A Writer's Diary - Virginia Woolf - Edited by Leonard Woolf - Persephone Book

Virginia Woolf began to keep a regular diary in 1915, and continued to do so till a few days before her death.

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, she was the daughter of  the critic Sir Leslie Stephen.  In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, and together they founded the Hogarth Press.  Her first novel, The Voyage Out was published in 1915 after which she wrote twenty other books.  She died at Rodmell, Sussex, in 1941. Just a brief synopsis of her life.

The diaries were extracted by Leonard Woolf and the extracts he pulled basically relate to her writing.  I think anyone taking a writing course would benefit from reading A Writer's Diary.  It reveals her process for writing, how writing filled her life and took the place of many unfulfilled dreams and became her solace and sanctuary, what she gave her life to.  Writing a book became like giving birth and since she was denied children her books became her children.  Not only was she able to write a book but she knew all about editing, publishing, printing, book binding, packaging and shipping.  So right from the thought to the finished distributed product.

1920 Monday 25th October
Why is life so tragic like a strip of pavement over an abyss ... It's having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old ...Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity which is worse, still I don't pluck the nettle out of me.

Writing was their income so quite often there is reference to the need of the success of a book.  Also a recurring theme is growing old and how she felt about that.

1923 Wednesday 15th June
I went to Golders Green and sat with Mary Sheepshanks in her garden and beat up the water of talk, as I do so courageously, so that life mayn't be wasted.

I like her reference here to "beat up the water of talk"  it truly expresses how I'm sure we have all felt at different times.

Thursday 30th August
I should say a good deal about The Hours and my discovery; how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters;  I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth.  The idea is that caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment.  Dinner!

In the evening after dinner Virginia would read or sit and embroider.  She always had a list of books that she was working on.

Monday 15th October
I've been feeling my way into it - up till last August anyhow.  It took me a year's groping to discover what I call my tunneling process, by which I tell the past by installments, as I have need of it.

I like the above passage as it reveals a small part of how she went about writing.

1924 Monday 26th May
London is enchanting.  I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, and get carried into beauty without raising a finger.  the nights are amazing, with all the white porticos and broad silent avenues.  and people pop in and out, lightly, divertingly like rabbits; and I look down Southampton Row, wet as a seal's back or red and yellow with sunshine, and watch the omnibuses going and coming and hear the old crazy organs.  One of these days I will write about London, and how it takes up the private life and carries it on, without any effort.  Faces passing lift up my mind; prevent it from settling as does in the stillness at Rodmell.

This passage builds such a picture in ones mind of a 1924 spring in London, it makes me think about my grandma who lived in London at Golders Green and would talk about travelling on the omnibuses, this was her London.

Sunday 3rd August
Yes I'll run through the rain into the house and see if Clarissa is there.

Mrs Dalloway.

Saturday 1st November
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men.  Why not write about it?  Truthfully?  As i think , the diary writing has greatly helped my style; loosened the ligatures.

Tuesday 18th November
What I was going to say was that I think writing must be formal.  The art must be respected.  this struck me reading some of my notes here, for if one lets the mind run loose it becomes egotistic; personal, which I detest.  At the same time the irregular fire must be there; and perhaps to loose it one must begin by being chaotic, but not appear in public like that, I am driving my way through the mad chapters of Mrs. D. My wonder is whether the book would have been better without them.  But this is an afterthought, consequent upon learning how to deal with her.  always I think at the end, I see how the whole ought to have been written.

Saturday 13th December 
I am now galloping over Mrs. Dalloway, re-typing it entirely from the start, which is more or less what I did with the V.O.;  a good method, I believe, as thus one works with a wet brush over the whole, and joins parts separately composed and gone dry.  Really and honestly I think it the most satisfactory om my novels (but have not read it cold-bloodedly yet).  The reviewers will say that it is disjointed because of the mad scenes not connecting with the Dalloway scenes.  And suppose there is some superficial glittery writing.  But is it "unreal"? Is it mere, accomplishment?  i think not.  and as I think I said before, it seems to leave me plunged deep in the richest strata of my mind.  I can write and write and write now:  the happiest feeling in the world.

When you read her biography it gives you insight as to why she may have added the mad scene, what in her life experience prompted her to do so, because in truth so much of what she wrote was what she had experienced, lived and on the page she could expunge it.

Wednesday 6th January
I revised Mrs. D., the chillest part of the whole business of writing, the most depressing - exacting.  The worst part is at the beginning (as usual) where the aeroplane has it all to itself for some pages and it wear thin.

While on vacation at La Ciotat
1925 Tuesday 8th April
The Hotel Cendrillon is a white house with red tiled floors, capable of housing perhaps 8 people.  and then the whole hotel atmosphere provided me with many ideas;  oh so cold, indifferent, superficially polite, and exhibiting such odd relationships; as if human nature were now reduced to a kind of code, which it has devised to meet these emergencies, where people who do not know each other meet and claim their rights as members of the same tribe.  As a matter of fact, we got into touch all round; but our depths were not invaded.  But L. and I were too too happy, as they say; if it were now to die etc.  Nobody shall say of me that I have not known perfect happiness, but few could put their finger on the moment, or say what made it.

This reminds me of Room With A View by E. M. Forster an interesting comment on happiness.  Took my mind back to last year sitting sipping a cocktail in Lahaina, Maui looking at the sea it was that kind of moment.

Thursday 14th May
The Truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.

Thursday 18th June
No, Lytton does not like Mrs. Dalloway, and, what is odd, I like him all the better for saying so, and don't much mind.  What he says is that there is a discordancy between the ornament (extremely beautiful) and what happens (rather ordinary - or unimportant).   This is caused, he thinks, by some discrepancy in Clarissa herself:  he thinks she is disagreeable and limited, ...  I think there is some truth in it, for I remember the night at Rodmell when I decided to give it up, because I found Carissa in some way tinselly.

I thought exactly the same on reading Mrs. Dalloway, you always are on the edge thinking that some profound truth or happening will take place and she turns out to be limited and shallow.

1926 Saturday 20th March
But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday.  If I died, what would Leo make of them?  He would be disinclined to burn them;  He could not publish them.  Well, he should make up a book from them.  I think; and then burn the body.

The fact is Leonard Woolf kept everything, later publishing much of it.

