(no subject)

My seasonal grouch is only going to be one day long this year, I think. Tomorrow afternoon, it will leave, to be replaced by friends and bonhomie. Yesterday afternoon and evening it didn't exist - I had Christmas Eve with some of my favourite friends.

This season is actually one of the best I've ever had, despite the gaping hole in a tooth (dentists in Canberra close very early on 23 December, it appears - but the tooth responds to painkillers) but we have many scraps of storm, sequentially. I feel the storms inside me and so it's hard to work. In other words, I'm grouchy this year because 25 December is a work day* and I want to work and things hurt. Also, people keep wishing me happy midwinter and I look outside and think "And I was certain it was summer. Just goes to show how wrong one can be in evaluating the saesonality of thunderstorms."

If I can get 4 hours of stuff done today, that will do. If I can get 8 hours done today, I shall de-grouch. If I can get 12 hours done today, then I get to go to the sales on Tuesday morning. If I can get 16 hours done today, then I'll regret it entirely.

Have a lovely holiday season.





*The logic of this defeats so many of my friends. My logic is that when all of you take Rosh Hashanah off, then I might be entitled to take Christmas off.

(no subject)

My mother and I just had our daily chat. Today we talked about the Mitford sisters. Mum has just seen the new Upstairs Downstairs and suspected a Mitford link and we wondered if Nancy Mitford has given us a little England of the sort that Georgette Heyer did, something that can be plundered by writers to create stories and situations*. I found myself beset by a sudden lack of memory, though I did remember that Unity was the Hitlerian and Nancy, of course, is unforgettable. It's the family culture that sticks and the fact that I am seeing it over and over again in works that are loosely based in the 30s and early 40s. Not the whole shebang - just bits and pieces.

By a happy circumstance, my reading for when I've read the four books that remain to me as holiday reading is the letters of the Mitford sisters. Or maybe I could read 100 pages in between each other book? I want to get further into this little world of lifestyles and large characters that is the Mitfords. New narratives aren't taking from the whole Mitford family, I suspect, just from two novels and from related material. In other words, it's England as designed by Nancy. Although it's helped by so many other members of the family being so very writerly.

Thinking about it, it's not really like Georgette Heyer's Regency in the way it works. The mechanics are more like the England of Enid Blyton. If soeone were to write a fan crossover, it would be Secret Seven meet Nancy, Pamela, Thomas, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah (when young, of course).



*This isn't the first time we've had this conversation.