Ah yes, June... Such a peaceful, pleasant month... I wish we could have hung onto you for a bit longer.

July brought covid (which we're now over -- the cough lasted two weeks, and the lassitude just over three, so we got off lightly, all things considered).

And as for August, well, a lot of it has been spent in hospitals, following up on the MRI that Nigel had in Istanbul back in May. It turns out he has to have surgery, which is scheduled for next week. If we're lucky, it will all be sorted in one pass. If we're not so lucky, there might be another round.

Everyone has been super-helpful, and I've been really impressed by the doctors' willingness to spend time explaining (to complete medical ignoramuses) what's going on. We're lucky that Nigel has health insurance, and is generally fit and well.

But it's an anxious time, and we'll be very glad when we're through it. The upcoming operation is always in the back of our minds, and we're both a bit distracted. I'm normally quite a focused person, but I currently catch myself putting things in silly places, or picking up the oven gloves to do the washing up...

We've deliberately kept ourselves busy, so August's PT posts record quite an active few weeks, in which we've done day trips, attended events, and tried out lots of new eating places.






And watching other people's stories takes your mind off your own, so no fewer than three movie posts have made their appearance on The Velvet Cushion this month (dealing with work by French, Brazilian, Japanese, Vietnamese, German, Australian, American, and Argentinian film-makers). There's also been a language catch-up, plus four posts on novels: Hari Kunzru's White Tears, Kevin Kwan's China Rich Girlfriend, Elif Shafak's The Forty Doors, and Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending.






So that's another month. Another review. Another attempt to capture something from the time that's whizzing by.

This week I stumbled upon the poetry of Kaveh Akbar. I don't always find it easy to digest, but his fascination with culture, spirit, and language make me warm to him. I loved this quote, from an interview he gave last year: "Were you ever a kid who would hold your shirt out ... like this, and you would fill it with stones or shells or whatever? I feel like I’m just moving through the world with my shirt out in front of me, filling it with language and images. And over the years I’ve realized that one hundred thousand percent of the time, if I’m like, 'I’ll remember this, I don’t need to write it down,' I forget it instantaneously. So I just write everything down."

Which is the best articulation of the rationale for my blog posts that I've come across...