Wednesday 16 March 2022

Vernal Equinox: Day 3


It's our third day of celebrating the upcoming Vernal Equinox! And it's continuing to be a daffodil-tastic week, although today had a bit of a bunny theme as well.

More Daffodils!





More daffodil-spotting today... I went to Crumpsall Park with a friend, and we were absolutely spoilt for daffs!

Lunch with a Friend



After all that daffodil-spotting, we felt like we deserved a nice lunch at The Secret Sandwich in Crumpsall. And lots of cups of tea!

Seasonal Chocolate



Couldn't resist this Hot Cross Bun Dairy Milk from Cadbury's... perfect for the season!

Ostara Earrings




Two different pairs of seasonal earrings for me today. For the day, I had some funky chickens. And then I switched them for rabbits in the evening to accessorize with our film night...

Night of the Lepus



Film night with Rob and a friend tonight... I couldn't find any daffodil-themed horror, but this one seemed perfect for the season. We watched the amazing 1972 eco-horror, Night of the Lepus. It's got giant killer rabbits!

Vernal Equinox: Day 2


It was the second day of our Vernal Equinox celebrations today (building up to the big day on Sunday). Today was also our wedding anniversary, so we had a bit of a double celebration this evening.

Daffodils




I went daffodil-spotting again today. This time, I was in Herristone Park on the way home from work.

Ostara Earrings



Today's seasonal earrings were little baby chicks.

Ostara Candle




We lit our Ostara candle (from Chalice Creations) for the first time tonight. Scents of lime, bergamot, coconut and grapefruit to last through the week.

Equinox



For some seasonal entertainment tonight, we started watching Danish supernatural thriller Equinox. I reckon there's enough episodes to see us through till the actual Vernal Equinox on Sunday!

Anniversary Cocktails




As it was our eighth (salt) wedding anniversary tonight, we had a bit of a salt-themed tonight as well. I made cocktails to celebrate - it was a Gimlet, but made with Mermaid Salt Vodka from the Isle of Wight Distillery.

Monday 14 March 2022

Vernal Equinox: Day 1


It's time for the second event in our Year of Celebrating the Seasons this week. The Vernal (Spring) Equinox (aka Ostara) is coming up on Sunday, so we're going to be celebrating all week, enjoying the beginnings of spring. We already started some new traditions at Imbolc, but who knows? we might start some more this week as well.

A Walk in the Woods




I started off my Vernal Equinox celebrations with a walk in the woods with my dad. We met in Blackley Forest and spent a nice hour or so just enjoying nature.

Daffodils




It's daffodil season! And that's a sure sign that spring is here. I'm determined to make this week as daffodil-tastic as I can, so I started off by spotting some in the woods.

Blackthorn



Daffodils aren't the only spring flowers though. The blackthorn is also in blossom in the woods this month.

Daffodil: Biography of a Flower



Since I'm going for a daffodil-tastic week, my holiday reading is Daffodil: Biography of a Flower by Helen O'Neill.

Ostara Earrings



I've got a good collection of seasonal earrings lined up for this holiday. Today's were daffodils and bunny rabbits.

Sunday 13 March 2022

Review: Atlas (Oddly Moving)

Tuesday 8th March 2022
The Lowry, Salford

On Tuesday 8th March, I was at The Lowry to see Atlas, a retelling of the Atlas myth by Oddly Moving. I’ll be reviewing this production on Hannah’s Bookshelf, my weekly literature show on North Manchester FM, later in the month. But here’s the blog version of my review…


Produced by Turtle Key Arts and directed by Charlotte Mooney, Atlas is a three-woman, single-act performance that retells the classical myth of Atlas, the titan condemned to eternally carry the entire weight of the cosmos, through physical theatre, storytelling and circus skills.

The play opens on a fairly plain and empty stage – this is a piece of theatre that relies much more of props and performance than stage dressing. A woman (Grania Pickard) collects a cardboard box full of toy figures, lays them out on a mirrored surface, and begins to narrate the story of Cronos, Zeus, and the war between the gods and the titans. It’s a light-hearted and intimate narration, in which Pickard comically illustrates Cronos devouring his own children with the help of some plastic dinosaurs and zoo animals. It feels almost like the way you might tell the story to children, and both the performance space and the performance style enhance the almost cosy informality of the narration.

When the woman reaches the introduction to Atlas, and Cronos’s recruitment of this particular titan to lead the army against Zeus and the other gods, Pickard is joined on stage by another performer (Arielle Lauzon) who silently dons a breastplate and wrist guards, ready for battle.

It’s at this point that the performance moves away from the gentle storytelling and into a more physical representation of the myth. The war between the titans and the gods is illustrated through stylized physical theatre, with Pickard and Lauzon being joined by the third performer, Helena Berry.

