Can this be true?! My last post was on May 29th?
Oh, dear. How did that happen?
Life has been exceedingly busy, mostly in positive ways with a dash of challenge thrown in to keep me humble. In stolen moments here and there I’ve been reading some lovely things, and I really must write about them.
Soon.
But not tonight.
And probably not tomorrow night, either. Maybe on Sunday. So far that day is looking free. Tomorrow (Thursday) I need to be in town all day, ditto Friday, and Saturday is my niece’s wedding, so no prizes for guessing that nothing will happen blog-wise till I find myself at home and alone, or as alone as one can be with four others drifting in and out at unpredictable hours.
The pattern of my year to date, this has been. I do enjoy my solitude as a rule, but circumstances are working against me in this area of my life at present, so I’m having to adapt.
I did run away for five days last week, with the farm truck and camper, to attend a print-making workshop with Hans-Christian Behm at Island Mountain Arts in Wells, and what an astoundingly rewarding time that was. It brought home to me so very sharply how deeply satisfying it is to be amongst artists, with the conversations that ensue once everyone has settled into their groove, and the validation that those conversations give.
During the four evenings I was away, I ducked out of the many invitaions offered up to me of dinners and various other diversions after hours, and instead retreated to my house-on-wheels and made myself the simplest of meals, after which I read and read and read. Heaven.
I didn’t read anything overwhelmingly new-to-me and exciting, mostly some of the more sedate O. Douglas novels (Pink Sugar, Eliza for Common), and a disappointingly bland Ngaio Marsh I hadn’t read before – Hand in Glove – and a slightly obscure (and probably deservedly so) Rumer Godden – The Lady and the Unicorn. Also E.F. Benson’s very first novel, Dodo, 1893, which was a far, far different thing than the gloriously daft Lucia sequence of the 1920s and 30s. I then returned to Anna Buchan, with her autobiographical Unforgettable, Unforgotten, which is absolutely stellar and a must-read for any O. Douglas lover, as the originals of many of the characters and scenarios depicted in her books are described as they were in their first form.
Now I’m delving into Beverley Nichols, following him happily Down the Garden Path, and with that I will leave you for tonight, to read about a long-ago English garden, and perchance to dream about my somewhat neglected modern Canadian counterpart.
I do hope everyone is having a lovely summer! Wishing you all green thoughts in a green shade, which reference I am guessing many of you will “get”, and for those who don’t, the clues are Marvell and Perenyi.
Good-night, all!
Leaves & Pages 