dovegreyreader scribbles

Family Matters and Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract...

Everyone’s family is extraordinary in its own way. This much and more I discovered in all those years of listening to family histories as a health visitor. It was important to get a feel for where a family had come from, the experience, the highs the lows, the tensions, the ‘issues’ and it wouldn’t take more than a few open questions and saying yes to a cup of tea to learn more. I look on it as one of the privileges of the job, and it was one of the aspects I loved the most and found so fascinating. People’s stories shared and respected.

Translate that love into books and it is understandable that I am always drawn to the family memoirs. The secret to success is for the writer to make their own extraordinary family seem likewise for me the reader to whom they might otherwise be ordinary...if that makes sense, and it wasn’t hard to wander around my shelves and find a selection of those I have enjoyed most in recent years. I think I have written about all of these in the past so please do follow the links if you want to know more about each one..

Hancox - Charlotte Moore

The Baroness - Hannah Rothschild 

and an interview with Hannah at Port Eliot Festival here

The Valley - Richard Benson and an interview with him at Port Eliot Festival including sight of the knitted farm knitsuke 

The Great Western Beach - Emma Smith

On Chapel Sands - Laura Cumming...how did I not write about this? It was one of my best reads of 2019...

The Three of Us - Julia Blackburn 

The Hare With Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal who I was also lucky enough to interview at Port Eliot Festival...happy days

Forty Autumns - Nina Willner

And then there was the astonishing and very beautiful book American Style and Spirit by Jane Bradbury about her Aunt Augusta and the Roddis family, their lives, their fortunes and their clothes. A picture of Augusta sits on the shelf above my desk and you might remember Jane  very kindly sent me a bunch of flowers as thanks for that post. The hydrangeas in the vase lasted so long they eventually put out roots and I was able to nurture a plant. Augusta’s Hydrangea has been through a few torrid times...I planted it out too soon and almost lost it...this year it dried out in the cold frame and I almost lost it again but, like Augusta's clothes, the plant has survived and is thriving again, and I am mightily relieved because it felt like a challenge at which I mustn’t fail.

It was the arrival of another book to add to this selection that made me think more carefully about their attraction. Perhaps, at the moment, it’s about immersing myself in someone else’s life and history instead of my own. It’s quite hard not to overthink all this, especially when the diary is empty and the next thing to get excited about it is the entire nation singing We’ll Meet Again together from their lockdown homes on VE Day. Actually, I am quite excited about this, because any sense of togetherness doesn’t go amiss right now. 

Richard Atkinson contacted me to ask if I might be interested in seeing a copy of his book Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract - The Story of a Tangled Inheritance. Published very recently this one of those books that could so easily be consigned to the wilderness in the midst of the current situation, and that has to be heartbreaking for any author who has committed a huge part of their life to writing it. In Richard’s case ten years or so, having found a box of old family letters...

'Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded – the age at which his father died – when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard.

This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica.

Richard’s searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a brilliant but flawed West India merchant who had shipped all the British army’s supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. ‘Rum’ Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy....'

I'm about a hundred pages in and both intrigued and engrossed. So many of these writers have no choice but to address the 'something nasty in the woodshed' and Richard's family is no exception. He will have to confront involvement in slavery, but his ancestors were also witness to a backdrop of some of the most momentous times in history and I am re-visiting so much that I once knew. The Treaty of Paris...who knew the barest shreds of that were still lodged in my memory.

Meanwhile there must be scores of family memoirs deserving of a mention and already I realise I have forgotten to include Elisabeth's Lists by Lulah Ellender...

Lulah Ellender quotes Hilary Mantel...

'What is to be done with the lost, the dead, but write them into being?'

And I was reminded of an evening spent listening to Hilary Mantel. I hunted out my notes and here's what I jotted down...

'...As soon as somebody dies they become fictional, they become a narrative construction, preserved in memory but in a sense you are not dead if someone still talks about you. The thought hollows you out with a sense of waste and loss for those not known...my greatest joy is to take a name and give them person-hood... a particle of being... doing honour to what is lost...'

I am sure you have plenty more suggestions to share..

 

Greenery - Journeys in Springtime ~ Tim Dee

Every year we make a note of the date. Not the date when someone else sees a swallow in the village, but when our first one arrives and heads into the veranda knowing they are home. Variously April 28th, 15th, 17th, last year the 20th and this year Easter Sunday morning, April 12th but so far just the one. 

