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• Africa Centre:ÌýThere is an invisible African presence in London’s Covent Garden. At 38 King Street, you will find a nearly nondescript building, currently being redeveloped into a retail space. But this place has a special significance to me and fellow Africans in Britain and in Africa as well as many British people with an interest in Africa and the Global South. Nowadays its quiet appearance belies its hidden history as a vibrant centre of African culture, politics and entertainment and there is little to suggest that until 2012, it housed the Africa Centre. The Africa Centre was opened in 1964 by Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia, and assumed a symbolic role in Post-colonial and Post-imperial Britain and Africa as a site of the continual celebration of all things African right in the centre of the former colonial metropole. The Africa Centre was a point of cultural exchange, offering the possibility of exploring new, and potentially more equal and deeper, kinds of African-British relations – it initiated exchanges that could go far beyond the colonialÌý Manicheanism and Anthropological gaze explored by Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth (Penguin, 2020, orig. 1963)).
• The Centre began as the brainchild of African students in London, and took shape when they were joined by a small group of British people with an interest in Africa, including Margaret Feeney and Antony Allott, a founding member of the SOASÌý Law Department. In a crucial development, the building was given to the African community and its Board of Trustees in perpetuity by the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. In 1962 Feeney became its first Director - and I was greatly honoured to serve on the Management Council, and briefly as its chair, from 1998 to 2003.
• An early aim of the centre was to provide a home away from home for the many African students studying in the UK. But it also promoted everything African: music, dance, politics, education. Within its walls, academic debates could be fuelled by African food served from its basement restaurant, The Calabash.Ìý It also had a bookshop dedicated to African books. It was one of the few places in the UKÌý where refugees, exiles, members of the various liberation movements, High Commissioners as well some visiting Generals and Cabinet Ministers mingled, albeit not always with the greatest ease (see ).
• There was something uncanny about the choice of the building for an African Centre. The structure itself turned out to have some previous connections with Africa and the global south generally, having been an auction house for Benin arts in the eighteenth century and subsequently a tomato and banana warehouse. It had been a veritable conduit of colonial exploitation of cultural artefacts as well as part of the network of colonial global capitalism. In its new life, it was remade as a counter-hegemonic space of anti-colonialism, decolonisation and possibly Post-colonial ‘futuring.’ It was a vibrant presence of Post-colonial and Post-imperial Africa in the very spaces where metropolitans had profited from colonialism.
• Leading members of the ANC such as Desmond Tutu and Thabo Mbeki patronised the place. Tutu recalls that:’ I do remember that when you were feeling a little low and homesick and everything seemed so foreign - you'd have this place, [the Africa Centre], it was so heart-warming.’ (). Equally memorable and renowned writers visited. For example, Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Ben Okri and Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Michere Mugo each at one time or another spoke at the Centre. Ngugi’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi was performed there in the 1980s.Ìý Dambudzo Marechera’s ground-breaking novel, The House of Hunger, was celebrated there. Yet another milestone was Michael Walling’s production of Toufann by the Mauritian writer, Dev Virahsawmy, an appropriation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest for the particular cultural and linguistic hybridity of Mauritius. With the intensification of the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe, South African and Namibia in the 1970s, it became a forum for intense and passionate debate about the future of those countries and Africa generally. It also welcomed the birth of new countries, for instance, it joined in the 1991 independence celebrations of Eritrea.
• As a space for discussion, it was naturally also aÌý space for thinking through new democracies. It hosted the bourgeoning African pro-democracy groups that emerged in the early 1990s. In 1993, as the newly formed Malawi Association UK,Ìý we organised, perhaps, the first public meeting in the UK by groups opposed to the one-party state in Malawi. The main speaker, Bakili Muluzi, would later become the first president of multiparty Malawi. The recently retired president of Malawi, Arthur Peter Mutharika also visited the Centre after his talk at ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú in the late 1990s.
• The Centre had a deep personal meaning for many: whenÌý we were campaigning against its closure, someone told me that, ‘without it, I would not be here – my parents met there.’ It could be that all buildings’Ìý brick and mortar endure across time, but their meanings change with different occupants and functions.ÌýÌý Even so, it can be contended that their meanings, their semiotic and affective significance, still persist in the numerous personal worlds of the former inhabitants as multiple memories of contingent and lived experience. These afterlives continue not so much in the lean terrain of solipsistic Cartesian pure thought, but more in the Kantian mode of existing both inside and outside consciousness simultaneously.Ìý So, it is with the Africa Centre in Covent Garden: it is no longer there, but it still abides in our memories and our affective histories. It is alive in the friendships we formed there and in the joys and sorrows we shared, as well as in the solidarity of the resistance to the decision to sell the building.Ìý It is remade in the public lives of many who have passed through it and who continue to contribute to advocating Africa, its arts, cultural practices, and its intellectual contribution to the world.
• Though invisible and silent to the passers-by and future shoppers, theÌý Africa Centre is still there at 38 King Street. Perhaps, from a different order of things, in another way of seeing, the building itself remembers. . Mpalive-Hangson Msiska.
• Artemisia – AttentionÌýI minded missing Artemisia Gentileschi at the National Gallery. Tickets for November 2020: cancelled; rebooked tickets for January 2021: cancelled. I missed the woman that much of art history has until recently persisted in missing. What effort must go into this kind of missing that refused to see such staggeringly vivid effects of paint on canvas? And what attention Artemisia brings to make her Judith and Holofernes: attention to what it means for muscle, skin, cloth, breath, and gut when a woman severs the head of a man. Carolyn Burdett.

Bus:ÌýI miss the No. 14 bus route from Russell Square to the Victoria & Albert Museum, a journey that, P.C. (pre covid), I used to make often. Sitting on the upper deck, in the window seat at the front, I would open a book but never read. Instead, I would gaze, an indulgent flâneuse, at the ‘West End’: Shaftesbury Avenue; Piccadilly; the Royal Academy; Knightsbridge and, at last, the V&A, always getting off a stop early to walk past the Brompton Oratory. As someone whose childhood was spent in suburban London, this journey always thrills me. I miss it. Lynda Nead.

• Christmastime:ÌýI love London at Christmastime. One of our family’s London Christmas traditions that were scuppered by the pandemic was our annual visit to Denis Severs’ House in Spitalfields. In a city full of interesting museums and galleries, Severs’ House is truly unique. After acquiring a Georgian terraced house on Folgate Street in 1979, the artist Severs recreated a series of period rooms, each telling the story of a family of Huguenot weavers who might have lived there between 1725 and 1919. With hearth and candles burning, and objects scattered haphazardly, it’s as if the inhabitants only left the rooms a second ago. Every Christmas season, the rooms are decorated with the sights and smells of Christmases past, making it a particularly special time to visit. Andrew Regan.

