April doings

Another month past. This year seems to be flying along as we are planning our first visit of the year to the house in France. Meanwhile a short break in the Lake District was very enjoyable and the weather just right. The fisrt day f our visit was fairly typical Lakes weather, rainy, cool and cloudy and was spent visiting friends up there, but the remaing few days were lovely, warm and generally sunny, ideal for walking, which we did for a couple of days. The day we left for home , the lake was like glass , reflecting the boats perfectly.

While there I did a little reading, mainly during the evening after dinner ( not prepared by me, thank goodness) and got well into Antonia Fraser's Must You Go, about her affair with and marriage to Harold Pinter. I enjoyed this very much, although I'm not a great biography reader. The life these two writers eventually settled into sounds at once slightly bohemian but well-orderd at the same time, although thinking back, her description of her early life at home in north Oxford, before her father Lord Longford inherited his title, perhaps life wasn't always as well-ordered as we like to think. The book is sometimes described as a love letter to Harold Pinter, but there is no trace of sentimentality in it, not that any would be expected from Antonia Fraser's pen. It is a wonderful description of the life of two writers, both supportive of each others work. Although Harold Pinter is described elsewhere as being an angry man, here he comes across as passionate in his opinions, sometimes angry but more often vehement in his arguments. His moods seem completely normal to me, the moods of a man who cares deeply about things and is unafraid of others opinions.