room was to take everything except the sofa and a bookcase out of it, vacuum and then heave all the furniture back in.

This is one reason why I am not at all looking forward to transferring the old furniture here, and I am praying that the used furniture dealer we called will take most of it away.

But, oddly, my greatest dread is that all the books will end up lining the new place. It DOES astonish me that I could hate books--before I married I kept all my books in perfect order and afterwards I lobbied my parents to send them over the sea---but now I just think of how rarely we seem pick them up. Of course, we must have picked them up sometimes--at least twice a year I would have to give the library a thorough reordering--but we do most of our reading on the internet, and most of the books I read now come from public libraries.  Most of our old books, therefore, are simply redundant--as well as dust traps and hiding places for insects.

And so going up to the Attic and looking at all the things we still have to pack and somehow cart to the new flat seriously depresses me. Naturally I am terrified of the moths tagging along, too.

After all my good intentions, when I loaded up my knapsack it was with one shoebox of wine glasses,  my winter church dress, a cookbook, the photocopy of my 2017 tax return, and two cardigans. But I also carried away an occasional table. My fingers are crossed that we will keep only the nesting three.  If the rickety leather-top table falls apart one more time when I move it to vacuum, I will kick it to pieces.

Here are some soothing minimalist and Japanese interiors to calm us all down.

Useful and/or Beautiful

Household essential: the guggle jug.

I was an undergraduate when I first heard of William Morris and his dictum "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

This sounds wonderfully simple until you attempt to rid your home of useless and ugly stuff. The very fact that you own it makes you reluctant to throw it out. And then of course you have to come to an agreement with those you live with about what can go and what must stay. 

Moving into a new home, while not having to move all our belongings at once, has been an exciting experiment in minimalism. The previous owner painted all the walls a pale magnolia and the wall-to-wall carpeting, which protects the downstairs neighbours from our noise, is a shade of oatmeal (except in the spare room, where it is blue). Thus the mostly-empty rooms give an impression of both space and light. It's very restful and, just like the design books promised, makes me appreciate the beauty of the few objects we do have. 

The curious thing, though, is what has already made the trip from the Historical House to "Saint Benedict over the Apple Tree" as we have named our new home. B.A. is, as long-term readers know, recovering from radiation therapy, but nevertheless he carried home a small table so that I would have  a computer desk at the right height for my ergonomic chair. That was very kindly.  He has also transferred such useful and life-enhancing objects as a colander and table lamps. 

But what is fascinating to me, and I hope I do not sound like a zoologist commenting on the nest-building habits of voles, is the sudden appearance of KNICKKNACKS. 

Now, I am not a knickknack fan, but I do not mind them either. My parents have a number of knickknacks, and some of them have been in the same place in their Toronto house for over 30 years. Knickknacks are such an expression of personality that it might be unfair to call them by that somewhat dismissive title. Try as I might, I cannot make myself give up a small family of miniature animals I have been given over the years--a jade frog, a clay wombat, some hedgehogs--to say nothing of the parliament of owls. 

That said, they're not here. 

No, the objects that have drifted down to the new place have all been curated by Benedict Ambrose, and it is interesting to see which of our accumulated objects he seems likes best.

The first, of course, were devotional: three crucifixes, two palm crosses, and the ceramic holy water stoup. Next followed three framed photographs: me and a gal pal smoking cigars; Polish Pretend Son and Trad Chaplain looking as if it were 1890; and Polish Pretend Daughter and her husband on their wedding day. Then the ceramic owl salt-and-pepper shakers, a gift from my mother, who volunteers in a hospital gift shop, appeared on the dinner table. After that, more devotional objects: an icon of Madonna and child and a Polish dried flower Assumption bouquet. Now a green guggle fish squats on our hitherto pristine varnished pine sitting-room window ledge. 

The green angel pillow from Krakow, which B.A. hastily sneaked onto Monday's van, goes without mention. 

The choices of the traditional Polish Assumption Day bouquet and the angel pillow were surprises, but when I think about it, over the years my husband has become ever fonder of Polish Stuff and more appreciative of my Polish language habit. 

So far I have been very respectful and not taken anything away except the photographs, as they had been perched around our very narrow hall and there is no really appropriate place to put them yet. Eventually the pictures of our Polish Pretend Children will reappear, but the snap of me smoking a cigar will vanish into a photo album to be giggled at and discarded by our heirs.

CONFESSION: The tin chicken. I forgot to mention the very engaging tweed owl B.A. purchased from Walker Slater as an exile-warming present when we were bumped to the Old Town. We have that. But we also have a brightly painted tin chicken from our refuge in the New Town, as our friends had put it aside for chucking out. He picked it up in the south of France, but she didn't like it, and I have been thinking a lot about chicken-keeping, so now we have it.  So despite my strivings after minimalism, I momentarily crumbled. However, the tin chicken cost 100% less than the tweed owl, so there is that.