Nick Hayter visited this morning to assess the post-refurbishment decorating work he is to undertake. We enjoyed his usual pleasant conversation.
The unconsolable skies shed continuous profuse tears throughout the afternoon, which we began with a trip to the Lymington Post Office collection office to claim a parcel undelivered because of a shortage of £2 in postage. The good news was that there was no queue. The bad news was that the office was closed. I took an alternative option which was to stick the extra postage on the back of their card and post it back to them.
We then drove into the forest to make
a record picture of the lake at Pilley which is avidly collecting more liquid sustenance. I chose not to walk round to the other side for that view since I was already feeling a drip.
While waiting for a train at the Lymington level crossing I had plenty of time to focus on the windscreen.
Perhaps it is the intensity; perhaps the consistently fast pace; perhaps the comparative shortness; perhaps the bloodthirstiness of the historical context of Charles Dickens’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ that renders it apparently the most widely read of the master’s novels, in which there is no room for his customary dry wit, and little for his comic turns.
Later this afternoon I finished reading the work which becomes impossible to put down; and scanned the last four of Charles Keeping’s perfectly matched illustrations to my Folio Society 1985 edition.
‘ ‘Hope has quite departed from my breast’ ‘
‘He spoke with a helpless look straying all around’
‘Miss Pross seized her round the waist and held her tight’
‘She kisses his lips; he kisses hers’
This evening we dined on double egg and chips with sausages and baked beans, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Comté Tolosan Rouge.
