I'm afraid to admit that when I'm driving in my car and not listening to iTunes, I listen to a local radio station that features the 'Awesome Eighties'......much to my husband's horror. He has trained our children to make disparaging remarks about this particular station. My loyalty remains undaunted. Yesterday, they played one of my all time favourite songs, Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. You can refresh your memory with the 'Red Dress' version here:
When it came on, I was in the midst of school pick ups and stuck in the interminable wait involved in trying to get a park in the school car park so I had time to listen to all of the words. They never fail to send a shiver down my spine. All of that pretence of singing from the other side. So then I started thinking about the book and what a disturbing, emotionally manipulative and abusive plot it has......dressed up as a love story. I must say that out of all the Bronte sister's books I prefer Jane Eyre, even though it too shares some of these elements....AND has a mad wife locked away in the attic to boot....yet at least they get there in the end. By making Mr Rochester blind and burning his estate to the ground, he and Jane can be happy. Happy.....not dead and tapping at the window in the middle of the night.
So then I remembered that when I was at boarding school in Sydney, a long, long time ago, the house I was in was 'Bronte'....not surprising as it was also the name of the suburb next door....yet there was also a house called 'Casterton' which lo and behold was the school where the Bronte sisters were educated. I have just utilised the magic that is Google and discovered that my old school in Sydney had been founded and modelled on the very same Casterton School which the Bronte sisters attended. Funnily enough I always felt an affinity reading about Jane Eyre's experience at school.....having been a boarder in the 1980's when I was still in primary school.....spooky.
About this time I finally parked the car.
I've been to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth:
During the UK road trip my now husband and I took soon after we became engaged. I must give him credit....he drove the car to Jane Austen's house as well.....he only insisted on seeing HMS Victory for himself. And of course, on a more recent holiday, he drove the motor home to Nancy Mitford's grave. But anyway, back to Haworth 1997 and here's me patting a sheep up on the moors at Top Withens which was supposedly the inspiration for the location of the Earnshaw family's house in Wuthering Heights:
Last night I went to our Art Collecting Group meeting. I wore this:
My mum may have done a fab job looking after my children last weekend......but she faded my fluoro pink jeans in a hot wash. The jacket was on sale at ASOS and the Chanel handbag was dug out for the outing to Derby Day.....it was a gift from my husband for our 5th wedding anniversary, which we spent sans enfants in Paris. He may live to tease me.....yet he's not all bad.
Too bad about my jeans, however, I will be embracing hot pink again tonight when I don this tangle of fabric to go to the Indian Cultural Society of Tasmania's Annual Dinner:
A mum at school gave me a sari tutorial yesterday.....it was a tad complex so I'm hoping that I can remember exactly when to pleat and when to tuck.
Wish me luck.
Rx
PS Am thinking about leading an expedition with the children down the road to Salamanca this afternoon to see Charles and Camilla. Hobart crowds are notoriously tiny so we would be guaranteed a good view......so long as it's not raining.
