Compost | February
red kites / the eternal to read pile / all fours / valentine’s tarot reading
Bird of the month: Red Kite
(Milvus milvus, Barcud Coch)
Red kites arrived in North East England around the same time as I did. I was a transplant from North Wales, coming to Newcastle for what I thought would be a year to do a Masters in Museum Studies. The red kites were transplants from the Chiltern Hills in southern England, 94 of them released in the Derwent Valley between 2004 and 2006, after the species had been extinct in the region for over a hundred years.
It was probably 2007 or 2008 when I first saw a red kite. At that time I was living in a ground floor Tyneside flat near Saltwell Park that I’d originally shared with a flatmate before she left to teach English in Japan and my boyfriend moved in. Car-less, we would often catch a bus out of the city at the weekend to walk in the ancient woodland of the Derwent Valley. The paths we followed through the trees had once been a railway line, carrying passengers, coal and iron ore between Consett in County Durham and Tyne Dock.
I remember one long, lazy walk that went on deep into a summer evening. We were hurrying to get back to the bus stop in time when a flash of movement overhead caught our eyes. We looked up to see a reddish brown bird of prey with a distinctive forked tail gliding above us, following the thermals. Not a buzzard, not a kestrel. Not even a sparrowhawk, which I’d hoped we might catch a glimpse of amongst the trees. I think my boyfriend might have looked it up in the bird book to be sure, before confirming in amazement that we had seen a red kite.
More than a decade later, we’re walking on the Waskerley Way near Consett with our two children. Another track that had once been a railway line, this one winding its way west from Consett and out across the moorland towards Weardale. We’ve stopped for a snack, hoping to re-energise the younger members of the group so that we can walk on a bit further. It’s a bright and breezy September day, glimpses of purple heather in the distance and the young trees that line the track shading from green to autumnal oranges and yellows.
Once again, movement overhead catches our eyes and we look up. A red kite circles lazily above us for several minutes. The afternoon sun makes the red feathers of its breast and the underside of its wings glow. We watch its forked tail shifting, small movements to correct its course, keep it circling over us. It watches us. Red kites are common now, a familiar sight all over this part of the North East. I’ve seen them flying over our old flat in urban Gateshead, and circling above the six lanes of the A1 near Durham. They have almost - but not quite- become unremarkable. I still feel a thrill when I spot one, and it feels very special to be being observed by this red kite now. What about us has caught its eye? Is it our brightly coloured waterproof jackets or the chaotic patterns the children make as they run and climb and chase? I imagine its yellow raptor eye, intent and fixed on us, curious, assessing. After a few minutes it turns a final loop above, dips its tail as if in salute, and flaps off towards the north.
On reading
This is my current to read pile shelf. It’s a mixture of books I’ve received as presents, ones I’ve bought for myself, library books, and books I’ve borrowed from my dad. Some only live there briefly while others are long term residents. Each year I typically read 2-4 books from the to read pile, plus several others that never make it to the pile (like impulse purchases or borrowings from a lunch break visit to Waterstones or the library), and add 4-5 new books. The pile is eternal.
In its current incarnation, my to read pile contains:
8 fiction books, including one graphic novel (Sabrina by Nick Drnaso), one epic poem (Gilgamesh, translated by Sophus Helle), and four historical fiction (Hild by Nicola Griffith, The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell, James by Percival Everett, Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff)
9 non-fiction books, including three memoirs (The Ghost Lake by
, The Red of my Blood by , The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing) and one collection of essays (In The Kitchen: essays on food and life)
I’m currently reading two books: The Siege of Krishnapur (J.G. Farrell) as part of Simon Haisell’s Slow Read, and Saving Time: discovering a life beyond the clock (Jenny Odell). The latter is a library book, and didn’t make it as far as the to read pile because I started it straight away. It’s research for my WIP where I’m currently writing and thinking a lot about the subjective ways we experience the passing of time.
I’m a slow reader these days, but throughout my childhood and early adulthood I was a voracious reader, reading anything and everything I could get my hands on, and I read fast. My speed slowed a little after I left university, and again when I became a parent, but I always had at least one book on the go. Then, the Covid lockdown hit in March 2020 and almost overnight I pretty much stopped reading. The attention span I needed to get lost in a good book had vanished. The outside world, with all its uncertainties and restrictions and anxieties, had too strong a hold on me.
It’s taken me sustained and conscious effort to rebuild a regular reading habit. One thing that has helped is alternating between fiction and non-fiction books. Balancing those two genres seems to keep me engaged. Post-lockdown, all I was interested in reading was non-fiction - I wanted real stories not ones someone had made up. But I find that if I read more than two non fiction books in a row I start to lose steam, and will abruptly realise that I haven’t picked up a book in more than a week. Alternating between fiction and non-fiction seems to work for me, engaging my mind and my heart in different ways.
