Books.

So, I know that I live in Hobart in 2012 yet most of the time I inhabit a parallel universe which depends largely on what I'm reading. I've tried to keep myself sane during the two long weeks of school holidays by skiving of here and there for a comforting little read. Mercifully, my children who can read, are also bookaholics....maybe because I mastered the art of reading while breastfeeding, so it must have been by very early association. Or maybe it's just because I'm a total TV tyrant and they have had no choice.

Late last week, Emma from Two Little Pirates left a comment mentioning Partick and Taggie O'Hara from Jilly Cooper's Rivals. So of course, ever since then, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about if I were a character from a Jilly Cooper novel, who would I be. Brushing my teeth....on the yoga mat.....etc etc etc Have you ever asked yourself the same question? Hmm. And then I started thinking about Rupert Campbell - Black, but I digress..........So, after a great deal of thought I think that I would have to choose Daisy from Polo......what about you?

I have been a bookaholic forever, and have a proven track record of using books as an escape route. Back in the days when most of the girls in my boarding house nursed massive crushes on Boy George, I was infatuated with The Scarlet Pimpernel. And more recently, when I was pregnant for the first time, while other women in the same situation may have been reading What to Expect When You Are Expecting I took mine back to the shop and swapped it over for The Sea, The Sea as I spent the better part of the ten months working my way through Iris Murdoch's oeuvre....all 26 novels. I can also tell you what I was reading during each of my four confinements, much to my obstetrician's horror....Margaret Drabble's The Millstone, Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves, Richard Flanagan's The Accidental Terrorist and then ten years later it was back again to Iris Murdoch and The Message to the Planet.

So, back to the more pressing issue of how have I entertained myself over the school hols. Firstly with this:

I must admit to not being that interested in Wallis Simpson beforehand, yet I was utterly riveted to this book. I stayed up too late most nights, when the children were in bed, reading it. I was shocked in Chapter Three by the claim that Wallis may have suffered from intersexuality and could really have been more of a man than a woman. Who would have thought. And then there were the revelations about her time in China, where it was supposed that she may have picked up various bordello techniques.....of the kind to inspire such infatuation that it could cause a king to abdicate. Not to mention the fabulous jewels and the designer frocks all accompanied by the debilitating poison of unhappiness which pervaded their married life. 

And then I moved onto this:

Which was also unputdownable. A story of one family's occupation of the same house, Knole,  over 400 years or 13 generations......and over that time the Sackville family saw it all. For ages, I have been fascinated by Vita Sackville - West and have read most of her books and been in awe of her gardening prowess at her own home Sissinghurst, where she moved after her marriage. (I've been to Sissinghurst on a pilgrimage to see the garden and climb to the top of Vita's tower). Vita was the only child of the 3rd Lord Sackville. She grew up at Knole and loved the house as an extension of herself. Because of her gender she knew from childhood that it would be her male cousin Eddy who would ultimately inherit Knole and not her. (Eddy was supposedly Uncle Davey in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love). As compensation, Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando for Vita which allowed her to take possession, in fantasy, of the sprawling renaissance palace that she had been denied in fact. What an incredible gift. But then of course, Vita and Virginia were lovers. Don't be shocked, but during her marriage, Vita had affairs with women while her husband had affairs with men. 

And to think that Jilly Cooper has a reputation for being racy. It just goes to show that sometimes fact can be right up there with fiction.

Rx