Book completed

Queen Lucia, by E.F. Benson. This is the first in a comic novel series collectively referred to as Mapp & Lucia; here we meet Lucia without Mapp. Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known as “Lucia” (pronounced as in Italian, with the “ch” sound), is the cultural queen of her little community, Riseholme (pronounced “Rizzum”). Everyone there is gentry (or their servants or the shopkeepers), and it’s set in what would basically be a 1920s England insulated from any knowledge of World War I.

Lucia decides what is right and best for Riseholme, entertaining her friends and neighbors with a series of parties involving her piano performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” posing her friends in tableaux of famous scenes from folklore and literature, teaching classes on cultural topics, speaking in bits of Italian, etc. In all this, she is aided by her best friend, the effeminate Georgie Pillson (he’s a needlework expert, etc.).

Meanwhile, her frenemy Daisy Quantock would like some influence over the social life of Riseholme, and when she brings home a “Guru” from India to teach them all yoga, it’s a struggle for Daisy to keep Lucia from enticing the Guru over to her own house so that she can retain her social control. And then, to Georgie’s secret pleasure, his favorite opera singer decides to move to Riseholme – a woman who is actually accomplished in music, actually speaks Italian, actually fun to be around. Whatever will Lucia do?

The next book is Miss Mapp, so I’ll be shifting my attention to Tilling, where Mapp lives. After that, we have Lucia in London, and then in the fourth book the real fun begins, when Lucia and Georgie move to Tilling.

I’ve discovered that our public library has the DVDs of the 1985 miniseries of Mapp & Lucia, which is how I met them, and which is great fun. (I haven’t seen the newer miniseries.) I’ll have to pick them up on Monday!

Day 1233: Happy cats!

We had a doe in J's yard for most of the day, and sometimes a buck was here too. The cats were fascinated. Here we have Azalyn looking at her, Ambrose done with looking at her and walking away, and glimpses of Blitzen's hindquarters and Theo's white feet in the foreground.

And now, if only they knew, the cats would be greatly relieved that our friends decided to drive all the way from Crater Lake to Portland today and didn't stop here at all, let alone spend the night!

Also...

Tonight was the first night of Shakespeare in the Park, and although I wasn't in the mood to go, it seemed like a good plan anyway... it'll be ten degrees hotter next week, and the next three weeks could well be smokier. We did have some smoke in the morning, but it had cleared up by afternoon.

The play is "Much Ado About Nothing," which I've seen in film form multiple times, so around 6:40 pm I thought, okay, I could go watch the last third of it. (It had started at 6 pm.) So I got dressed, filled my water bottle, opened the front door, and... big fat raindrops were plunking on the ground! I went back and checked the forecast: 0% chance of rain. Nevertheless. It lasted about ten minutes, but by then the ground was wet. And although it was entirely dry when I went on a walk an hour and a half later, I don't know how quickly that happened.

So it was a good thing that I was so slow in deciding to go! Glad I stayed home this time.