the lines of partying, catching up with family and friends and keeping my nose firmly inside the latest Kate Morton between guilty doses of ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘Love, Actually’. I mean, isn’t that what Christmas – along with red wine and chocolates – is about?
Then snow took a hand.
December seems to have been spent wandering through a world of snow and ice. The car disappeared beneath a snowdrift. Which at least answered the question of whether to venture out into that brown slush formerly known as road. Whatever direction you go, my road goes down. Steeply. With bends. Not to mention big, bad stone walls on either side. I’ve seen the results. No thanks.
So dog walks and a pint of milk became a trip to Narnia, and central heating and my nice warm fire had never felt so good. I have a radiator next to my writing desk, and a view out into my garden. Which meant it was no trial to beaver away happily on the WIP.
All that wandering in snowstorms did come with a price, however. And so I ended up at Christmas knocked sideways with laryngitis (my least favourite infection of choice), prostrate on the sofa, silenced and only in the mood for DVDs. Despite the best efforts of Phoebe, who raided her toybox on a regular basis on the principle of hope springs eternal in the sheepdog breast. (I’m trying to make up for it now. Guilt)
Which is why I ended up spending Christmas with TV versions of Dickens, including the 1976 version of ‘Our Mutual Friend’. It was very strange watching something I hadn’t seen for over thirty years. You know when you revisit something you’ve loved, and it always disappoints? Well, to my surprise this didn’t. I’d remembered it vividly, and there it was, almost exactly as I had pictured it over the years. Apart for the fact that I remembered it in black and white, because that’s the TV we had when I was a teenager.
And it reminded me that it was watching that old BBC series that had made me ‘get’ Dickens in the first place. I had a bit of a wobble a couple of years later when I studied ‘Bleak House’ at university and came up against the insufferably self-effacing Ester Summerson. She didn’t exactly go with the discovery of ‘The Female Eunuch’. I only recovered from the Ester effect much later, when I was living in London and twigged that all those mad characters weren’t exaggerations after all. (Well, not much) And at the same time, all those things that I now love about Dickens suddenly made sense. I love his anger, his total fury at injustice and his delight in all the variety of human life.
So I’ll still always remember with affection that first introduction to Dickens that made me persevere past the language and heroines and the toe-curling deathbed scenes, and led to so much wonderful reading over the years. And so much inspiration.
And yes, I did also watch the 2006 version of ‘Bleak House’ in my supine state. And loved that Ester. And cried buckets at every deathbed, especially Joe the crossing sweeper. I’m still claiming it was the gin. (medicinal, of course)
‘Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.’
Wow.