• Dalston: Elephants once roamed Dalston. The North London Colosseum, with a capacity of 4000, opened in Dalston in 1886, starring Professor Collier’s Elephants. But tastes change: in 1898 it was converted into a variety theatre and in 1920 to a cinema. In the 1960s it became one of the first venues for black music in the UK, with Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Cliff appearing. It transformed again in the 1990’s, becoming Club Labyrinth, home of rave. The building was demolished in 2007, despite much dissent, to make way for Dalston Junction station which regularly disgorges revellers into the night. Sue Jones
• Docks:ÌýThis word names a maze of canals, one-way systems, deep dark waters. First, there was the East India company’s early dock at Blackwall (they needed a wall to keep their produce safe). Produce came in - desirables, some bloodstained, from India, Sumatra, China and then the colonies. Then the war, container ships that were too big, decay, and a famous notice ‘You’re welcome to Millwall’. Dockers, too, are amongst London’s missing. Whole suburbs grew up in service of the docks. Electric light illuminated the docks early – to stop the pilfering. For some boys, education meant learning to swim. Thanks to Ollie Chinyere.
• Open door: Lock Down for me erased one of the glories of London ... serendipitous discoveries. As a London based guide and author my life is spent walking the streets, dipping in and out of alleyways and courtyards, and visiting small independent galleries. Each day brought newÌýexperiencesÌýbut best of all were the things you found when least expecting them when entering an open door. With London’s doors shut and nobody on the streets the random meetings with artists and the public were gone and visits toÌýthe city were poorer without them.

• Execution dock:ÌýExecution Dock, the centuries-old site of pirate execution, stood at the low tide point on Wapping foreshore. Following a final ale at the nearby Turks Head, condemned pirates would be hanged at Execution Dock and their bodies left on the gallows until three tides had washed over them. Audiences thronged to witness these events. Pirates continue to exert a fascination today. One Wapping pub has erected a gallows and customers drink their pints in its shadow. But Execution Dock itself is lost in the Thames mud and only the nearby Thames River Police HQ is left to administer watery discipline. Sue Jones.
  
• Excuses:ÌýI miss excuses to borrow my favourite children and go to the panto at Hackney Empire. We would sit in cheap seats in a high balcony, in the front row. And when the cast threw sweets into the crowd I would say, ‘now is the time they want us to throw our sweetie papers, one, two, three’, and down would drift the papers onto the stalls. Ha, serve them right. But this year all the parents are home-schoolteachers, and the other grown-ups have masks on and scuffle tactfully to the other side of the pavement. Here’s to knowing the small people again, as humans. Rachel Klosky.

• Film:ÌýThe first time I went, my friend, Chloe tried to convince me to adopt an axolotl. (I considered it until discovering they eat live fish). She then presented a film she had not seen and was herself introduced by a video of Stanley, the curator, singing her name from the sandstone mountains of Wadi Rum. None of those present knew what the film would be. Liberated Film Club featured, once a month, an incognito film. I miss it and its ardent attendees. That night we saw Passion, by György Fehér, based on the crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra.

• Gorilla:ÌýIn 2016, a silverback gorilla named Kambuka went missing at London Zoo by exiting through an unlocked ‘entrance’. In this ironic twist of events, the patrons and staff at the zoo locked themselves into buildings around the site to counter the danger presented by this unleashed ‘wildness’. These spectators watched through phone screens and the windows of their temporary enclosures as the gorilla strolled freely around the grounds of the zoo. There is a delicate balance central to zoological spectatorship where the rules and expectations of such tangled space are quickly surpassed when the boundaries established by captivity are transgressed. Lee Christian.
• Green Park:ÌýGreen Park is a central London park missing lakes, buildings or playgrounds. Can it be a park with all those gone? It may not have buildings of its own, but it is hedged by shopping paradises and palaces (see T is for Townhouse) as well as, apparently, RAF Bomber Command Memorial (which sounds like something your grandad would require you see on a trip to London). Also, was it really a burial ground for sufferers from leprosy? Thanks to Ollie Chinyere.

• Horses:ÌýIt’s very rare that you see or smell a horse in London these days; police horses, ceremonial uses, the occasional brewers’ dray kept for show. It’s a bit of a thrill to hear the clop of hooves. But horses occupied the London streets alongside humans for most of the city’s history. For many centuries, the horse was the only means of powered transport, apart from the river, for goods and people within and beyond the metropolis. Horse-related activities proliferated: the Saddlers are one of the earliest documented city companies, while the horse market at Smithfield is mentioned in the 1170s. Carts and packhorses thronged London’s streets from the middle ages, and coaches and private vehicles from the 16thÌýcentury. Even a century ago, in 1919, though the motor was already dominant in passenger transport in London, three-quarters of trade vehicles were still horse-drawn. Visitors commented on how London smelt of horses, and the 3-4 tons of dung each one produced in a year made no small contribution to the capital’s problems of cleanliness and congestion. Vanessa Harding.

• Ice: In his twelfth-century account of the city of London, William Fitzstephen, hagiographer of Thomas Becket, described skating on the frozen marsh at Moorfields on skates fashioned from cattle bone. Just such a pair is held by the Museum of London, a type of skate in use since prehistory. A fragment of Old English riddle may allude to this collocation of ice and bone: wundor wearð on wege; wæter wearð to bane (a wonder happened on the way; water turned to bone). Ice, brittle and pale as bone, without doubt, but perhaps also the inter-objective pas de deux of ice and bone, dancing together? Mike Bintley.

• London Bridge:ÌýOld London Bridge looms spectacular in the imagination. Containing on its span houses and businesses, water mills, fortified gates, heads on spikes, it was pre-modern London in microcosm.Ìý It hindered the flow of the mighty Thames, causing rapids between the bridge’s piers. To steer a boat through was ‘shooting the bridge’, a hazardous and often fatal endeavour. In 1831 the bridge was replaced by a more orderly structure, traces of the original effaced. The stones of Old London Bridge now languish, hidden, lining the West Reservoir in Hackney. I swim over them and – sometimes – glimpse ghosts of heads on spikes. Sue Jones.

