I finished my first book of 2025 today.
And how I loved it! I was a big fan of Hayley Mills when I was a kid, as were most people my age.
As she wrote about the movies she has been in, I realized that I may have seen only Pollyanna and The Parent Trap. I am going to try and get ahold of some of the more serious ones like Tiger Bay and Whistle Down the Wind, as well as some of the ones she did when she was older.
She is a very good writer. Highly recommended.
For my January book. I chose 4. - the New Year's category. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers begins with Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter going off the wintry road into a ditch.They walk until they come to Fenchurch St. Paul.
It was past four o'clock and New Year's Eve; the snow that had fallen all day gave back a glimmering greyness to a sky like lead.
I bought a lovely used copy years ago. I have been meaning to read it in January, prompted to do so by Gladys Taber whose housemate Jill read it every year in that month. From Stillmeadow Sampler:
Jill, of course, reads Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors again, although she almost knows it by heart now.
And from Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, concerning which one book to take to a tropical island:
Jill would take Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors and just reread it every few days.
I enjoyed the small parts of the book which focused on a dotty vicar and his long-suffering and much-loved wife. However, I simply cannot say that I liked the book. The main subject is campanology, which is bell-ringing. Sayers is clearly very knowledgeable on the subject, but this reader could not understand it at all! I felt like I was reading an unknown language. And the locale was so dismal and depressing that I couldn't stand being there, even if in the pages of a book! The villagers for the most part seemed as miserable as the locale.
I watched The Nine Tailors many years ago, and my memory of it is that I just didn't get what was going on. I felt sure that if I read the book, all would become clear. But, no. The book is well-thought of, and highly praised, but I cannot add my voice to the throng.
Each year I bring out this dear little book with all the other Christmas books. I don't think I have ever read it in its entirety until now. Most people seem to catagorize it as "prose poetry". Whatever it is called, I loved it so much, and I find myself admiring the film version even more because it is very true to Thomas' words. I've written about the movie here, if you would like to read it.
I had forgotten that I gave it to my mother.
It clutches at my heart and makes me cry - the way she wrote "my Nan". She died three years later.
Two years earlier, Tom had given her this album on the first Christmas after my father died.
The book I chose for the girls told the tale of a grandmother describing to her grandchildren what Christmas was like when she was young, a passing of memories that took us back in time. I've always loved stories of life in the "olden days," hearing the jingling livery of a horse-drawn carriage, the sound of long skirts sweeping the floor, a teacup settling into a saucer in Emma's garden ... it's the closest thing to time travel I know.
I'm like that, too. I've always loved stories from the past. And Christmases in older times seem so special to me.
Somewhat shockingly I must admit that Susan Branch's memories are of "olden days". Shockingly because those were my childhood days as well as hers. She was nine and I was eight in 1956. I tried to find a picture of me that Christmas but apparently my mother didn't take pictures of every Christmas and occasion in our lives. This fact in itself sets 1956 apart from 2020. Do you know I have over 70,000 pictures (and videos) in my iPhotos on the computer?! Granted they could use some culling - a dozen shots of one daylily for example - but still. I managed to come up with one of me in 1956. Wish I could see what that book is. It almost looks like a booklet of some kind.
It feels like just about every single thing is different. You don't see many large families anymore. It surprises Margaret when I tell her that I was the odd duck as a kid, being an only child. I can think of just one other in my class. Hazel knows several like herself. Susan writes:
... everything we had was made in America. Milkmen left glass bottles of milk on our porch, gas cost 30¢ a gallon and was pumped by an attendant. There were individual jukeboxes on lunch counters - for a nickel Elvis, Doris Day, Little Richard, or Buddy Holly would serenade you over your banana split. At school we practiced cursive on huge blackboards that covered the walls, and lined up to get our polio vaccines. Girls wore dresses for everything, to school, for roller skating, hopscotch, and cartwheels, too - and every boy on our street had a six-shooter and a coonskin cap. Drive-in movies were wonderful, under the stars, the whole family went to see Lady and the Tramp, us in our jammies. We had rotary telephones and a party line, and the new thing in the living room called television.
This was a middle-class white American family, like so many others in those days.
My dad got a job with General Telephone, so they moved from Long Beach to the San Fernando Valley. That's where I grew up, along with my seven brothers and sisters in a pink-stucco four-bedroom house my parents bought for $16,000 with help from the GI Bill. ... We didn't have a lot of money but just enough, apparently, because we had the basics, warm beds, clean jammies, friends, shoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and parents who loved us. I always thought we were rich because I felt so happy. ... There wer 53 children living in the twelve houses on our dead-end street, and more coming all the time. ... Bikes made us totally mobile from about six-years-old. Parents didn't worry as long as we told them where we were going and were home for dinner.
Olden days, indeed.
But the thing that still lives, that still rings as true as then is the love in the family. I would hope younger people than I am will read this to see that though some external things change, love in a family is timeless.
"Are we rich" I asked my mom. "Not rich in money," she said, "but rich in love. We have each other. That's what counts." It was a highly satisfactory answer. It sounded exactly like "Yes."
This is Susan Branch's family in 1956.
Flowers in the Rain by Rosamunde Pilcher 1991
Recorded Books read by Davina Porter
Fiction A+
This is a collection of stories, and my very favorite book among all her writing. The characters and situations seem real to me. The scenery and house interiors are described expertly.And now here I am, 14 (!!!) years later rereading this little gem after Rosamunde Pilcher has died having lived a good, long life.
Yvette left me this comment a while back on my In the Garden with the Totterings post talking about the old Victoria Magazine.
