The Obsessive Diary

The beautiful and the damned at Electric House on Tuesday night where I got dinner before the kitchen closed, I sat at my favourite corner table from which I can see most others, they were on the banquets through the arch. He looked like Jim Morrison, it was impossible not to stare. His companions an inch less stellar but with that jagged razor of wild that would see them step too close to the edge. They didn’t see me. Even as I did a fly by to get another angle. They were polite to the waiting staff. Jim Morrison was used to eyes upon him. He centred their table. I wondered if all three of them were nice.At Euston station the next morning sweating in the closeness of departures, not enough sleep, a heavy bag hauled from tube to concourse, coffee in one hand, a salad already collapsing in a bag. A man twisted with demons and propelled by some sort of rage weaved through the crowd, a small wide woman followed in his wake. I wondered if he ordered her to walk ten steps behind him or she did it for her own sake. They were locked in relationship. I put on my merkaba. The sluice gate opening of a platform called, the crowd that was me moving as one, the cries and laughter of a man and woman: They looked the same! I’m so sorry! Thanks so much! Oh my God they looked at exactly the same! Two silver suitcases, handles up, ribbed sides, solid and hard and a story revealed itself of strangers happening to stand side by side with identical pieces of luggage. A misdirected hand, a distracted take, a comedy of errors that brought two people together on a crowded day. Would they fall in love? Would they never see each other again? As I descended the ramp I wondered at what point they realised the mix up, ran, said excuse me, I’m so sorry, but -. They were happy about it, laughing and full of apology. It was a beautiful thing.A Quaker accompanied me all the way to Glasgow, an MA from Birkbeck, a medical journalist and researcher with tendrils reaching into the Society of Apothecaries, she was writing a non fiction paper when it become clear as Preston gave way to Penrith that a novel was trying to get out. I’m a story teller she said and I replied, Yes you are.The walk from Glasgow Central to Citizen M may as well have been New York City in 1891. It all became clear in the baroque swirls and gothic curls of red Scottish stone where Carnegie got his ideas from; nineteenth century Manhattan is this green place - Central Park and Carnegie Hall, the original Gotham City. Glasgow Women’s Library once the main library for that side of town, built and filled by Carnegie, the men’s reading room twice the size of the women’s at the time, the children with their own entrance round the back. It’s been in the hands of women for over a decade now and equality reigns. All are welcome. We gathered around a large low table made of outsized black slices fitted together like cake for purpose. A happily crowded room, wonderful humans, all, we talked Greenham and Fallout for almost two hours. At the end a Polish woman asked me to sign her book with something I’d said. I knelt to lean on a chair and wrote, No f****r has the right to tell you who you are or how to live. She told me about the shock of coming to the UK in the nineties from a Socialist country where gender equality was written into the blood and constitution. I heard a pregnant woman turn down the offer of a seat on the bus claiming it was an insult to her principle. What is the second wave feminism? It makes no sense. I had to agree. I like having the door opened for me. So do I. When ideology imposes its weight over ideas which spring easily you have the makings of a scene confused by its own presence. Always offer to carry my bag. I will not turn you down. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Kimberly Warner is one of the best interviewers on this platform, she’s also a marvellous writer in her own right and a great friend. So who better to spend an hour with talking about Fallout? We recorded this LIVE when I’d just got back from a whirlwind trip to the US promoting the novel in Boston and NYC; for those who missed it, here it is in full. And why not order your copy today? One runaway girl sets a family on fire - and lights the way to liberation. In the bleak winter of 1982, fifteen-year-old Bridget has had enough of Thatcher’s Britain, of being invisible, of her family’s secrets. Armed with little more than a sharp tongue and a fierce sense of justice, she runs away from her suburban life to join the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp - one of the most iconic protest movements in British history.But Bridget’s disappearance doesn’t just blow open her own life.While I’m on the subject have you read Kimberly Warner‘s memoir? What happens when your body becomes uncertain territory?In Unfixed, Kimberly Warner chronicles her descent into a world shaped by chronic illness, neurological instability, family secrets, and the destabilizing realization that the foundations of identity may be far less fixed than we imagine.As Warner investigates the hidden truths surrounding her father and family history, she simultaneously confronts an elusive illness that alters not only her physical reality but her perception of the world itself. Water becomes both metaphor and lived experience: disorientation, drift, immersion, survival. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Home to the farm as Solstice approaches, I left London on Friday after breakfast with J, H and others; in those morning hours as the market crowds with candlesticks and ragged chairs, we meet up the top where they having been meeting for over a decade. Every Friday, that’s where they’ll be, and now me, too. It’s exactly why I moved back to the city, this easy connection, no phone calls or train times involved. Eggs on toast and a coffee, a conversation that dives immediately into heart regulation, memoir and alien life force. H pointed me at the audio book of A New Science of Heaven by Robert Temple and I listened to Plasma all the way from Ladbroke Grove to Guildford where a second root canal awaited me.This one wasn’t as fun as the first and the first was no fun at all. She, my dentist, is lovely, couldn't be sweeter nor more adept at her craft. We’d already bonded over Mangalore - her birth place and where I landed when I ran away from Uni to search for my boyfriend’s mother and we were on a roll of trust and careful hands but nothing beats metal in the mouth and screaming drills to bring nightmare to a reclining seat. I dug nails into pain points as instructed by J before I left Golborne. I breathed out as the needles went in. An hour went by. My heart rate went up about a thousand notches. She told me I was doing well and I had no measure for that. Numb all the sunny way back to the station, another train ride to Milford where my car had been gathering sticky dust for a fortnight in the carpark of the railway. Waitrose, because dinner was needed and I wasn’t planning on driving again till Sunday. An odd feeling of grip in my mouth where tooth recreated filled the jagged gap I’d been living with. Home to a garden exploding in summer. Nesting birds darted from the hedges as I drove in and I rang the farmer to say let’s defy those sightline furies of many years and leave them be till November. He wrote back, You must be psychic. I was just about to text you. Jasmine left me no option but to bury my face in flowers at the gate. Artichokes impersonated triffids. Michaelmas daisy’s moved in tides across the yard. Agapanthus stuck up like sentries to remind me of my mother. Poppies budded with opium. Vine tendrils reached for me as I lay on the day bed talking to M. later on the phone to A she asked me what I do with weeds. I said I didn’t recognise the word because the land is singing. The air is pulsing. There is life in great multidimensional stories spilling into every gap and the farm is happy. There is no such thing as a weed. An email from a journalist told me an interview I did a while back is live on BBC Sounds and I listened to ten minutes of me telling tales of the stones which on hearing in edited bites came across as so other, as if it had happened to someone else, and I found myself thinking wow, how amazing, the wish I’d been there I often have when hearing of other people’s lives enflamed before remembering I had been there, it was mine. We’re such funny creatures, aren’t we? B is at the flat about to fly to France. I’ll be there in about a week and I can’t wait. J is in Jakarta posting videos of terrifying bike tricks at traffic lights that make me pray he’s on two feet, or at least on a bike taxi who isn’t an idiot. And I’ve been thinking about this third life which is without blueprint. My parent’s are dead, my children are out of the nest and for centuries this would have been the slowing down, the baking bread, the pottering in the garden with arms ready for grandchildren when they come but in the lull nothing but a looking back - but not for us. We are the first generation for whom a third life is granted. I see a decade before grandchildren, thirty years of an energy for who I am now; hands free and working. Eight months ago in the tumult of endings I stood in my kitchen, the quiet overwhelming, and said aloud, I have to get out of here. I had a vision of waiting at that table for my children to need me, the oppressiveness of a farmhouse that once overflowed with endless meals and Lego turned silent like a ship when the wind drops, a vessel caught in the doldrums, rocking me into ancient age. My therapist asked, Do you miss the hub? and I said yes - the clamouring cacophony of family life, the mess and exhaustion, the no time for anything else yet somehow I made time, publishing three books, bringing up words as well as children. This is your third life, she said in response to my wobbling. There is no blueprint, and I thought, yes, that’s it. My mother worked throughout our childhood, we were a blip fitted into the slats of an architectural practice rather than the central pivot of her world and so when we left, although I cannot know for sure, I imagine she hardly noticed. Her house remained full of the waifs and strays with which she’d filled it. Her days and weeks and yearly routines remained exactly the same. She did not up and leave and rent a flat, there was no need. I’ve worried my shift in focus, the farmhouse here but without me in it, will have wobbled my children - their anchor in place but the captain jumped to a swifter, more agile vessel that as we speak is cutting through waves like the farmhouse never could; I am revelling in the ability to tack left and right at a moment’s notice, to see the sun hit waves at entirely new angles, to feel the spray so close, the light so piercing. B said I like the idea of you being at the farm but I wouldn’t want you to feel stuck. God love them both. Here we are. Third life. Let’s go. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Sara Santa Clara, Angie Browne, Francesca Bossert, and many others for tuning into my live video with Simon K Jones! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