• London Bridge:ÌýOld London Bridge looms spectacular in the imagination. Containing on its span houses and businesses, water mills, fortified gates, heads on spikes, it was pre-modern London in microcosm.Ìý It hindered the flow of the mighty Thames, causing rapids between the bridge’s piers. To steer a boat through was ‘shooting the bridge’, a hazardous and often fatal endeavour. In 1831 the bridge was replaced by a more orderly structure, traces of the original effaced. The stones of Old London Bridge now languish, hidden, lining the West Reservoir in Hackney. I swim over them and – sometimes – glimpse ghosts of heads on spikes. Sue Jones.

• Missing (obviously):ÌýIn 1827, when John Simpson’s painting was first exhibited at the British Institution on Pall Mall, it was called Head of a Black. Owned by the National Gallery since 1847, it remained mostly in storage. Transferred to Tate in 1919, it has only been on permanent display since 2013. Within Tate’s collection of British art, the painting is significant as one of very few historical portraits of Black sitters. Yet it is revealing – and troubling – that even today researchers have not been able to establish with certainty this man’s identity. The title hints at an unconfirmed link with the famous Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Our knowledge of the Black presence in nineteenth-century London remains seriously under-researched, and difficult to access because most archives did not record a person’s ethnicity, or the colour of their skin. Scholars now try hard to recuperate the identities of sitters such as the one in Simpson’s painting. This is difficult and painstaking work, but it is urgent business: we need to know more about these ‘missing’ people that inhabit many of the galleries and historic collections in London. Their contributions to the city’s history must be more widely known and understood. Sarah Thomas.

Neighbourhood:ÌýWas St Buttolphe’s Without Aldgate London’s first multi-cultural community? When Shakespeare wrote Othello he didn’t have to use his imagination to conjure up ‘the Moor of Venice’. Michael Wood’s research in the Guildhall archives has revealed that a small parish outside the city gates at Aldgate was home to around twenty-five ‘moors’ at the end of the sixteenth century, including Isabell Peeters ‘a Black-more lodgeing in Blew Anchor Alley’, Symon Valencia, ‘a black moore servaunt to Stephen Drifyeld a nedellmaker’, and Christopher Cappavert ‘a black moore’ who probably hailed from the Cape Verde Islands. The district was also inhabited by French and Dutch immigrants, a Persian, and several people from the Indian sub-continent. Life was hard for these denizens, however, and John Stow’s Survey of London (1598) describes the parish as full of ‘filthy Cotages, and ... other preposterous like inclosures ... which is no small blemish to so famous a citie.’ Stephen Clucas.

• Obscene Publications Act:ÌýIf you walk down Kingsway to the Aldwych and stand midway between St Clement Danes and St Mary-le-Strand, you are standing on a slice of missing London. This was the site of Holywell Street, a narrow Elizabethan lane, which The Times called ‘the most vile street in the civilised world’. Holywell Street sold indecent books and prints and in 1857 became the focus of a moral panic about obscenity that led to the passing of the first Obscene Publications Act. It was dirty and seditious and stood in the way of London’s modernisation. RIP Holywell Street. Lynda Nead.
• Our designer:ÌýNow mysteriously missing, our designer, O, is gone! OC has now exited the Missing London vault, slammed the big door; crossed the Threshold; passed the Plane trees and is undoubtedly Missing to be met only serendipitously or in Series Three The Return a Castle Own production coming soon in the smoking ruin of british higher education- maybe as our defence lawyer? Gordon Cole.

• Plane trees:ÌýI’m not missing London. I’m not missing my commute, expensive take-out cups of tea on Kings Cross station because my train’s delayed. I’m not missing my ancient work PC. I’m not even missing the books I’ve left in my office. I’m not missing the clouds of choking seed heads that come off the plane trees and drift on the steps of our building, making eyes itch and throats close. But actually, I am missing those plane trees. Their sheer audacity: to be so huge, their crunchy, then slippery, leaves on pavements, roots undermining buildings, insisting they belong in the city. Rosie Cox

• Quadrangle:ÌýHaving never once attended Somerset House’s annual ice-skating rink in the Before Times, it was a bit weird to find myself missing it in 2020. In my mind: arctic light, the scraping of skates, the warmth of people in the cold air. Maybe it was just the people I was missing. To me, means picking my way across it to meet my family members in its café, a hazy recollection of my nephew running through its summer fountains, . Much more recently, : bodies congregating in a courtyard choreography, others gathering to delightedly watch. Louise Owen.

• Route:ÌýTottenham Court Road, gritty and polluted, I don’t miss but turning into Store Street and seeing ahead, looming, almost surreal, the monolith of Senate House. I miss my walk past the Building Centre with its architectural models and the enticing diversion into the fug of Store Street Espresso.ÌýÌýThen on I walk, drinking my coffee, across Gower Street and Malet Street, towards Senate House, stepping down and through its travertine entrance space and up and out the other side, heading toward the plane trees of Russell Square, vivid green against the massy terracotta of the (sometime) Russell Hotel behind. Catharine Edwards.

• Songs:ÌýEarly English poetry drips with twisted gold but makes little mention of money. Battlefields are plentiful, but markets are missing, being perhaps too mundane a subject in comparison with the sunlit groves of The Phoenix, the fen-lairs of Beowulf, or the shining city of Judith. Yet London’s earliest incarnation in the Middle Ages was exactly this: a mercantile and artisanal settlement stretching from Trafalgar Square to Aldwych (the old wic, or market), and following the slope of Covent Garden down to the strand – Old English for ‘shore’. Lundenwic is alive in place names, but its songs have not survived. Mike Bintley.