As the play continues, different modes of physical performance are used to create vignettes in Atlas’s story. Berry mimes the Labours of Herakles; Lauzon juggles with the golden apples of the Hesperides; Pickard collects and deposits an assortment of small hessian sacks, moving them round the stage to transform them from sandbags on the battlefield, to a weighty burden to be cleared away single-handedly, to sacks of soil that turn the stage into a garden. The fluidity of these movements works well with the storytelling style, as though we’ve moved from imagining the story through the plastic animal toys to imagining it through the movement of the performers on stage.

As I said, the story is presented through a series of vignettes, which are laced together by Pickard’s storytelling narration. A standout for me was Berry’s swaggering evocation of Herakles. This sequence uses mime and physical performance to evoke a sort of macho pointlessness to the Twelve Labours; without saying a word, Berry’s physicality here conveys a lot about the character. This is a Herakles who can perform amazing feats – and doesn’t he just know it? It’s a compelling and lightly comical vignette, which stays just on the right side of absurdity.


While Atlas might be described as a dynamic performance, with Pickard, Lauzon and Berry moving seamlessly on and off the stage, interacting with the props and switching physical styles without missing a beat, it’s also a performance that makes powerful use of stasis as well.

The moment when Atlas is commanded to lift the cosmos and hold it for eternity is evoked through Lauzon lifting the circular mirror (previously used to lay out the plastic toys of Pickard’s introduction) above her head. The stance Lauzon adopts and the effort apparent in raising the mirror above her head, followed by a breath-holding moment as she locks her arms and stands stock still to keep the weight in the air, is impressive. As the mirror – the ‘cosmos’ – slowly weighs her down, gradually forcing her into a crouch before she adopts the pose we might be familiar with from art and sculpture.

The sequence is almost visceral, and Lauzon’s performance not only encourages the audience to ‘feel’ the weight pressing down on Atlas, but also to emphasize – in a very physical way – with both the pain and the resignation as the titan accepts the punishment.

And this is something that continues throughout the piece. Lauzon offers us a very human Atlas. Again, without using any words, the physical performance conveys character, and the audience is tacitly encouraged to imagine the human emotions that might be accompany such a super-human (or inhuman) burden.


That said, while Lauzon and Berry evoke mythological figures through wordless physical performance, there are words here. Pickard’s narration continues throughout the piece, and the words she speaks offer another dimension to what we are watching.

Although the narration is mainly a continuation of the introductory narration of the classical myth, with Pickard continuing the intimate and gentle style of the opening sequence, another story emerges through interjections and asides. And this bit was something of a (pleasant) surprise.

The other story – and I don’t want to give too much away about this – is told through such light-touch narration that you might almost miss the significance of what’s being said, particularly in the initial interjection from Pickard, as she collects up the weighty sacks and holds them in her arms. The way in which an entire character and backstory is conjured through almost minimal narration is impressive. Pickard actually speaks very few lines of this ‘other’ story, and at one point says only a single, seemingly misplaced word, and yet this opens up a whole other perspective on the Atlas myth and its significance. And, as with Lauzon’s physical performance as the weighed-down Atlas, it subtly encourages an empathetic response in the audience, without offering heavy-handed explanations or directives.

I know I must have overused the words ‘intimacy’ and ‘empathy’ in this review, but these were absolutely my lasting impressions of this performance. The physical performances combine perfectly with the storytelling to share a simple tale with the audience – but, as it transpires, there is more than one story being told here.

I thoroughly enjoyed Atlas. It was an engaging and immersive piece of physical theatre, with three excellent performances and a real charm to the deceptively straightforward storytelling. If you get chance to catch a future performance, this one is a recommendation from me.

Atlas by Oddly Moving was on at The Lowry, Salford, on Tuesday 8th March, as part of a UK tour. For more information, and for future tour dates, please visit the Turtle Key Arts website.

Wednesday 23 February 2022

Performers Wanted for Live Poetry Special 2022


Want to perform your poetry on the radio?

The annual Hannah's Bookshelf Live Poetry Special is back! (With a couple of little changes...)

On Saturday 26th March, Hannah’s Bookshelf on North Manchester FM will be broadcasting its annual Live Poetry Special. And once again, I’d like to invite poets and spoken word performers to get involved and perform their work on the show.

For the first time in nearly three years, I'll be inviting poets into the North Manchester FM studio to perform their work live on the show! However, I have to admit I've enjoyed being able to feature work from poets from further afield on the last two poetry specials, so I'll also be offering a limited number of slots for poets outside Manchester to pre-record their performance for inclusion in the broadcast.