We thought he/she had been here before because there's a little perch they have made their own. It's a tangled up bit of electric cable that we always meant to wire up to an outside light but never did and there it sits. A complete eyesore if you look up and to the right of the front door but of course now we daren't change a thing about it. And so our single swallow arrived and there he has been sleeping for the past weeks waiting for the rest of the nest building team, and I'm wondering whether he is one of these. Last year's fledglings on the day they moved from nest to rafter with their first flight. 

Alongside the annual conflict is gathering. The wrens, who have been with us all winter, purloin a vacant swallow's nest and start loading it with mossy furnishings of their own, claiming squatter's rights, and there's nothing we can do about what happens next. It will be Armageddon out there because for all its diminutive size, Troglodytes troglodytes has the voice of a klaxon and will make its displeasure known when the Hirundo rustica mount their invasion and reclaim their property. It's usually a day to go out and leave them to it. We'll go for a walk instead and come home to a pile of moss on the deck, wrens in retreat back to their hedgerow nests and swallows back and forth with their preferred decor of mud, grass and white feathers.

 

This all brings me back to where I meant to start which was with Tim Dee's new book Greenery - Journeys in Springtime recently published by Jonathan Cape. I'm afraid I bought my copy from You Know Where to be sure it arrived soonest. My need for the real book in hand was yesterday once I'd read the Kindle sample.... 

'One December, in midsummer South Africa, Tim Dee was watching swallows. They were at home there, but the same birds would soon begin journeying north to Europe, where their arrival marks the beginning of spring.

Between the winter and the summer solstice in Europe, spring moves north at about the speed of swallow flight. That is also close to human walking pace. In the light of these happy coincidences, Greenery recounts how Tim Dee tries to travel with the season and its migratory birds, making remarkable journeys to keep in step with the very best days of the year, the time of buds and blossoms and leafing, the time of song and nests and eggs. After South Africa, we follow European migrants staging in Chad and Ethiopia, and on across the colossal and incomprehensible Sahara. We accompany storks venturing the Straits of Gibraltar, honey buzzards dodging Sicilian hunters, and tiny landbirds finding haven on the curious island of Heligoland. A diary of the spring spreading through Britain with a magic trinity of oak-tree-loving birds interleaves the continental greening. We read of other determined spring-seekers: D. H. Lawrence and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We hear from a Sámi reindeer herder, a barn-dwelling swallow-devotee, an Egyptian taxi driver, a chronobiologist in arctic Norway. There are bears and boars and bog-bodies too.'

 

So many books must be slipping into obscurity before they've even taken their first breath at the moment, and I can't quite imagine how the publishing world will regroup and get back on track after this, but it would be a real shame if this happened to Greenery because it is becoming, for me, the iconic book of this moment in my life. That sounds a bit dramatic but something similar happened with Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, which I read through my dad's last few weeks. Looking back I see I wrote one post here knowing my dad would be reading it, and mentioned it in another here, a couple of months later knowing sadly he would not.

Arctic Dreams was a book that took me somewhere else, to another place that I didn't even realise I wanted to visit, but the memory of it, and the state of grace it created, has stayed with me...and I think Greenery will do likewise. Tim Dee's writing is bringing perspective, focusing my wandering attention and extending my horizons, and all at a time when the natural world has been giving some space to rest and breath.

I didn't know I wanted to go to the Sahara Desert but now I'm there, trailing the swallows as they travel north. 'We all, more or less, must be vernalised - and go through dark times in order to be born into light' suggests Tim Dee of our transition from winter mood to spring mood, but perhaps the same applies to moments like now. I think we'll all grow and change through this, in small ways, maybe in much deeper ways, the world will be different, no question....but some things won't change, like swallows migrating and barn owls nesting (deo volente).

I mentioned when 'our' swallow arrived 'home', but as Tim Dee points out with migratory birds, who do they belong to and where is home...

'Where are they at home? Whose swallows are they? Can anyone, in any case, lay claim to a bird?'

We talk of 'our barn owls' whilst knowing they are no such thing.

Greenery is punctuated with literary and poetic references that have thus far sent me scurrying in search of W.S. Merwin and Elizabeth Bishop, Shakespeare and Nadine Gordimer, Wordsworth and The Odyssey, and I'm only on page fifty six. The margins are unashamedly littered with pencilled thoughts as they flash into my mind. 