A visit with Thomas Hardy and his wife
Sunday 25th July
"E. M. Forster takes a long time to produce anything - 7 years," he chuckled.  all this made a great impression of the ease with which he did things. "I daresay far from the Madding Crowd would have been a great deal better if I had written it differently," he said.  But as if it could not be helped and did not matter.

Thursday 23rd June
This diary shall batten on the leanness of my social life.  Never have i spent so quiet a London summer.  It is perfectly easy to slip out of the crush unobserved.  I have set up my standard as an invalid and no one bothers me.  No one asks me to do anything.  Vainly, I have the feeling that this is of my choice, not theirs; and there is a luxury in being quiet in the heart of chaos.  


1928 Friday 4th May
Also the "fame" is becoming vulgar and a nuisance.  It means nothing; yet takes one's time.  Americans perpetually.  Croly; Gaige; offers.

Wednesday 7th November
I think I may say that I am now among the well known writers.  I had tea with Lady Cunard - might have lunched or dined any day.  I found her in a little cap telephoning.  It was not her atmosphere - this of solitary talk.  She is too shrewd to expand and needs society to make her rash and random which is her point.  Ridiculous little parakeet faced woman; but not quite sufficiently ridiculous.  I kept waiting for superlatives; could not get the illusion to flap its wings.


And the egotism of men surprises and shocks me even now.  Is there a woman of my acquaintance who could sit in my armchair from 3 to 6:30 without the semblance of a suspicion that I may be busy, or tired, or bored; and so sitting could talk, grumbling and grudging, of her difficulties, worries; then eat chocolates, then read a book, and go at last, apparently self-complacent and wrapped in a kind of blubber of misty self-salutation?  Not the girls at Newnham or Girton.  They are far too spry; far too disciplined.  None of that self confidence is their lot.

Yes it's happened to all of us hasn't it?  If I sit at one more business luncheon and all they talk about is sports and American Football.

1933 Thursday 24th August
What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me!  I went in and found the table laden with books.  I looked in and sniffed them all.  I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it.  I think I could happily live here and read forever.

1934 Monday 7th August
A rather wet Bank Holiday.  Tea with Keynes.  Maynard had had teeth out but was very fertile.  For instance:  Yes, I've been 3 weeks in America.  an impossible climate.  In fact it has collected all the faults of all the climates. this carries out my theory about climate.  Nobody could produce a great work in America.  One sweats all day and the dirt sticks to one's face.  The nights are as hot as the days.  Nobody sleeps. ..."So to German politics."  They're doing something very queer with their money.  I can't make out what.  It may be the Jews are taking away their capital.  Let me see, if 2,000 Jews were each to take away 2,000  - Anyhow, they can't pay their Lancashire bill.  Always the Germans have bought cotton from Egypt, had it spun in Lancashire; it's a small bill, only 1/2 million, but they can't pay.  Yet they're buying copper all the time.  What's it for?  Armaments no doubt.  

I found this comment about the weather in America so true and interesting comment on Germany, buying cotton from Lancashire and what was going on, remember 1934.

A visit to the Tower of London
1935 Wednesday 27th March
The sergeant major barked and swore. All in a hoarse bark:  the men stamped and wheeled like - machines;  then the officer also barked;  all precise, inhuman, showing off.  A degrading, stupefying sight.  But in keeping with the grey walls, the cobbles, the executioner's block.  People sitting on the river bank among old cannon.  Steps etc.  very romantic;  a dungeon like feeling.

Is it any wonder that on leaving these people have psychological problems degrading, stupefying, yes that does sum it up.

Tuesday 9th April
"And Virginia, you know I'm on the Committee here," Said Morgan.  "and we've been discussing whether to allow ladies" - It came over me that they were going to put me on: and I was then to refuse:  "Oh but they do," I said.  "There was Mrs. Green." .... The veil of the temple - which, whether university or cathedral, academic or ecclesiastical, I forget - was to be raised and as an exception she was to be allowed to enter in.  ...  No:  I said while very deeply appreciating the Hon. ... In short one must tell lies, and apply every emollient in our power to the swollen skin of our brothers' so terribly inflamed vanity.  Truth is only to be spoken by those women whose fathers were pork butchers and left them a share in the pig factory.

Thursday 9th May
Sitting in the sun outside the German Customs.  A car with the swastika on the back window has just passed through the barrier into Germany.  L. is in the customs.  I am nibbling at Aaron's rod.  Ought I go go in and see what is happening?  A fine dry windy morning.  The Dutch Customs took 10 seconds.  This has taken 10 minutes already.  The windows are barred.  Here they came out and the grim man laughed at Mitzi (their pet marmoset) But L. said that when a peasant came in and stood with his hat on, the man said this office is like a church and made him move it.  Heil Hitler said the little thin boy opening his bag, perhaps with an apple in it, at the barrier.  We become obsequious - delighted that is when the officer smiles at Mitzi - the first stoop in our back

Hitler kept a list of people who he would round up as soon as he invaded Britain and the Woolfs were on it.

1937 Sunday 4th April
Maynard thinks The Years my best book:  thinks one scene, E. and Crosby, beats Tchekov's Cherry Orchard ...

Wednesday 23rd June
It's ill writing after reading Love for Love - a masterpiece.  I never knew how good it is.  And what exhilaration there is in reading these masterpieces.  this superb hard English! ... But enough - I went shopping, whitebait hunting, to Selfridges yesterday and it grew roasting hot and I was in black - such astonishing chops and changes this summer - often one's caught in a storm, frozen or roasted.  As I reached 52, a long trail of  fugitives - like a caravan in a desert - came through the square:  Spaniards  flying from Bilbao, which has fallen.  I suppose.  Somehow brought tears to my eyes, though no one seemed surprised. ... flying - impelled by machine gun in Spanish fields to trudge through Tavistock Square ... clasping their enamel kettles.  A strange spectacle.

Must see if I can find a copy of this book.

1939 Thursday 29th June
What a dream life is to be sure - that he should be dead, and I reading him:  and trying to make out that we indented ourselves in the world; whereas I sometimes feel it's been an illusion - gone so fast;  lived so quickly; and nothing to show for it, save these little books.  But that makes me dig my feet in and squeeze the moment.

Here she is referring to the death of Roger Fry who she wrote a biography of.

Monday 7th August
Oh and I thought, as I was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, and the gradual coming of death.  As people describe love.  To note every symptom of failure;  but why failure?  To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; and to detect every one of the gradual stages toward death which is a tremendous experience and not as unconscious, at least in its approaches, as birth is.