• Thresholds:ÌýWalking from Euston station to Gordon Square, the morning sun shining in my eyes, the plane trees waving me hello. Arriving at the entrance to number 43, imagining the past steps of people who have worked in that building over the last 200 years. Remembering the times I’ve stood with co-workers in all weathers trying to encourage others not to cross the picket line. This site of solidarity is an emotional threshold where I get to know more about the people I work with and my workplace than I often get the chance to once I’m back inside, feet under my desk. Sophie Hope.
• Town houses ... Kate Retford takes a tour:
• Devonshire House, Piccadilly: Chatsworth House, that great baroque pile in the Derbyshire Dales, has been hailed as one of the UK’s greatest national treasures. Yet visitors in the eighteenth century found it decidedly disappointing. One Thomas Martyn commented in 1767: ‘Chatsworth has very little in it that can attract the eye of the Connoisseur’. That was because, during this period, all the good stuff was in the Cavendish family’s London town house, which stood more or less opposite the current premises of the Ritz on Piccadilly. However, those prized possessions were sent up to Derbyshire ahead of the sale of Devonshire House in 1920., and all that’s left are the gates from the forecourt, topped by sphinxes, which now stand on the opposite side of the street, opening into Green Park. Look on these and think of Siegfried Sassoon’s wry poetical tribute: ‘not one nook survived to screen a mouse/ In what was Devonshire (God rest it) House’.
• Norfolk House, No. 31 St James’s Square: Parties seem a thing of the dim and distant past. They had a particularly good one at Norfolk House in St James’s Square early in 1756, to mark the completion of this lavish new building. One guest, Captain William Farington, sat down on 18th February to describe the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk’s soirée for the benefit of his sisters. His breathy account of ‘the finest assembly ever known in this Kingdom’ describes each room in turn, innovatively ‘furnished with a different colour’. The Music Room, which survives intact at the , was white: ‘wainscotted in a whimsical taste, the panels filled with extreme fine carvings, the arts and sciences, all gilt, as well as the ceiling … here the Dutchess sat, the whole night that she might speak to everyone as they came in.’ Demolished in 1938, you’ll find a rather underwhelming office block in place of this party house today.
• No. 100 Pall Mall: My last lost town house stood roughly on the current site of the Reform Club on Pall Mall. Designed by Charles Barry (1837-41), based on the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, the Club is a good sight more impressive than the standard, three-storey terrace house which John Julius Angerstein inhabited in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here, he built up the art collection that became the nucleus of the National Gallery. After Angerstein’s death in 1823, Lord Liverpool’s government bought 38 pictures from his collection as well as the lease on the building, where the work continued to be displayed until its move to Trafalgar Square the following decade. A shortly after the purchase shows students diligently copying paintings, including the most valuable from Angerstein’s collection: Sebastiano del Piombo’s Raising of Lazarus (1517-19). Catalogued as ‘NG1’, it .

• Underground (see also wrestling): The Underground is our quotidian catabasis, or descent to hell. Those who work there know most of its mysterious passages and dual tracks. They know too much of us, also, and have codes for what we leave behind. Sometimes, above ground, abandoned stations appear like places where the world used to be thin but has scarred. These tiley buildings are all called Mornington Crescent. The underground. Will we go down and if we do will we come up?

• Vindication of the Rights of Women:ÌýThe tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and Mary Jane Godwin, St Pancras Old Church Gardens is a monument to missing. Mary Wollstonecraft died in 1797 after giving birth to her daughter, the writer Mary Shelley, who learned her alphabet by tracing the letters on her lost mother’s tombstone. These commemorate the ‘Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, Wollstonecraft’s feminist manifesto on behalf of the women missing from the Rights of Man debates. Wollstonecraft herself has been missing from her grave since 1851 when, after Mary Shelley’s death, her parents’ remains were moved to the Shelley family tomb in Bournemouth. Away from London during COVID, I miss my proximity to this dedicated place of missing. Hilary Fraser.

• Wrestling:ÌýAn estimated 500,000 mice live in London's underground. Once I saw one wrestle an abandoned burger onto the tracks at Euston Square. Another time, beneath Tottenham Court Road, one charged with a plastic fork in its mouth, like a pole-vaulter in training. These days, when I’m stuck inside, or rifling through more takeaway, I find myself wondering what they are up to with so few of us around - how they are coping without our snacks, our threatening patter; do they miss us and wish we’d come home? Maybe hunger is a fair price for extra freedom, a little longing the cost of keeping safe. Fintan Walsh,

• Xtreme violence: The current Eagle Tavern on Shepherdess Walk, Hoxton, is a mere fraction of its former size and glory. Once it was Hoxton’s favourite pub, and with its Grecian Theatre could hold 10,000. In 1882 the Salvation Army acquired it for their meetings and a temperance bar: and thousands of residents of this working-class area turned out to object. A series of riots saw Salvationists brutally battered and savagely used, and forced off the streets. The theatre and pub were demolished in the 1890s, and the violence of 1882/3 is now all but forgotten. Remember it as you pass by. Ed Lyon.

• Zoo:ÌýBarthes on alphabetic order: an idea per fragment, a fragment per idea, and as for the succession of these atoms… If alphabetical letters are the smallest unit signalling matter then fragments correspond to zoological display.
• Marx: The name of a thing is entirely external to its nature. I know nothing…if I merely know his name is Jacob. In an unobserved enclosure, dazzling pelt and jutting jaw intersect behind boundary-architecture. Carnassial teeth shear in diagonals, slicing like a butcher’s knife, our diurnal sequence. Under Zoonotic time, the living monuments of the zoo recede further backwards as we slump forwards. Lee Christian.