Meanwhile,  whilst I have discovered another book to add to the 'of the moment' reads in my life I'm thinking some of you might  have discovered yours too. And if not books for the now just yet, perhaps books from life-moments past whose power and effect has stayed with you.

Please do share them in comments...

And perhaps this beautiful film from New Zealand will help too. I would just have arrived home now, struggling with jet lag, but I'll be back there again one day....in the meantime Papatūānuku is breathing...

 

Leonard and Hungry Paul ~ Ronan Hession

It seems like some sort of minor miracle that I have finished a novel, a newish one at that.

Back in early March a parcel of lockdown books arrived from Susan Hill, and Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession was included. Susan has always been a very reliable source of reading recommendations, with her finger on the pulse of the publishing world, what's current and what is worth reading....mostly. We might have disagreed about Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser- Akner last year, but it does't happen very often. 

It was a while before I opened it, (March 24th, I've written the date inside, it seems oddly important to do so at the moment) but as soon as I did, and had read the first paragraph, I knew I'd have to be rationing Leonard and Hungry Paul to a chapter a day...

'Leonard was raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty, his father having died tragically during childbirth. Though she was not by nature the soldiering type, she taught him to look at life as a daisy chain of small events, each of which could be made manageable in its own way. She was a person for whom kindness was a very ordinary thing, who believed that the only acceptable excuse for not having a bird feeder in the back garden was that you had one in the front garden.'

Consequently it was April 19th before I finally allowed myself to finish Leonard and Hungry Paul, and I think I could probably start over and read it again just for the book's gentle humility and the innate goodness of those who see life through a different lens; people who have different expectations and reactions to the norm. It's a book to make a reader question 'the norm' and who decides 'the norm' anyway. I've often wondered and suspect many of us, in our different ways, are doing some, if not a lot of that right now.

Leonard and Hungry Paul, both mature men are good friends. Leonard's mother has recently died leaving him alone in the house and the life they happily shared, whilst Hungry Paul (I could only assume this was probably a name given to him as a ravenous baby) still lives with his parents nearby.  There are simple certainties to the lives herein. Both Leonard and Hungry Paul work, they meet regularly to play board games, Hungry Paul's more worldly sister Grace is planning her wedding, people buy books in shops, meet for lunch...normal (well, the Old Normal) things happen and yet underpinning the whole book is a sense of goodness that I find it hard to describe.

Given how suspiciously minds are often encouraged to work today it would be so easy to jump to conclusions about both men... the mummy's boys, does the 'friendship' conceal something more, ultimately place them both on the autistic spectrum, job done, Sorted, pigeon-holed, move along, and yet Rónán Hession challenges assumptions and prejudices at every turn, denies a reader their judgements and I emerged from the final page completely grateful to have read this book. It's not slushy or sentimental but it made me question so much about myself, and at a time when we're all questioning so many other certainties too.

I'm bringing you news of this one this minute because it is a mere £1.89 on Kindle at the moment. Now I know (as a reading friend pointed out the other day) that some of us are currently racking up Kindle spending on a par with the GDP of a small nation, and that there will be a reckoning, so perhaps download the sample first and read the first chapter before you commit. And even if you do commit and then don't like, you can always return a Kindle purchase for a refund if done within a certain time frame. 

But I don't think you will be disappointed.

Meanwhile, as we all chug along in our respective restricted worlds, please do share any other good Kindle or otherwise reads that you have discovered.

 

 

 

 

Confessions...

Honestly, here we all are trying to read good books...books that I can hold my head up and be proud to say I've read through these challenging times, and then what happens...

This...

The trouble was that in an effort to avoid switching on the lunchtime news one day I persuaded Bookhound that now was a good time for me to see just one episode of Malory Towers. The BBC have generously made all episodes available at once. I loaded it with caveats...I'll watch the rest on my iPad.... it will probably be awful... you'll hate it but you mustn't mock.... 

And so we watched the first episode...

The next day we watched the second episode...

On the third day Bookhound says 'Is it time for lunch and 'your' serial...'

Note the 'your'...

And so it has carried on and Bookhound will possibly slaughter me for revealing this...but he gets as excited as I do about the lacrosse match, and the Open Day...and what will happen to nasty Gwendoline next...and who will Darrell lose her temper with now...and there you have it. It's a whole new world for a man raised on Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings and the world of Biggles, but it's a return to a familiar world for me as life at Malory Towers, the Cornish clifftop school, unfolds.