1940 Thursday 30th May
Walking today (Nessa's birthday) by Kingfisher pool saw my first hospital train - laden, not funereal but weighty, as if not to shake bones:  something - what is the work I want - grieving and tender and heavy laden and private - bringing our wounded back carefully through the green fields at which I suppose some looked.

Saturday 22nd June
This, I thought yesterday, may be my last walk.  On the down above Baydean I found some green glass tubes.  The corn was glowing with poppies in it.  ... We pour to the edge of a precipice ...

Friday 26th July
But it's an incredibly lovely - yes lovely is the word - transient, changing, warm, capricious summer evening.

Saturday 31st August
Now we are in the war.  England is being attacked.  I got this feeling for the first time completely yesterday;  the feeling of pressure, danger, horror.  The feeling is that a battle is going on - a fierce battle.  May last four weeks.  Am I afraid?  Intermittently.  The worst of it is one's mind won't work with a spring next morning.  Of course this may be the beginning of invasion.  A sense of pressure.  Endless local stories.  No - it's no good trying to capture the feeling of England being in a battle.  I daresay if I writ fiction and Coleridge and not that infernal bomb article for U.S.A. I shall swim into quiet water.

The war weighed heavily on her mind.  Also they knew something of what was happening to Jews in Germany.  Leonard was Jewish and they had spoken of a suicide pact if the Germans were to invade.  I think this put the idea of suicide to the forefront of her mind.  Plus she had half heatedly attempted suicide before.  I also doubt if Leonard would have gone through with it.

Monday 16th September
Great air traffic all night.  Some loud explosions.

Tuesday 17th September
No invasion. ... We found a young soldier in the garden last night, coming back.  "Can't I speak to Mr. Woolf?"  I thought it meant billeting for certain.  No.  Could we lend a typewriter?  Officer on hill had gone and taken his.  So we produced my portable.  Then he said:  "Pardon sir.  Do you play chess?"  He plays chess with passion.  So we asked him to tea on Saturday to play.  He is with the anti-aircraft searchlight on the hill.  finds it dull.  Can't get a bath.  A straight good natured young man.  Professional soldier?  I think the son, say of an estate agent or small shopkeeper.  Not public school.  Not lower class.  But I shall investigate.  "Sorry to break into your private life"  he said.  Also that on Saturday he went to the pictures in Lewes.

Most countries have a class, social strata system, I remember it clearly and Virginia Woolf definitely fit into the upper class, public school, which for those of you not brought up in Britain actually means private school.  I find the above comment most interesting, everybody slotted into their defined cubby holes.

Sunday 29th September
A bomb dropped so close I cursed L. for slamming the window.

1941 Sunday 8th March
Just back from L.'s speech at Brighton.  Like a foreign town:  the first spring day.  Women sitting on seats.  A pretty hat in a teashop - how fashion revives the eye!  And the shell encrusted old women, rouged, decked, cadaverous at the teashop.  The waitress in checked cotton.  No:  I intend no introspection.  I mark Henry James' sentence: observe perpetually.  Observe the oncome of age.  Observe greed.  Observe my own despondency.  By that means it becomes serviceable.  Or so I hope.  I insist upon spending this time to the best advantage.  I will go down with my colors flying.  This I see verges on introspection;  but doesn't quite fall in.  Suppose I bought a ticket at the Museum; biked in daily and read history.  Suppose I selected one dominant figure in every age and wrote round and about.  Occupations is essential.  And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner.  Haddock and sausage meat.  I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.

This is the last entry in A Writer's Diary.

I had started to read this book several years ago, but it was not the right time.  I found V.'s diaries to be very soul searching.  I think writing thoughts that one never totally gels in one's mind, but she did and wrote them.

Her last photo with a professional photographer, Gisele Freund.

Christy

Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson, Persephone Book

Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson.

This book I borrowed from our local library, this was a wartime edition, actually no date in it, but on the inside back jacket it says LONDON CALLING OVERSEAS, and at the bottom it says FROM LONDON COMES THE VOICE OF BRITAIN … THE VOICE OF FREEDOM

Printed by Herbert Jenkins Limited, Duke of York Street, London, S.W.1

Miss Buncle’s Book is set in an English village, I would say circa 1930s.  The story centres round Miss Buncle a maiden lady whose dividends are so poor that she is obliged to write a book.  She’s a kindly truthful soul with not too much imagination and just writes about her friends and what’s going on in the village.

The publication of her book has quite unexpected results and changes not a few lives, and all for the better, including Miss Buncle’s. 

This story pushes all the parameters of an English Village of that time, with all the hierarchy of name and money, and how one is viewed, when you have so little means, but are obviously not of the laboring force.  How just a little money, oils the cogs, adds little niceties of life and enables one to dress differently and therefore feel differently and if you feel differently, confident in oneself, then this is exuded to others and they treat you so much better.

I have a friend who comes from a very poor background when a child, many ups and downs.  Her mother had to leave school to look after her siblings, her mother always said, “If you dress nicely people respect you more.”  This has always been my friend’s motto and I think it’s very true.

Here are some passages from the book that I enjoyed.

“What fools the public were!  They were exactly like sheep … though Mr. Abbott sleepily … following each other’s lead, neglecting one book and buying another just because other people were buying it.”  Mr. Abbott is Miss Buncle’s publisher.

“Murmuration of starlings.”  I love that word for a group of starlings.

“She wondered idly what Barbara Buncle was thinking about now, sitting there with that silly vacant smile upon her face.  She would have been surprised if she could have read the thoughts that prompted the silly smile.”

“ … A jacket, with a beautiful picture of a Golden Boy, playing a reed pipe”  The jacket cover she wanted for her book.  As you can see in the above picture it was used as the jacket cover for this book.

Giving away Ernest’s money to charities, Ernest is the young vicar  …  Who has always had a very nice trust fund and has no idea what it is to live on extremely limited means.  His guardian wisely does not comply with his wishes, just lets him think he has for a year.  This all works out well though because a haradan who has had an eye on Ernest's money, now drops him like a hot potato.

“Good.”  Said Ernest at last, stretching his arms, “I’m free”

“You are bound,” thought Mr. Whitney, Ernest’s guardian,  but he was too wise to say so.