Whether you’re a veteran performer or new to reading your work, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line via the Contact page, tweet me or message me on Facebook if you’d like to perform or would like more information about how to take part. Slots are limited, and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Please let me know if you want a live or pre-recorded slot when you contact me.

The Hannah’s Bookshelf Live Poetry Special will be going out on North Manchester FM on Saturday 26th March at 2-4pm. It will be broadcast on 106.6FM (in the North Manchester area) and online (for the rest of the world). Performance slots are 6 minutes long.

Tuesday 15 February 2022

Stories to be Read with the Lights On 21: The $2,000,000 Defense by Harold Q. Masur


I've probably got time for one more story from my Hitchcock reread today. The next story in the book is 'The $2,000,000 Defense' by Harold Q. Masur. This story wasn't as immediately familiar as the previous ones, and I wasn't sure if I remembered reading it before when I started.


After a few pages, this one really wasn't ringing any bells. It's so weird the way I remember some stories and not others.

'The $2,000,000 Defense' is a typical 'Tales of the Unexpected'-type story that's very much in-keeping with the rest of the book. You can sort of see the ending coming, but there's an added sting in the final reveal that might be a surprise. I absolutely knew what was coming with this one, but it's because I guessed the ending, not because I remembered it. 'The $2,000,000 Defense' is a pretty standard story of someone getting their comeuppance. What I liked about it was the way you didn't realize it was comeuppance until right at the end (you think he's just a victim of something bad).

But, I have to say, I 100% do not remember reading this one before.

🠄Previous Story

Stories to be Read with the Lights On 20: Guessing Game by Rose Million Healey


The next story in the book is 'Guessing Game' by Rose Million Healey. And after the last two I was curious to see whether I remember anything about this one. 'Guessing Game' continued my streak... it definitely seemed familiar from the start. It feels like I'm remembering the middle of this book more clearly than the beginning.


A couple of paragraphs in, and this one is totally came back to me. I even thought I remembered the ending! As I continued reading, the story came back clear as a bell. Now I'm wondering (as with some of the others) if I've read it in another anthology more recently. It was just so familiar!

And I was right about the ending. As soon as the creepy kid asked Martha to guess what was in his creepy kid box, I remembered the answer. I wonder why this one stuck so clearly in my head?

🠄Previous Story

Stories to be Read with the Lights On 19: Agony Column by Barry Malzberg


Back to my Hitchcock reread this afternoon... the next story in the book is 'Agony Column' by Barry N. Malzberg. And even before I started reading, this story seemed familiar. It's very much about how people shouted into the void before social media existed. I feel like I definitely remember reading it the first time round.


I'm not sure where 'Agony Column' wants our sympathies to lie. There's a suggestion that we should relate to Martin Miller, who says he's just desperate to be "recognized as an individual" and whose frustration escalates as this doesn't happen. But, on the other hand, Martin Miller is sending unsolicited and sometimes uninformed opinions to a variety of people in an attempt to "correspond" with them. There's an incredible arrogance to his assumption that, if he has an opinion, he must be entitled to an audience.

You could literally reformat this story as a series of tweets, rather than letters, and it would feel very current. Weird to think that the last time I read it, I'd only just got my first email address!

🠄Previous Story

Sunday 13 February 2022

My Year in Books 2022: January

I'm a bit late posting this... not a great start to my year of posts! Sorry about that!

Once again, I'm going to be writing monthly blog posts with short reviews of all the books I've read for fun, rather than for research or review (not that those books aren't often fun, of course). Hopefully, the rest of the year's posts will be published on time! But for now, here are the three books I read this January:

The Haunting Season (2021)


The first book I read this year was sort of a reread, but not quite. I skim-read The Haunting Season back in November, as part of the prep for my Hannah’s Bookshelf Christmas Special. (I know… I probably shouldn’t give away my secrets like that!) I knew that it was the sort of book I’d enjoy reading slowly, so I put it on my to-read pile for a proper read over Christmas. I ran out of time in December, but since we’re celebrating the seasons more thoroughly this year, it seemed like it might be the right book to pick up between Christmas and Imbolc. And I was right – this collection was perfect for the dark winter nights of the post-Christmas period. The anthology contains eight short stories, all set in winter, and all about haunting (though not necessarily ghosts). Although these are all new stories, they’re mostly set in the past. In some stories, this past setting is quite specific, but in others there’s just an eerie sense of an older, other time. All eight stories were beautifully written and very readable, and I’d struggle to say that I have a favourite. ‘A Study in Black and White’ by Bridget Collins had me hooked from the start, and ‘Thwaite’s Tenant’ by Imogen Hermes Gowar had a powerful sense of place and setting. I also liked the very visceral folk horror of Andrew Michael Hurley’s story ‘The Hanging of the Greens’. Perfect winter reading, and a strong recommendation from me!