First Term at Malory Towers was published in 1946, and the series has never been out of print since, I'm now wondering if there is some sort of theory about the penchant for books about girl's boarding schools in the period immediately after a war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This occurred to me having recently read Erica Wins Through by Josephine Elder published in the 1920s. Maybe its about security and safety and re-establishing the order...perhaps creating a new version. I'm sure someone has written a PhD on the subject. Various new themes have been introduced to the Malory Towers TV series, including a back story for Darrell and a bit of scandal at a previous school. And whilst pranks prevail discipline is still paramount (and matron is vile) but girls are encouraged and praised for standing up for what is right and fair in the finest traditions of boarding school stories.

Reading very lightly around the subject  I was interested to find a piece, in a collection of essays on the subject of  school stories, by Rosemary Auchmuty outlining the undreamt-of educational opportunities that these schools represented for girls...

'a chance to study seriously, perhaps to aim for university or a career, which in turn offered an alternative to marriage and money of one's own. Games brought girls the comradeship of the team and new physical freedoms. It is easy to underestimate how revolutionary all this was in the 1920s when only a quarter of all girls enjoyed a secondary education.'

Girls could be successful because all things were possible within the all-female educational environment, and the scope of a girl's ambition (or lack of it) is a contrast neatly played out between Darrell and Gwendoline in the TV series.

For whatever reason the indoor scenes were filmed in Toronto whilst the outdoor scenes were filmed at Hartland Abbey in North Devon, and the setting is pitch perfect having also been used for the upcoming film of Rebecca, Sense and Sensibility, The Night Manager and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

It's all a right old wallow I can tell you, smart uniforms, predictable plots, midnight feasts, wandering ghosts and happy outcomes but entirely enjoyable.

I read the books over and again as a child, copies long gone, but for old time's sake I downloaded a sample to my Kindle, started reading and before I knew it I'd found a bargain box set on eBay and couldn't stop myself. Six in the series written by Enid Blyton and another six sequels added at a later date. Enid Blyton was forbidden reading at my state primary school, considered to be a 'poor writer' by the headteacher, though fortunately my parents saw it differently, and the library had an endless supply. It was much later in my life that my dad confessed that he had read them all while I was asleep so that he could join in the conversation with me...and that he had loved them all too. Needless to say our own children were suitably inducted into the world of Enid, both books and videos, because shouldn't all children experience that sense of freedom and adventure so beloved by the Famous Five.

I smiled when I read this recently in the monthly Letter sent out a by 'a publisher'...

'And we were SO surprised when a very very intellectual friend of mine said she was hugely enjoying Anne of Green Gables on Netflix....'

Don't be in the least bit surprised I say. Firstly Anne is the absolute heroine and aren't we all Kindred Spirits right now, and even the 'very very' intellectual need something that offers consolation and safety and certainty. Malory Towers is proving to be our unashamedly nostalgic antidote to so much else at the moment and I'm wondering if you have found your antidotes too...

In that little book of essays on school stories there is a delightful one by Adele Geras. Adele has this to say about the pleasure of reading books like this...

'I do not think it's possible to over-emphasise the pleasure - sometimes a rather guilty pleasure - of having no roughage at all to chew on in a book ..it's just like eating meringues all day long...the last thing we liked was the distinct possibility that we ourselves would end up in a school just like Malory Towers...'

Sadly Adele's re-reading of In the Fifth at Malory Towers as an adult found them distinctly lacking, and she suggests they are best left behind in childhood...too late, I've bought them now, but maybe Adele didn't have a plague in progress, and after all the charity shops will be open again and in need one day. I'll have a go.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine to confess your secret antidotes here because I'd love some more suggestions...

 

Stitching a path through...

I hope you all had a good weekend and thank you for all your lovely Easter greetings, and for emails from those saying how pleased you are the scribbles is here. Can I just add how thankful I am that all of you are out there too, keeping our worldwide conversation going, and keeping each other on an even keel when any one of us has a wobble. I had a bit of a moment on the evening of Easter Saturday. The sudden thought that we wouldn’t be seeing the family for heaven knows how long and Easter egg hunts of the past just washed over me unexpectedly and in a flash. 