I put my glasses in the washing machine and left my AirPod case on the desk and went out for breakfast listening to the last chapter of Permission by Elissa Altman as I walked the few minutes to Electric House. Only the third thing was meant. I suppose as usual I am tired and also being forgetful or maybe just overwrought with the silence that has descended my world since last October. Without that everyday conversation with another there is peace and there is loneliness and there is a writer’s paradise in the hours I work and a human hell in remembering the times when I would have chewed the fat and passed the time with someone I trusted to be there. He is not there. I shouldn’t have trusted him. Yes, having experienced the rage quietening and life getting on with itself it has risen up again as it’s likely to do when his name comes up, when I am reminded. I am still angry. M and I talked about the responsibility of boundaries, one’s own lying with oneself and no one else, and I thought about what makes me let him into hurt me and realised it comes from want. I want an apology. I want him to stand accountable. I may never get it. Yoga this morning, early, having got up to write. By mistake and inadvertently I’ve begun the 7th draft of the novel I’m working on; by mistake and inadvertently because I meant to start in August after a holiday but then I started looking at notes, and then I opened the document, and then. So an hour this morning rewriting what I see now was a wrong turn in tone and character, and a walk to the Life Centre (forgetting my mat) and an hour sweating and slipping on one of their mats in a room packed to the jowls with women like me except with dyed hair and some younger and one man; there’s always one man. He tends to put his mat in the middle. This guy was intimate in his detail of debugging from whoever had used his yoga mat before him. Spray, wipe, spray until he’d made it clear the world was disgusting and infection was not his thing. In Savasana I cried.Over breakfast, Permission finished - and I have so much to say about this I don’t know where to start but luckily she and I will be in conversation on Wednesday, so I guess I’ll start there - I read Quartet in Autumn, the most exquisite tragic-comedy I’ve ever read. So little happens. So much is said. Pym is unparalleled. At the table beside me a young couple touched hands, their fingers interlacing, his stretching further than hers across the space between them. So often lately when I see this I think, you wait (to the girl) one day the curl of his hair will be the thing you despise, his nose will enrage you, you will wonder how you ever found his laugh appealing. It happens to me all the time; on the escalator descending into the tube, passing a couple snogging, his thin sandy hair already receding, her hands upon it, You wait. The girl staring up adoringly at the big baby of a man who thinks elasticated waists are acceptable and which she thinks are sweet, You wait. Perhaps I will fall in love again. Perhaps I will find again the generosity of heart to not want to burst their bubble. This is what being alone does to a person. The internal monologue is rarely tested. We become unreasonable. Barbara Pym knew it. It is this she sets out exquisitely. I see myself in those pages and think, come on now. Soften. Be nice.On Friday I met with my friends as usual at our place on Portobello and J showed us the photograph of the Peruvian women who gathered in a circle in the sea, naked, to scream and kick in visceral response to a spike in femicides. This, I want to do. This encapsulates my rage. A silence has descended on my world and I want to know, where do I put it? Where can I speak it, this fuel that is anger that is words that desire to be action? It is cellular. It is in my bones. I put it here. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

How can I not begin this post with a snap of Augusta Sagnelli , Creative Director & Co Founder of Souvenir Magazine , caught in a Paris café with the latest edition? Impossible. Red shoes, red fan, red binds on the red chequered chair, the deep burn red of her bag, her drink - is it iced tea? moving into shades of earth. It all begs the question, have you read yours yet? This second edition of Souvenir, the new anglophone literary & art publication bringing you fiction, essay, critique, art, interview, and reportage three times a year direct from Paris is yours by becoming a tier or founding member. Do it. Support the arts. I’ll see you in those pages. Yes, I’m in this month’s edition, and yes, so are a multitude of others who’ve been lucky enough to work with the great creative and editorial team to produce an imprint of the highest quality in feel, look and content. Augusta Sagnelli , Samuél Lopez-Barrantes and Kyle Berlin are up to something very cool indeed. Join the party. Get on board. This is the creative wave we’ve been looking for. I’ll be reporting LIVE from Paris later this month to give you a behind the scenes look at working with this exacting, high-standards team. They know what matters and they are unflinching in achieving it. Praise be. They speak my language. Paris has continued to play a part in my week as locked into the titanic battles at Roland Garros I’ve watched titans fall, first Sinner, then Djokovic. Last night I settled in to watch Fonseca face Ruud and promptly fell asleep. Remind me to let TNT know not to book me for evening commentary. I woke this morning to the news that he’d won - Fonseca - what a story is unfolding there. Next up, the battle of the 19yr olds, Fonseca vs Jódar. I am obsessed with tennis. Wait till Wimbledon opens. I’m going to become unbearable. And heads up, this week I’ll be LIVE in conversation with Eve Chase - join us on Wednesday when we’ll be discussing her latest novel, The Secret Thread, out this week. She’s clocked up over a million in sales over the last few years, been a Sunday Times Bestseller and a Richard & Judy Bookclub favourite. We’ll unpick the hard work, dedication and craftsmanship to understand how it’s done. Outside my window the woodpecker who’s taken over the fat ball feeder pecks heavily while blue tits flutter nearby. As the moon rose to full last night, the temperatures dipped and we long for rain. I’ve had four grateful days at home recovering from what feels like months and months of adrenaline. I wake, wander about, lie down for a minute and find myself dropped into heavy sleeps that last hours, that leave me foggy. But my suitcase is packed again and despite Kenny resolutely sitting on it I am away today for another bout of full diary work and play.I shall report.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Ocean Vuong last night at The Emmanuel Centre in London with Andrew Wille and K and others - Andrew gave me the tip off and gathered us, he has seen him many times before but this was my first, akin to seeing Nick Cave, knowing from the moment he began that we were in the presence of greatness. An eloquence and an accuracy of thought and word. A deep and broad learning. He spoke for an hour almost without pause, Jack Edwards guiding with questions when needed but they weren’t really needed at all. I wondered if back stage OV knew what he was going to speak about, how he prepares and arrived at the thought that his life is preparation for these present moments, that he involves himself in what fascinates him and when the time comes to speak he just opens his mouth. It had none of the feel of practiced book publicity interview, the same stories, the same questions, a sense that at any given event on the tour the output would be roughly the same. No. It had the feel, like seeing Nick Cave, that this moment was unique, that these thoughts he expressed in that moment were of that moment however much he might have considered them before. He was present. His homework - that of living and studying and being involved in what fascinated him irrespective of outcome or who was watching - was evident. And though it isn’t by the by at all, Jack Edwards was fabulous too. Took a cab back to west London, the heat still making everyone’s footsteps slow, and found myself in the pimped up seats of London’s singing cabbie - the full red leather, Union Jack, cushions and champagne bucket rich interior of the man who pissed off Tom Jones on The Voice. He told me the story in a tone so muted I had to lean forward in my seat, but the gist was this: he got to the televised last few rounds. He sang but they didn’t choose him. Swinging around in his chair, Tom Jones was deep in explanation, you’re great, but what would I do with you? when our singing cabbie felt the rush of just wishing to get off stage and interrupted our national treasure by tapping his watch and asking him to get on with it, I’ve got a fare to meet - as a joke, he said, but King Jones did no find it funny. A limp handshake followed, a leaning forward to whisper in his ear, You shouldn’t have done that, son, and the piece was never aired. It was ended. I asked him how he felt about it now.Dinner at my favourite local, they are getting to know me, this single woman who eats alone, who doesn’t read or look at her phone but just watches. It is ripe with conversations, scenes to store in my mind. Last night’s gem, a woman and a man, my age or perhaps a little older, she very beautiful with dark pepper hair scraped back, tanned and sculpted profile by an artist who knows about graceful age. He, larger in his seat than her, white grey shock above thick black rimmed glasses of the kind favoured by architects, or as it turned out energy workers who think it’s their god given right to describe other people’s energy fields as rare, which he did when her son turned up and kissed her repeatedly smack on the lips. You’re exactly as I imagined you, this the man to the son, and so it was apparent that although he’d know the woman for a many years, he’d never met her child. He told them about Egypt, the retreats he runs, the coming of the End Times and yes, I even heard Atlantis thrown in there while she interjected with the occasional wow, flattered in that way I’ve seen myself behave around this kind of b******t. Christ did he go on, so pleased with his own voice, his own opinion, his own thoughts. So the opposite of Ocean Vuong. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

When I got back to the farm last night there appeared to be a large triangular black figure with two points of burning flame on its head in the stone circle, and someone running from stone to stone. It was late. It had been a long day. I thought, do I go up and see what’s what? And then I thought, no, to hell with it. Leave them. I’ve been the keeper of these stones for almost thirty years. You name it, I’ve seen it dancing among them. There comes a moment when the strength and power of themselves has to be enough. Whoever those witchy Wiccan druid warlock sunset whirling summer pagans were, I hope they had fun. It could easily have been a trick of the light. It might well have been kids hanging their jacket on the central stone, torches precariously balanced, playing hide and seek. I will never know because I turned for the house instead, dragging my bag that I’d already dragged from London to Oxford to Guildford, feeling for the key in The Secret Place, opening my laptop as soon as the cats were fed, locking in to GMP vs Djokovic at Roland Garros, hoping I hadn’t missed a titanic unseating having been watching it on my phone all the way from Reading via dodgy wifi, fist pumping in a carriage sweaty with packed to the jowls Sunday; tennis makes me forget my whereabouts. I become that person lost in AirPods and my own enormous world filled with the sound of thwacking ball and grunts, the tension as tight as the strings. GMP is a Frenchman and Djokovic wasn’t happy but he beat him anyway, a deflating in the 2nd set like a child who’s used up all their beans in the 1st, a hot headed youth who came roaring onto court but left with his racket hanging by his side and I crawled off to bed liking Novak even less than I had before, Kenny practically sitting on my head, so determined she was to recognise I was home. That was Sunday, Oxford because I’d got tickets to see Gentle, Angry Women - the film by Barbara Santi about three young activists who trace the legacy of Greenham forty years on. A kooky little indie picture house, cool after the heat outside, Greenham banners tied badly which kept undoing themselves and slithering to the ground. Peggy Seeger was there looking stylish in pink. To the man handing out CND newsletters she said, I answer to ma’am or babe.” I liked that. I gave her a copy of Fallout. She was beautiful. But how am I, that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Okay, I’ll tell you. I was frustrated by the sense that I’ve written this book and they’ve made this film and I’ve been trying to link up and none of that crew seem to be interested. Which is typical of me because when I’m excited about something I can’t understand why the whole world isn’t excited about it too. And like GMP, I feel deflated in the 2nd set of the game of selling books having used up a lot of my beans in the 1st. It’s a deadly mindset to fall into, that I have an opponent across the net who is trying to defeat me. Framing the difficulty of getting public traction as a personal assault on my wants smells, as D would say, like home cooking. Power over a thing precious to me in the hands of untrustworthy others is my childhood all over again. I’ve been dogged by the familiar sensations of being obstructed, blocked, actively banned from my desires; oh look, power handed over. I am small and my life depends on people who don’t give a s**t about me. Who are unreliable. Who hold what is most precious to me and dangle it over a five story drop. Oh yes. When I was a child, after the man in the basement had left, his insane wife who was our nanny dragged me out from behind my bedroom door where I’d been hiding, pushed me over the sill of the open window and hung me over that five story drop, legs dangling to the spiked iron railing far below. Those of you who’ve read my memoir know this scene, and what happened after, but a new little piece came to light recently in an email from a family member who remembered travelling to France that summer with my mum, the Citroën rushing along back roads heading south, my mother’s hands on the wheel. I don’t know why she keeps going on about it. These the words that were recalled, my mother saying them repeatedly. I don’t know why she keeps going on about it; she being me. I must have been in that car, somewhere at the back, probably lying on the suitcases. I wonder if I’d shut up about it by then.It was this scene in our class on Voice this month that came back to me. The rushing of the road. The rushing of the wind through that open window. My mother’s hands a perfect fit on the wheel. The nanny’s hands a perfect fit on my waist. The scene a perfect fit over my present day. I am angry. I come roaring onto court. I am not gentle at all and yet, and yet; this is the work, the reframing. I have spent the week pulling that girl in from the window, telling her the threat is over. I am gentle with her. There is no demon. There comes a moment when the strength and power of myself has to be enough.