Quiet but eventful

Hello everyone. A quiet week here, activity-wise. I think I have been living on adrenaline for a couple of weeks and now I am down to earth with a bump. One can have too much of the wrong kind of excitement. We have not, however, given up completely on excitement.

We have been considering getting rid of our second car for a while. When we were working it was necessary but since we’ve been retired we use it less and less, and so in the aftermath of A being ill, the decision was made. So that goes off this week, never to return. It’s a shame because it’s a two-seater convertible and was a lot of fun, but we only used it about once a fortnight just to keep it going, especially in the winter, and to be honest we have better things to do with the money that goes on tax, insurance and fuel. And at the moment that better thing is to change our main car for a newer one. My trusty SUV is now over ten years old and although still perfectly good it’s really too big for Devon lanes (and for most parking spaces) and the reasons I bought it—comfort, safety and road presence over a long commute to work—are no more. So we are downsizing the car and looking forward to getting to grips with all the technology that comes with a new car these days. You know that old cliché about it being like the inside of an aeroplane cockpit? Well, it’s like being inside an aeroplane cockpit. I’ll let you know how I get on. when we take delivery in a week or so’s time. 😬

The roses were briefly beautiful and then it rained. And rained. And gale force winds. Some have hung on determinedly but they are battered and there are petals everywhere. I am deadheading like mad (with the new Niwaki scissors) and hope to get further blooms as the season goes on. They are all repeat-flowerers so it should be okay. In the south west of England here the weather is mild and the seasons a little earlier than further up country. I always forget this and then wonder why it feels like it’s all over so quickly. Better planning is needed. Before I forget—on a whim I picked up a rather showy smallish/patio rose at the garden centre called Bright Smiles. Not my usual thing as I prefer the soft pinks etc., but my dears, it is a wonder. Beautiful golden yellow semi-double flowers edged with deep apricot, the flowers fade to palest lemon and the petals don’t fall. The foliage is a dark, glossy green. Add to that a rather lovely scent and I was very glad I submitted to my whim. I spent an inordinate amount of money on a large pot so it can stand outside the front door and cheerily greet me as I go in and out, but because A can’t lift anything heavier than a half-full kettle at the moment it has had to be delivered and will take TWO WEEKS to come five miles. The rose will very likely be past its best by then but heigh ho.

“Bright Smiles”

Last week I also had (another) go at teaching myself to crochet. I’ve tried before but never been able to get the hang of it, but I was determined to keep at it and so dug out some spare yarn and a decent sized hook and sat down in front of Youtube videos. I don’t know why I find it so difficult, but I do. Maybe it’s because the working yarn is held in the left hand when in knitting it’s held in the right and that confuses my muscle memory? Maybe because there’s so much ‘yarn round hook’ and pulling through one or two loops, or diving into the starter circle. It just feels so alien. Any how, after much perseverance and a seriously painful left thumb joint caused probably by hours of repetitive movement, I am now the owner of six hand-crocheted coasters of varying levels of skill, and I cannot tell you how inordinately proud of them I am.

Coasters! Yay!

Lastly, the week’s reading has been another Angela Thirkell novel, this time the eighth of her Barsetshire novels, Before Lunch, set in the fictional English county borrowed from the world of Anthony Trollope. As usual, it seems that nothing much happens: neighbours gossip, attend meetings, discuss cows (in some detail), worry about a proposed development in the village, and drift in and out of love. But this time, below that amusing surface lies one of Thirkell’s more thoughtful and bittersweet novels.

The story centres on Catherine Middleton, a capable, kind woman married to the self-important but not entirely unlovable Jack Middleton. Their summer routine is disrupted when Jack’s widowed sister Lilian Stoner arrives to stay nearby with her stepchildren, Denis and Daphne. From here on in, the plot lines interweave:

Daphne, quite a hearty, no nonsense young woman, finds herself torn between two suitors: the young heir Cedric (”C.W.”) Bond and the older architect Alistair Cameron. Denis meanwhile, a sensitive composer recovering from poor health, is seeking support for a ballet he hopes to produce. The denizens of local society become embroiled in a campaign to save “Pooker’s Piece,” a beloved stretch of countryside threatened by commercial development, and Catherine quietly becomes the emotional lynchpin, offering sympathy, wisdom and stability to those around her while managing the frustrations of her own marriage.

As always, misunderstandings are eventually resolved, engagements are rearranged into more suitable matches, and community harmony is largely restored. But not every emotional longing receives a conventional happy ending. Unusually (from the Thirkell’s I’ve read previously), there are a lot of unspoken feelings, and polite conversation and jolly exchanges conceal deeper emotional currents.

Catherine Middleton is an interesting protagonist. I found myself wondering how she came to marry the bore that is Jack, and stay married to him. At first she seems passive, but it doesn’t take long to see that everything revolves around her, that her husband is adoringly dependant, and that her patient and intelligent advice is freely given to help many of the other characters. She provides an unusual emotional depth to this particular novel.

There is no scintillatingly gripping plot (in fact it’s rather slow) but Thirkell’s dialogue is witty, observant and often very funny. The portrait of English county life just before the second World War is affectionate but not sentimental, and there is the usual retinue of regular ‘types’–overbearing aristocracy who turn out to have hearts of gold, mutually attractive couples who struggle to recognise their true soul-mate until almost the end of the book and much misplaced affection, and a good many ‘salt of the earth’ farmworkers and house staff who have a part to play in resolving the muddles. I’m sure there are lots of people who see Thirkell’s novels as patronising and full of outdated stereotypes etc., but I love the very particular English upper-middle class between-the-wars comedy of errors that she gives us so beautifully. It’s not the most eventful Barsetshire novel, but it is among the most emotionally nuanced. What begins as a gentle social comedy gradually reveals itself as a study of quiet disappointments, mature affection and the compromises of ordinary life. I heartily recommend it to you.

And that, my luvvers, is another week gone. Take care of yourselves and I’ll write soon. x