Drinking from a decent cup

Designs for decorated cups
by Alfred Forrester 1804-72

I woke up about five this morning and it was too cold to get up so I finished The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso, the story of two women in their eighties who are neighbours in Cape Town - one is white, the other black.
South African history's dealt with lightly - this is a story about two women trapped in their sorrows, told well, often surprising.
And one detail that stood out was Hortensia's need to drink out of a decent cup. I've noticed that an Airbnb couple will choose their cups and stick with them for the weekend. I have a preferred coffee cup and another tea cup. Part of the joy of visiting Jane Fordham is a choice of gorgeous cups - each of them a story.
January's a difficult month. Sometimes it feels like it's thrown together in the worst recesses of the mind. I had a few of those hours yesterday but also a stack of books to help me out.
My mood was challenged by the complexity of guilt and regret that Omotoso explores. History overlaid on personal experience provides a good shake out of self-pity.

Owl being mobbed - detail from a 13th century bestiary
in the British Library

A couple of other news stories did the same. Oprah Winfrey became the first black woman to receive the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement award. And in accepting it she delivered a history lesson. What made the greatest impression on me was her link between Rosa Parkes and Recy Taylor. The history she summarised so skillfully in her speech echoed in Omotoso's novel as I read through the early hours - different continent, same racial injustice. And then there were two other stories sending good messages:  Toby Young, the journalist friend of Boris Johnson (the only explanation anyone needs), resigned before he was sacked and Carrie Gracie, a BBC presenter and China editor resigned in protest at pay differences for men and women.

Juvenile dotterel, Borgo Bonsignore beach, Sicily
September 2015

Another consolation out of all proportion exists in my photo of this bird. It stood on the beach in Sicily a couple of years ago for most of the day, watching the sea. I had no idea what it was. A chance find on Google images suggests it's a juvenile dotterel - a member of the plover family. The bird migrates from the icy north, where it breeds, to a belt stretching from north Africa to Iran for winter. Like the phalarope, males incubate eggs and look after the chicks.
Which brings me again to Alan Paton's brilliant novel about Africaaner life. Too Late the Phalarope explores a family in which the only book allowed in the house is the Bible. The son who offers his father a book of birds, therefore, is bound to challenge the status quo.
So many invisible lines between books, memories and news....all of them stories.
Since Sicily, watching the dotterel, I've loaded far too much on its young back. Discovering its identity, I can now admire it and hope it had company for the remaining miles as it flew over leaking boats coming in the opposite direction - all of those passengers just wanting to drink from a decent cup.