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Emily Charlotte Powell, Pia Hinckle, Lisa GK, Roz Edwards, and many others for tuning into my live video with Bridget Young! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Hitchhiking barefoot in Sri Lanka. That was the news this week by phone accompanied by photos of those bare feet but as P pointed out when we met for lunch at the Ashmolean, didn’t we hitch around Zim? And yes we did, aged 19, too and girls and completely unguarded in our notion of danger and fear. At a lovely event for Fallout hosted by Phoebe Griffith I found myself in the company of brilliant women discussing their fears for their children and themselves - at least in the eighties we knew what to be afraid of, the threat was a bomb we could see - and I thought of my son out in the wilds, tasting life and felt the certainty that whatever dangers he brushed with, this facing life was preparation at its best. And meanwhile in London B is out in their wilds; I texted them last Friday, knowing their engagement with all things activism, heads up this weekend darling, it’s a perfect storm of London Riot - a march for Palestine, a march for the far right and as if that wasn’t enough, the FA cup final would be bringing thousands to the city at the same time. They sent me a thumbs up and I had to be content with that, so on meeting for dinner this week I said, did you go? It turned out they had, unintentionally, while on their way to a comedy club. They said, it was so funny, mum, all these extremist nationalists with their England flags and all the pro Palestine with their Palestinian flags walking side by side towards the starting point of their marches, not talking, not looking at each other, not starting their protesting until they were gathered in their groups. I see it, lining up for the fight like boxers in the ring, waiting for the bell. Hurt, opposition, determination to be heard walking side by side through London’s streets, their cloaks of flags lifting like wings in the breeze. I recorded an interview on Better Known Podcast this week (thank you Anna C Wilson 😊) . It’ll be out June 21st if you want to hear me list the six things I wish were better known. Can you take a shot at what they were? No prizes for guessing Greenham, obvs…. And Monday night was the salon at Phoebe's when The Suit made its presence felt in a yellow chair…I was in Oxford on Tuesday, coffee with S, lunch with P, a quick whizz around the In Bloom exhibition, I can never get enough of black Lillies.Home in time for class with Kit de Waal, this month on Voice. As Emily Charlotte Powell said of herself, I was completely undone by it, and if you ever get the opportunity to study with Kit just do it. Say yes. I’ve learned so much. She’s a f*****g brilliant teacher. End of.But I had to jump off 15 mins early, pull myself together ( Andrew Wille you’d have been proud) and zoom in to a book group hosted by shannon kennedy - a roomful of brilliant readers, copies of Fallout in their hands, lives of protest, voice and movement in their hearts and a ready stream of discussion that took us from Nevada, to Greenham, the eighties to the present day, and what would it take to bring 30,000 women together now. Wednesday was The Obsessive LIVE with Wolf Mom Bridget Young whose son is incarcerated in the US prison system. If you haven’t listened to it yet, let me encourage you to do so. Life turns on a dime, and connection is at the heart of recovery. Thursday was a quick lunch with A who’s landed on what they love, inadvertently discovering a skill and quick wit for campaign organising - they were up to their ears in the local elections we’ve just had and to hear them talk was to know they’ve hit their stride. I never knew what it was to love what you do. Welcome. It’s a gift. May everyone be as lucky, as awake and as able to grab it with both hands as he has. From there to my mum’s old house yet again to pick up one or two last things before the whole thing closes down and is sold off. A 1950’s Danish serving trolley. A little bedside cupboard. The Stephen Wiltshire prints that hung on her office walls. Do you remember him? As a child I was fascinated by this child genius who could take one look at the Natural History Museum and then recreate it exactly on paper. He sold his first drawing aged eight. Maybe this was it.And now it’s Friday and yes I’m tired and yes I am ambitious to do more. Fallout continues its rollout and I want more events, more chances, more moments to talk about it and celebrate it and appear at festivals and on panels and in rooms and on podcasts. I look at friends who are on forty event schedules and want it for my own even while my head spins with everything I’ve already done and a, you’ve over done it virus ever nibbles at my toes. This is what it is to love what you do. I want more. Eleanorps, oh yes, forgot to say, most excitingly of all this week, T gave birth to 6 puppies. If you’re very lucky, and I have Margaret’s permission, I’ll post photos. Oh Lord. The pinkness of the noses. The squeak. The scrabble for milk. Heaven. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Julie Russell, Craig M. Slater, and many others for tuning into my live video with Louise Fein! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Who remembers the old Colony rooms in Soho where Francis Bacon fell off bar stools and Lucien Freud gave those eyes? Not me, I’m making that bit up but I imagine. I have read enough about it. It closed and was recreated in a basement room off Regents Street, complete with everything exact, the pictures on the wall, the bar and piano, and that’s where I whipped off too as soon as Jessica Fellowes and I said goodbye on our Obsessive LIVE conversation of Tuesday night - to Wip Flash Open Mic Lit Salon at The Colony Green. I wasn’t going to read. I’d done enough of that lately. My boots were not empty of attention, adrenaline, and risk. I was going to sit at the back while my friends did their thing. But the back turned out to be the front, a low slung room of padded benches against the wall, chairs and those Francis Bacon bar stools, a mic, a piano, a bar and a hat with my name in it and there was no where to hide.J and H read in turn - what a thrill to see friends be brilliant. The break brought a whiskey at the bar and the barman shy and confessing it was his third time there and yes he did have something but no he really wasn’t ready and J saying, come on and so he did: name in hat along with mine - it was supposed to be random calling but when we sat down first mine came up then his. I remember the heartbeat, the terror of taking words and me on their first public outing ever - an open mic in Betterton Street a hundred years ago - and I watched it crawl all over his body, his lips close to the sound, his hand disbelieving these were really the private lines he’d written that morning being spoke aloud, the room quiet to his touch. This will be a beginning for him and we witnessed it. There was a French woman, confident and curly in yellow tights and ripped skirt, poetry she had skills for. A long woman in leather sang to tripping guitar. A pot-bellied grey hair got up with doubt and made us all laugh with surprise at his candour and gift. A glasses, dyed blonde performed the play of another’s words that had the beauty of Alan Bennett all over it. Clever. Talk. Talking heads. And on top of all that, the many more who wiped the floor with such high standards in that basement room, came an old friend who at first I didn’t register at all until she said, remember me? and the woman who’d be kneeling on the carpet to my left morphed like magic into B who I’d not seen for thirty years. It was a night.Like Cinderella I ran for the tube before midnight, J & R with me till Bond Street and Holland Park. Didn’t sleep much. It was like catching a flight and knowing I had to be up early, my brain wouldn’t allow the deep rest of nothing going on the next day. I try to be cool and calm about big adrenaline moments like this, be at the studio for 9:15, call time from 9:30 but my heart knows different. I walked from West London to Portland Place just to calm my nerves. I lay on the floor of the green room. I joked with the producer about pronunciations of my name. When M turned up I gabbled about anything and nothing to get my voice working and lips tuned up and mind on anything but that any minute they were going to push open that glass door and say, we can take you through now and that would be it; no going back. When it happened it was a relief to let go and let the river take me. Down the carpeted hall, through the heavy sound barrier to the studio, lights, and booths and cans and large red mics with Women’s Hour printed on them so there could be no mistake. Of course my stomach started rumbling, of course my mouth went dry but something else happened, too. She who exists inside me who loves this kind of thing, who turns up reliably and with full relaxed fun took her place instead of me and I found myself smiling at Chloe Tilly across the huge round desk and there we were, getting into conversation as if it was just the two of us, chatting on a park bench. Twelve minutes was over in a flash, and I loved it. If you want to listen on catch up, here’s the link to BBC Sounds. You’ll find me at the 45:21 mark (I’m the last on).Met D for a spot of lunch yesterday and dinner with R. Another late night, a walk home through lighted streets past the house I lived in when I was a twenty-something me and these past thirty years were all to come. God we had fun there. I feel that lightness of spirit again. The endless possibility. I walk easy. What happens when two friends publish at the same time? A book swap of course. Join me 6pm today on The Obsessive LIVE with Louise Fein to talk about her latest, Book of Forbidden Words and Fallout…. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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Electric House, early afternoon, the low arched room that stretches with opulence was scantily clad; perfect young women with perfect young hair scraped back for the serious stuff of tapping importance into laptops. Not many, just enough to fill the hush. A central table and sofas adorned with mothers and babies, a pram blocked the way between tables. A little girl knocked over crayons and demanded she take the menu home. Her mother patiently explained the restaurant would be cross. Her mother had perfect hair too. Blonde and rich. Thick to the shoulders. As they left I realised the other woman wasn’t a mother to these toddlers and infants at all but the nanny, wheeling them out while the mother wondered how to pay, holding up the bill and walking away. I have judgements. I probably have no right to these. They left room for a clear view of two men in the uniform of ageing tech bro rock star pretender probably worked in the music business or cars. Or art. Or something that took them to Ibiza. Shaved heads that fuzzed. Five o’clock shadows that did the same. Suits. Heavy weight glasses lifted to the brow. Voices that belonged east of here, that had watched too much Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, that wore flat caps on the weekend when shooting movies or ducks. One was larger than the other. One was leaning forward in his seat. I heard something about apologise; “you should apologise when… “ and the smaller one shuffle and beg and do that crawling that dogs do when they bare their teeth. He wanted something. It stopped him from beating his chest. Their conversation staggered on, Big Man ever more comfortable in his leaning back, forty-five degree angle to the table that had pots of tea, glasses of water. He managed to put his ankle up on his knee, his knee jutting, white socks, loafers, message sent, I’m done. Little Man stood up. It was almost over. If only he hadn’t sat down again. He stood up and chattered in the relief flooding I am almost out of here way that made him affable again, easy. He made the other guy laugh, ears prick at some titbit of information and before he knew it his hand was on the back of the chair, pulling it out and he was down again, legs spread, elbows resting, the enthusiasm of launching into a story that this other guy might actually enjoy made him forget the past hour of humiliating discomfort, the power play, the please for the love of god be my friend. Big Guy began scratching his nose. Then his earlobe. Then the back of his head rubbed with big hands that said what the f**k is this guy thinking. Can’t he take a message? and if there had been a hint of reconciliation and yeah maybe I’ll let you back in the gang, it was gone. Little guy had overplayed his