#englishlight

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When Mark Twain said," Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." And when Penelope Fitzgerald said, "Understanding makes the mind lazy"

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I have this urge to live in some idyllic little town close to the sea in Dorset or Dover or maybe Devon. Maybe somewhere with a rich Edwardian history. A house at the far end of the street-that-goes-up-the-main-hill, and I want to be able to see the ships docking on the horizon as soon as I step one foot out of my door. A place so ridiculously stunning that it must be boring. I want that house to be littered with books, magazines and coffee cups from the window to the wall. I imagine that maybe now and then the townspeople would drop in unannounced with sweeties or fresh cucumbers with hopes to catch a glimpse inside the madhouse.

The madhouse house at the far end of the street-that-goes-up-the-main-hill.

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When I am in any hill town I always make a point to find the oldest restaurant. The one that takes a climb up but offers fabulous vistas. Then I take out my book and diary and order the cheapest thing on the menu( so that I can keep them coming) and pretend that I am a successful someone working out of a quaint cafe in a coastal town somewhere in North-east of England.

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“Women have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. They’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. I am so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But—I am so lonely.” 

The instantly quotable line by Saorise Ronan as Jo March in Greta Gerwig'a 2019 screen adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

The above artwork; 'Sumair' by

Amrita Shergil dated 1936 is currently housed at National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

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"I didn't know anything really, which is a strangely wonderful position to be in. Everything that lay before me was new and mysterious and exciting in a way you can't imagine. England was full of words I'd never heard before streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet. I didn't know how to pronounce `scone' or `pasty' or `Towcester' or `Slough'. I had never heard of Tesco's, Perthshire or Denbighshire, council houses, Morecambe and Wise, railway cuttings, Christmas crackers, bank holidays, seaside rock, milk floats, trunk calls, Scotch eggs, Morris Minors and Poppy Day. For all I knew, when a car had an L-plate on the back of it, it indicated that it was being driven by a leper. I didn't have the faintest idea what GPO, LBW, GLC or OAPstood for. I was positively radiant with ignorance.

Notes From a Small Island

By Bill Bryson