• Rules:ÌýThis week was to includeÌýmy first visit toÌýpolicy instituteÌý. MyÌýimagined scenario: a perfectlyÌýsunny day;ÌýVictoria Line to Green Park,Ìýarriving early andÌýperambulatingÌýthrough theÌýactualÌýGreen Park; thenÌýamblingÌýtowardsÌý, envisioning myselfÌýto beÌýaÌýseasonedÌýspecialist of international affairs.ÌýBut youÌýknow where this is going:ÌýtheÌývisit was cancelled.ÌýAnd you knowÌýhow it was replaced:ÌýinadequatelyÌýby a Zoom call.ÌýOnline, theÌýÌýstill applied.ÌýThough thisÌýdoesn’t prevent me from detailingÌýthe reason forÌý‘visiting’,Ìýreaching 100 wordsÌýfor this diaryÌýentryÌýdoes.
• Newsround:ÌýWatching CBBC’sÌýÌýhas become a daily ritual.ÌýI’ve been struckÌýbyÌýhow,ÌýthroughÌýsuchÌý(digital) television programmes,Ìýyounger people connect fleetinglyÌýwithÌýaÌýpublic world.ÌýÌýonce observedÌýthatÌýtelevisualÌýpublicÌýconnectionÌýcreates ambiguous relationships betweenÌýawarenessÌýandÌýresponsibility.ÌýThis weekÌýNewsroundÌýreports about theÌýmurderÌýof GeorgeÌýFloyd, and the protests in the US and elsewhere. My older son hasÌýmore questions than IÌýcanÌýanswer.ÌýFor him, it’s aÌýlargely-unknown world ofÌýsystemic racismÌýand unequal treatment by policeÌýofÌýwhichÌý–ÌýI try to explainÌý–ÌýsomeÌýof his teachers and classmatesÌýwillÌýhaveÌýfirst-handÌýexperience.Ìý
• Newts:ÌýI’m learning lotsÌýabout newts,Ìýat least theÌýplenitudeÌýthriving in one marshy pond near my homeÌýin Walthamstow, East London. Crested and smooth,Ìýwith and without frill, male and female, large and small, spots and orange bellies.ÌýThisÌýlearningÌýisn’tÌýparticularly hands-on. I’m reclined barefoot on the grass, watching two children, my children, on the newt hunt. They draw much attention fromÌýpassersby. NotÌýjust inÌýproducingÌýabundantÌýspecimensÌýfor their publicsÌý- it’s also thatÌýtheir whole getup isÌýpleasantlyÌýabsurd. Both in child-sized waders (yes,Ìýthese are available), nets aloft, one inexplicably wearing his cycling helmet.Ìý
• Plots:ÌýAÌýbook chapterÌýI’m writing on social media images and the city isÌýegregiously late. It comes out of aÌýmixed-method,ÌýÌýon how such platforms help mediate experiences of urban change. I’m not late just because ofÌýtheÌýlockdown, but also because ofÌýmyÌýslownessÌýinÌýlearningÌýImagePlot, anÌýopen-accessÌýImageJ-based toolÌýthrough which one can createÌýlarge-scale imageÌývisualizations.ÌýLearning this hasÌýdefinitely beenÌýhelpful analytically, but I’m also just struck by aesthetic beauty of theseÌývisualisations,ÌýplottedÌýonto anÌýX-Y axis,Ìýalong cartesian or polar coordinates. Akin toÌý,Ìý orÌý.Ìý
• Loops:ÌýI’ve long dabbled in sample-based music production. It’s not something I talk much about aroundÌýCollege. And somehow, someway, I’ve squeezed in just a little more time for this during lockdown. For years, I’veÌýbeenÌýmildly obsessed with chopping and playing samples using newly-low-cost tools modelled on theÌýclassicÌý, famouslyÌýÌýand others. But in recent weeks, I’veÌýsettled in rather comfortably with theÌývitalityÌýofÌýtheÌýsimple loop.ÌýAs Joseph Schloss observed in his ethnographyÌýMaking Beats,Ìýlooped samplesÌýrecast music anew, establishingÌýrepeated juxtapositionsÌýof beginningÌýandÌýend. WonderfullyÌýhypnotic,ÌýinexorableÌýcompositions.Ìý

• Sunday.ÌýToday’s lesson:ÌýneverÌýuse canned chickpeas to make falafels.ÌýDespite followingÌýÌýreligiouslyÌý–Ìýexcept forÌýtheÌýcanned chickpeasÌý–Ìýour efforts came to nothing:Ìýliterally, asÌýweÌýwatchedÌýour littleÌýfalafel pattiesÌýdissolveÌýintoÌýaÌýsmall, foamyÌýmessÌýin theÌýhotÌýoil.ÌýCooked chickpeas clearly lack resilience.ÌýWe grilled the remaining ones,Ìýwhich wereÌýnice enough but tasted too healthy…Ìýoh forÌý‘’ down the road!ÌýÌý
• Monday.ÌýBack to work for all of us: online learning for my son, online lecturing and admin for my husband, and for me,Ìýendless emailing and admin,Ìýcrisis management,Ìýattempting to maintain aÌýsemblanceÌýof normality…Ìýit’s a challengingÌýtime to beÌýheadÌýof a department!
• Tuesday.ÌýCookingÌýprovidesÌýan essential respite from the screen time that is now so all-encompassing.ÌýRachelÌýRoddy'sÌýÌýremind me of the city where I spent my teens,Ìýlearned toÌýmake realÌýtiramisùÌý(it doesÌýnotÌýinvolveÌýcream),ÌýdressÌýwith styleÌýandÌýswear in RomanÌýdialect.Ìý(I’ve given all that up now, except for theÌýtiramisù.)ÌýHerÌý‘’Ìýpasta sauceÌýinducesÌýbothÌýnostalgia and heartburn.Ìý
• Wednesday.ÌýWorkedÌýonÌýmy articleÌýabout French writer and photographerÌý,Ìýalas nowÌýhopelessly overdue.ÌýGuibert’sÌýphotographicÌýself-portraitsÌýareÌýoftenÌý‘indirect’ representations, showing himÌýveiled in shadowÌýorÌýreflected inÌýmirrors andÌýwindows.ÌýImages of a man who knew he wasÌýdyingÌý(of AIDS; heÌýdiedÌýin 1991).ÌýButÌýthey’reÌýalways elegant,Ìýwith a winkÌýforÌýhis audience;Ìýautofictional, exactly like his writing.Ìý
• Thursday.ÌýToday,Ìýa PhD chapter on depictions of South Asia in Japanese anime.ÌýAÌýfootnote toÌýEndoÌýShusaku’sÌýÌýgives me the slimmest of excusesÌýtoÌýturn toÌýtheÌýnovel.ÌýIt’s a late workÌýfrom thisÌýJapanese Catholic novelist,ÌýwhichÌýendsÌýabruptly yetÌýnonchalantly,ÌýabandoningÌýitsÌýprotagonists inÌýtheirÌýhotelÌýin Varanasi.ÌýTheÌýnovel’sÌýJapanese stereotypes of India are fascinating, and someÌýareÌýuncomfortably familiar.ÌýWill I ever visit India, now?Ìý
• Friday.ÌýWeÌýwillÌýput up theÌýpingÌýpongÌýtableÌýtoday. ItÌýarrived about aÌýweek ago in a completely un-constructedÌýstate; asÌýmy sonÌýsays, the instructionsÌýstart,Ìýmore or less, byÌýtellingÌýyou which forest to go to for the wood.ÌýI am sure it didn’t say ‘self-assembly’ on the website.ÌýWe start afterÌýtheÌýworking day:Ìýthree hours later, we haveÌýonlyÌýgotÌýto page three,Ìýwe are cold,ÌýweÌýneedÌýaÌýspannerÌýof a size we don’t have,Ìýand I never want to see a screwdriver again.ÌýÌý
• Saturday.ÌýAnother four hoursÌýof high-octaneÌýDIY, andÌýthe table is ready!ÌýIt’s aÌýgloriousÌýday: gentle sunshine, no wind, perfectÌýping pongÌýweather.ÌýI call my mother in Tokyo. TheÌýdeath rateÌýin JapanÌýisÌýridiculously low compared to ours here. Or perhaps oursÌýisÌýridiculouslyÌýhigh? SheÌýcannotÌýbelieveÌýthe newsÌýIÌýgiveÌýher about Johnson’s government, and I annoy her by sayingÌýthe Japanese PMÌýis muchÌýto be preferred. Sounds ofÌýping pongÌýwaft in from the garden.ÌýÌý

