Alchimie's Journal

skygiants

Still, men do seem to get what they deserve—in a rough way—over a long period. [...] Well, it’s my guess. There’s no proving it. Nobody’s ever made up the accounts. Think of the accounting system they’d have to have in heaven to reckon our follies and sins and good deeds, and decide what we should get. Think of the decisions they’d have to make—and revise. And reverse. Think of the good deeds that turned out badly—and of the murders that turned out to be a good thing.

• I am finally reading Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea in an original 1966 printing and am incredibly distracted that the cover art seems to be done by the same person who did the covers for the later Reachfar novels of Jane Duncan, the ones focused on her time in Jamaica. Or is it just me? Perhaps it was a common style, with the wrap-around covers and the vibrant greens and blues and such -- but whether it is actual or only in my mind, I find it incredibly distracting, since every time I pick up the Rhys I am expecting Janet's voice.
  
  
• When going to Target repeatedly to pick up needed objects for the weekend of volunteerism I also picked up a large number of on-sale candles; the one on my desk is 'sweet almond' and it smells lovely, definitely sweet in a non-food way, although I cannot vouch for the almond. I am fond of candles and scented things (if they do not trigger migraines but I can usually tell immediately enough to avoid that) but I largely want them during autumn and winter, so it is only just starting to be the time in which I will indulge in them. (September is not autumn here even once the equinox has come, but it has been colder in the mornings at least.)
  
  
• Pamela Brown's series of novels about a group of British children creating their own theatre company are all available again! I read the first one some small time back and was so frustrated not to be able to find the rest, so now I have them all as ebooks and am most of the way through the second. There's a good Guardian piece about them. I find them reminiscent of Streatfeild but less class-concerned and I think also less Imperial -- Streatfeild wrote at least some children's work on the glories of England etc etc and I can't imagine Brown doing that, her characters are too busy enjoying Greek food and wandering the cities they find themselves in to worry about how special their Englishness supposedly makes them.
  
  
• Speaking of special Englishness reminds me that over the weekend I reread some of an Angela Thirkell novel, Northbridge Rectory, and was as always struck by the mix of really pleasing bits with horrifying moments. The humour around the young man who has a crush on Mrs. Villars the Vicar's wife is excellent, with his determination to see her as a fragile heroine who needs his protection, and Thirkell's description of the way that Mrs. Villars sometimes gives into temptation and enjoys the attention but then feels afterwards like she has given in to her "inferior self" is for me a very accurate description of such moments -- but then we passages like "a piece of the roof fell in, most unfortunately not killing two very rude little girls" and I think this is meant to be funny also, but it is just horrifying, because Thirkell so clearly really does think working class people, especially children, are disposable and that the world would be improved by less of them. I was hyper-aware of this in the later novels, but had not realised it started popping up so early until this reread. I will doubtless keep on rereading (and complaining about) Thirkell from time to time, because the good bits are so good, but I wish I could find someone I found as satisfying without all of the ugh.
  
  
• Which brings me lastly to Miss Read, who I also read some of on my weekend (there is a lot of reading time while lying awake waiting for giggling children to quit whispering and fall asleep) -- she is not funny the way Thirkell is, but she is also not awful -- she seems to have a much greater appreciation for the times she lives in and the differrent people who make up a small community than Thirkell can accomplish. She was a generation later, of course, which I am certain helps, but she also did not grow up upper-middle-class, which perhaps has more to do with it? I do not know, but I am rereading Thrush Green and enjoying it.
  
  I should go eat before it is time to acquire children or otherwise I will be cranky while waiting in the sun for them to be released.

• valley pearl grapes (large green orbs, very sweet so I think some will escape the freezer),
  
• green beans for a salad (cooked green beans, feta, cherry tomatoes, vinegar I think -- I do not make it, our spouse does)
  
• white corn, which will be dinner tonight (along with leftover spaghetti and the green bean salad above) while watching a chunk of the first season of Steven Universe at smol son's request -- he has only seen a few scattered episodes and is interested in the whole
  
• raspberries, not my favourite but the children love them
  
• strawberries (some of the last of the season)
  
• green pluots and red plums, both to eat out of hand and make the breakfast apricot crisp that kass recommended,
  
• several packages of goat stew meat from local goats.
  

In the tube, these thoughts gave way to others. The others, in fact, had been there all the time, lurking in the background like a toothache. Now, they surfaced with full force and he sat glumly in the Picadilly Line, confronting them. There was no evading it; self-deception got you nowhere; he knew what had happened to him.