I doubt I’m alone with these moments.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided the only way up was quilting. I’ve run out of fabric for The Knot Garden so that is stuck on my sticky fleece wall and on hold..

And I’d been reluctant to start anything new fearing it might always have plague associations...but then quilting is all about stitching whatever is happening in your life into what you are making, so I decided I needed to just woman up, eat chocolate for breakfast as per Easter Sunday tradition, and get on with it.

And so I tasked myself to get properly into Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt.  This is Jen’s version...

It’s fiendishly complicated as you can see.

I had bought the pattern book ages ago and made a half-hearted start before realising that this thing needed planning, uninterrupted time and masses of concentration.

Then I thought I’d join one of the regular online groups that start in January and make this quilt to a monthly schedule through the year. 

That didn’t happen either.

Well I have no excuses now and by the end of Easter Sunday I’d had lovely chats with our three chicks, all fine in their various worlds, apologised that the Easter Bunny hadn’t quite made it round to all of them (even though they are all in their thirties) and I was soon in the flow with the cutting and piecing. Having added more to my half-hearted beginnings of backalong I’m now well on my way.

I have amassed a good selection of indigo and Japanese fabrics and decided to use these in various permutations...

...and it’s all quite pleasing. Reds, blues and yellow ochres play right into my happy colours so this is feeding good things into my soul.

Meanwhile I hope perhaps some creative projects have seeped into your life, though only if you find them helpful... they are definitely not compulsory.

Or maybe the elusive reading concentration has crept back...

Or perhaps something entirely new and unexpected has helped...

Apparently jigsaw puzzles are in huge demand and we have a 1000 piecer  saved for an emergency moment. 

PS Our first swallow has arrived. Just the one, the advance party, sitting on the wire. He’s sleeping on his own in the verandah waiting for the rest of the team.

 

 

Eastertide

In keeping with tradition the scribbles has rest over Easter, a throwback to my childhood when playing out on Good Friday and Sundays was definitely not allowed.

It seems strange to think that we are ALL coping with the same situation this year, staying at home, flattening the curve, social distancing and many of us missing time with family and friends. But by doing it we know we are winning for Team World and getting to the other side, wherever we are.

Nature has been very kind to us here in The Shire this week. Blue skies, warmth, exquisite sunsets, and that super moon, along with good barn owl watching and I hope that you have had some special times too. Having time to notice them more than usual is a bonus. 

I've also been reading a chapter a day of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and can’t tell you what a delight it is to walk through those fur coats and out into Narnia. I first read it on holiday in Tintagel when I was about seven. Staying with one of those aunts and uncles your parents gained for you from wartime friendships. Auntie Pam was a teacher at Delabole Primary School and there was always a big pile of books waiting by the bed. What a magical place to read such a magical book. 

So here’s wishing you all the happiest and gentlest of Easter weekends and sharing a few of this week’s best nature moments (including the Belle Époque tulips) for those who might have missed them on Instagram.

 

Mr & Mrs Ravilious

The poster from the exhibition is framed and on the wall because Bookhound called into the Fry Art Gallery at Saffron Walden, when he was up that way backalong, and had a wonderful browse. Mr & Mrs Ravilious proved to be a real treat with so much of Eric and Tirzah’s work on display.

Along with catalogues various my best gift was this. A tea towel far too lovely to use, so instead it is pinned up in my sewing room as reminder that a mere ten yards away is the barn owl nest box with sleeping owls within. This an Edward Bawden illustration.

I’m finding there is much to commend Eric and Tirzah’s work at the moment. They both encapsulate something about a firm foundation to a way of life that we’ve seen temporarily turned upside down. There’s a certainty about it.

Children will walk to school again...

The White Horse won’t have galloped off...

Cuckmere Haven will still be there for the looking at...

The lighthouses will carry on shining..

Our barn owls have been much quieter in the evenings than last year, but apparently this is probably because our pair are already happily matched and there is no need for too much of the mating game to be played. No week-long relentless calls from the nest box as one of them tries to attract another one, that bit’s all done and dusted and with any luck, as long as they both survive, our pair will stay put in their known residence and hunting grounds year on year. They will also want to keep their nest off the radar of any predators so silence is an intentional phase. 

We've been mastering the art of the new digital Wi-fi night vision binoculars, my Mothering Sunday gift, and can now watch what is happening on my iPad screen and take pictures. The quality will improve once we dispense with the window and set up outside, currently the glass blurs the image slightly, but we are still mesmerised at the sight of this...