• For the purposes of this narrative, ‘week’ signifies an arbitrary construct, divisible into seven-ish distinct time units, with increasing elasticity (distinguishing between days as an academic and freelancer with an unpredictable routine was tricky enough pre-pandemic!) This particular ‘week’ has been punctuated by redundant calendar notifications – see Caribbean trip below – and a couple of arrivals, reorienting me somewhat.
• In her latest travel podcast series, Colombian historian Diana Uribe states (loosely translated): ‘While movement may be physically restricted, we still have our imaginations to explore the world.’ This sentiment is comforting, even though I was supposed to have left for Jamaica this week, then Cuba, for a writing research project. I’ve explored Mali, Ireland and Japan through the ears, enjoying Uribe’s international perspective. I’ve also redeemed my Imagination Airways ticket via Google Maps, traversing random avenues in cities I may or may not visit someday.
• Writing prompt using Street View as stimulus: Drop the little yellow man onto the grid and watch the neighbourhood come into focus. All the poorly-pixelated people crossing roads. The couple holding hands – are they still together? Who lives behind that door? *
  When wishing to get inside the buildings, virtual museum tours are plentiful. I’ve enjoyed revisiting Barcelona’s – and its impressive 360˚ experience – this time without having to navigate other tourists taking pictures on their phone. is another lighter-hearted way to interrogate sculpture and paintings.
• The final Polari First Book Prize entries thudded onto my doorstep last weekend – I’m one of this year’s judges – and I’ve relished the prospect of escapism, plus I’d already read/hoped to read many of the forty submissions. Now the deadline looms, simultaneously shifting from poetry to fiction via graphic memoir has proved intense, so I’ve emptied my calendar to make room. I’m particularly mindful of how these first-time authors are facing an increasingly-uncertain climate, and so I’ve read each sentence with their hopes in mind, taking copious notes. I think of my own debut novel, and how I must also cast it out into a future beyond my control – if it ever sees the light of day. My feelings are not one of despair but of determination.
• Despite feeling I’ve missed out on so much, I’ve caught the aftermath of some cultural moments: live DJ battles; film screenings; Zoom poetry festivals; but most has been lost to the world of social media ephemera. Art abounds and we cannot contain it.Ìý
• This week’s other arrival was , twenty-four new essays on sexuality and religion (I’m one of the essayists, as is Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Jeanette Winterson and more…) I’ve just seen a moving live online chat with Ruth Hunt and Dustin Lance Black, also a contributor.
• Other social media conversation highlights include and discussing poems last night on Instagram Live. I also, finally, caught up on the Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott back catalogue battle, (even Michelle Obama was watching it at the time!) It’s a Neo-soul nostalgia fest.
• On to film, and it’s difficult to explain It’s infuriating in some places, boundary-pushing in others, but the payoff is worth it.
• Tying some of these threads (music, virtual travel, Colombia, Spanish-language content…), soundtracked my morning. Palenques and maroon towns are another topic for another day, warranting much more detail than I can afford here.ÌýÌý
• Finally, I’ve made good on my Jamaican trip by following , a Caribbean feminist book club. To feel part of a community across time zones feels precious, urgent right now. Though my movements are necessarily restricted, I have an unlimited worldscape.Ìý

