Tuesday 11 March 2008

happy endings


We have just got back from a 3 day break up in Southwold.
Before I went I was very bad tempered, miserable, impotent, ratty - any negative phrase would stick to me like a burr, and get under my saddle - and itch like mad.
Now I am serene, we had a few good blowy walks, fairly nice food and hotel[including me being rude to the maitre d'] and I read most of 2 books. Otherwise the world is the same, except a few fallen trees, but I have changed.
The books were/are good. First I finished This Foul Night's Work, by the marvellous Fred Vargas. She is a somewhat fey French archaeologist,with a wonderful translator Sian Reynolds; she must be good because one of the things I like about the writing is the poetical prose.
This is by far the best book of the five she has written, and I adored it. Young Fred claims she takes a 3 week holiday from archaeologing and writes a book. Would that it worked that way for moi.
I am now reading The Other Boleyn girl by Philippa Gregory, which I imagine is better than the film, judging by the reviews. I have never had a sister, or a brother so most people's emotional development is on another planet. I wonder what proportion of people are only children, this alien race, except in China of course.
I give my books away to friends and Charity shops, as there would be no room to walk otherwise. It seems lately that in my desire to make room for the next I am shedding lots of my recent history, while on the shelves sits books I am fond of, bring back parts of my story. I want to keep both Fred and Philippa, who will have to go to make room?
We once had a neighbour whom I called Toad, He was quite a nice young man really, nothing much to complain of, except for once when we walked past Notre Dame he popped up, making a special time suddenly feel ordinary, or strange, colliding worlds, universes. the example of string theory. Anyway he was amazed I had book shelves, at home, not in France, he always throws away his books once he has read them.
He waited years for his girl to return to him tho.
Well with another woman for company, but he never gave her the key, she would sit outside in her cheap red car looking furious till he came home.
Anyway his lady love returned from abroad, they married, had kids and now I hear they are divorced. So sad, wrong book, wrong shelf, who knows.