Since the beginning of the first lockdown I have been reading “Middlemarch” by George Eliot on my Kindle. I tend to download classics, for free, as in general I prefer to have a real book, printed on paper. But the Kindle is useful for travelling (a rather distant memory) and for the odd moment when a real book is not to hand. Middlemarch is a very long book, it is a bit like vowing to read War and Peace. But I re-read Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss not so long ago, and decided I really like George Eliot’s style. I think perhaps like Charles Dickens, her writing is lost on teenagers, which is when I read many of the so-called classics of English literature. I have enjoyed both these authors much more as a mature adult.
I have been puddle jumping and leaf throwing with the young grandson today, endless hilarity. I decided to make a traditional winter time English tea, so we had jacket potatoes with assorted fillings, and rice pudding made from scratch, baked in the oven. One of the pleasures of lockdown has been I think to resurrect old recipes: perhaps it is a subliminal desire to re-create the past?
Another wonderful enterprise which took place during lockdown: The Spider, a traditional English song, sung here by the Timeline Choir, conducted by Stef Conner.
Maybe its time to finally read Shakespeare’s comedies, none of which seem remotely funny to me.
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