• SeiÌýShonagonÌýwas a JapaneseÌýwriterÌýin theÌýtenth to eleventhÌýcenturiesÌýwho served in the entourage of the empress in Kyoto.ÌýHerÌýÌýis a diary,ÌýaÌýcommonplace book – a blog if you likeÌý- filledÌýwith her likes and dislikes, gossip, pleasures (her favourite outfits, quips, meals)Ìý-Ìýand her disappointments. She was encouraged to write after she was given a sheaf of very precious paper to use – the aesthetic faculty was extraordinarily prized in Heian Japan.ÌýSheÌýmay haveÌýkept it by her bed to jot down her thoughts before she went to sleep or when she woke during the night. Hence the name,ÌýPillow Book.ÌýShe liked making lists – some of them very sharp and worldly.ÌýLife at court wasÌýluxurious butÌýcircumscribed and regulated,Ìýlike a large household in quarantine, and they amused themselves with anecdotes and exchanges of knowledge.ÌýHere, inÌýaÌýsaluteÌýto SeiÌýShonagon, isÌýa listÌýof things that came to mind this week.
• A familyÌýpet: I am talking more to friendsÌýand they’reÌýtellingÌýme things I never heardÌýbefore:Ìýduring a Zoom coffee morning one Sunday, a neighbour reveals thatÌýhe keeps a pet python in his basement.ÌýItÌýwas acquired as aÌýpet andÌýcalled Monty because the familyÌýthought itÌýwas male. It’s now known asÌýMontikins.ÌýShe spends the day sleeping but wakes at night and sometimes eats a rat, which my friend provides from his freezer.ÌýMontikinsÌýis two metres long and has been livingÌýthere over thirty years, has aÌý‘veryÌýpretty face’,ÌýmyÌýneighbour says, addingÌýhe is very fond of her.
• Dreams ofÌýescape: Dreams have become much more colourful, say several friends.ÌýIt’s true in my case too. I am keeping much more regular hours,Ìýthough I have bouts of insomnia. Maybe isolation helps incubate dreams.ÌýThough in my conscious day-to-day life IÌýdon’tÌýthink about travellingÌýagain,Ìýat night I roam the world, sometimes piloting my own plane, which is made of matchboxes and very small but as difficultÌýtoÌýmanoeuvre as if it were aÌýBoeing 747.ÌýAnother night I took a taxi toÌýthe HeathrowÌýExpressÌýbut the driver refused to put my suitcase in the boot and insisted it follow us on a Deliveroo moped. At a traffic light, I rebelled and opened his boot myself, and found a corpse in it with signs of plague from the olden times.Ìý
• What do you miss most? asks another friend.ÌýI didn’t answer her and realised that I have shut my mind to thinking about life before lockdown so as not to become desperate. Now and then the pain cuts into me, of not seeing my family for such a long time.
• Historical precursorsÌý#1:ÌýJoseph down the well et al. Isolation is a terrible punishment, we all know.ÌýCircumstances when peopleÌýhave beenÌýhidden awayÌýinclude,Ìýat the extreme end,ÌýtheÌýhorrorÌýof being dropped down a well,Ìýlike Joseph by his brothers,Ìýand left to die. InÌý,Ìýthe wicked wizard, Aladdin’s uncle, lowers the boy into a deep cave to fetch the magic lamp and, then abandons himÌý–Ìýbut AladdinÌýmanages to free himself, and freeing yourself by ingenuity and patience is a heroic possibility in such stories. But not in real life.ÌýIsolation is enclosure and enclosure oftenÌýimpliesÌýdarkness.ÌýThe tales of the Nights are tunnelled with underground passages and chambers, and at the end of them, someoneÌýhas been holed up: theÌýincestuous brother and sister, or theÌýprince of the black islands, who has been turned half to stone by the enchantress he married.ÌýIn lockdown,ÌýI watched theÌý,Ìýthe productionÌýby Simon Godwin in whichÌýTamsin Grieg playedÌýMalvolio asÌýMalvoliaÌý-Ìýwith deadpan severity. The comedy was wicked and light-footed until the scene when Sir Toby et al trickÌýMalvoliaÌýandÌýshe’s thrown into prisonÌýfor being madÌýandÌýher piteous cries from inside this dark holeÌýrise upÌýfrom under the stage.ÌýSo many isolated care home patients, now, as well as prisoners of all ages,ÌýareÌýkept in all day because of staff shortages and the dangers ofÌýcontagion,ÌýandÌýhave no such hopes or chancesÌýof escape.
• Historical PrecursorsÌý#2:ÌýHermits and anchorites: At the other extreme,ÌýholyÌýhermitsÌýchoose to self-isolate:ÌýinÌýSyria in the 5thÌýcentury,ÌýSimeonÌýStylitesÌýclimbed to the top of aÌýpillar, withÌýno room to lie down,Ìýand stayed there forÌý37Ìýyears.ÌýHeÌýset a new craze inÌýenforcing social distance, and cutting all ties to beds or baths, but he couldn’t get away from people who flocked to consult him.ÌýAt one time, there were several more hermits standing on pillars in the surrounding area.
• Some centuries later, medievalÌýanchorites – mostly women – would wall themselves up near a church, in a cellÌýso narrow they too could not lie down to sleep and depended on the charity of others for survival.ÌýLike theÌýstylitesÌýor column-dwellers, theseÌýself-isolatorsÌýalso attracted crowds. Some visitors began by scoffingÌýandÌýtaunting butÌýwere miraculously persuaded and converted to repentance.ÌýÌýis the most celebratedÌýanchorite, partly because T.ÌýS.ÌýEliot in hisÌýÌýwas inspired by herÌýÌýand quotedÌýherÌýlines, ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well,Ìýand all manner of thing shall be well’.ÌýShe isn’t a fully recognised – canonisedÌý–Ìýsaint, but her expression of steadfast hope and consolationÌýunder duressÌýcharacterisesÌýoneÌýroleÌýfor saints across time, to showÌýdefiance andÌýhold outÌýpromise.
• Saviours: SeveralÌýotherÌýsaintsÌýare directly linked to plagues, becauseÌýpraying to themÌýdelivered a city, a country, a people from the ravages of an epidemic.ÌýAt the time of my writing thisÌýtext,Ìýthere is some debate concerning the re-opening of churches.ÌýPastors put the emphasisÌýon the need for quiet prayer,Ìýnot the efficacy of divine beings to end the horrors.ÌýBut in Palermo,Ìýanother hermit,ÌýÌý– who is the palladium of the cityÌýandÌýa symbol for the citizens as well asÌýthe Catholic faithfulÌý–Ìý.ÌýÌýwas thereÌýwhen that struck, and in lockdown painted glorious images ofÌýRosaliaÌýat her healing work.ÌýIt made me smile when I heard theÌýPalermitaniÌýareÌýstill puttingÌýsuchÌýfaith in their patron saint.ÌýBut the way belief works for believersÌýshouldn’t beÌýjust smiled at or condescended to.Ìý
• There are scores,ÌýnoÌýperhaps hundreds, of localÌýMadonnasÌýall over Europe and the Americas who are tied to the memory of a particularÌýscourge, as healers and saviours. The shrines and statuesÌýset up in cathedrals, churches and street tabernaclesÌýkeep the record of what happened though the memories fade with the bunches of flowers, the burned down candles and the photographs of the ones who survivedÌý- or the ones who didn’t. At the same time, psychologically,Ìýthese cults are expressions of belief that the powers aboveÌýare kindÌýbut need to be told what’s needed. They’re notÌýGreekÌýgodsÌýsendingÌýarrows of pestilence in retaliation for crimes against themselvesÌý- usually for not showingÌýthemÌýproperÌýrespect.ÌýWhen Oedipus arrives in Thebes and the city’s stricken with the plague, it’s assumed by everyone that this is a divineÌýpunishment,ÌýÌýandÌýthe cause - the carrier of the pollution - must be found. I’m not saying,ÌýGod forbid, we should revive mythological terror of divineÌýfury,Ìýbut that saints’ storiesÌýoften provide grounds for hope.ÌýThe question now is who or what can offer this in ourÌýpresent,Ìýintractable predicament.
• The patron saint of plague victims is StÌýRoch, or Roc or Rocco - he’s always identifiable because he lifts his tunic to show the suppurating sore on his thigh and he has a dog with him. Legends differ, but it seems he was born in Montpellier in theÌý14th century, with a birthmark on his chest in the shape of a cross.ÌýTravelling to Italy and finding the plague raging, heÌýnursed the sick andÌýcured many sufferers. WhenÌýhe caught it himself,ÌýheÌýhid himself away in the woods.ÌýThereÌýtheÌýdog found him andÌýlicked hisÌýbuboes andÌýalerted his owner toÌýRoch’sÌýhiding place.
• His devotees multiplied ever since his reputed lifeÌýspan andÌýgrew even in theÌý19th century. Many churches all over the world are specially dedicated to him – in Glasgow he turns into StÌýRolloxÌý(I am tempted to cry,ÌýRolloxsÌýtoÌýCovid). In Venice, a city stricken again and again by plagues,Ìýthe paintingsÌýÌýcreated for theÌýScuolaÌýdi San Rocco are some of the most magnificent of the Italian high baroque.ÌýProbably the mostÌýglorious monumentÌýever builtÌýto give thanks for the end of a plague is the church ofÌýS. MariaÌýdellaÌýSaluteÌýin Venice –ÌýwhichÌýdominates the vista across the Grand Canal fromÌýSan Marco andÌýisÌýalso filled withÌýsumptuousÌýworks byÌýÌýand Tintoretto.ÌýWhen the composer Gustav von AschenbachÌýwanders semi-crazed through the pestilential alleys of the city in Visconti’s film,Ìý,Ìýhis path takes him pastÌýthese memorialsÌýraised to heavenly powers to stop such horrors returning. All these expressions of faith were, at one time, new contemporaryÌýworks of art, fearlessly ambitious for beauty as a weapon against loss, despair and emptiness after plague.Ìý
• Experts: TheÌýFourteenÌýHolyÌýHelpers were like medics todayÌý–ÌýtheyÌýeachÌýhad their special expertise. Sore throats,Ìýeyes,Ìýepilepsy,Ìýdiseases of the tongue,Ìýfamily discord.ÌýThey were scrapped in the Reformation and the CatholicÌýchurch rather sheepishly followed suit.ÌýBut my favourite healing saintÌýof allÌýisÌýGuinefort,Ìýwho wasn’t a hermit or even a person, butÌýa greyhound who was wrongly killed by his masterÌýafter he’d left him to babysit and come backÌýto findÌýthe dog with bloody jaws. Too late, he discovered the baby safe and sound and a dead viper by the cot, bitten in two by the brave hound.ÌýThereafter, parentsÌýbrought sick babies toÌýGuinefort’sÌýgrave and there wereÌýcenturies ofÌýmiracles.Ìý
• But who or what can we turn toÌýnowÌýand escape? InÌýÌýAlbert Camus asked a good question: how to be a saint in a world without God?ÌýI hear on the news thatÌýÌý– from a trace that’s the equivalent of a spoonful of sugar in an Olympic swimming pool.ÌýThey should have a shrine, likeÌýGuinefort.ÌýBut whose story would workÌýnowÌýto stave off despair during this prolonged seclusion? Anne Frank didn’t survive, but she is still an inspiration.ÌýMy proposal would be Emily Dickinson. She secluded herself and wrote, lines such asÌý‘I dwell in Possibility...’Ìý
• A friendÌý–ÌýSophieÌýHerxheimer,Ìýwho isÌýan artist and a poet currently locked down on a residency inÌýin Berkeley CaliforniaÌý–ÌýsentÌýmeÌýtheÌýactivity-cum-recipeÌýbook:Ìý60 Lovers to Make & DoÌý(Henningham Family Press, London), which she published last year.ÌýIt’s a prophetic book about filling solitude, and her inventiveness and high spirits made me laugh and the air around grew lessÌýstifling.ÌýEscapism isÌýa strong remedyÌýand writersÌýand artistsÌýopen upÌýescape routes. That doesn’t mean being cosy and heart-warming and consolatory.ÌýI’ve beenÌýplunged in watchingÌýtheÌýtruly astonishingÌýsequence of filmsÌýÌýmanaged to createÌýduring and immediately afterÌýWorld War IIÌý–Ìýin spite ofÌýshortages of all kinds.ÌýTheseÌýworksÌýare filled with wild, bizarreÌýimagination,Ìýbut they also make you think, hard and critically,Ìýabout many things thatÌýstillÌýapplyÌýall too vividlyÌýtoÌýourÌýBrexit-embroiled, virus-crushedÌýcountry. TheyÌýshow us howÌýdaringÌýimagination leadsÌýusÌýsomewhere elseÌý–Ìýat least mentally.ÌýIfÌýhere and now weÌýcouldÌýnowÌýmake works thatÌýinvent andÌýreflectÌýwith the same breadth of feeling, that would be something toÌýface down anxiety andÌýdefy the future gloom.ÌýThe wartimeÌýcreationsÌýof artist-storymakersÌýlike Powell andÌýPressburgerÌýpresent such overwhelming evidence of the role ofÌýculture in survival, it’s infuriating thatÌýliterature and theÌýotherÌýartsÌýare beingÌýlaid waste.ÌýAs I am writing thisÌýtext,Ìýthe . Ideas neededÌý–Ìýkeep them flowing.ÌýÌý

