UK Fun, Tea With Alice Salon 61

I’m loving reading the submissions to the D’Ancey LaGuarde literary tribute competition. The initial ridiculous idea grew out of an emailed bit of LaGuarde fanfic spontaneously sent to me by an excellent Patreon who I will leave unnamed unless they want to volunteer themselves in the comments section below. I can’t quite believe that a joke I did and then the whim to have a competition for writing fiction based on a fictional fiction writer has lead to this incredible flowering of creative energy. At the cost of a £200 prize in real money (plus £1000 worth of imaginary value constituted by me writing your name in my cryptic ledger of course), I’m getting so much joy. Some of them are really really funny and good! I’m delighted and flattered to have such silly and clever people enjoy my work.

Being in the UK is strange and full of memories. Two years away doesn’t seem like that long, in one way, but the whole world has changed in that time, and also MY whole world has changed, and then changed again. I did a gig in Leeds on the weekend and went to York the next day for a bit of touristing, and it was all so the same, but like rereading a good book, all meaning suddenly different things.

York minster struck me anew as just this incredible physical expression of man hours. Just the hand-crafting of every stone, and the effort and care put into its perfections came into my eyes with the emphasis of how much work. To make the building, and to make the people who made the building. How much work we put into each person who goes into the world an adult, who goes on to create things. How responsible we are for each other’s children, how interlocked we all are in the ways we exist. Just a slight shift in angle of view.

It’s hard to describe, or even to properly notice how many little changes have gone through for all of us in the last few years. For me, there’s the obvious physical change of having had a baby and the mental stuff that came along with it by default and also by decision.

I’m more patient and also more ruthless. Better at boundaries and horribly conscious of the loss of people when you burn bridges. (I needed space from someone, and they died in the meantime, and I genuinely can’t tell if I’ve coped with that or not at all). Fewer illusions about the world, I think. More aware of my flaws as a friend and my good qualities as a mother. Grey hairs, a completely new body (bits of me are food now, and most of me is furniture now and I smell different!).

Salon this week is

Jun 8, 01:30 PM London time

Jun 8, 10:30 PM Sydney/Melbourne time

Jun 8, 08:00 AM New York/ East Coast US time

Or your local equivalent. Stick it in your calendar. I’ll send through the link to the relevant levels tomorrow.

Xx

A