"I've heard of the Totterings (probably from the same Victoria Magazine - gosh how I miss that magazine, the older issues, I mean. I have so many clippings and many of the covers)"
It seems to me that the 1990s were rather a golden time for homey types like me. There was Victoria Magazine, there were Rosamunde Pilcher's books, there was Mary Engelbreit, and there was Susan Branch. Each of them celebrated the simple, quiet joys of home and garden and family life. When I was in my forties and fifties these women sustained me in my own love of home. I was part of yahoo email groups whose members had the same kinds of interests. I now feel more adrift in my own boat. I do miss the camaraderie with women which the magazine and the books and the discussion groups used to make me feel.Over two years later, I still feel the same way, and the feeling is made more poignant with the announcement of Rosamunde Pilcher's death. She was so important to me, and to fellow readers, that one of the groups we formed was called Rosamunde's Kitchen. It was so named because her books and stories always had the best kitchens! They were big spaces with room enough for a large table (always "scrubbed pine"), a writing desk which was the pulse of the mother's life, and often a couch. Her descriptions are still of my ideal kitchen! In every book, the author brought rooms and houses and gardens alive in the reader's mind.
Under the shelter of the trees the front of the house didn't get the morning sun, but that just made the deep, shady porch seem homier.Can't you just see it?
Mrs. Whitshank was talking about dishwashing machines. She just didn't see the need, she was saying. She said, "Why, some of my nicest conversations have been over a sinkful of dishes!"Hazel is still washing them, pretty much whenever she comes. Here's a picture from last week. The sun was streaming in so Pop wore the hat Campbell chose for him.
One of those things was farro, a tender Italian grain that feels nice to bite into. I'd heard of it, but never tried it until that night at our friends' table. Julia had cooked up a pot and mixed it with peas.I have cooked farro before but only in a stew. This time I cooked it until softened. In the meantime I sautéed some onions, and cooked some peas. When the farro was done I stirred in the vegetables, making a delicious, simple, and filling meal. I have rarely cooked with peas, other than cooked fresh from the garden with butter. I used frozen peas in this dish, and really the taste was quite exquisite. They mixed well with the onions and farro. If you've not heard of farro, it is a grain-lovers treat. Here is a page offering high praise for the humble grain.
blew the basement in and ripped off the roof. First floor practically wasn't touched. Six people in the house. Three servants: married couple and a housemaid, Gordon Cloade, his wife and the wife's brother. They were all down in the basement except the wife's brother...The only survivors were the wife and her brother who come to the family estate in Warmsley Vale. Gordon did not make a new will in those two weeks of married life, so his family who were to be the beneficiaries now receive nothing because his old will is 'revoked by his marriage.' I was amazed at this law - that the wife automatically got the money. What hardships this placed on the family.
The rich, childless man had taken all his relatives completely under his wing. ... Yes, they had all depended on Gordon Cloade. Not that any of the family had been spongers or idlers. Jeremy Cloade was senior partner in a firm of solicitors, Lionel Cloade was in practice as a doctor. But behind the workaday life was the comforting assurance of money in the background. There was never any need to stint or to save. The future was assured.A stranger comes to town saying that perhaps the first husband is still alive, which would of course make Rosaleen's second marriage invalid, and the money would all go to the family. Or if she died, the same thing would occur.
And already a curious dissatisfied restlessness was creeping over her. It was all the same - almost too much all the same - the house and Mums and Rowley and the farm and the family. The thing that was different was herself....And her mother's life
Except for a rather unreliable woman who came four mornings a week, Mrs. Marchmont was alone in the house, struggling with cooking and cleaning. ... The small but adequate fixed income which had kept them going comfortably before the war was now almost halved by taxation. Rates, expenses, wages had all gone up.A farmer says
"I'm only just keeping my head above water as it is. And what with not knowing what this damned Government is going to do next - hampered at every turn - snowed under with forms, up to midnight trying to fill them in sometimes - it's too much for one man."There is mention of an 'ill will' and 'ill feeling' that is everywhere.
On railways and buses and in shops and amongst workers and clerks and even agricultural laborers.The book offers such a strong sense of English life in 1948. The atmosphere is almost a character in the story. The characters' actions and reactions are in response to the social, monetary, and political situation of the post-war years. I really enjoyed the book and learned so much.
The Scottish clan that I belong to - or would belong to if it were now anything more than a sentimental myth - was broken a great many generations ago by a party of MacDonalds, who hunted down the last chief of my clan, captured him, refused him mercy, saying that a man who had never shown mercy should not ask for it, tied him to a standing stone, and shot him.That standing stone was on the Scottish island of Colonsay. McPhee brings his wife and four daughters over to live there for a time. He weaves together the past and the present, teaching us local history and showing us what life is like. At the time of the book there were 138 people on the island, and today there are 135 people. Amazing that fifty years later the population is the same especially because the crofters of the late sixties feared the young would leave and never come back. Some must have stayed, and perhaps others have moved there. There are a lot of activities that weren’t going on in the time of the book, for example festivals, and honey production. There is still a laird, and I found an article where he helped save the only pub five years ago.
‘There is apparently a point at which gossip can become so intensely commonplace that it is not only beyond hurting anone but is, in fact, a release.'McPhee shares some of this gossip with the reader, using a great device whereby he notes the words of several people, listed one after another without mentioning anyone’s name. This particular topic went on for two pages.
which is really what most people who live in Vermont end up doing. It’s a place where you choose your location over your career. You find a place that you want to live and then you figure out a way to make a living.
