Bare Black Branches

Seventh February
There is something very beautiful in the tracery of the bare black branches of the trees against the pale blue sky. D.E Stevenson Mrs Tim and the Regiment

branches

Yet another of Mrs Tim's thoughts that I have often thought. I love it when that happens in a book. Suddenly coming across your own thoughts expressed by a character. It's even better when you like the character.

Very Sundayish

Thirty-first January
Wake very late after night's revels. The sun is shining and everything looks and feels very Sundayish. D.E. Stevenson Mrs Tim of the Regiment

sunday

We woke up at friends' home. Drank copious cups of tea. A cold drive home. The weekly food shop. A delicious afternoon sleep. Fresh bed linen. Warming supper.
How was your Sunday?

Knowing a person

I'm meeting up with university friends for lunch this weekend. I realise we've known each other for over 20 years. Re reading my letters last month, there are many from them. Letters written whilst on holiday, on gap years after university, thank you letters, good luck in new home, sharing the excitement of engagements. Many memories. Our lives are quite different somehow, I don't know about their day to day thoughts and emotions. They're not the friends I would go to in a crisis. But they are friends I've known for a very long time.

'Well, this is one way of knowing a person, I suppose; to know the outline, not the detail; to sit on the veranda and look at the contour of the hill - that shoulder, such a jagged shoulder it looks, running down steeply into the silverwater of the loch. I know Mrs Anstruther in that way - just a few jags, sticking up into the blue sky, just a rounded piece of hill with a few pine trees on it. Some day I may climb the hill and feel the smoothness of the jagged rocks, and find a piece of bog-myrtle in a crevice, or move a stone and see the ants and beetles wriggling amongst the pale roots of grass.' D.E. Stevenson Mrs Tim of the Regiment
socks
Thankfully we no longer need to snuggle by the fire to keep warm as we did in student days. What are your thoughts on friendship over time?

Awakened

We're off to Berlin for a few nights. Here's Mrs Tim's thoughts on sleeping in a hotel bedroom.

"How many hundreds and thousands of people have awakened in this room; awakened to their sorrows and joys, their hopes and their fears? Strange that I should have slept so well, untroubled by the haunting of their thoughts!" D.E.Stevenson Mrs Tim and the regiment

Some day dream bedrooms to dream of lazing in...

bed

Glistened

"The dew glistened on the grass like millions of diamonds..." D.E. Stevenson Miss Buncle's Book

Walking on the grass this weekend the dew really did glisten. I am loving, and quietly coveting, all the sequins being showered in front of my eyes this autumn.

toast dew

Complete, Invincible, Perfect

My dear dear friend marries today.

'Together we shall be complete, invincible, perfect,'

DE Stevenson Miss Buncle's Book

I think the bride will be wearing these beauties....

Christian Louboutin

String My Thoughts Together

Another lady, in some ways very different to Lady Slane but in her memories a little similiar. I really enjoyed reading, or rather devouring a couple of train journeyseant it was swallowed up rather quickly, my second DE Stevenson - Mrs Tim of the regiment. This passage slightly sums it up, and is also the diary entry for my birthday.


'...a blessed feeling of idleness encompasses my soul....
My thoughts drift across the garden and hang upon the trees like fairy lights, or curl upwards and vanish like the smoke of Burnside chimney. I can take a thought from the cupboard of my memory - just as I take a dress from my wardrobe - give it a little shake and put it on, or fold it away.
... How nice it is to lie here in blameness idleness, and let these vagrant memories flow through my body like a cool stream!
Somewhere in the world there must be a formula (am I trembling upon the edge of it now?) which, could I but grasp it, would reveal to me the Secret of the Universe. For there must be a secret, of course; the world would never roll over and over on its way through Time and Space if everyone's thoughts were as vagrant and purposeless as mine. This secret, once known, would string my thoughts together like a necklace of pearls.
But where to look for the secret - where to find it? Those mountains, dreaming so peacefully in the sunshine - do they possess it? ...Shall I find it in the swallow's jagged flight, as it darts across the garden in pursuit of flies? Shall I find it in the call of the cuckoo, echoing sadly from the pine-clad hills? Or is it hidden deep in the hearts of human beings - a piece here and a piece there - so that if you could find all the pieces and fit them together, the puzzle would be complete? But the hearts of humans beings are so difficult to find...' DE Stevenson Mrs Tim and the Regiment

idleness

Where does the secret lie for you?

Slips and Stocking and Shoes to match

I've been searching for The Perfect Outfit for an April London Wedding of Dearest Friend. I have now found it but for a time I thought it could be a little like this.

"They spent three crowded hours together in the large square room. Virginia was most exacting, she flung dresses on to Barbara and tore them off again. 'It's not your style at all.' she told Barbara when the latter expressed a preference for a brown crepe-de-chine with a straight bodice and flared skirt.... Just wait a moment till I find what I am looking for,' and she burrowed into the cupboard again. Barbara tried on coats and jumpers and frocks and hats until her newly-waved hair was like a wind-blown haystack... When at last Barbara emerged from the shop she felt somewhat dizzy, and tremendously excited - she had never known until now that clothes could be exciting... There was a bottle-green coat with a fur collar and a hat to match, and a jumper suit to go with it; and then there were two 'little frocks' and an evening gown - and then there were slips and stockings and shoes to match." DE Stevenson Miss Buncle's Book

dress

No need for a slip, I have shoes, now just need to buy the stockings.

Miss Buncle's Book

Aah my Persephone Secret Santa. Miss Buncle's Book. Village life and how we show ourselves - in private and in public. There are many characters whom we meet and as a reader we get to see them in both spheres. We think we're showing who we are but are we? We think we're hiding who we really are but are we?

There's silly Mrs Greensleeves
'She was a pretty woman and she liked pretty things. The pink satin quilt, the frilled pillows with their pink silk bows, the breakfast tray with its white cloth and pink china were carefully chosen. Mrs Greensleeves liked to think they expressed her personality, and perhaps they did. Nobody saw her in bed except her maid... but the mirror was adjusted so that she could see herself and she enjoyed the picture.'


The vicar - trying to live just off his stipend however....
'Ernest... had never been poor, and he was not really poor now. This poverty of his... was merely a sort of a game. Sometimes it was a troublesome, worrying sort of game, but there was nothing bitter, and real, and grinding about it.'

Our eponymous heroine Barbara Buncle.

'Barbara got up and had a hot bath. Her new garments had arrived... and Barbara decided to wear one of her new frocks this afternoon. A bath seemed a fitting preliminary to the donning of the slinky, soft wine-coloured creation which lay curled up in its neat brown box all padded out with rustling tissue paper.
When she had bathed, and dressed, and finished doing her hair, Barbara slipped the frock very carefully over her head and turned to look at herself in the long mirror... She was quite startled at the change in her appearance - it was Elizabeth Wade who looked back at her from the quicksilver depths of the mirror (not Barbara Buncle at all).'

A gentle book yet on reflection a whole lot more than meets the eye.