What a very pleasant evening I’ve had. For various reasons, what should have been a book club get together didn’t happen, someone was poorly, someone had exams, someone had another commitment, but in the end J invited me round to hers, and armed with a bottle, I knocked on her door. She has such a pleasant and lovely place, I always feel very at home and comfortable. The first thing we did was to go outside to view her new garden feature which now has a working fountain. Saying fountain doesn’t really describe her water feature, which is a gently bubbling event, water, trickling over pebbles and stones and then down into a pool. I guess another time I visit we will sit beside it with a coffee, relax and natter about this and that, and keep our fingers crossed for dragon flies.
The bottle of wine was calling us so we went inside where there was what might be called a delicious light collation awaited. Our plates and glasses charged, we went through to the sitting room and had a general catch-up, her family and grandchildren, my family and written-off car, We then chatted about books we had read and recommendations for each-other. Did I mention ‘Alibi’ by Joseph Kanon? If I didn’t I should have done. J recommended and lent me ‘The Night Manager’ which I really should have read as it’s by my favourite author, John le Carré. We talked about TV and what we had recently watched, and the Snooker World Championship.
We talked about the book group and our current read, ‘Talking Heads’ by Alan Bennett. It was originally a series of monologues shown on BBC in 1988, which I think we had all watched. The eminent actors in the series were of the first order, Alan Bennett himself, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Patricia Routledge, Thora Hird, David Haig, Eileen Atkins, Penelope Wilton and Stephanie Cole. We agreed that as excellent as the book was, really it worked so much better as a TV series.
My chauffeur arrived and having been refreshed with a small Scotch, we bade each other a fond farewell, looking forward to the next time we were together.
Lois Elsden 