Random Jottings

Merry Christmas

I am off to see my family tomorrow and then a pantomime on Boxing Day and a good time will be had by all.  I would like to wish everyone who takes the time and trouble to visit, read and comment on my witterings, a very Merry Christmas with my love and thanks.

 

Winter Solstice - Rosamunde Pilcher

Last week I posted about A Christmas Carol which I read every year before Christmas and have done so for at least the last twenty years, if not longer.

I am now posting about a more recent addition to this tradition, though it is now a tradition that is at least ten years old, and that is the re-reading of Winter Solstice.   Some years back there was a poll on the BBC about the nation's favourite books. This was in the days when books were actually discussed on the Beeb, you won't find that now, and Pilcher's The Shell Seekers was near the top of the list.  I love the Shell Seekers and it was my first book by this author, but my favourite is Winter Solstice.

Each year I read it and each year I am engrossed and cannot put it down because I want to see how it finishes even though I know the ending. Many fellow readers will understand that daft though it sounds. We all like a happy ending.

Rosamunde Pilcher's books are all centered around family and relationships and in Winter Solstice we have disparate elements of a family coming together to make a whole.

Elfrida Phipps is a retired actress. As she says herself she was never famous but carved out an enjoyable living in the chorus and small parts.  Her marriages were ill advised but she found happiness with an actor, who she never named as he was well known.   He then became ill and she nursed him until he died.   Seeking solace she buys a cottage in a small village which she calls her 'geriatric bolthole'. She goes to a dogs home and brings back Horace for company and settles down.

She makes the acquaintance of the Blundells, Oscar and his wife Gloria and a late addition to the family, their daughter Frances.   Life settles down and then tragedy strikes.

Sam Howard is back from New York where he has been working and living for several years. His marriage has broken down and he has come home to take up a new position. He is a wool broker with a background in the production of tweed and wool and he has been asked to take over a mill which has been wrecked by flood damage and put it back on his feet.

Carrie has returned home from Austria where she is fleeing the end of a heart breaking love affair.  She is homeless and jobless at the moment and unsure of what lies ahead and is deeply unhappy.   She visits her mother and sister, a charmless pair, and discovers that her sister is remarrying and wishes to unload her daughter on her mother at Christmas so she can go to the States to be with her lover.   It is ever the lot of the single daughter to be assumed as having nothing better to do and when Carrie sees Lucy she decides to take care of her over the Christmas period.

I hope I am not giving too much detail away if you have not read the book so I will now cease and instead say that all these people, by way of coincidence and luck, all end up meeting each other in a house in Scotland.  All of them have more or less written Christmas off as they are all suffering from a loss but, as with all Pilcher books, a warmth and happiness permeate the writing and over the festive season, they come to terms with their situations and find comfort in each other and, yes, joy.

Rosamunde Pilcher's writing is such a pleasure to read.  I love what I call 'clean' writing, with no fuss or frills, just elegant well written prose and Pilcher delivers in spades.  Never a word wasted but she sets a scene and creates characters that resonate.

There is a room in the house which I love to conjure up in my imagination.

"the room was furnished with the bare minimum of furniture. A thick Turkey carpet. A sofa and two chairs. A table against a wall, a glass fronted book case in which a few old books leaned against each other......without pictures of knick knacks to divert the eye it was possible to appreciate the lovely proportions of the room, the ornate cornice and the plaster rose in the centre of the ceiling from which depended a charming Victorian chandelier"

This room has a bay window overlooking the town square where one can sit and watch what is going on and oh, how I would love to be there curled up with a book with the fire flickering and all peaceful and quiet.   It is a glorious room.

Winter Solstice is a book filled with warmth and happiness. Sorrow yes and bereavement but it is beautifully dealt with and written about. I find it hard to put into words just how much I love reading it and how happy it always makes me feel.  Despite all the odds this odd mixture of a family find comfort and solace over Christmas and are able to start looking forward.

And the final page is pure delight.

If you have yet to have the pleasure of reading this wonderful book then please get hold of a copy if you can and read before Christmas.

It is a book that will make you happy. I promise.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

It is that time of year again. The time when I trot over to my bookshelves, check the letter D and take down a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Please note I say A Copy not My copy. This is because I have multiple copies of this book and today have just added to them with yet another edition.

I love Dickens. Always have but I do know those who cannot get on with him at all - I freely admit I find this difficult to understand but hey ho.  Over the years I have read an awful lot about the man himself and, quite frankly, he sounds a tortured individual and not very nice, in particular in his treatment of his wife which I thought was appalling.  I really should not like him at all but somehow I find it hard to dislike someone who has created Mr Pickwick, the Fezziwigs, David Copperfield, Uriah Heep et al.  I feel that underneath all that non stop frenetic genius, there was a troubled individual. 

And this afternoon when reading A Christmas Carol for the umpteenth time I discovered passages that struck me anew as being simply wondrous, conjuring up wonderful pictures:

"The poulterers shops were still half open and the fruiterers were radiant in their glory; there were great round pot bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy brown faced, broad girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the greatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by and glanced demurely at the hung up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeepers benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves..."

Glorious.

Which edition to read today?

There is the one illustrated by Quentin Blake which I could not resist.

A superb edition of A Christmas Carol and other Stories by OUP, a wonderful hardback with the original illustrations.

A Christmas Carol, the Graphic Novel which reminds me of when, as a child, I had this kind of illustrated version of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and other classics.

Then an edition I came across at a jumble sale and which I paid about 50p.  Inside it is inscribed, written in ink "for our dear Gloria with loving Christmas wishes from the Aunties at Ealing Village" It does not have the date of the particular Christmas which is a shame but this particular copy, which has no ISBN number or publication date to give me a clue, is published by Raphael Tuck & Sons "publishers to their Majesties the King and Queen & to her Majesty Queen Alexandra" which means it is Edwardian. This link https://tuckdbpostcards.org/history makes fascinating reading.  There is also a Wikipedia page about this company which was founded in 1866 and was granted the Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria. This copy has lovely illustrations and the title page is protected by a sheet of tissue paper, intact which is a miracle after all this time. I would love to know who once owned this and to reassure them that I am looking after it very carefully.

And finally, another edition which arrived just an hour ago from the Folio Society. I could not resist. I simply could not.  A glorious edition with illustrations by Michael Foreman which fit beautifully.  It was a pleasure to hold and read. They also sent me a free Folio diary which I thought was rather kind.....

Well you know how I am going to close this post don't you? Of course you do....

"...he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us and all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!