Odd how the time of year suggests a visit somewhere, and we probably don't go at any other time of year because it involves driving past Exeter and that means holiday traffic, and we get fed up with that.
Before you know it it'll be April and time for St Ives.
Is this a sign of encroaching age when these things become habit?
We'd better start mixing it all up a bit.
Anyway off to Honiton for a mooch around the antique shops and the bookshops and first things first, a walk up the hill to our favoured eatery and brunch, because by the time we get there I'm gasping for scrambled eggs on toast... which I always eat in Honiton.
As usual I had stuffed a book in my bag because who knows when I might get bored and need to read. The choice needs to be slim and portable, imperceptible weight-wise, so while Bookhound ordered food and beverage I opened my book of choice and made a start. In fact that day I had picked up They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell because I have been meaning to read him forever and had bought this one recently.
On his way back to the table Bookhound had picked up a 'red-top' tabloid that he wouldn't usually 'take' but it was all that was left, and we had a brief debate about how different the same news can be when you read it in a tabloid. In fact you learn all the bits that you really want to know but feel slightly ashamed that you want to know them (...er...John Terry etc) and we settled quietly like the pair of long-married fifty-somethings that we are.
Well I could have foregone the rest of Honiton and just sat there all day because I was completely oblivious to everything else around me, missed the waitress shouting ninety-seven ... scrambled eggs and next thing I knew there was the food under my nose.
It occurred to me at that point what a variable thing reading in public can be.
Sometimes a book just fails miserably, my mind refuses to concentrate and prefers to listen to the conversation on the next table because sometimes it's so loud how can you but help it?
Well on this day brief excerpts were drifting in...
'saw you in the library but you looked busy...'
'yes, it gets like that..'
but not enough to distract me, my complete attention focused on They Came Like Swallows.
I often find it quite difficult to start a book 'out in public' too, a well-established read much easier because finding my plot and voice feet in the early chapters of a book often requires added concentration. But there I was immersed in my introduction to this little boy called Bunny, who looks most disgruntled on the cover of the book, and there's his mother ominously stitching diapers and the bully of an older brother about to ruin the day and then I discover why the older brother seems slightly over-indulged.
When I looked up I hardly knew where I was, surely I was in this house in 1917?
I have failed several times over with William Maxwell's The Chateau but think it might be almost impossible to fail with William Maxwell if you start with this one, and apropos of nothing but a remote connection to little boys on the covers of books as per They Came Like Swallows, this one's becoming a habit too, I've added another recent sighting to our collection.
If only they'd received some of the royalties.
Now, I can't believe a single one of you goes anywhere without at least one book secreted on your person, so we'll take that as a given, but are you a public reader, and do some books make for better public reading than others?
Any books you can recall that kept you oblivious to the world at large as you read?
Missed your station?
Missed your scrambled eggs?
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