“How nice for you – and for her of course,” exclaimed Barbara.  She had lived for so long amongst these people and had suffered so many afternoon teas that she was able to say the expected thing without thinking about it at all.  You simply put a penny in the machine and the expected thing came out at once, all done up in a neat little packet, and suitably labelled.  The machine worked without any effort on Barbara’s part, it even worked when the real Barbara was absent and only the shell, dressed in it’s shabby garments, remained sitting upright upon its chair.  The real Barbara often flew away like that and took refuge from the dullness and boredom of Silverstream in the scintillating atmosphere of Copperfield.”

“Filth!”  she cried.  “Filth!”  and flung it on to the table all amongst the cakes and china and chrysanthemums.  It lay there half resting upon a dish of cream buns, and half propped up against the damson jam – it was a copy of Barbara Buncle’s book”

“ ‘The portrait which you find so ugly was never intended to be a portrait of you.  If you really think you are like that we are sorry for you and offer you our sincere sympathy.’” Says Mr. Abbott.

I do love this above passage, because the person is entrapped either way.

“Then Miss Buncle was distressed about the stir caused by her book and Mr. Abbott knew of nothing more soothing to worry or distress than a nice round fat cheque (or bank note).”

“What fun it had been that morning at the bank!  Barbara had gone in soon after the bank had opened, and the young man with the fair hair and the supercilious expression (Mr. Black his name was, and he was one of Mrs. Dick’s paying guests) had looked up from his desk and seen who it was and gone on writing for at least two minutes before he came to see what she wanted.  No need to bother about that old frump, he had said to himself – or Barbara thought that he had.” 

“Lovely bonfire!”  Sally said, poking it so that the flames shot up with a roaring, crackling sound.  “The French call it ‘feu de joie’ – I think that’s and awfully good name for it, don’t you?  Is this a ‘feu do joie” or is it just burning rubbish?”

“It’s a ‘feu de joie’, “Barbara replied incautiously.”

Literally means:

feu de joie

ˌfœ də ˈZHwä/

noun

1. a rifle salute fired by soldiers on a ceremonial occasion, each soldier firing in succession along the ranks to make a continuous sound.

 I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have taken so long to actually write this review, do read it, you will not be disappointed.

Take care,

Christy

P.S.  I have not forgotten my Worpress Blog, it just takes me so much longer to post there as I am not used to it, so for now and a future time, when I have time here are my reviews

The Village by Marghanita Laski

The Village by Marghanita Laski is a special read.  She is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

Wendy Trevor and Edith Wilson on duty at the Red Cross post as usual, it is the very last day of World War II.  They are sharing intimacies of their life's that they would never dreamed of sharing together before the war.  As Wendy Trevor lives at the top of the hill and is considered middle class and Edith Wilson lives at the bottom of the hill and is considered working class.

"There's a lot of us will miss it, "  Edith said  "We're all of us felt at times, you know, how nice it was, like you and me being able to be together and friendly, just as if we were the same sort, if you know what I mean."

They talk about their families, Wendy has two children Sheila and Margaret, Edith has three children, Edie, Maureen and Roy.  They confide that they both lost a child in death, Wendy when her and the Major farmed for a while in Kenya and lost a little boy and Edith confides that she had a little girl who died.  They have become very close.

The Trevor's returned from Kenya before they lost all their money and bought an old house with a small holding chicken farm, their income is about six pounds per week.  Edith confides that when her Roy comes back from the war he will pick up his old job as a printer, his apprenticeship having been finished and he will make ten pounds per week.  Edith used to be Wendy's day lady, cleaning and cooking for her, but since they had to use all her income on the private schooling of their girls, there is just no money for a daily.  The Major is a disaster at business, being born in the era when landed gentry did not have to work and their private incomes where never going to end, but of course all this changed.

"Then they parted, Mrs Trevor going up the road to Wood View on Priory Hill where the gentry lived and Mrs Wilson going downhill on the other side, down Station Road among the working class."

Wendy dispares of her eldest daughter.

"She looked at Margaret ... her soft brown hair caught back with a slide from her sweet but oh, so uninteresting face. ... thoughts of contrast between the life she had once known and the one she was living now."

If her sister had lived and not died in the car accident, it might have been different as she had married money, her girls now had no hope of coming out in London and being presented at the Court Debutante Ball.

Gerald Wendy's husband and ex-Major says to Daisy a neighbour and friend.

"You look as enchanting as ever,"  said Gerald, falling happily into the roll of gallant young officer with an eye for the ladies."

There is to be a village dance to celebrate the end of the war all will be there.  Margaret does not want to go she thinks.

"There was something wrong with herself, that made Roger Gregory, the only young man of her own sort in the village, dance with her only as a duty and escape as quickly as he could."

She returns to help in the kitchens and comes out, standing along the side of the Village Hall, a young man comes over and asks her to dance, she remembers him, from her child hood days as being Ron Wilson, who she used to play with, while his mother Edith was working at their house.

"Somebody nearly bumped into them, but he tightened his grip on her waist and drew her deftly away from the impending collision.  she looked up at him and thought, in a confused kind of way, that he looked as if he'd always be able to manage things, grinning away with that cheerful confident way he had, as if he was still someone people could be all right in trusting."

Ron and Margaret win the Spot Dance and now all eyes are on them.

"Good-bye Roy." ... "That young man's getting a bit too big for his boots.  A pity, because his mother's such a decent woman."

"What can Margaret be trained for?"

She is not at all academic like her younger sister and certainly will not win a scholarship which is so badly needed in the Trevor family as there is no money for further education without it.

"Margaret saw herself being married."

Margaret ends up with a mind boring job at the Hospital which their friend the Doctor suggested.

"... the only thing they've got to hang on to is that they belong to the so called upper class, and even that doesn't cut the ice it used to any more."

One day Margaret makes arrangements to meet her old school friend Jill Morton at the pictures, but she doesn't turn up and there is Roy Wilson waiting for someone who also does not turn up, they decide to make the most of being there and see the film together, with a bite to eat afterwards, thus begins their budding romance.

"I'd like to very much,"  she said, Roy's whole face wrinkled with sudden pleasure."

Margaret's mum Wendy becomes quite ill from nervous exhaustion and Margaret stays at home to look after her.  She does not mind because unlike her mum she very much enjoys looking after the house and cooking. Mrs Wilson comes up to offer her services and it is agreed that she will do the laundry while Mrs Trevor is ill.