moment. The anecdote begun so happily fell among white china tea pots and glasses half filled. The second leaving was awkward. Little man tucked in his chair like he was at school, or leaving the dinner table, dismissed. His departure down the long opulent archway of Electric House, paintings filling the walls, sofas of perfect young teatime business and a bar that will serve cocktails tonight was hurried and quiet and don’t look back. Put your glasses on. Remember tomorrow is another day. Big Man didn’t watch him go like I did. Big Man heaved a sigh of relief and buried himself in his phone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Sonder: the word I want written on my arm in tiny script so that it reminds me. Sonder is the awareness that every stranger you encounter has a life as vivid and complex as your own.A man on the street, naked; I saw him from my Uber as I drove uptown. At first I thought he was wearing a suit, the uniform colour of his skin gave an impression of organised outfit, it made him stand out amongst the crowds walking by, some hurrying, some on their phones, none stopping, all navigating around him as if he wasn’t there. I imagined him realising - I’m invisible! and throwing a leaping pirouette. But he wasn’t dancing. He was staring down at objects loosely scattered at his feet, he was pointing and counting and reversing as if they encroached like a tide across the sidewalk, pushing him backwards to the road.A man as I walked up 5th, a street corner for a board meeting, heads of department invisible to me but not to him. A finance discussion, a fine-tuned explanation of investment and stock prices and where to put the money. Perhaps all faces were turned to him as he paced eloquently, one arm illustrating the need to follow closely his thinking. Perhaps the company he kept were all listening intently.An argument in Midtown. Another street corner, another man but his morning was a face saddened with unacceptable effort that his rational point of view was leading nowhere. He persuaded with both arms. His opponent appeared in my mind to be larger than him, a giant or maybe it was God or maybe it was his parent. He was so eloquent in his efforts. I wondered how long he’d been trying to make them see.And in Boston before I left while stationary at lights on the way to South Station, a figure dressed in black; black exercise pants tight to the ankle under loose trousers rolled up at the knee, black raincoat, the hood up, black trainers and he stood with is back to us facing down the wide dead end of an alleyway, pigeons at his feet. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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Holy s**t. I’ve seen a fair bit of theatre in my time, mostly forgotten, but the greats will never be. The inaugural meeting of the We Three Bookclub happened this week (and yes, my friends, I’ve adopted that name without consulting either of you, who do I think I am etc 😂, but I like it.) - K had just come from seeing something in Wales which was wholly forgettable and we ranged among a million subjects other than Little Dorrit including how live performances can let themselves down; opera, musicals, theatre, we picked out the ones that will stay with us forever, mine Mark Rylance in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem and that would have remained my tippity-top if I hadn’t, on Friday night with L, seen John Proctor is the Villain. As I said, Holy S**t, and you can quote me on that.The script - Kimberley Belflower take a bow, Take two bows. Take so many bows that you no longer know which way is up. To write with such fluency. To twist and turn a classroom, young voices, The Crucible from spring to torrent until nothing existed for us 389, full to capacity seated on our edge but the lit stage, the world of 2018 in Georgia and a young woman, believed. That final speech when it’s just Shelby and Raelynn had me losing time and space, had me finally understanding what it means to hang on every word; there was a moment when the actor, Miya James, had left the shores of the beginning of it but was no where near in sight of its end and she was free floating, flying on its sheer brilliant wings and I felt the ground drop away beneath me.The idea - The Crucible unwrapped and unpacked, turned on its head, revealed for what it is, yet another applauding of a man for safeguarding his name. There’s a speech Shelby delivers to Carter about the fiction of his name as opposed to the fact of her body that nails the inequity and absurdity of this so perfectly I pray it finds its way onto every school curriculum. The structure - when a writer pulls off that trick of stacking a narrative around a known play so that the story reveals itself in a looping hall of mirrors I can only sit back and wonder at the four-dimensional mind-bend of it. A classroom of students studying The Crucible, so far so simple, yet by the end these boundaries have been rewritten.The final scene and its impact had me standing, and yes, I’ll admit it, crying my f*****g eyes out which never happens to me in a theatre except this time it did. Those girls, and Kimberley Belflower, spoke for all of us. I realise it’s sold out but if they ever run another production, get your hands on a ticket, pronto. Before I sign off, it’s the launch of Fallout next week and I’m going to be live streaming the party so if you want to be virtually there, here’s the link. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Easter was B at the farm for a fortnight and me coming and going for the first week but for the second, a whole week together, was a gentle delight. Just me and them doesn’t happen often what with friends and them being at uni and so I’m impelled to write, to mention it, our time together cohesive and easy, a dance of meals and backgammon, walks and conversations about how we would make this world function with equity. That is where B and I meet, academically but also with our hearts. A basic living wage for all, artists recognised for their vital part in the health of a nation by being state supported to create, and how to tie income to cost of living so that no one grows rich on another’s struggle. We dream of an ecology where the CEO’s pay packet is in percentage cohort with the cleaner’s, and disagree on the place of capitalism. We dissect private land ownership and unpack communism. We ask if competitiveness exists where resources are unlimited. I wonder what field B will make their working home once uni is over and perhaps they’ve done a masters and maybe a PHD. I feel optimistic that their social conscience is shared amongst their friends. And we walked and we talked and we went to the stones. When the AGA blew up we got in the car, practically in our pyjamas like the Tiger Who Came To Tea, and went to Cranleigh for supper. There, a woman flouted all preconceived notions of Surrey women, and coming up to our table said how hard she tries to get these modern linguistics, they, them around her middle-aged tongue and she has gay sons and all that matters is love. She continued to get it wrong even as she stood there being human and funny and trying and isn’t that what Angie Browne and I talked about? Risk getting it wrong, and when she returned to her own table of two couples and white wine we loved her for her open-heart and joy in saying hello.This week I’m in London with J who today flies off to Sri Lanka. After my LIVE with the wonderful letter-writing Fiona Melrose we skipped out the door and onto the tube, still thrilled by the ease of the city. To Tottenham Court Road and there we were in Soho, on our way to Barafina via Trisha’s, a speakeasy basement dive of the these don’t exist anymore kind, yet they do if you look hard enough. Down stained and trodden green carpet stairs, the stench of ancient cigarettes pulling us into a room of two person tables and plastic red cloths, a wood chip bar and two men, hair combed over, stools to fall off. The walls a festivity of nights photographed at their height of whisky and high balls, forgotten friends loved madly, the floor sticky, the lighting scant. £25 a year for membership, eat your heart out Soho House. This is what all other clubs try for and fail at, their desire for clean mess a falsehood where Trisha’s never tries, it just is. Dinner at Barafina (exquisite) and a walk down darkened Portobello, mistaking the lights in the sky for the moon. Did you see the Artemis photos? Wouldn’t it be great if this perspective on our blue dot brought sense.The lights turned out to be lasers from Wembley or some such, but for a moment there we considered the moon in her glory or even aliens. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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Dear Lodge Farm,You and I have been through a lot together. When I came here you were three hundred years old and I was twenty-five. Or maybe, in the way of multiple incarnations, we were both ancient in brick and flesh skins. You were tumble down and damp, cramped with linoleum and carpet, avocado green bathrooms and alarms, wisteria tore at your hair. An alleyway of cobbles and moss ran along your back, stones shouldered the hill from crushing you and all your rooms seemed underwater, under earth, dark and musty with the weight of trees and roots. There were broken down buildings gathered around you like old tired friends locked in ivy, beams that half fell to darkness where we imagined crying; when I first came here a milkmaid used to walk the grass by the wall to the L-shaped barn and a mother and baby haunted an upstairs bedroom. Slipped tiles and broken guttering, water rising beneath quick fix slabs of concrete, a fitted kitchen that fitted no one. Do you remember? We arrived and flung wide windows. We scrubbed the underlay from wooden floors. We ripped those avocado green bathrooms out and built plinths and painted the ceilings sky blue with clouds scudding. We went in with gloved hands, bandannas on our faces, and pulled at the ivy and hauled at the beams falling. We imagined we released trapped souls. We lit candles and chanted and brought in the light. I remember on nights here, you creaking with multiple lives, saying, let’s live together peacefully, okay? and we did. The milkmaid disappeared. The crying baby stopped. The mother, dead in childbirth, vanished.That was our beginning, the commune, the first marriage, the pagans in the wood. Then came Australia, a return with a bird of paradise, a second marriage, children and divorce and a move to the L-shaped barn so that you could be ripped out again, the entire first way of being forgotten in builders and new floors and literally hauling the hill away from your back so that you could role your shoulders, hold your head up and breathe. No more damp. A garden terraced with steps in odd places to allow me to walk in circles when I worked. A studio entirely redesigned and shifted on its axis. A bedroom erased of two men. We, my children and I, reentered your papered hallway, your bright and easy kitchen where doors had become windows, and windows had become doors and we set up a new childhood there. Train tracks ran from school room to scullery. A library considered itself one of the finest. Intelligent storage packed away whole cities of lego and brought it out again to pierce at bare feet and give us memories of life lived on the floor building star ships. An attic that used to cramp itself into knots to fit the water tank became a thrill to say to guests, you’re up here as a creak up ancient steps revealed two more bedrooms and a bathroom, a view that made them sigh. You grew, you settled, occasionally a tile slipped or a pipe burst but we were here, I was here, to catch you. Your aging seemed to reverse. You blossomed into a youth you hadn’t seen before and appeared to double in size. We were happy. The children grew. There were ponies in the garden and apples on the trees. Chickens tried and failed to avoid foxes. Potatoes pushed up through soil and blackberries became crumble in our hands. By your AGA lay children and animals, birthdays brought cakes from the oven and Christmas brought the box of decorations out from your musty hallway cupboard. I fell in love here again. But as David Shrigley says, all things must end and you and I know the wheel has turned. In these thirty years from when you were three hundred and I was twenty-five you’ve reincarnated three times to fit my changing life. You’ve recovered healthy lungs and a strong and beating heart. You’ve solidified your walls and mended broken guttering, your wisteria no longer tears at your hair but drapes instead in tendrils violet and gleaming. You are well, in high spirits, you and I have blossomed together. The barns have become cottages, the land we care for has expanded and we have a stone circle to keep us anchored to what matters most. You and I are healthy, the children are grown, and so it is time to move on. My dearest Lodge Farm, I’m not deserting you, there’s no abandoning going on, we need your rock-solid here-ness to come home to, the children and I, and I’m making sure you’re cared for, but there’s something that I want now, too. A London life high-kicking free of responsibility that allows me to walk out the door with just keys and a phone and change my mind on a dime and go where I please without planning. Without driving. Without train tickets and schedules and who’ll look after the cats. My dearest Lodge Farm, I have done my time and I’ve done it well. You’re old enough now and in the best of health to stand on your own two feet. You know how to hold the space for me without the AGA exploding or the pipes bursting. We love you. Be here for us when we come home.