Day 27: Book club
I have wanted to be part of a book club for years. I envied others’ theirs and threatened to join the one in Waterstone’s in Belfast but lacked the courage to actually go…a wine fuelled conversation with Belle Fierce in her caravan of love last summer got the ball rolling and she made a few invites and we got started.
The first meeting was a nerve wracking experience: I wanted to be informed without sounding like the English teacher I am; wanted to be intellectual: wearing my BA(Hons) with quiet pride rather than arrogance and mostly I didn’t want to sound like a gibbering high school idiot in front of these grammar school geniuses.
As someone in education who was well served by the selection system: my GCSE grades opened the door to A-levels and the much envied (rapidly hated) local grammar school leading to Queens and an English with minor Politics degree that allowed me to end up back in the education system as a high school teacher. And still I’m somehow apologetic (and psychologically scarred) that at 11, I wasn’t deemed intelligent enough. This is a topic I will return to.
Our first three books at book club have been books I’d read before but was more than happy to re-visit. I seem to either be sober and shy or drunk and obnoxiously opinionated… I moan that there isn’t enough book chat at our ‘meetings’ but enjoy the talk of gender politics, motherhood and the various other debates being a woman in 2012 generates.
We meet once every two months and now I have another worry to contemplate. The girls houses are gorgeous: homes and interiors creations: cosy with style. My apartment suits me but it is without style and grace… although I’m moving beyond the idea that these are not women to be intimidated by, I should instead be impressed by their wit and warmth and realise the potential for friendship.