"Maureen ... nudged Margaret in the ribs and said "The trouble with you, Miss Margaret, is that you've got no sense of class."

There are many other characters in The Village that enforce the class differences of the time.  It is a truly delightful read and catches that era so well.

Christy

Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell

The setting for Brook Evans is Normal, Illinois in 1888.  When I first picked the book up I thought it was going to be about a man, but Brook Evans is the daughter of Naomi Kellogg.

Naomi is in love with Joe Copeland who is the only son of a widow and works their farm which adjoins the Kellogg farm.  His mother thinks she's a cut above everyone else and nobody is good enough for her son, so secretly, Naomi and Joe meet under the willow tree near a Brook, hence the name Brook for their daughter.

"... her hand was on moss deeper and smoother than velvet, ..."

Resting in her bedroom which was always very special to Naomi, just thinking about Joe.

"The magazine lay under her hand, drowsily she thought of Italy, a land of romance.  The perfume of roses came in through her window, there was that good smell of drying hay - full clear song of the thrush.  The water of the brook - waters of Venice.  Ardent whispers, through the centuries.  She was close to Joe.  His eyes were loving her.  His voice whispered."

Unfortunately Joe dies unexpectedly when he is hit by the thrashing arms of his new combine harvester.  This is a tragedy not only for Naomi but the family an unwed mum.

"If you would and for my sake - stand a little disgrace?"  she asked timidly.  "Mostly it would be for just me. Then I would go away and make my living for my child.  O father, I would like that so much better."

"...and words Mrs Copeland and her father had used ... they were like rats."

 In comes Caleb Evans who has always liked Naomi and says he will marry her, even with the child.  They do so and move to Colorado farming country, east of the Rockies.

Caleb is very religious, he is good in his pious way, but Naomi never loved him and she never grows to love where she is, her only love is Brook and Brook is closer to her father not knowing that she is not his daughter.

Brook is invited to a dance by Tony Ross a  part Indian mostly Italian boy.  Her mum makes her a most beautiful dress in a pale yellow, Brook looks lovely in it.  Against her father's wishes with her mothers push she goes to the dance.

"This boy would not be riding to this love had there not been Joe, it was almost as if he were Joe, thus riding through the light sent down from Big Chief."

I think here Naomi equates Tony, of Italian heritage, with that long ago day of dreaming in her bedroom, of romance and Italy.

Joe, aided by Naomi, secretly courts Brook.

Caleb says:

"Turned from her he ventured:  "Well maybe you and Brook'll have a good time here together.  Kind of like a visit just you two."

Tears surprised her; even though he had not turned to her she turned back.  Words she so sorely needed - but could not accept from him."

Sylvia Waite is a missionary back for a while to visit with her mother before going off again, they all attend the same chapel.

"Outside she could hear Sylvia Waite's voice and Brook's acquiescence.  She moved nearer the dress twisted marked with tears.  She put her own hand upon it, as if seeking strength for what she had to do."

"Oh, there must be that little girl - sweet baby voice - not barren years with Caleb Evans."

While Caleb is away she knows that Tony is planning to ask Brook to elope with him, she approves of this, although Brook doesn't know she knows.  Brook leaves the house this will be the last time she sees her, as Tony is planning to take her to California and get married.  This is Naomi's sacrifice for her daughter's happiness.

"What would happen if every one were to give up what there was between what they were supposed to know and think, and what they really did know and think?"

There is a terrible twist in these events, which leads Brook to go off with Sylvia Waite on her missionary endeavors to Turkey, and her father signs the papers needed for her to leave the country.

The bitterness of this for Naomi, it is too much, she never sees her daughter again as she also has never returned home to see her family.

In Turkey Brook meets an English officer Bert Leonard and marries him, they have a son together Evan.  Time passes WWI comes and Bert is severely injured.  For a long while Brook nurses him, he dies and she decides to go and live in France.  Where she is courted by her husband's Colonel, Colonel Fowler, who all think she will marry.

Over the years her mother's family have written to her and she to them, they let her know that her aging father Caleb is living with them in Normal, her mother long since dead and will she come home to see him?

By chance at a party a friend is giving, she meets Eric Helge.

While in Paris:

"Ici!  she called rapping.  In this window was one dress.  Yellow you would call it, only it was more like light than like any color, unless it was like champagne ..."

Evan asks:

"For whom then?" he demanded."

"For my mother", she said, and he had never seen her face like this."

"Oh, you are lovely, Mother,"  her boy cried (Oh, you are lovely, darling!"  she heard the other voice, the voice she had not heard for twenty years."

Thus after all these years she understands, she is reconciled to her mother.

More happens, the book has an interesting ending it seems to come full circle.

I read half the book as it is divided by being marked as four books with chapters.  I read two and then put it down for a while, picked it up again with a fresh eye and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Christy

Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy a Persephone Book

Set in Victorian Bayswater, London.  This is a story about Anglo-Jewish families of the time, written by Amy Levy, referred to as the Jewish Jane Austen.  Although it seems these days that many writers are referenced as the something Jane Austin, but I digress.

It is about how little there is for a young woman to do except to marry well, and for an aspiring young man of promise to marry very well.

The main character is Reuben Sachs a beloved son and grandson of whom great things are expected.  He is a lawyer and now working for a local bi-election candidacy.  It is said of him -

He came straight across the room to old Solomon, a vivifying presence - Reuben Sachs, with his bad figure, awkward movements, and charming face, which wore tonight it's air of greatest alertness.

He is loved and loves a distant cousin who he has known from childhood, from a poorer family, and bought up in the family of a better off aunt.

...the whole face wore for the moment a relaxed dreamy, impassive air, curiously Eastern, and not wholly free from melancholy.

The settings in the book are mostly in one relatives parlour or another, gathered for various festivities.

Conversation flagged, as it inevitably did at these family gatherings, until after the meal, when crabbed age and youth, separating by mutual consent, would grow loquacious enough in their respective circles.

... the great majority gay with that rather spurious gaiety, that forcing of the note, which is so marked a charateristic of festivities.

That is so true, I have been at, let's call them do's and have felt that way.

There is a young family friend, from a very well to do English family, he is certainly a most eligible bachelor, although not Jewish, but by marrying him Judith Quixano would be elevated to a different level in the social strata and it certainly would be very good for her relatives too.

Generally speaking, the race instincts of Rebecca of York are strong, and she is less apt to give her heart to Ivanhoe, the Saxon knight than might be imagined.

