Catherine Queen

I feel like, lately, I get to the end of every year thinking, ‘Well, that one was the hardest of my life.’ Then, somehow, the next one manages to be harder. And yet, I’m still here.

Still freaking here.

I read 29 books this year. Moving out of town in 2023, so I expect to have more reading time since I’ll be on the train more often…Not so much history this year, and I’m sad about it. But some wonderful Zola!

Faves in bold.

• The Cabinet by Un Su Kim (a little bit of weird magical realism – atmospheric)
• Wicca Made Easy by Phyllis Curott
• The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey (simply stunning! Romance, magic, race, class, gender conflict, history and mythology collide on a Caribbean island)
• Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski (a gripping mystery set in a 1990s strip club)
• My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (the teacher-student ‘romance’ under the spotlight)

I’m turning 36 this week, which means, I think, that I can no longer think of myself as ‘young’. Perhaps that happened a long time ago, but now it’s a glaring neon sign right in my face. My slightly sagging face, more to the point. 

I’ve never really felt that I fit in anywhere, but it seems particularly egregious right now. I am not: an attractive but exhausted mother of two, wearing earth-toned, wide-leg trousers and a floaty linen top, gently calling little Albie back from the edge of the pond at the National Trust property we’ve visited for the weekend, hoping my broad-shouldered accountant and ex-rugby playing husband, Rob, will step in. 

I am not: a tanned and very slim European expat, squeezing in my third ski trip of the year between rising swiftly through the ranks of a consultancy firm and casually seeing a string of wealthy Italians I do lines with in the bathroom of various exclusive Mayfair locations, maybe nibbling on a piece of sushi at some point in the evening just to prove that I do, occasionally, eat. 

I am not: an uber-athletic workout freak with a minor instagram following, a minimalist home and a toddler whose middle name is Coconut, making my own almond milk, wearing only white and on my way to becoming a life coach.

I am not: dressed up for brunch with the girls on Sunday, tottering to Piano Works on a pair of nude heels that clash with my spray tan, excited to plan our next trip to Bali or Ibiza or Mykonos, planning to shovel a £20 plate of egg and avocado on toast into my Kylie Jenner matte beige mouth, chased down with three litres of ‘bellini’.

I am not: strolling hand in hand through a farmer’s market with my other half, my ‘person’, after reposting my wedding photos from seven years ago for the 50th time because it was ‘the happiest day of my life!!!!1!!one’ and the last time I was a size ten.

Snarky pen portraits, I know, but permit me some humour.

I am not valuable enough to be chosen as a wife, a mother, or even a girlfriend. I am not sound of body. I am not well-dressed, well-groomed, tidy, an excellent cook, a gourmand, knowledgeable about wine, capable of keeping a plant alive for more than a month, able to code, a good housekeeper, successful in my career, creatively fulfilled, rich enough to stay in nice hotels, in possession of absolutely straight teeth OR a completely hairless upper lip.

But I am passionate. I am curious. I am tenacious. I am open-hearted. I am a sister, a daughter, an aunt and a friend.

I am: an occasional writer, a sometime slow runner, a word sponge, wearing a second-hand pair of jeans and an oversized v-neck sweater with big owl glasses sliding down my nose, wandering through a museum with a Sondheim fan badge pinned to my chest. A slightly rumpled, almost middle-aged bookworm carrying a tote bag with five old receipts and a reusable fork at the bottom. 

I am somehow a grown woman, and I don’t quite know how it happened.

I’m sure I’m not alone in finding writing therapeutic. It’s not just the act of committing thought to paper. For me, it’s about constructing a story from the chaos. Perhaps fooling myself that there is some kind of order to this. That I was meant to go through this.

The universe doesn’t really work like that, I know. The gods have their two buckets and they just chuck stuff at us randomly from either one whenever they feel like it.

They just feel like chucking quite a lot from one side at me, lately.

Anyway, been doing my research and it seems like someone with levels as low as mine doesn’t have very many good options when it comes to fertility treatments. Pending further medical discussions, obviously. But it may be that I need to use a sperm donor.

I guess I always thought I would be a mother.

Conversely, I’ve never imagined myself as a bride. I’ve sometimes idly thought about a song I might like to walk down the aisle to (Roslin and Adam from the BSG soundtrack, obviously), or what style of wedding dress I like while watching ‘Say Yes to the Dress’. But when it comes down to it, do I actually see myself standing in front of all of my friends, saying, ‘This is the life I choose/this is the thing I can’t bear to lose’? No. The thought brings me out in a rash.

But I have often pictured myself with my children. Small vignettes, like picking them up, rocking them, kissing them. Taking them to the museums or the park. Making them little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Playing hide and seek.

I’ve seriously procrastinated on this post, and I think I know why. I’m ashamed. I only read 27 books last year. That’s the lowest number since I left university! There are a number of reasons: ongoing pandemic, working from home, putting energy into learning languages, binge-watching the Sopranos, starting to write copy freelance, dating etc. But they are all excuses. I just haven’t made reading central to my life and that’s bad for me in so many ways.

I’ve been doing a lot of self-growth work through a meditation programme, and one of the cornerstones is deciding your ‘authentic code’. I’ve enshrined learning and curiosity in my code, but another thing that’s important to me is loving. And that includes loving myself. Since I was three years old, reading has been a therapy, an escape, a relaxation. And I should make more of an effort to prioritise that.

She said, having worked on her first job until 7.30pm the last three nights, and her second job until nearly 12.

Anyway, I didn’t read a huge amount of YA in 2021. The YA community has become very fragmented, with many authors shifting to MG or adult, so I feel like I’m a bit disconnected from what’s going on. Additionally, I feel like contemps have been more prominent/popular, and they’re just not my favourite genre.

I also didn’t read as much non-fiction as I would like. I LOVE reading gripping history. But since reducing my reading time, wading through a hefty tome can be somewhat intimidating.

Reading The Mirror and the Light took absolutely FOREVER so that wiped out a lot of potential reading progress…!

As always, bolded titles were my particular favourites:

For the last few months, I’ve wanted to write about the process of ‘coming out of’ the pandemic. A sort of ‘Covid is over’ retrospective. Although, of course, we find ourselves now in the midst of Wave Eleventy, in this funny kind of ‘personal responsibility’ quagmire that benefits nobody except the chronically selfish.

This year seems to have passed in an instant, doesn’t it? Perhaps because from November to March, I was in near total isolation at my parents’ house, in a city I have never lived in. It was a privileged position, in many ways: I had food, a warm, comfortable house to stay in, and the companionship of my family. We watched a lot of good TV and movies. We went to the beach for bracing walks, when allowed, and, when restrictions tightened, we limited ourselves to a loop around the block.

But in a city where I knew no-one else, my social world narrowed to phone calls and a semi-regular roleplay game in which I played a drag queen wizard with the stage name Glamione Danger. When it came to the spring and cases had at last dropped a bit, I was so desperate to come home to my own life, it was a physical ache.

As for the rest, I hardly know where to start.

Sunday

I came back to my tiny room this week.

I hadn’t reckoned with the difficulty of returning to the scene of the crime. To smells and sounds of another era. To a mountain of undone laundry, half a pack of soggy Bran Flakes, a love poem tucked into the back of my food cupboard.

A dog barks. The pipes groan. I’m thrown back to last year, when I had hope. Even the way the light seeps under the blind, the shadow of my towels on the back of the wardrobe door, my boots tucked under the chest of drawers since I last wore them over a year ago.