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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It’s my birthday. Fifty-five today and I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be which has got to be the best birthday present of all. Birthday presence. I’ll take that. Normally I cry on my birthday but I get the feeling this time I won’t. I moved into the new flat a week or so ago and then was high-tailing it to France after only a night here. M and I flew back on Wednesday and went west first to hers and then Chaggers to see S and doggles and her incredible show. What it is to have such talented friends and celebrate them. I love staying at hers, or rather, her neighbour’s which is linked to hers by secret doors behind bookshelves and curtains. I always think when I go there that if an American could see it (yes Adam Nathan, I’m looking at you) they’d think they’d fallen into a fairy fantasy hobbit film of entirely unreal proportions. Up on the moors, the final lurch a sunken road dripping moss on ancient stone, a hamlet firmly ignoring time, its shoulders to the wind and each other’s walls, shells along the path to steps happy to break your ankle. The twists and turns of rooms and stairs that could easily lead you in circles even with the lights on, low ceilings and rugs and inching past sofas and stepping over settles and a kitchen that would give even the mildest of agents a heart attack. There is no compliance here. There is the best of sleeps. We hung out at the show and then went for tea at F’s who’s inherited another parrot called pigeon who will only speak to her. The other looks on with mild disgust. Dinner at the pub and we all, on sudden food, felt the exhaustion of our pillar to post (me and M) and hanging a show (S). M dropped me at the station the next morning, the train to Paddington, a quick change and forty winks at home and T arrived with dancing shoes on. We got food and chatted the catch up we’ve been missing and then there we were, heading into Annie Macmanus ‘s Before Midnight at 7:45pm and so ready my body started moving before I’d folded my coat into a locker. I’d been looking forward to this for months. There are no photos - of course there are no photos because that was the point. “We’re here to dance,” said Annie. Two thousand people brought together for the love of the beat; it’s been years since I’ve been in a club and I’d forgotten the joy of the faces. Two thousand up turned smiling humans all agreeing that dancing is the best, that coming together to move in unison is a world-beating way of feeling the love, that love is without bounds or limits. Up on the balcony behind the decks, Annie doing what she does best, spinning the room into unity, arms raised, hearts open, bodies moving as one. It’s a prayer and a church and we are all devotees and when Human League remixed into a chorus that everyone knew I felt that despite all the madness outside, it was going to be all right. Look what we’re capable of. Look what we love doing. Annie - we love you. I will be doing that again and again. I danced non-stop for four hours, a thirty something pulled me into a hug and shouted I can’t believe your stamina! and I thought, yes, the years of dirty desert outback parties, dancing for a week and my body knows this place. Give me a beat and my body can keep going forever.On the way home one of those tableaus that make the late night tube a theatre - a man slumped in comatose sleep, another man and his wife boarded the train, he in suit and coat and hat, she in rain Mac and small walking tour rucksack. He took the space half taken already by the sleeping man, and the man snuggled into his shoulder, quite happy. The wife refused to sit. Minutes later, the man and his wife left and the sleeping man lay down, his head on the lap of his new bed fellow and throughout it all there was laughter and gentleness and care.The weekend’s been spent here in London and I woke on Saturday morning with the distinct impression that I was playing truant from my life. What is this easy space with carpets and walk to the shops? With no heavy load of thirty years driving and caring and running the beauty that is the farm no doubt, but is no doubt a load to carry? Here I can go out, forget something, come back and it doesn’t involve a three point turn in a sloping lane. Here I am light. I carry nothing but the dustpan and brush picked up from the local hardware store as I slowly gather the essentials. Have I really escaped my life? Or is this a new one? The latter, obviously, a new iteration, a chapter of me that begins At fifty-five I moved to London and I am filled with gratitude. How lucky I am to have this happen, to be able to make this happen. Yesterday J and I sat on the floor prepping his portfolio, the carpet covered in double-sided tape strips. In the print shop a couple with their three-week old baby came in for passport photos. It made me think of my conversation with Marc Typo , how exactly the thing happened that we discussed, the immediate language of mothers, intimate and to the point, how she can’t think what she used to do with all her time and here I was with J, nearly nineteen years later, that exquisite, precious time in the past and how much I cherish it. She held up the print for me to see, she looks like a little mafia boss all dark hair and scrunched face and sleep and we laughed and off she went into her nineteen years. Meanwhile the farm of course, in true farm style decided to mark the occasion of my leaving by exploding the AGA; a frantic call with K got it turned off while she valiantly cleaned up the soot which by all accounts has plastered every surface and turned Percy Cat a shade of grey. No matter. All change tends to come with a shifting of bodies and the farm has rustled her full muddy skirts and lifted her giant arms in the air and the beats have knocked a few things over. I will be home there tomorrow. All will be well. Happy Birthday to me.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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In my favourite place in the world, life is pain au chocolate writ large by morons with bombs and the floured hands of boulangère who rise before dawn. The Magdelane card I pulled was Gaia, all belongs, and black smoke clouds Middle Eastern skies and the scent of baking drifts upon Mediterranean air. The jasmine is out. The jays have multiplied. We hear chaffinches and collared doves. Yesterday a buzzard lifted off from low oaks to rise carefully above the burnt woods; the blackened trunks now decorated with green, it’s been three years since the fire. Margaret and I have come out to furnish the cottage which sits sentry like at the bottom of the drive; what was once all darkness and damp has become, like its big sister, light-filled - a silence that encourages listening. Opening the door for the kitchen contractor he said, si calme and I replied, Oui, comme un monastère. My favourite place in the world has grown.We flew out, M & I, on Saturday, an early take off that brought with it the usual fret about missing the alarm, the taxi not finding us, needing the loo mid journey. The whereabouts of passports checked fifteen times between kitchen and terminal, carefully planned 100ml fluids in clear plastic bags meeting notices to say the rules had changed. There’s not many people I can travel with, but M is one of them. On your right, on your right as we enter glorious human theatre; off the shoulder sweatshirt and click-clack nails, sculpted brows unmoving with one eye kept on a matching boyfriend in black. M & I have known each other so long that all it takes is a look. She told me about the influencers arrested in Dubai for mistakenly filming the war. There’s a Netflix film in there somewhere. In the queue for immigration which took forever and involved much tired cursing of Farage and Johnson a pet was shunted in its box straight forward under the straps which funnelled us in snaking lines; the owner, a middle-aged woman with regulation hair kept her nose in the air and eyes forward, daring us to judge. There was confusion when a uniformed official announced an abandoned bag and we all looked at the plastic casing with holes along the side, the strange heavy quiet emanating from it, and said to each other, who would forget a cat? When its owner stood at the high perspex she spoke fluent French enough to get a laugh out of the officer and the box tipped over on its side with a weighted thump at her feet and still no sound came. The silk kaftan from the plane who’d enjoyed every inch of our conversation wafted three rows ahead. The perfectly rounded skull as big as a basketball with features the size of a child’s hunched in slow progression, an occasional profile revealed precision beard. We huffed and shuffled and cursed Farage and Johnson and sourced the scent that had followed us all morning as coming from M’s coat; no delicious notes of Frankincense rather the sprayed message of a raggedy Tom who makes nightly visits to my kitchen. I’d heard him in my half-sleep yowing his arrival and so used to it, thought nothing, but M’s trench coat had been hung ready on the raised handle of her case and with it the scent of her own cat and whippet. Derek meet Mousey & Twig, and if perfumers could capture the pervasiveness of his musk you’d only need one dab a year. Oh how we laughed. To happy work of getting the cottage ready, we hit the ground running with lists - market / IKEA / bring from house. Two years ago, (or was it three?) M, S & I went down to what was the wreck of a shell, the building containing half a century of another family’s life and death, the walls dark, the air musty with fever. We’d opened the door carefully and switched on our merkabas before crossing the threshold. None of us wanted to turn right along the passageway to the darkened bedrooms beyond. In the death room, shutters bolted against July heat, we placed our tools; a bowl of water, flowers, salt, a candle and incense - this witchery we worked together without speaking. As we moved we all felt it, the web of sticky plasmic staying, the stuck and not letting go. It covered our faces, swept along our skin, clung to our backs and brought the hairs up on our arms. We chanted and lit and said prayers. We left the candles burning. What change since then, in not just the dimensions of La Petite Souer but echoing through each inch of my life. Nothing looks the same. Everything feels different and she, the little sister of the big house, is dancing. Light-filled and faces washed, rooms expansive and love bouncing from terracotta tile to the ancient oaks which still reach their arms above her, she is reborn. If anyone’s in the mood for a very pretty cottage in southern France in which to vacance, let me know…We managed swimming and backgammon and Ramatuelle. The tennis courts market on Sunday morning brought the joy of a budget and furniture I would normally pass by. We found barrels for tables, and Buddha thrown in, a bargaining in my poor French produced Habitat chairs at a knock down rate. All this arrived and was placed, a happy dolls house play of furnishing from which we stood back and admired our work. A transformation, and not just her. Six months ago I was here alone on a writing retreat unaware that a phone call was coming that would, in New York second, change everything. Six months ago I was still living according to an eight year plan that stretched a lifetime ahead. There has been half a year of grieving since, a season of rage and sorrow. All belongs says Gaia, and these last few days that truth has settled. All belongs. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Due to a slight tech situation, the end of our conversation was cut off. But never fear! We jumped on zoom, and here it is: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