I think said Leo "that he was shocked at finding us so little like the people in Daniel Deronda."

So it is for Judith as she loves Reuben, but Reuben must marry money MMM.  Her father -

He was one of the world's failures; and the Jewish people, so eager to crown success, form, so  ... have scant love for those unfortunates who have dropped behind in the race.

They acted and reacted on one another, deceiving and deceived, with the strange unconscious hypocrisy of lovers.

I felt this book so caught the nuances of Jewish life, a circle orbiting within a circle, sometimes touching, but never meshing.

The Jew it may be remarked in passing, eats and dresses at least two degrees above his Gentile brother in the same rank of life.

...What help is there?  There is no help, for all these things are so.  A. C. Swinburne.

Reuben Sachs is not a long book but it carries you along very quickly, although the settings and plot are predictable, the verbiage, flow and wit of writing is smooth.

I loved it and therefore will rate it a 5 Star, I know not all would agree.

Christy

The Fortnight In September by R. C. Sheriff a Persephone Book

I just loved this book.  It's about an everyday suburban family taking their annual fortnight holiday.  The time period is about 1920s.  There is mum and dad, a teenage daughter who works at a dress makers, a teenage son who has just started at an office in the City and a younger son still at school.

The evening before a busy time of last minute preparation,  don't we all relate to that.  When they all come home from work and school, father's special list carried over from year to year refined and upgraded.  His rituals before the household departs.

He always had an absurd pang of sorrow when he locked the tool shed door each year before going away ..

He thinks - The man on holiday becomes the man he might have been, the man he could have been, had things worked out a little differently ...

One gets further insight how things might have worked out differently for him.

A wonderful description of the train journey, through Clapham Junction, they have taken this journey each year for many years and know every changing of the box junctions.

At last they heard rumping of it as it came over the bridge just round the corner ...

Each year they go back to the same Guest House, ran by a widow and becoming a little more run down, but they are loyal and know that the board they pay is important to the land lady, even though many have left over the years.

I loved the insight into how sometimes one feels on holiday.

They had reached the strange, disturbing little moment that comes in every holiday; the moment when suddenly the tense excitement of the journey collapses and fizzles out, and you are left vaguely wondering what you are going to do, and how you are going to start.  With a touch of panic you wonder whether the holiday, after all, is only a dull anti-climax to the journey...

One of the delightful passages in the book is the acquiring of a beach hut.  Could they afford it?  But it would be so very nice, and makes one feel well richer some how.

...that sudden pride that comes to cautious people when on rare occasions they boldly step beyond the ranks of those around them ...

It is said that Sherriff had in mind Bognor Regis when he wrote this book, but I could so easily see it applying to any number of link English seaside towns, equally well to link Southwold in Suffolk which I visited last year, especially with the Victorian Guest Houses and all those Beach Huts there.

Christy

The Provincial Lady in Wartime, by E. M. Delafield, A Persephone Book

The Provincial Lady in Wartime is set at the beginning of WWII.  It is written in the form of a Journal or Diary, so has that stilted feel to sentence construction, the way one records events and little things in a diary. It's a record of a Provincial or maybe they should say Upper Class Provincial English lady of the era.

How will she comply to the blackout, making sure that all the windows are covered and not a chink is showing.  They must close a wing off, there's no need to keep it open with the children away at school.  The cook is protesting about the antiquated range she has to cook on, and aunt Blanche is going to descend on them from London as she can't possibly share a house with that impossible woman, who thinks she is thirty years younger and is helping in a canteen in London.

It is a witty account, of her endeavors to help in the war effort, travelling backwards and forwards from her house in Devon to London, working in the same canteen as aunt Blanche's friend.

I read this from the original American publication of this book and in the frontispiece it says events - that make up the life of an average British citizen in time of crisis ...  I beg to differ with this.  This book reflects the era it was written in, the type of person of a certain social station in life who would have the time to write and get her works published.  This does not negate the amusing chronicle of events unfolding in time of war and her eloquence of description.

Some quotes from the book on how bureaucracy works - Am struck not for the first time on how final arrangements never are final, but continue to lead on to still further activities until parallel with eternity suggest itself and brain in danger of reeling.

E. M. Delafield also refers to The Priory by Dorothy Whipple as a modern novel.

Remember my rating is within the First 100 Persephone Books and Persephone is already at the top of my list, but it does not stand the test in comparison.

Christy

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield a Persephone Book

I've started on the Provincial Lady in Wartime, but as soon as I began reading The Home-Maker, I'm afraid I ditched the former book.

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield is one of Persephone's American author choices. Set in 1920's mid town USA, in a town not too near other towns.  We come to know the Knapp family.  Lester the father, Evangeline the mother, Helen 13, Henry about 10 and little Steven about four.

Lester works at the only department store in town.  Old Mr. Willing's has died and now his nephew has taken the reins.  He is young in his thirties and wants to move the department store into the 20th century.

Lester quite college to marry Eva, taking a job in the accounting office at the department store, he loathes his job.  Eva went straight into being a house-wife; these were the expected norms of the time.

Eva is efficient her house is a bandbox, dinner is delicious, at the stroke of the hour.  But everyone seems to suffer from stomach problems.  Although on a limited budget she can make anything out of an old discarded piece of clothing, she has style and the eye for it.

Lester had come home to dinner and has told them that he has been passed over yet again for a promotion.  As she says:  There never would be anything else for her, never, never!  But is was Bitter!  She looked wicked.  She felt wicked.  But she did not want to be wicked.  She wanted to be a good Christian woman.  she wanted to do her duty.

Eva was at constant war with Stephen they butted heads all the time.  As Lester left the house after another confrontation was in the works he thinks.  The opinion of a man who couldn't make money was of no value, on any subject, in any body's eyes.

One day he goes into work and is told that he is to be let go.  On leaving work he's in a daze, he'd be better off dead to his family at least they'd have the insurance money.  His neighbor's chimney is on fire, he rushes up and falls off the roof.  He is taken home paralyzed.

You must read this book to see how it all works out.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book.

Evangeline held the suit up, looking at it and thinking gratefully how it would help some woman through a difficult year in her life.  She remembered suddenly the Mrs. Warner who had so pathetically longed for that bright green sports sweater.  This would satisfy her wistful, natural longing for pretty things and yet be quite suitable for her age.  Evangeline had so much sympathy for women struggling with the problem of dressing themselves properly at difficult ages!

