Beautiful day today, nippy breeze but the sky is blue, the sun is shining, the daffodils 'are fluttering and dancing in the breeze' and spring has definitely sprung and the heart lifts with that lovely anticipatory feeling one gets at this time of the year.
I am having a restful day not doing much but lolling around and drinking tea and girding my loins ready for the coming week. We are now in warp speed getting ready for the Chicago conference with all the invitations gone out and responses coming in, client meetings to arrange etc etc and it will only get worse. Last year I ended up back at the doctor begging for a prescription for my long abandoned happy pills because of stress and panic attacks and I am determined to avoid that this year (if I can...)
This is a picture of a National Trust property just round the corner from my bijou flatette. I took it this morning and then when checking my computer realised I have an almost identical one I posted on this blog this time last year. I had lost the original in the Great Computer Disaster of December 2006. It is a delightful place and on Sundays parents take their small children along to feed the swans who live here, along with ducks and moor hens and it is all nice and happy.
Fell asleep on the sofa after lunch and woke up just in time to catch Making of a Marchioness on the radio. Nearly missed it! I absolutely loved it of course and Charles Dance was perfect as Walderhurst with that beautiful voice of his, Miriam Margoyles as Lady Walderhurst and it was a perfect companion to my lying on the sofa with feet up. I gave the link in a post earlier this week so do listen if you have missed it. Final part next Sunday.
Opened my latest copy of The Literary Review which arrived yesterday and the editorial on the opening page was all about updating the Classics. A new translation of War and Peace is being published and it is 'free of solemn philosophical wanderings', the text is shorter, characters who die in the later version survive in this one but Tolstoy's people 'remain central throughout'. There's a relief. As you know, I was very cross with Mansfield Park being mucked about with and the character of Fanny Price being changed to make her more 'relevant' so you know my feelings on this sort of interference.
Worse is to come apparently. Orion have decided that next month they will be producing Compact Editions of Charlotte, Emily and Jane and George which will see that the books are 'sympathetically edited'. We are assured that they will nevertheless 'retain all the elements that make them a classic in the first place'. As the author of this editorial asks why sex up Wuthering Heights as sales figures suggest there is already at least one copy in every home?
Oh, and by the way according to the papers today if you watch Persuasion tonight on ITV, it is to find that Captain Wentworth is in love with one of Anne's nieces. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but she does not have any. Her only married sister, Mary, has a little boy and her other sister, Elizabeth is unmarried. I think they mean Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove who happen to be her brother in law's sisters.
Yes, alright I know I am being nit pickety and after I got Northanger Abbey wrong I should just keep quiet, but Persuasion is my most favorite Jane and I am so hoping they will do it well.....