First thing’s first:I will be LIVE in conversation with (First and Last Woofter), the one and only Patrick Gale, Thursday 3pm UK. It’s his first foray into Substack, his maiden interview here, and being a lifelong devotee of both the man and his work I’m slightly beside myself that it should be me who gets to hold the stage. For those who know his work already, come with your questions. For those who’ve yet to discover one of England’s finest novelists, where have you been? He’s our very own Anne Tyler, our Cornish Elizabeth Strout and in Love Lane, we’re back with Harry Cane…. I’ve already told him I may well spend the entire hour telling him how much I love him. It’s also more than likely that we’ll drift into whippets…Now, for the diary….I ran out of oil. In 30 years of living at the farm, this has never happened. The AGA went out, the heating died, there was no hot water. That was Monday, which we’ll return to, but first, Mothering Sunday which saw me and Margaret exchanging rage-filled, tearful voice texts about the lack of flowers, messages, texts, phone calls, thinking ahead, any planning at all by our offspring while avoiding (me) and raging at (her) instagram which is designed to turn even this most ancient of existences into a competition from which we all emerge scathed and seething. All it takes is a daffodil we cried to each other as decades of snot and teething and temperatures and dropping everything to hold knocked us over. As the waves of love and exhaustion took us under. As the scent of freshly baked bread made us wonder if we were the only ones noticing, and the driving and cooking and cleaning and love, (did I mention the love?) made us shout Why only one day? I’ve a thing about these man-made celebratory dates; Mother’s Day, Women’s Day, Valentine’s and Christmas. I can’t help but feel they’re a happy falsehood of care, (“We celebrate you, don’t we?”) and a straightforward system for keeping us in our place while making money out of it; a coercive control producing flowers once year to make it all right. They make me wild. And then there’s instagram. So M and I in our voice message exchanges tried to be very mature while failing and I thought of all the friends who’ve wanted children and never had them, who’ve lost children, who’ve lost mothers when they were young for whom the day is so much worse, and hours ticked on and I went for a walk and then this happened.S turned up for some farm R&R with a friend, and they each brought armfuls of flowers and telling me I’m the best. And then B sent a message so full of love and care it made me cry, instantly plus has it arrived yet? which it hasn’t (whatever it is) but the thought mended everything. And J stepped up to help me yesterday (which we’ll get to), turning up with flowers and just what I needed. And then oil ran out. At the kitchen table yesterday, the place from which I’ve run a commune, married twice, brought up twins and written four novels I suddenly and all at once could no longer hold it all together; the farm, the estate, the parenting and career. Last week I met with AW for an editing meeting which we ended with a quick tarot because, why not, we are both warlocks of a kind, and the last card I pulled was the Ten of Wands. You’re holding too much, he said. You need to put something down. And at the kitchen table when I could no longer hold it together, S put her arms around me and said, your mum died, and your relationship ended and J&B left home and you’ve a book coming out and it’s no wonder, it’s a lot, you need to put something down. And then the oil ran out and I thought, Okay. It’s a sign. I have moved to London. I picked up the keys last week and moved boxes from my mum’s emptying house yesterday. Last night was my first night in my new flat, and obviously this is confluence of happy timing is no coincidence at all. It was time.J turned up with flowers and all hands on deck for a day of logistical boxes, parking, keys and lugging mattresses upstairs. We went to the Tall White House and rescued 1970’s cutlery and 1980’s saucepans, and the cups I gave my mum with the handprints of her grandsons made in the pottery when they were small. We sat on the floor while waiting for deliveries and imagined his travels to Vietnam. We ate lunch at a place on Portobello, marvelling at the ease of being in London, and made lists of things I need; kettle, water filter, everything. And after he’d gone I unpacked boxes.As the bubble wrap lifted from the glasses that had once stood in the high white cupboards of the dining room out of reach, the distinct scent of Cinzano drifted up to meet me. And as I looked through a bag with my name on it, tissue paper revealed a tile from Cluny where, on our long drives through France, my mother would always stop. Hello Ma & Pa. You are here and so am I. A flat in west London, the part of town where I lived with Margaret 30 years ago, long before the farm, and children and marriages and books. I've returned to the ‘hood. A new chapter begins. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

“Books are radical technology” said Louisa Joyner on the Main Stage yesterday and although London Book Fair can sometimes feel like the slick debut from an Enfant Terrible; overly wordy and as pleased with itself as all hell, I’m with Louisa. Reading is an act of protest and rebellion and books are the latest and oldest in the fight.The watchword at every talk seemed to be libraries, especially on the PEN stage which was less doused in entry-point, evergreen and content viewing habits than the bigger spaces where Netflix sat alongside Penguin Random House and reshaped this sacred act to fit an industry-language modal. Fascinating as those key notes were, it was PEN where I found the literary activists; the publishers, writers and librarians that felt like home. I found myself drawn back there again and again, up the metal stairs with the bannister rail that unnervingly stopped and started, and steps strangely carpeted in beige, a pace along the balcony and random dive through the swing doors, a glance at what was on and often getting lucky with a seat. But let me take you by the hand to the beginning, of walking in through Olympian arches on Day One.I met AW, SB & JN for breakfast. Tea, and tables moved to fit us all, in a little cafe a minutes walk from the venue. Already we were talking in that way when industry professionals get together, like an AA meeting meets falling off the wagon, therapy while happily digging ourselves deeper; to have found myself in a career that involves what I would be doing anyway for free is what makes this writing life such an excitement and a heartache. We care and we cannot stop. I spotted others at other tables, the conversations to come of nods and negotiations; LBF hasn’t always welcomed the writers, it is, primarily, for the publishers and all who sail with her. LBF is where deals are done. Or rather, relationships are cemented, as these days many deals are already in the bag before early March rolls around and the hurried, harried faces of agents have been hurried and harried already non-stop since Frankfurt. I was feeling peculiar as we stopped at bag check, the river of this certain type of us; large glasses, decisive boots, crumpled suits having carried us across the Hammersmith Road and down the wide side street to ribbons herding lines. Was it a rogue wave micro dose (they happen)? Or just a complete lack of sleep (weird dreams and 3 am wakefulness)? Or the sheer impact of Olympia in full book fair swing, massive and crowded and What’s On boards only adding to the sense that whatever this was, it was already Too Much? I decided to adopt the festival stance of old; a refusal to take in maps and timetables or any planning whatsoever, a commitment to let the flow take me. And take me it did. It’s been two days of bumping into people I haven’t seen in years - a random stop in a quiet spot to eat my salad and who should be beside me but C who I haven’t seen since the Festival of Writers back in 2017. An aimless left and right and hey presto I found myself at Salt and the lovely Chris Hamilton-Emery who gave me my first deal. Standing up from his table, about to go and literally at the one beside, AG from school who now works in distribution. And without any meet me there or see you here AW and I managed to coincide not only events but seats next to each other repeatedly. When you catch the current, the overwhelm of crowded places with too much choice becomes a simplified matter of not worrying what else might be going on. Yesterday, tired and wondering if this really was enough now, I took an empty chair at someone else’s table, got talking to the someone else who turned out to know exactly who I need to call to get FALLOUT into prison libraries, an idea born of attending the PEN event on supporting targeted communities. It went like that, each leaning to feel a little lost straightened by some fantastically coincidental connection that said, no, keep going, you’re in the right place. JS and I had a thoroughly lovely catch up in her very busy day, both work and personal, we sat on quilted stools near the Main Stage while she refuelled, and parted with a hug; her to relentless rounds of meetings, me to find what next to inspire my day. And have I mentioned the large glasses, decisive boots and crumpled suits of this uniform of choice? In the queue to the toilets I met my favourite, an eavesdropping heaven between a New Yorker in neck brace, pink teddy boy shoes with black flames snaking, the largest glasses possible, and a face intent on living who’d zeroed in on the woman behind her (and in front of me) who fielded this cultural cross over with quiet, respectful Britishness despite the feeling coming off her friend to meet eyes. All this and more; the urge to pour my tea over the balcony onto heads unexpecting, or the screams of did you see that badge? by young things unsure if Buy My F*****g Book was approved messaging for LBF. Michele Howarth I can tell you that it went down a storm. And of course, the joy of CB in Empress mode, and FALLOUT there on the shelves and up at Turnaround, of people talking about it, of it out in the world and how it really does take a village to raise a book. All of this is a joy, as was last night when we skipped off to the Stable Group party. I could only stay for a small slice, and we looked forward to meeting again in NYC. A small slice because it was a Substack gathering night, too.The best for the end? Maybe it really was - I always imagine I won’t know a soul but even in the doorway writing down our names on sticky labels, there was JF, and on entering the room upstairs a delight in finding PW and a host of others and the chatter and love carried me from one Hello! to another. One of the speakers told of how this place has radically changed his life for the better and that’s me too. I know we sound like evangelists, but Substack saved my writing life and I’ll never tire of saying it. So thank you Farrah @Substack Rosie Gee and Emma Rowley for hosting, and brilliant discussion led by Emma Gannon with Abigail Bergstrom Jess Pan and Mark Diacono . The room was half-filled with those not here yet and I hope it inspired them to join in. Writing is radical technology and Substack is where rebels come to play. There can never be too many of us.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Morning all,Just a quick head’s up for all those thinking of going the Hybrid route.In line with London Book Fair happening all week (and yes, I’ll be there, might even do a bit of LIVE streaming…), my Substack LIVE guest today will be Stephanie Buck, creator of The Hybrid Publishing Toolkit. Join us with your questions and pens at the ready 6pm tonight (GMT) plus listen out for the special discount offer for orders before 31st March.Subscribe now, and keep your eyes on Notes for the live link. Stephanie’s done all the hard work for you…. Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

