Today is the first time it has really felt like spring is on its way. I walked to a meeting this morning and the air smelled fresh and wet after the early rain. The sun was warm on my face, and the sky was bright with fluffy white clouds racing each other in the wind, which surged between the hills in heavy gusts, roaring against windows at the top of campus. As I walked up the hill to Queen’s, the smell of the curry herb Lia likes to rub against filled the air. I don’t know the name of the herb, but I recognise the smell of her cat fur in the summer, musty and spicy.

I drove home with the windows open and music turned up loud, delighting in the way my car responded to my movements. I get the sense, from time to time, that my car knows exactly where I’m going. It’s a dangerous notion, perhaps, and one that I shouldn’t take too literally. But there I sit, in this big blue bubble of a machine which whirs and roars beneath and in front of me, and its movements are fed by the slightest shift of my fingers or toes. Perhaps some movements are unconscious. I love driving. I love to drive over the train tracks and feel each ridge beneath me. I love the easy motion of turning slight bends in the road, the exhiliration of a motorway, the swift manoeuvres in traffic, the freedom of an empty road. Driving an automatic car in the States was easy, reliable, predictable, but there’s something about the feel of a clutch beneath your foot, that up-down, back-forward balance on a hill, where the car is completely in tune with your body, your breath, your focus. The danger of feeling that the car knows what you want it to do is too real in an automatic. With a manual, there is a satisfactory shift of the gears: that slide, slotting something in its correct place. Orderly, positive motion. When you are behind the wheel of a stick-shift, the car moves with you, changing gear like drawing breath, and you don’t notice a jerkiness. As a passenger, there are a series of nauseating jolts as you move into a comfortable speed, and I suffer from terrible car sickness. As soon as I’m behind the wheel, I have control, and my body is in sync with the machine.

The contours of my car make me smile. The blue hips, brows, backside and haunches curve around its body, and its bonnet grins at you as it approaches. Bug drivers all over the country acknowledge each other’s taste and style with a nod or a wave or, more appropriately, a wink of light. Whoever decided to add the vase was a genius.

As I drove home today, upbeat about my meeting with Margaretta and positive about the day ahead, a huge black cloud loomed over the hills behind Exwick. I realised that looking forward, all you could see was grey dullness, while behind me the sky was vivid blue and bright. Attitude to life could be determined by your direction, by which way you decide to look, a fitting metaphor. I opened the door, stepped out into the sunshine, went inside, and within five minutes rain was pelting the windows. The blinds gloomed with reflected grey. Fifteen minutes later the sun shone again, but in seminar late this afternoon the rain slanted sideways across the windows with the wind, which booed and hissed in the dimming light. A typical English day, I suppose. But the air smelled of spring.

I had an appointment with Margaretta today. I was so angry with myself this morning for forgetting what time I had scheduled the appointment. I knew it was this morning, not too early, but had forgotten to write it down. I knew I would have to drive to campus, pay to park, walk up the hill to the second (American third) floor of Queens just to look on a door and come back down again, go home, and wait for my appointment. It was a miracle that I arrived just as Margaretta was opening her office door, two minutes early for my appointment. I was shocked (and not a little relieved that I hadn’t waited a few minutes longer to leave the house). The meeting went well, and I feel a lot more positive about my portfolio now. Plus, I have spread the Julian Green joy, so that is one achievement for the day.

I have Faith Hill’s song, Paris, in my head. It has ridiculous lyrics: something about tearing up the Mona Lisa into little pieces, which would be all very well and good if the Mona Lisa was painted on canvas instead of wood.

Tomorrow my mother is coming to Exeter and meeting me for shopping and lunch in the town centre. I haven’t seen her for over a month, and it will be great to get out of the apartment and catch up. I’m looking forward to some allocated time off work. I always feel I am playing hooky when I’m not working. I cleaned the house today and felt guilty that I wasn’t working. Right now, writing this, I know I should be working. But when time off is allocated, set aside as separate from work time, then I can enjoy it. Tomorrow is set aside as mother-daughter time. I hope the weather’s good.

The house is all spick and span tonight. We had a cleaning session, ostensibly for Mum coming, but also because the mess was getting to me. I suppose it wasn’t really that messy; there was just a significant amount that wasn’t in the correct place, and the floor needed vacuuming. I often wonder why I can’t just manage to clear up in intervals: the living room today, the bathroom tomorrow, etc. When I clean I like to start from the very beginning and work my way through to pristine order. It’s a bit like organising my bookshelves. I can’t just sort out a shelf at a time… oh no. All the books come off before any order can be restored. I’m far too methodical about cleaning. I’ll begin with the intention to tidy up the kitchen and end up with my sleeves rolled up and my head inside the cooker, scrubbing away, before mopping the floors and tidying the cupboards. Today I vacuumed and then mopped the kitchen and bathroom. I feel like my head is more organised when my surroundings are tidy. The house smells of Ecover and ginger peach candles and S’il Suffisait is playing.

I have to decide where to take Mum for lunch tomorrow…

Another thought:

John, in my Writing From Life class, said he writes to make his life more justified in some way, as though it is only through writing about life that it has any importance. I’m not sure I would go that far. Although I’ve been writing a lot lately, I often go for days without writing because life gets in the way. But I do understand where he's coming from. Writing about life makes it seem more important. Rachel (also in the class) said some lovely things to me about how my writing makes my life sound, which made me wonder whether my writing for that class gives my life a false façade. She said I made her question how stressed her life had become lately, and I wanted to say: no, you don’t understand, I’m stressed, too!

Blog is such a ridiculous word. It makes me think of things like mud and stomping and gurgling sinks. It’s an onomatopoeic word without a sound referent.

We went out for a drink after class yesterday, and over my orange and passion fruit J2O I was told something like “an academic is a creative writer waiting to evolve.” Those weren’t the exact words, but it was the essence of what was meant. I think academic writing comes so naturally to me because it is a skill that can be learnt, with its right rules and rhythms. There is still a satisfactory linguistic element to academic writing, though. There is poetry in finding the perfect and precise word, that one that means exactly what it should. In creative writing, a thesaurus can be taboo; the right word is rarely a multisyllabic monster. But in academic writing, there is a moment of completeness at the Shift-F7, and the subsequent hunt for and revelation of that exact word. Before it’s found, you know it’s there, lurking in your subconscious dictionary, so when you find it there is a connection between unconscious and conscious self: a click, a fit between the hidden and the apparent, like the satisfaction of finding the jigsaw piece that fits. In academic writing, words can be jigsaw pieces: you know the general look of the finished picture, but you don’t have the image on the top of the box to guide you. Things just have to feel right. The click of finding the right word is the click of putting things back in their proper place when cleaning, or of shifting the stick and feeling the car reach its perfect gear, with the happy hum of the engine to move you on.