• My week has had something of a focus on the German Democratic Republic. This is largely because I’ve been preparing and recording a lecture on Gerhard Klein’s 1957 film . Perhaps it’s inevitable in these strange times that we look in unlikely places for ways to understand our current experiences and I was tempted to reflect on our own lockdown in the light of the film’s depiction of a locked-down state, however different these may be. The GDR’s lockdown was in fact only partial in the mid-50s, as the border in Berlin was still open. This anomaly is harnessed in the film to make the case that the state must foster a commitment to itself that is elective, rather than coerced, and that this can be achieved only by creating communities of belonging that serve the needs of the many and not the few. While in the final instance this idea is reduced to a surprisingly conservative revitalization of the nuclear family and traditional gender roles, the film fascinates still, not least for its images of movement back and forth the across the East/West border on the part of young protagonists lured by the West’s consumer culture.
• East Berlin also features as a setting in my latest reading, Deborah Levy’s . Her protagonist visits the depressing end-state of the 1980s which has more in common with the repressive, hyper-surveilled GDR of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s (2006) than with the still hopeful 1950s take on the socialist state. Here too I found an odd (and somewhat trivial!) link to my contemporary lockdown experience in the form of missing baking ingredients. After five weeks without, I finally managed to source some flour and have celebrated by baking quiches, pies, cakes and biscuits. Baking, along with sewing and knitting have been my go-to activities for rest and relaxation for years – my mum, a Home Economics teacher passed on all her skills – but the sometimes slower pace of my lockdown life (no commuting!) means I have a bit more time for them. It’s easy to be inspired at the moment too by , of course, but I’ve also been catching up (on my mum’s recommendation) with Secrets of the Museum, a behind-the-scenes look at the that affords an intimate glimpse of its incredible costume collection. Also recommended to me this week was , a podcast on the history, the pathologies and the politics of knitting which you can listen to while stitching.
• A different, more meditative reflection on the meanings of the objects we craft also formed part of my latest audiobook listening, Kit de Waal’s (beautifully read by Fiona Shaw) whose central character dresses dolls as a response to trauma and loss. Although very differently realized, both this novel and The Man who Saw Everything share a focus on the losses we experience and the lives we can or can’t live in the shadows they cast. Their characters move in sometimes disorienting ways across time and space and they are in this sense anything but lockdown novels. Nevertheless, both ask us to reflect on what we do to make meaningful the time we have available to us and both have inspired me to do so at what sometimes seems like an out-of-time moment in my life.