It was a train ride to Gladstone Library which began with a complicated shifting of luggage and repacking awkwardly in the back of my car in an echoey London NCP where always something is dribbling over the concrete floor and wafts of urine meet the sense that a car chase or attack is imminent. They are look-over-your-shoulder scary, city carparks, especially the ones underground. From there, suitcase artfully repacked leaving pinstripe trousers and gold boots and taking my heavy blanket (we’d been told it would be cold) I walked to Euston past city tents and felt regret, and foolish that I could have, that morning, written a post about stress. This is stress I thought passing the flapping tarpaulin rigged up on high pavement wall and had the urge to edit my post and then thought, No, why do I need to tell the world I’m embarrassed at my loss of perspective? Why not just correct it internally? Which I did. Waiting for trains, watching the faces craned to the board is one of my favourite theatres; I love the coffee in hands, the suitcases each has carefully arranged, the muted conversations and loud. A pair of women to my left, familiar, comfortable, off hiking. A father dragging a daughter across my vision, he, harried and looking for something, she, dragging her feet, pink raincoat, brown curls, more interested in her hands. I thought, where’s her mother? in that automatic way for which I chastised myself; maybe she didn’t have one, maybe this was divorced dad’s weekend, but minutes later dad and daughter washed up beside me with mum and brother, Spanish, talking rapidly, mispronouncing Tring and repeating platform numbers until they left in a hurry, children continuing to drag.I got travel sick during the two hours to Chester, I realise now it was probably this bug coming on, but the swaying of the high speed and my attempts at working made the carriage swim and the drowning fields outside become my anchor. All was wet and glistening mud as the south became the midlands, horses up to their fetlocks, heads dropped, hedges scarred with winter, ploughed acres of flood plains and one lonely chestnut leaning for its friends in the distance. I am against postwar crop farming methods. I am saying that for the record. There’s no need to till the soil or rip oaks away from each other. As we sped towards Crewe and Churchill’s cry to dig for your country laid out a tattered land of fences and fertiliser I wondered how long it would take for humans to recognise en masse that we can talk to trees. Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, and yes that’s THE Gladstone, who lobbied repeatedly during his four terms at the top and sixty years in politics for Welsh home-rule. Who read so many books that, broken down into timescale, would have meant he’d have had to have read a book a day from the day he was born to the day he died. So we’re talking multiple books started and finished in a day. While being Prime Minister. I realise there was no BBC iPlayer in the 19th century, but still. I won’t break the privacy of the writers who gathered for our inaugural meeting, this was Day One of Kit de Waal ‘s 6 month writing course, but I will say that it was a joy to connect, loving and inspiring and wholly heartwarming, and yet again I experienced the truth that everyone carries with them stories of complexity and fascination, and humanity, these strange animals we are, is impressive in its drive to see the light and make something beautiful of it. I walked in the graveyard before we all met, searching for the earliest grave and found it, a child, 9 months, in 1733, her headstone a cracked carved slab leaning brokenly against church wall, wet with moss and dragging leaves, her brother lying flat at her feet, 18 months, no name. Within the church as usual the urge to also lie flat overtook me. I breathed. Empty churches never stop telling stories. An early walk in the rain to the castle, primroses and slipping banks. Breakfast. The last to arrive with L having got talking and forgotten the time. We worked, we learnt, we said goodbye and shared taxis to the station, me and M & W, I sat facing the retreating road and again, travel sickness snaked up my gut and made me hot with dizziness, Chester station arriving just in time. W & I talked all the way to London, the journey delivered in an easy chattering share of our lives, what joy. Some lads in the seats behind us called out, has anyone got scissors? I’ve gum in my ear, at least that’s what I thought he said, and had visions of poking and blood, until he called out again, I’ve gum in my hair. This, I could deal with. Of course I had scissors, tiny gold embroidery ones carved with fishscales that belonged to a friend of long ago and have resolutely slept in an inside pocket of my bag, ready for this moment. No one was more surprised than the boy when I stood up with them in my hands. He leaned his head toward me, this young lad, his friends laughing, the clump of his chewing gum hair held out for me to cut. Don’t cut too much as if this was a hairdressing salon on the high street and not a north western railway hurtling south. Hold still as the carriage lurched. His friends thought it hilarious. He retreated with the hair gum strands in his hands and I watched him feel for the hole in his neat haircut, imagining the mirror and going out tonight and girls.My journey didn’t end in London. Back to the car and scary underground carpark, onto the road for the farm. It was no wonder Saturday was a blur and Sunday the sick bug came and took me. I think I rode on Monday. I definitely dragged my feet about the kitchen and repeated I don’t feel well as if this would override the stuff and nonsense approach to illness that I have been brought up with. I cancelled lunch with F on Tuesday, making it to zoom for therapy in which I cried and ranted and raged and felt an inch better until I had to muster myself for London again when I wondered what what would happen if I threw up on the 13:21 to Waterloo. Amongst this, with the full moon, Margaret’s four-legged girl died and Samson and I lit a candle. To the Happy Hunting Grounds, with love. Moronic tendencies kicked off another round of such world madness it’s a wonder straight jackets are not flying; this I was shielded from until I finally looked at the news and spoke to A who told me her brother in Dubai is sleeping in his car in the basement.Meetings, unavoidable, and more chattel collecting at the Tall White House. A discovery that no one had claimed the whizzy-whizzy chair on which I spent so many hours spinning. A discovery of the triple disc Womble Album. Help packing the pheasant crockery, my new flat will have echoes of the past in it after all. Coffee with A and a quick cup of tea with K. And last night, in preparation for my conversation with Essie Fox: TALKING THE GOTHIC , Queen of the Gothic tomorrow on Substack LIVE, I took myself off to the Electric for an immersion in Emerald Fennel’s Wuthering Heights. I’ve a feeling Essie will have quite a lot to say about this. It’s rich and theatrical and plays roaringly fast and loose with the text. It’s a feast and I loved it, loving Emerald Fennel’s eye already. It’s as sexy as it should be, as sexy as the book and just as tempestuously windswept and epic as the moors. The sound track is great. In a packed auditorium set with sofas and armchairs and coloured glass table lamps I ate popcorn, feet up, awash with Cathy and Heathcliffe. Around me Young People put their phones away. A girl in silver trousers got one last selfie in with boyfriend directed to kiss her. The girls beside me in identical glasses and baseballs caps took off their hats and settled in with pints of Stella and chips. When the movie closed, I was the first one to stand. Outside, a group clustered, eyes wiped, It’s going to take you a long time to be all right, said one to another. Grief and rage continue. Eleanor Use this link ⬆️ to dive into my archive This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

I’ll be honest with you. I’m pre-pub stressed. Alisa Kennedy Jones and I jumped on a zoom last night and I said, “I’m apologising in advance for how annoying I’m going to be between now and book launch.” She’s busting a gut to get everything happening at the right time and in the right order and I’m trying really hard to trust in god and tie up my camel. Tying up my camel, I’m good at. Trusting in god, not so much. I was chatting with PG earlier this week who also has a book coming out and he said he hates the pre pub months, which was reassuring to hear, him being so experienced. I want to bury my head and run away and move onto the next and wave a magic wand. Which is funny because I’m going to bet there are writers reading this who’d give their eye teeth to be in my position and can’t see what the fuss is about and why aren’t I just up to my neck in enjoying it? Which is what EC said when I moan-cried to her and of course she’s absolutely right. *continues crying and moaning.Can’t remember Monday at all. Tuesday I went to Bruton to stay with Margaret who’s helping me with the cottage out in France. Another mountain out of a molehill situation when I needed hand-holding through a momentous IKEA order involving beds and linen and cutlery and lamps. A few micro naps later we went with B to dinner - by coincidence all of us wearing variations on green, white and pinstripes - to celebrate early Margaret’s birthday, and devoured plate after plate of dishes so small and delicious we became hysterical; like the meeting of the green-white-stripes coven intent on losing their s**t over strips of tender venison and beetroot hot with horseradish. To London on Wednesday, a three hour drive that required coffee, and logistics of packing for a couple of days here before the train to Wales today - I have to hurry this and get up and go. Breakfast meeting with SM yesterday in Coal Drops Yard - my lord that woman’s brain is a wonder, I could swim in it forever. She’s a powerhouse. Lunch with D & D & their son M just returned from Paris. So lovely, and things delivered from VO. These friendships we build. They are precious. Went straight off to meet JD for a walk along the river - he’s dog sitting Pickles who could only see joy in her little silken head and know love in her soft, bitey mouth. Home to my temporary bed in White City where my phone decided to freeze and I had to run across the road to the Apple Store in my pyjamas for a young person to press a few buttons and get it working again. Stress zoom with Alisa. De stress watch of more episodes of Detectorists. Sleep. I had better get my s**t together and get up. It’s Day 1 of Kit de Waal ‘s 6 month writing course and I’m off to Gladstone Library. The joy of sitting in class again. The relief of handing over responsibility. Teach me. I will learn.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

So he’s been arrested. I might have been the last person in the UK to hear this, my day being spent well away from ticker-tape streaming breaking news and anything resembling The State of Things bar the small and flighty references made by me and P as we walked in the woods, marvelling at moss. I’ll start at the beginning. It’s reading week and the farm has been peopled by a herd of Yoot, friends of B arriving by train and bus and car. In the run up I did a lot of shopping, three goes at the supermarket knowing I couldn’t carry it all at once. The freezer groaning, the fridge lit up, the larder toppling, my waking brain full of casseroles and soups. Were there vegetarians? Who doesn’t drink milk? None of this in my day business; I remember my mother catering for a summer house array of celiacs and Hep C’s, vegans and dyed in the wool carnivores with a deadly night shade avoidant thrown in and her outrage on hearing that someone else didn’t eat flour. Nut allergies hadn’t made their way into the 70’s and thankfully, and they didn’t this week either, just a quiet preference for tofu, and another retreating from dairy. These we can handle.They’re messy and bright and young and grown up and at the beginning and also already begun. They eat a lot. They’re loving with each other. They get up late and go to bed when I am nearly at my full night’s sleep. I hear them larking about in my dreams. They study together, laptops open on their knees in the sitting room, the stress of an assignment due today put M on the floor with a blanket over her head. Broth was required and a gentle closing of the blue light. They work hard and take it seriously. I find myself drifting quietly about among them, loading and unloading the dishwasher, putting lids on things and wiping surfaces, thinking about supper. Slowly, like animals peeking out, they’ve each found me in the kitchen for conversations that matter to them. I think of the horse whisperer and Robert Redford in the long grass. I listen and don’t say much. They are each flighty, in their own way. Aren’t we all. Amongst this I’ve been to London for the launch of Catherine: a retelling of Wuthering Heights by my friend Essie Fox: TALKING THE GOTHIC , held at Goldsboro Books, which was fun in all the right places, and included an early drink with AW (one of my favourite ways to spend an hour) and a chance reconnect with Louise Fein whose latest Book of Forbidden Words will be out next week. We hadn’t seen each other since our debut days. Both Essie and Louise will be guests on Substack LIVE, keep your eyes out 👀 for schedule and links….I was hosted by Lindsey Trout Hughes and the London Writers' Salon on Substack LIVE on Tuesday night - have I fully expressed the joy of talking to a curious and brilliant mind who’s read FALLOUT and loved it? Perhaps I haven’t. Perhaps the happiness is impossible to relate. This, when Lindsey holds up my book and is smiling and hugging it like a treasure of love, this is what it’s all about. For the work to be got, the intention understood, the words to land and the whole to be embraced with that objective joy that is nothing to do with glorifying the writer and everything to do with loving the living breath of a work of literature, this I can let land in me, too. This is how I feel about books I love. I stroke their covers like the neck of a horse come to stand beside me. I glory in them. (Thank you Lindsey.) London Writers' Salon are running weekly prompts for free subscribers, and a competition for paying subscribers. I’m delighted to be this month’s guest judge on the theme of The Fence. Details on their Substack. While riding J rang to say he’d got into UAL!!! 