Hello, and how was your week? I thought I would give you a quick update from my house. This isn’t really what I want to write about, as really I want to tell you about what I plan to write for my thesis. But I can’t. I’ll explain why in a minute.

Firstly, if you had Mother’s Day last weekend, was it lovely? I had lovely gifts from my family, and no one forgot this year. (I never assume…) I cooked dinner for my mum and mother-in-law, and it was all very pleasant.

I used it as an excuse to use the last of the turkey dinners from the freezer. Due to various off-spring changing their plans/announcing they no longer eat birds/incompetence on my part, I ended up with several turkeys, of different sizes, this Christmas. They all went into the freezer, and the last one has now been defrosted—which always takes longer than expected—and cooked.

Last Sunday was busy, because it’s also the day my daughter and her fiancé moved back home. They are currently between selling/buying houses, and they are living here for a while. Mostly this is brilliant. It’s the first time since Kia died that the house hasn’t been horribly empty. When I pop out, I now can shout through a bedroom door to my soon-to-be-son-in-law and tell him that I am leaving. And when I am home, I shout that I’m back. He probably can’t hear me, because he’s busy working, but I like having someone to tell. To be honest, Kia probably never understood when I told her these things, but I just liked telling her.

They did move back with more stuff than I was expecting, even though all their furniture has gone into storage. My house is rather full. But I like having a full house, empty rooms feel wasteful.

The cage by the pond is also very full at the moment. When Kia died, the local fox soon realised the garden was accessible again, and started to visit, so I have kept the ducks shut away (even thought they could be back on the pond now). They seem quite happy, but the cage is incredibly muddy as they spend all day transporting wet mud from the end with puddles to the rest of the cage. Ducks are mucky creatures. There are a couple of nests, in corners where they think I won’t notice them, and I think they must be almost ready to hatch. Depending on how many hatch, the cage will definitely be too full. And I can’t bring the ducklings into the garage this year, as that is full of daughter-stuff. Ah well, I shall decide on a plan when I know how many hatch.

I don’t have a huge amount of time for duck or daughter sorting, as I am preparing the proposal for my thesis. I want to tell you all about it, but I have to be careful—apparently ‘self-plagiarism’ is a thing. If I write and publish something, I cannot then put it into the thesis. So I can only tell you snippets, and nothing in academic language. Basically, I want to look at why the Leviathan, which is clearly not a crocodile (because it breathes fire/smoke) changes Job’s attitude in the Book of Job. What does it represent? I’m reading lots of books by scholarly authors, and have discovered ‘monster theory.’ Who knew that was a thing! Apparently, all cultures have monsters, and you can learn a lot about cultures, and what they valued, by examining their monsters. In a time/place of physical uncertainty, the monster might be extreme weather-monsters, or lions; before medical advances, the monster might represent disease; when there were warring nations, the monster might be violent. I wonder what our monsters today might be—loss of control? Racism? Mental disorders that result in unpredictable violence? The films/books we read seem to have lots about psychopaths and historical racism at the moment. When I was a teenager, there was lots about evil spirits/demon-possession (with films like ‘The Exorcist’). You don’t see so much about that now, maybe our monsters are changing.

The other thing you don’t see so much of now are—complete change of subject coming, so brace yourself: some of the sweets I ate as a child! My mum is doing a jigsaw, and on the back are photos of sweets from the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I will leave you with them—how many do you recognise? Fruit gums have always been my favourite, though I am also keen on a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate.

Hope you have a good week, that has a manageable amount of stuff, and no monsters. Maybe there’ll be some sweets too.

Thanks for reading. Take care.
Love, Anne x