I was listening to the Audible version of the book Children of the New Forest today.
I like books like this, being ancient and undisturbing. Authors of this era did not trouble themselves with Character Arcs or unresolved character flaws. There are no characters with unpredictable sexuality. One does not concern oneself with the ethnic origin of any person, because they are all White, British, and supporters of the Glorious Empire.
It makes for a very undemanding read, or listen, in this case. One knows that the writer has one Simple Message, which must be Thoroughly Understood. This is invariably about being good. Industrious virtue is lavishly rewarded, and idleness and greed condemned to outer damnation.
I do not always sympathise with exactly the right characters.
Indeed, I have recently listened my way through some of Frances’s Hodgson Burnett’s efforts, which are very much along the same lines. She wrote three successful books, being Little Lord Fauntleroy and others in a similar vein, and dozens and dozens of unsuccessful books, at least by modern standards. I listened to a couple of them, and it is not difficult to see why.
My listening was encouraged by the fanciful possibility that she might be a distant relative of some sort, given that she bears my maiden name and hails from Salford, from where I can also claim some family roots.
I like a story with a jolly good moral. Perhaps we are distant kin.
Anyway, the point was that whilst listening this afternoon, I was lulled into a description of the ancient crumbling old relative in whose care the Children are briefly dumped, in between Civil Wars. She is almost too old, and certainly too doddery, to get out of her chair, and is so senile that she refuses to escape the perils of the approaching Roundheads and stays where she is. She is referred to, throughout the text, as the Old Lady.
She is fifty, the narrative explains.
I was miffed.
I am a lot older than fifty. I am fifty seven and two days, and I can get out of my chair with almost no trouble at all, although I concede that there are plenty of times when I would rather not. Indeed, this morning I walked the dogs over the top of School Knott Fell and Grandsire Fell behind it, and came back to do a day’s housework.
The muddy bit beside the tarn is positively awash with tiny creatures that might be either frogs or toads, they are too small for me to be able to tell which. They are about the size of beetles, and there were so many of them that it was hard to walk without squishing them, and I had to pick my way through with great care.
The dogs showed no such inclinations and belted through with total indifference, they are probably still chewing bits of frog out from between their toes.
When I got home I made cherry-brandy chocolates, biscuits, fudge, and cooked some sausages. I hoovered and swept, prepared picnics for us and pizza for Oliver, wrote a few more lines of my current story, faffed about with the laundry for a bit, and then came out to work, which is where I am now.
Most definitely I am not quite doddering yet, despite my newly-vast number of years.
I am expecting it to happen soon. I will keep you posted.