The Hoarder by Jess Kidd (2018)


Something funny happened with this one… I knew I was planning to read Starve Acre later in the month, and I’d just read one of Hurley’s short stories in The Haunting Season, so I thought it’d be best to break the two books up with something completely different. I’d picked up The Hoarder, because I’d seen it on a list of must-read Gothic books and I liked the look of the blurb. It was only as I started to read it that I realized the author’s name seemed familiar. Ah… that would be because Jess Kidd also had a story (‘Lily Wilt’) in The Haunting Season! I guess this month has a bit of a theme after all! In some ways, The Hoarder is quite different to ‘Lily Wilt’, but in others there are some definite similarities between the two stories. The Hoarder is set in the present day, when careworker Maud Drennan is assigned to the home of Cathal Flood, the hoarder of the title. She discovers a towering pile of rubbish (and a towering old man guarding it), but also some hints of a decades-old mystery that she becomes determined to solve. I was hooked from the start by this one. The characters are quirky, but still very sympathetic, and the way the mystery unfolds is really engaging. I did guess one of the reveals, but I really liked the way the story plays with the ambiguity of memories and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley (2019)


Since I always read festive books for Christmas and Halloween, it wanted to choose a seasonal book for Imbolc this year. I struggled a bit to find a book set at the end of winter, as most ‘winter fiction’ tends to be set in the run-up to Christmas or around the solstice. Fortunately, Starve Acre is set at just the right time of year. I’ve also read a bit of Hurley’s fiction already, so I knew I’d be getting a folk horror-inflected take on the season. I also knew a little bit about the publishing history of Starve Acre, an earlier version of which was published as part of Dead Ink Book’s Eden Book Society project, but then withdrawn when the novel-length version of the book was contracted. I read four of the other Eden Book Society stories a couple of years ago, but I was a bit late to get the earlier version of Starve Acre. Time, then, to read the longer version. Starve Acre is the story of Richard and Juliette who have moved to his old family home, a place with an acre of land that was once home to a mighty oak tree but where nothing now grows. Richard and Juliette’s son Ewan died before the story begins, and the novel is an exploration of their grief, of landscape, and of the dark tendrils of history. Starve Acre is sad, but in an unsettlingly detached way and with moments of real horror. Perfect for the season.

Wednesday 2 February 2022

Imbolc: Day 7


It's the final day of our Imbolc celebrations. I'm a bit sad that we'll be taking the lights down tomorrow, but we've had a lovely time inventing new traditions and enjoying some festive fun.

Imbolc Lunch



I don't know if this counts as a seasonal celebration, but I had a lovely afternoon out with my mum today (including some very nice cake).

Groundhog Day



There's only really one film to wrap up our seasonal celebrations... it's Groundhog Day! (And I've also been enjoying learning a bit about the history of Groundhog Day and its European precedents.)

And so the wheel of the year turns... We'll be celebrating again at the Vernal Equinox.

Tuesday 1 February 2022

Imbolc: Day 6


Tonight is the big night... the festival of Imbolc begins and it's the feast day of St Brigid. So we decided to mark the occasion with a new tradition... a candlelit Imbolc Dinner with some seasonal dishes.

Imbolc Dinner




Candlelight doesn't make for great food pics, but we had sweet potato, butternut squash and nut roast with colcannon and roast parsnips.

Imbolc Gifts



And another new tradition for the year... after dinner, Rob and I exchanged Imbolc gifts. We've decided that we're going to get each other seasonally-themed whisky drams throughout the year, and then we'll try them all when we're on holiday in December.

Monday 31 January 2022

Imbolc: Day 5


I had a bit of a busy work day today, so there wasn't really time for any seasonal celebrations. So sadly, today's post will be a bit short.

Imbolc Earrings



All I have to share today is another new pair of seasonal earrings. Today's were little silver sheep, since sheep are a symbol of Imbolc.

Sunday 30 January 2022

Imbolc: Day 4


Another day of celebrating the end of winter! We only had a little bit of time to celebrate today, so we headed out for a lovely walk and a little picnic.

Imbolc Earrings



Today's earrings were Brigid's crosses (but made of silver, rather than rushes). Really, they should be worn on 1st February (as this is St Brigid's feast day), but they seemed appropriate for today's little outing.

Hatch Brook Waterfall



Apparently it's traditional (or good luck) to visit a waterfall at Imbolc. So today we headed over to Brinscall (near Chorley) to visit Hatch Brook waterfall. It was little bit tricky getting up close to the waterfall, but it was totally worth it.