So relate to that.

The two were silent father and son.  Lester said to himself, shivering, "What a ghastly thing to have sensitive, helpless human beings absolutely in the power of other human beings!  Absolute, unquestioned power!  Nobody can stand that.  It's cold poison.  How many wardens of prisons are driven sadistically mad with it!"

Another quote:

"He that is down need fear no fall, 

He that is low, no pride,"

said Lester Knapp aloud to himself.  It was a great pleasure to him to be be able to say the strong short Saxon words aloud.

This reminds me of Winston Churchill's writings:

Used to rally his countrymen and the English-speaking peoples in the dark days of the Battle of Britain. The best remembered words sound like this:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The words Churchill used are overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon, the old short words he thought best of all. 

She came to feel that talking to Father, when they were alone together, was almost like thinking aloud, only better, because there was somebody to help you figure things out when you got yourself all balled up.  Before this Helen had spent a great deal of time trying to figuring things out by herself, and getting so tangled that she didn't know where she had begun or how to stop the wild whirl racing around in her head.  But now, with father to hang on to, she could unravel those twisted skeins of thought and wind them into balls where she could get at them

I had so many more quotes referred to in my notes but I think I would over whelm you, so will stop here.  Do read the book.


I've been thinking that after I've read all 100 Persephone books, I would somehow like to list them by preference, but one to one-hundred would be too complicated, so I came up with the idea of 5 categories.  So the 5 Star Rating would go to the top twenty books and so on down the line to 1 Star.

Of course this is just within the Persephone Books which I already consider at the best end of a good read.

Christy

Good Things In England, by Florence White, A Persephone Book

The Tradition of the British Savoury Pie.

This is the deli Black Olive in Southwold, a traditional English seaside town on the Suffolk coast.  The reason I wanted to feature this was to show some of the wonderful Savoury Pies that have a long British history.  I'm sure they're very popular at the seaside, to pick up a pie, with some tomatoes and salad, there you have a take out al fresco picnic.

To the left are traditional Norfolk Pork Pies and to the top right are goats cheese and onion quiches.

Some not so traditional pies here are Thai Chook Pie, but they incorporate the traditional pie making skills with an Asian influence.  There are also Moo Pies and Wild Mushroom and Asparagus.

Meat pie and mushy peas is traditional grub fare.

When I was at Persephone books in London I bought one book and it was Good Things In England, by Florence White.

Originally published in 1932 it says:

A Practical Cookery Book For Everyday Use

Containing Traditional and

Regional Recipes suited to

Modern Tastes contributed by

English Men and Women between

1399 and 1932 and edited by

Florence White

I think Americans would like this book as it has all USA measurements and makes some wonderful 1932 comparisons of cooking culture.  For instance she says:

In a new and vast country far from Europe they have been able to preserve the integrity of their own kitchen far better than we have, and to develop it on individual lines.  If we want to learn to improve our own cookery - and we should want to do this - it is to American we should turn, not to France.

She also writes:

We can learn from the Commonwealth countries.  They have the same advantage as America of developing the cookery of the Homeland in a new setting.

Florence White says a whole book should be written on The Pies of Old England.  To be sure though the heritage of the local savoury pie has a long history in the UK.  I will share one recipe with you from Bungay, Suffolk; which seems appropriate:

Shrimp Pie

Bungay, Suffolk 1823

1. Pick a quart of shrimps
2. If they be very salt, season them only with mace or a clove or two.
3. Bone and mince two or three anchovies, mix them with the spice and season the shrimps.
4. Put some butter at the bottom of a shallow pie dish, (A modern fire-proof glass pie-plate is just the thing,)
5. Put in the shrimps and pour over them some more butter and a glass of sharp white wine.
6. Cover with a very thin delicate piecrust and bake until this is cooked.  It won't take long.

Doesn't that sound delicious and really not that complicated, I might keep this recipe in mind.

Christy

NANOWRIMO National Novel Writing Month, 1st to 30th November

nanowrimo  What is nanowrimo, you may well ask.  I was in my library last week and saw that they had a writers meeting every Monday evening through out the month of November, I attended, having not any idea what the itinerary or format was.  But as I have always been interested in writing I thought that I would go.

After sitting there with one other person for a while, he worked at the library and had started doing some writing before, in comes another person.  Eventually our fearless leader appeared somewhat late, well half and hour late.  She did begin to explain why we were all meeting through out the month of November.  Eventually there were seven people there including myself.  One other person was in the same position as me not having a clue as to what it was about, but he was ahead of me because he had started a novel.

Well it seems that during the month of November one aims to write 50,000 words, that is an average of 1,667 words per day.  Now since I attended on the 5th, the first meeting had been scheduled for the 29th October, but of course Hurricane Sandy cancelled that meeting out, I was already behind if I wanted to join in.

National Novel Writing Month is a world wide event.  It seems that you can sign up in your region or any where in the world chat or be encouraged to write.

Here are some published nanowrimo noveliests

So take a look at these links and see what you think.

Christy

Persephone 2013 Diary

I received my little package in the mail from the UK, the Persephone Biannually.  It's just so fun to receive with updates on new publications and short stories.

This year I've ordered the 2013 Persephone Diary.  Every year I look around for a diary that I will enjoy for the year.  Two years ago I made my own on Blurb.  This year as it commemorates 100 books for Persephone and has all the beautiful fabric end papers in one collection, I thought that I would enjoy this.

Every Persephone book has a grey cover, but to brighten the book all the inside sheets have a different fabric pattern, representing the era of the story.

Christy

P.S.  No work today as there is no power at my office.  I'm getting to the point where this is good and bad, because there will be a mountain of work to go back to.  Still I will enjoy it and make the most of it.

What I've Been Reading, Midnight In Peking by Paul French and Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen

Midnight in Peking, the year is 1937 Pamela Werner's body is found near The Fox Tower on a piece of no mans land.  This is a time when Peking is being closed in upon by the Japanese, many Westerners are leaving if they can, many can't as they are the flotsam and jetsam who have left Europe over the last decades, many being white Russians, add this to fortune hunters, diplomats and a very free life style, an underworld of opium and you have a true mystery.

Two detectives investigate the crime, a British detective Dennis and a Chinese detective Han.  It has shocked the elite enclaved mostly European community.  Who could do such a shocking thing a madman?  Must be a Chinese person or could it be one of their own?