All Fours
I (finally) read All Fours by
at the end of last year, about six months after everyone else because although I reserved it from the library in the summer it took four months before it was my turn in the queue. I enjoyed it a lot - it’s one of those books that feels like it portrays life and people as they really are, rather than the slightly more sanitised version we like to believe in or present to others. There were so many lines or paragraphs that I read with a full body yes: on motherhood and mid life, desire and sex, creativity and a room of one’s own. I still can’t get over the narrator spending $20k doing up a hotel room though!I have two entries in my Notes app dedicated to All Fours: one full of lines and paragraphs from the book that I want to remember, the other full of thoughts and responses. There’s so many of both that I’ve considered turning it into a post of its own, but it feels slightly redundant to do so given how much had been written about the novel already.
It feels so refreshing to have a female narrator who is self obsessed in a way that I feel like previously only male narrators have been permitted to be. I want to make a comparison with John Updike but it’s been years since I’ve read any of his novels. What I remember of them is a series of middle aged narrators feeling dissatisfied with their lives and who I took to be largely avatars for the author.
I’ve seen All Fours described as psychedelic, or a fever dream. There is that hyper real, dream logic element to it - the $20k spent refurbished the hotel room, the dance on Instagram to magically summon Davey - but also so much that rings true, articulates something I’ve thought or felt. And some of the “I can’t believe she did/said that!” moments in the novel feel like slightly exaggerated and adult versions of things we might have done or said in adolescence. In my mid teens, I remember engineering excuse after excuse to casually walk past the classroom my current crush was in. Setting up opportunities to “randomly” bump into them and imagining a whole conversation and series of events that would spool out from that meeting - culminating in us snogging of course!
I also highly recommend the series of discussions inspired by All Fours and hosted by
, . and . There have been three discussions so far, exploring lots of juicy topics around midlife, perimenopause, rage, caring, desire and hormones.A Tarot Spread for Valentine’s Day
I have a very ambivalent relationship with Valentine’s Day. In high school, it was another gauntlet to run in the endless popularity contest that life as a teenage girl often felt like. Who would get the most Valentines cards? What if I didn’t get any? Did I dare to send a Valentine to my current crush? What if he didn’t like me back? The risk of ending up embarrassed or ashamed were high. I cultivated a carefully constructed couldn’t care less attitude. I was above such things, I had no desire to receive a Valentine, it was a commercialised fake holiday designed to make people spend money on useless tat to somehow prove their love. But I still watched enviously in morning registration as the prettiest girl in my class showed off the cards and presents she’d received.
I’ve softened a little with age. Now Valentine’s Day is a nudge, reminding me and my husband that we should make some time to spend an evening or a day together, just him and me, to step out of our parent identities for a little while and remember how it used to be. I’ve also warmed to the idea of a day designed to celebrate love - love in all its forms, not just romantic. It’s so easy to focus on the things that are hard and difficult in our individual lives and in the wider world - the climate crisis, the totalitarian coup gathering pace in the US, the ongoing death and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank. But it’s important not to lose sight of the good things that continue to exist in the world, of the things we love - the people, places, seasons, objects, books, music…
So, here is a two card spread for Valentine’s Day. I drew one card for beliefs to embrace about love, and another card for beliefs to release about love:
Beliefs about love to embrace: 4 of Wands
The four of wands is a card of celebration. Take the time to celebrate yourself, celebrate the people, places and things you love, celebrate the moment. Conjure joy in your life and in the lives of those you love. Maybe that means a grand gesture (a surprise weekend away, a dozen red roses), maybe it’s a smaller moment (drinking your morning cuppa on the back step and listening to a blackbird singing, buying your child’s favourite yoghurt at the supermarket). Cultivate joy - the fours in tarot are about structure and stability, so try to plan some time into each day (an afternoon, an hour, 10 minutes)to spend with people that you love, or in a place you love or doing something that you love.
Beliefs about love to release: 5 of Swords
The five of swords is a card of conflict. A conflict where there are no clear winners or losers, and maybe about something that shouldn’t have been a conflict in the first place. The sword cards are associated with the element of air, which in turn is associated with thought and communication1. This card is a reminder not to get too in your head when it comes to seeking and experiencing love. It’s a card about being defensive, which can be a form of self-preservation but also self-destruction. Don’t seek to control love, don’t try to keep yourself closed off from it in the belief that this will keep you safe (from pain, from rejection, from loss). There are no guarantees, we can’t know how things will turn out, but we must try to remain open to love, to the possibility of love. If we can do so, there are so many different forms of love available for us to experience. So many different forms of joy.
The associations for the other suits in tarot are: pentacles (earth / the body, the physical world), wands (fire / energy, creativity), and cups (water / emotions).