And watching the owls walk along their newly repaired platforms is a huge relief after last year’s balancing act on a few dilapidated and decidedly precarious broken remains. Ten years-worth of storms had taken their toll so Rick and Mateo from the Barn Owl Trust came to install a new platform back in January. 

But just how long could we go on saying ‘That’s the male ...’ or ‘ Is that the female.’ We’d resisted naming them last year because it felt a bit possessive and, well somehow not right. But we have relented this year, and it was the exhibition poster and the consolation of the art right now that clinched it.

Meet Eric and Tirzah, Mr & Mrs Ravilious (last year’s picture).

Meanwhile I’m wondering whether art or perhaps music is working positively for you right now. 

Please do share in comments, and let us know how you are too...

Pleasings...

It felt like the right time to resurrect Pleasings and I have a few, so please do share yours in comments...

Scoring a supermarket delivery slot might have been my highlight of the century so far. A chance log in at 5am (early bird catches the worm etc) saw me sitting up in bed ordering easy peel clementines, disinfectant (hopeless, sold out weeks ago) and other sundries. We are a fair distance from any sort of shop here so we have always shopped as if for a mini-apocalypse when we do go to save on extra journeys. We are going to try and use local shops too, now that they are setting up and coordinating deliveries.

I booked a hair cut in early March thinking I’d be going to New Zealand (this week). ‘ Go short’ I said to Ed, ‘she’s bound to take me off wilderness camping so the less of it I have to worry about the better.’ Offspringette and I had actually planned a road trip to the very south of South Island, to get as near to Antarctica as we could, so the camping and long drop toilet facilities would have been inevitable and a delight. Of course the potential for this situation to last several months means only one thing...I’m going to have to let Bookhound cut my hair eventually because it drives me bonkers once it’s back down past my ears. I have this vision of us all emerging from confinement looking like the Count of Monte Cristo or Miss Haversham or in my case Worzel Gummidge.

And talking about New Zealand. Offspringette had the brainwave that, in the absence of the real thing, we share a virtual month together. Each day we decide where we are going and what we are doing and we send pictures. I actually get quite excited about it and can’t wait for the  Sheffield Pie Shop and Walking Bealey Spur Track day, plus I expect we’ll stop at Cass Station too.

My sweet peas, sown last October, have had a lovely winter and are now raring to be planted out. We’ve done one lot and just need to build a couple more twigwams for the rest. They are Solstice variety which don’t need long hours of daylight in order to flower, so I could be picking these by the end of April. Vases of sweet peas might just be lifesavers this year.

As well as watching Spooks from episode one (2002) we’ve started watching The Nest, a new series on BBC 1 on Sunday evenings. It’s one of those that quickly takes a hold and we are gripped. A Glasgow couple, desperate for a baby, take up the offer of a surrogacy from a teenage girl who has recently been in care. They know precious little about her but decide to to risk all with their last available embryo. Of dear...what could possibly go wrong. With so many series now on hold, so no Line of Duty or Call the Midwife in the making, there is going to be a dearth of these in the autumn so we are filling up on them now. It’s all about having things to look forward to and distract at the moment too, so that is our viewing sorted for a while.

Good news. I’ve started a grown-up book and am loving it. A copy of Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession arrived in a book parcel from a friend, and if ever there was a book for the now I think this might be one of them. 

Plenty of other good things are happening and this evening (Thursday) the National Theatre are making the first of several productions available to watch for free on YouTube. Tonight it is One Man Two Guvnors starring James Corden. One of the downsides of rural living far from the centre, is the prohibitive cost of getting to that centre for anything like this, so we are looking forward to a night at the theatre. Imagine if someone were to show the stage production of Wolf Hall...we can but hope.

If you have news of any other good things being made available please do share them, and of course do share your own Pleasings in comments too. The bar is never very high because Pleasings is about finding a bit of light in the ordinary day to day, so finding that forgotten bar chocolate (or bottle of gin) at the back of the larder would be right up there with the best just now.

PS Today’s virtual day in New Zealand is a visit to the hot pools in Hanmer Springs

and while we’re there we’ll nip into the deserted but beautifully preserved Queen Mary’s Hospital next door. It won’t be blossom time in Southern Hemisphere April but we’re overlooking minor details like that.