These are the questions that haunt the detectives, but as time goes on one can see there is a lot of politics and payoffs involved.  This true story is revisited by Paul French and he does a great job, unearthing and reading through all the correspondence that Pamela's father sent to the foreign office in London after he did his own investigation.  You can come to some very compelling conclusions as to who did it, and why.

It's a great insight into Peking on the cuspid of WWII, but so sad that a teenage girls life should end like that.

Full Body Burden.  Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats.  This is also a true story of Kristen Iversen, who lived in a wonderful new housing development built yes withing a hairs breath of Rocky Flats.

Just the name itself Rocky Flat is something you think now where have I heard that?  I can't say I read the whole book because it became very detailed in statistics, but I found the beginning very compelling and read quite a bit.

Did you know that the third worst nuclear disaster happened back in the fifties at Rocky Flats and was not equaled until more recently by Chernobyl and the Fukushima nuclear disaster that just happened in Japan.  That was kept under wraps and only providence of the wind blowing in the other direction stopped the whole of Denver, Colorado from being contaminated.  Of course one could ask who was contaminated then?

A compelling book to read and probably if I had more time I would read the entire book.  The perfect suburbia of the 1950s gone awry.  People becoming ill and not knowing why, it's all so new and what do they actually do at that plant, the government would never let us live here or build here if it wasn't safe!

Yes the people of 2012 are less trusting or are we?

I may come back and finish this book at some point, it makes you think.

Christy

How Nice! The Making of A Marshioness and Autumn Is Coming

Mr Bit Brit and I were sitting in the Simla room when I saw a florist van pull up and he looked like he was looking for a number. the position of our house is hard to figure out.  And I said I bet that's from Bob and Don our company owners and it was, so that was a lovely surprise and to be honest just right timing because now I am back home I can get to enjoy the plant.  Actually I took it into my office to enjoy there.

Then later on in the week I received a lovely Omaha Steak dinner for the family from my office, that's still in the freezer waiting for the right time to cook it up and enjoy it.

Kindness is always appreciated.

Thank you!

I like to write in the morning, letters or my journal, I like the morning because I am not tired, it's a fresh new start and the day stretches ahead with possibilities, by the late afternoon and evening , I'm tired and my opportunities to accomplish things are closing down.

I just finished reading The Making of A Marchioness by H. Burnett, the writer of Secret Garden one of her best known books.  I must have started it well over a year ago, read Part 1; which I totally enjoyed but could see that Part 2 was darker and put it down.  Now I've finished it would not rate as one of my best reads, but it is a good read.  It's one on the Persephone list.  When I read a little bit about her life , I could see how it did play into her writing.  An abusive husband her wish to live a certain life style, moving up in the world, her details in what was worn.

The mornings are quite dark, but i still wish we didn't change the clocks.  The feel of Autumn is here  and under the oak tree we have wood all over, neat stacks of wood and piles of it, two cords have been delivered; which needs stacking, there isn't too much more space.

I had a lovely meeting with my friend C. the other Saturday, what a joy just to sit and chat and share.  Things don't change but our prospective is refreshed.  I was given two boxes of tea, a lovely note-book and a very beautiful glass dip ink pen, but I have tried using it and I'm not much good at it, although I did break out a couple of old metal dip pens which I used along with the lovely little pots of inks given to me and this has worked well for me.  I even broke out my old dragon inkwell given to me by my mum's cousin Marjory, who died very young.  I don't know how I came to be the inheritor of this double inkwell but I've had it since I was a child.  All is sitting on my little Eastlake desk and makes me feel good just to look at it.

Our side by side fridge/freezer went on the fritz, a man came out and said we needed a new compressor a very expensive job.  So we shopped around and found in the Sears Overstock Store a fridge that fit the bill, for less than having the repair done.  A side by side in bisque color; which we were told was an outdated color, but that's the colour of all the appliances in our kitchen so we're not changing out for the stainless steel look. Yes is has a couple of minor dings, but not bad.  We went in on Saturday and it was half price, we left it and hubby went in Monday morning and the guy was marking things down and he said what about this so he scanned the bar code thing on his list of knock downs and it went down $150, yippee, so that decided us.  Our old fridge was ten years old and that's about their life span.

Today was very Autumnal and it is raining and quite windy.  Driving to work something fell with a big bang on my car roof, I'm sure there will be a ding, then on the way home something else fell on my windshield and made me jump, there is a ding in my windshield now.  I'm a little paranoid about things falling as one time I had an entire tree fall on my car while I was driving and could have been killed.  My car was in the repair shop for two months.

On the way home many roads were blocked off by the police, I thought because of the bad weather, but then I went past a sign that said funeral and realized it must be the funeral for the Police officer who was shot in the line of duty when he stopped a hit and run driver.

People are full of rage on the roads, I had a horrible experience last Wednesday coming home.  There's a traffic light where I always make a left hand turn, the left lane is never backed up, but the lane to go straight always is.  There is a center lane that can be used by traffic going either way, if there's no traffic in it you can use it down to the light and make the left hand turn.  Well I guess a guy took exception and just pulled right out in front of me,  from the lane that was lined up for the light. I had to slam my brakes on so I did not hit him, then he proceeds to park his car across the lane, jumps out and starts swearing and shouting at me.  I did exclaim, I just want to turn left,  but then I shut my mouth, just sat there and said nothing, you never know what people will do.  Some fruitages of the spirit need to be applied one being self-control.

Christy

Downton Abbey

The World of Downton Abbey by Julian Fellowes who wrote the series.

My lunch hour at the park; where I thought it would be fun to share with you some eye candy from the book that accompanies the mini series Downton Abbey.  The visuals are just beautiful and full of interesting information about how ones would have lived back then.  And how the actors felt making the series.

It would be a lovely book to add to your library.

Christy

Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay

I ran across this paperback at my local library it was a .25c give away and I had always wanted to read it.

In keeping with Paris in July I read Sarah's Key and then watched the film.  The book is a must read. Read the book before you watch the movie, so many more shades to the characters than can be brought out in the film.

Set in Paris, July 1942 there is a great Jewish round up known as the Velodrome d'hiver Round-up.  Sarah a ten year old girl is caught up in this and taken with her family to the Velodrome.

Fast forward sixty years to a journalist Julia Jarmond and see how their two lives become twined to one.

I will post a book review of this on my Lil Bit Brit Lit Blog later.

Christy