darlings
we shall give space for Rumer Godden to speak – and illustrate some of her words with our own vision of the world.
it feels as if Rumer Godden has been staying with us for a few weeks while we read the 2nd part of her autobiography –
when we left this morning at 06:50 hours to meet a friend who lives on the next street it was still misty and the sun had not yet blown away the marine layer – we walked together through the still-quiet streets and talked about his summer on a mystical island and caught up with everything that has happened in both our lives and that wanted to be brought out into the sunlight and examined and mused over and put away in a new place with a sigh of satisfaction and then we stopped and drank coffee and the sun became hot, suddenly, and we walked back, slower than before, in the emerging heat of day.
but when we used the key to get back into the building and walk up the back stairs (past the swimming pool and over the car port) and into the apartment –
r u m e r g o d d e n had left.
sadly bereft, we feel.
and yet glad she came to stay.
but all is not lost – Rumer is forever present in the midst of the tangles of the electronic impulses that underpin the interweb – can you see this Transmission in your Territory?
what *did* we do until the interweb came along? – writers were left inside their books – but now we can hear them (*shivers*) forever.
the Library has Requested Rumer’s return (we wonder who has asked for her next).
luckily they sent us an email (so Modern, as William would say) and told us they have a Huge Pile of books awaiting us.
isn’t life delicious?
Thank you for this, I have a Rumer Godden waiting and have moved it to the top of the pile. Kingfishers Catch Fire, title from a poem by Hopkins, story set in Kashmir, India, main character a determined independent woman named Sophie. Can’t wait.
we bet she was christened Sophia and the headmistress called her “So-Phi-Ah”
Rumer writes about those sorts of gels.
I am reading your post with delight. And how lovely it is to listen to Rumer; I didn’t know that one could. Yet, there she is, with daffodils, just as it is here, right now.
we feel SURE we looked for her before so this is a New Addition to the Interweb and a very welcome one.
aren’t daffodils the most happiest of blooms?
Indeed they are. Did you feel happy when she said that books should take a long time to write, preferably with pen and paper ? :)
we have a muse that types faster than we write with ink pen on thick vellum though ;-)
Ah, well, it ‘pays’ to keep the muse happy!
Dearest G
A library requesting a return, especially of infrequently borrowed books always has carries a frisson for me… why? Who? Why now?
Someone else will be having dinner with your recent house guest.
Exciting and disconcerting all at once.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
agreed.
we always slink into the library and can’t quite meet the librarians eyes as we feel nakedly vulnerable at the sheer Volume (and rich mixture) of our Requests.
and we always look at the other books on the shelves just to see what other people have Requested.
*shivers*
Purple toes! get you west coast lady.
You’ll be pleased to hear it is raining at the seaside today. I imagine there are lots of people who don’t have lovely cottages huddling in kagols eating chips and still smiling xx
do you remember how you kept offering me a Kagol in Cornwall? ;-) *giggles*