👏👏👏 and I couldn’t be more proud of that boy who is taking life by the lapels and saying, Come on then. Who is turning up. Who is being bold in the face of risk. I finished a draft of the new piece of work I’ve been playing with for a year, and sent it off to AW before I changed my mind. It’s short. 32,000 words. A small book that asks one, very big question. I love it, as I should, and am enamoured by its clear intent to not be any bigger. I am a novella, it says to me again and again. Okay. I hear you. P swung by to pick up her copy of Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón and we talked about the rarified air of poets and how lichen is part fungi part plant and how moss makes us want to be little people and headed off into the woods to prove it.Chat with AS & SLB yesterday - they’re at Les A, such a joy to see them, the house, them in the house, know that most holy of places is being filled with brilliant life. We are making plans….Last night was supper made from leftovers and Yoot overwhelm floor-lying with blanket over head, and life-giving broth to bring her round. I am just as vulnerable to this blowing up of things that on my deathbed I will not remember. I think this as waves of urgency and panic hit me in the run up to pub day. It matters hugely to me and simultaneously, in the vast and rolling scheme, it doesn’t matter at all. And then I went to bed, leaving them all too it, hearing laughter replace stress, and opened iPlayer with thoughts of a comforting half hour on the bobsleigh or curling or with Clare Balding’s hair and what should great me but Breaking News and an inch by inch description of the days events on repeat and That Photograph of him in the back of his car attempting to lie flat or is it hide or is it so knocked over by entering a police station that hadn’t been newly painted he couldn’t work out what the smell was until he discovered it was him. I’m no royalist, but god love Charles’ statement. And I’m no believer in the state, but holy smoke this looks remarkably like holding to account. Not a single Yoot mentioned it all day so I wonder if they don’t look or maybe they don’t care and perhaps both of these are signals for a bright and burning future. Welcome to the year of the Fire Horse.Eleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Angie Browne, Billy Bumbo, Lindsey Trout Hughes, Isabel Peralta, Kristin Austin, and many others for tuning into my live video with London Writers' Salon! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

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On the tube yesterday it struck me, this splintering of reality, so many versions, one for every passenger moving along the platform. It wasn’t always that our politics divided us, there have been eras when a shared reality went all the way up the tree and only at the very edges did one person say the world is flat while another said it was round. Mostly we shared a lens. Mostly we saw things, in larger groups that is, from the same angle. I sat on a bench remembering how mice used to run about the tracks and the whistling underground wind brought a train screaming out of darkness and every person around me carried a reality in their head and I thought about statements that we could all agree on without getting into a fight.We are humans. I thought that was a pretty safe bet. And then I couldn’t think of a single other that someone wouldn’t take issue with. I think that’s why I operate from there in focused intent when meeting anyone. It’s the only shared reality I can reliably take as read. (Apologies to any aliens reading this, please do let yourselves be known.)I came up to London on Tuesday afternoon like a packhorse of rare things - a suitcase for three nights in the city, J’s camera bag with a bamboo steamer squeezed in it, his jacket stuffed sideways and my own leather rucksack from Venice that never fails to remind me of that Alice in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass week of the biannual when the black box had opened and I’d lost my mind. I’d been planning on an early night but J rang as I got off the train. “Come to a life drawing class.” And so I did, crossing London to dump my stuff then straight back on the underground to Oxford Circus where we met for early sups and played for time till 7pm in his favourite Soho cafe, one of those rare, untouched places so very hard to find; the ghosts of Francis Bacon and The Colony Club in the ripped green leather banquets. A place where if you ask for a tea they deliver a mug of builders with no questions asked about milk or caffeine or do you have herbal? Where the very idea of gluten free or lactose intolerant would be thrown out on the dirty, rushing Soho pavement along with your ideas of feeling special. Open deli sandwiches on display in the long, wide glass counter. A high board and a menu that’s never changed. A narrow gap for the proprietor to turn sideways through, in and out of the kitchen, plates of meat and two veg, customers come alone to eat before returning to their studios to paint masterpieces. A man beside us in baseball cap read a script, eyes down. Another, white hair in a booth across the room, was interrupted from his dinner by two young fans who knew he’d written / photographed / created greatness and wanted to tell him so. A man and a woman stood about pointing at the sepia images covering the walls and talking of how it used to be. This was the Soho of Quintin Crisp, one last vestige remaining. And then we went Life Drawing. A large, hot room in Covent Garden, chairs in an ellipse to the stage, easels set up behind them for a double row of students. £10 gets you a board to lean on, paper and pencils and two hours practicing looking. I was instantly fascinated by lines. I found I wanted to let my hand follow my eye without dropping my gaze to the page. I liked that I found lean in her back and weight in her seat. I noticed how the relentless practice of noticing that I do all the time as a writer, storing up and studying, came out in this other discipline. I want to go again. I want to make life drawing classes a habit. It was two hours of antidote to this shouting that says my reality is more true than yours. It was forty people in a room sharing the reality of a human form and producing their version without contesting the version of the person beside them. It was forty truths quite different yet quite happy to live side by side. We all belonged. Wednesday began early with a breakfast meeting at the Ivy Club with SD. Always and ever fascinating. Spent a happy hour with the Tudors at NPG, got caught in the rain on my way to meet VG, another happy two hours discussing The State of the World and our antidotes (excellent costume jewellery and sparkling eighties fashion are hers. I applaud and salute and in all ways love her.)To the tall cold house in London where I collected the last of the chattels from my mother’s estate. No, I didn’t want the paintings she left me, they were two of the scariest pieces of art I’ve ever seen and haunted my childhood - VG is convinced I should write an article about the things our parents leave us… I’m not sure I can bear to look - but here’s one of them:The other was a dim portrait of two women, one behind the shoulder of the other as if following, both looking out with the clear message that they were behind me, don’t look. They hung on a turn of the stone stairs, and I would spend my life racing past them. Thanks, mum, but no thanks. I did however rescue Babar and Arthur. They are coming home with me. Yesterday I had what looked like a blessed clear day, uncommon in this post-AC reality of mine where there are no checks on my enthusiasm for work. I thought I’d spend it editing - this new novella in process is shaping up - and I tried but a bone tiredness overtook me, as did admin. I realised last night I’m going to have to set up some clear parameters for when I’m on and off the clock. This brave new world will have no emails before 8am or after 6pm and none at the weekend. There will be life drawing. There will be pens down and eyes up and filters set to fine grain. There will be this:Eleanor p.s. - I’ll be in conversation with this afternoon only on Substack LIVE discussing her new novel Who By Fire. Join us at 6pm GMT..p.p.s - Luke Deasy has come up with the brilliant idea of AskMyStack. It’s a tool for bringing your substack archive into the present, making it easy for readers to navigate their way into it and find out more about who you are and what you write about. Have a look at mine and tell me what you think. It’s in development, and Luke is keen to hear feedback. You can contact him directly or leave comments here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Increasingly, there is poetry. From Andrea Gibson‘s every time i ever said i want to die, to Sherman Alexie‘s Black Box. Yesterday I met with the man who chose a phone call while 4,000 miles distant as an apt way to end an eight year relationship. We hadn’t spoken since that moment. I needed time to calibrate. Our relationship had been so fuelled by rage and passion, such complicated and huge emotions, so much love, so I thought; I loved him. But I didn’t want the ending to be like that, my ending, he’d already had his and it had sent a howl reverberating from hotel bedroom to the streets of New York. (I’m returning in May and I wonder if I’ll still hear it.) I wanted mine to be quiet. Clean. A clean cut. I was a mess the night before. I made myself watch videos of our past, zoomed in on snap shots of our summers together, his face; I had to rip the band aid off so that it wouldn’t be a shock. I had to ready myself. I knew full well how my body loved him, how my cells would jump at his arrival, how my chest would lean. I couldn’t risk a moment of forgetting. I’d forgotten too many times before.My head said to my heart, Now, look, I know you loved him but you can’t have him anymore. It’s over. He’s no good for us. And my head took my heart’s hand and said, It’s going to be okay. There was so much hurt I wanted to shout about; the temptation to make a scene, try and get the thing I’d been longing for, his understanding, compassion, pain, love, his real self to meet me; the self I’d imagined he was or could be. But this was the real him, he who chose a phone call to end it. That was the real him. There is something calming about reality. Something non-judgmental. Reality is allowed. And when we met in chairs too soft and too close together that I had to move and adjust before I could sit down, it was quick, and to the point. It was goodbye face to face, because eight years deserved that. And then it was over. Black Box by Sherman Alexie : This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

I’m tired. It’s been a lot. It’s only January. And then I speak to my friends in the states and the grief and rage comes in pins through their faces on the screen and pierces me too. It’s only January. Yesterday Jojo came for lunch and we laughed about stupid funny things and she told me some tragedies and we shared vegetable soup and sausages and lemon drizzle cake and walked in the easy cooling mist up to the stones then further, higher up into the woods. She said England had become the best temperate place to plant Sequoias. We’ve so many here. The one in the wedding circle is six people arms outstretched round. We kissed the Chestnut tree and shook hands with the Juniper tree and slid home down steep muddy tracks stopped by roots and held by branches. She cycled away before the light failed. I was in London last week looking at flats, I’m moving there; not hook line and sinker, but for this shoulder period of a decade before my children can reasonably think of the farm as beginning again, I’m taking action. I’ll go between the two. I don’t know how the routine will unfold, but I’ll find out. And already I’m appreciating the cosy known warmth of it more. I came home and everything was here and thirty years of nesting enveloped me. That’s the trouble and the beauty of it. It’s easy. Known. Little effort. With everyone gone I could easily disappear. Which I don’t want to. I’m not ready to. So London it is, pushing me out onto my visible edge again. The cats will have to cope. We’re in discussion.I read through a draft of the new book yesterday; determinedly a novella, it needs work, obviously, but there are bits that are not bad. I’ll let it rest for a while and then get back on it. It’s building. There is something there. And Substack LIVEs - yes, I’ve been doing a lot, and more to come. I get so nervous in the run up; my stomach goes, I wonder what the hell I’m doing, why do I do this to myself? and turn in circles trying to find a calm. I tell myself this (which is the truth): they are an exercise in presence, they give me the gift of connecting, they feed my curiosity, and when those three aspects come together they are the best fun. I’m always full of high afterwards, searching for more. The other day I saw Jane Fonda had arrived on Substack so I asked her. Imagine. You never know who’s going to say, Yes.LoveEleanor This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe