Getting ready

This week has been spent in preparing for a return to the Auvergne. That means a certain amount of time has been spent on tidying up the garden, reading a Reading group read for the meeting on Monday evening, finishing off recovering a chair to match one done last year, so we don't have to fight over who sits on a padded chair, and getting various things sorted out.
This chair was last year's effort, although the picture shows it without its finishing braid covering the raw edges.

One of my recent reads was Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant. The story is set in late eighteenth century Portsmouth and Australia, the main character Daniel Rooke born into a working class family, nevertheless receives a good education, thanks to his mathematical ability being recognised. He joins the Marines, gets sent to Antigua, where he witnesses the results of disobedience to the Navy's orders and eventually, because of his mathematical and navigational skills, is sent to Botany Bay, Australia with a convict ship. Here Daniel meets a very young native girl and manages to begin to learn their language. Their relatonship is described very tenderly. Kate Grenville's use of language is very poweful. Her writing seems to me to be spare, but with emotions very carefully described. I was so caught up in the growing relationship between Daniel and Tagaran that I almost didn't want that part of the story to end. Having read Kate Grenville's The Secret River, which I also found a riveting read, I wqas glad to pounce on this in my local library when I spotted it.