Reading

I went down the beach for the weekend, just on my own. It was a bit unexpected to have no social events this close to Christmas, but that's the way it worked out. Number two son had three performances of his Christmas play, but he wasn't super keen for us to come and watch it, so we didn't. He did want us to go and see his Sunday night performance to mark the end of his script-writing course. There were seven teenagers in the course and they did moved readings of all of their scripts - all less than ten minutes and some of them were very good. Mostly funny, some dramatic, some weird. I thought my son's was the best in both plot and words but I think I might be biased.

So at the beach I did absolutely nothing. Didn't sew, didn't turn out a cupboard, didn't go for any long walks. Both nights had massive electrical storms and incredibly heavy rain, but the days were pleasant and I went for two swims. The waves were decent but the water was quite churned up which means you can't see your feet ... so both swims ended after about an hour when I stepped on something that wriggled off. Probably a flounder, but I always think of those massive string-rays around in the river and get nervous.

Between swimming and eating I just lay about and read. It was wonderful. I recently finished Juliet Barker's biography of the Brontes, which is just over a thousand pages of closely written detail about their lives, starting with Patrick Bronte and ending after Charlotte's death. I usually like biographies with less detail and more raciness, but this kept me engaged through the whole thing. I had read Mrs Gaskell's biography ages ago, when I was having a Gaskell moment, rather than a Charlotte Bronte moment, so I've known one version, but not the full story.

Barker's biography covers all of them, but focuses a lot on Charlotte - I suppose because she did the most, and certainly wrote the most letters. I had always ordered the sisters by my preference for the books - Wuthering Heights as the runaway favourite, followed by the Tenant of Wildfell Hall and then Jane Eyre a distant third... but reading the biography  made me re-think and, which is the point of this way too meandering paragraph, realise I had never read Villette.  And that is what I did this weekend, and it was really really good. Spot-on psychologically; which is surprising and humbling, after having read this biography and realising the Brontes were probably not the kind of people I would put up with for very long (prickly, self-conscious and awkward). Hidden depths.