The Obsessive Diary

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It was a train ride to Gladstone Library which began with a complicated shifting of luggage and repacking awkwardly in the back of my car in an echoey London NCP where always something is dribbling over the concrete floor and wafts of urine meet the sense that a car chase or attack is imminent. They are look-over-your-shoulder scary, city carparks, especially the ones underground. From there, suit...

I’ll be honest with you. I’m pre-pub stressed. Alisa Kennedy Jones and I jumped on a zoom last night and I said, “I’m apologising in advance for how annoying I’m going to be between now and book launch.” She’s busting a gut to get everything happening at the right time and in the right order and I’m trying really hard to trust in god and tie up my camel. Tying up my camel, I’m good at. Trusting in...

So he’s been arrested. I might have been the last person in the UK to hear this, my day being spent well away from ticker-tape streaming breaking news and anything resembling The State of Things bar the small and flighty references made by me and P as we walked in the woods, marvelling at moss. I’ll start at the beginning. It’s reading week and the farm has been peopled by a herd of Yoot, friends...

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On the tube yesterday it struck me, this splintering of reality, so many versions, one for every passenger moving along the platform. It wasn’t always that our politics divided us, there have been eras when a shared reality went all the way up the tree and only at the very edges did one person say the world is flat while another said it was round. Mostly we shared a lens. Mostly we saw things, in...

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Increasingly, there is poetry. From Andrea Gibson ‘s every time i ever said i want to die , to Sherman Alexie ‘s Black Box . Yesterday I met with the man who chose a phone call while 4,000 miles distant as an apt way to end an eight year relationship. We hadn’t spoken since that moment. I needed time to calibrate. Our relationship had been so fuelled by rage and passion, such complicated and huge...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

I’m tired. It’s been a lot. It’s only January. And then I speak to my friends in the states and the grief and rage comes in pins through their faces on the screen and pierces me too. It’s only January. Yesterday Jojo came for lunch and we laughed about stupid funny things and she told me some tragedies and we shared vegetable soup and sausages and lemon drizzle cake and walked in the easy cooling...

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

Be a winner! Pre order Geraint Anderson ‘s latest book, How To Con Friends And Manipulate People This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

“Small children, small problems. Big children, big problems,” said my friend on the phone last night. We’re in the era of 18 - 25 when they’re not kids anymore that can be reined in and put to bed, when they have the reins themselves and are learning to use them. You wouldn’t hand a new driver the keys to a Ferrari, would you? They have to start on a moped at best, “a Reliant Robin” as Margaret co...

Dear Everyone, These last three months have been hail stones, this diary an entry of sorrows and however much I’ve wanted to turn up with ta dah! a break in the clouds it wasn’t possible. (Isn’t the urge to please crazy?) But I can turn up with thanks. I know what I’ve been going through is the same as everyone else. I know my hurts have matched yours. I’ve been expressing it all here and people h...

And so it goes. I seem to have drawn to a halt. It’s winter. Hibernation is obvious. Christmas was incredibly loving in the arms of my Somerset family. They filled me with the good stuff. I’m grateful for them. I love them so much. Me and Margaret cooked up a storm, everything was delicious. We talked and walked and opened presents. We put on glad rags and toasted our fortune and love for one anot...