Sunday, May 06, 2007

Family weekend

Family weekend

A good weekend’s come and gone. The son and heir arrived with the family early on Saturday and we had a good long day, with a walk in the woods, GD1 and GD3 contemplating walking the plank – a tree trunk over our local stream and playing ‘Pooh-sticks’ on the little bridge across it. It was fine enough to get out the swings and slides that M bought a few years ago from (presumably) a parent or grandparent who wanted to lose them from her own garden. The two girls, occasionally angelic, mostly manage to squabble over perceived rights and injustices, even to the point of fighting over two identical penguins acquired from boxes of Persil.

GD3 today told me that a wish she had made yesterday (apparently you have to make a wish when you blow away the fluffy stuff on a dandelion) was a double wish. ‘I wish you would never die, Grandma,’ she told me, ‘and I wish that chocolate was good for you.’

GD3, who is five, also confided that she doesn’t actually believe in fairies, but she hasn’t told her friends, because she doesn’t want to disappoint them.

My son, who cannot tear himself away from computers was to be found on mine, each time he managed to escape from family duties. I set him a task of installing a photo of the Gawain front cover, on the Goldenford (http://www.goldenford.co.uk/) website. This still needs a little sorting, as for some reason, the text aligned itself down one side. Now I find I’ve lost my email connection. Every time he visits, I find new things on my computer and ask myself what he’s been up to this time. Is he guilty, or is it something to do with pressure on my server due to the Bank Holiday weekend?

Yesterday evening, we discussed a very interesting article in New Scientist about making you mind up. NS referred again, in one section of the article, to the Zimbardo and the Millgram experiments and the way in which we are inclined to accept others’ view of the rightness of something, and let ourselves off the hook, rather than standing out from the crowd. I’ve always been fascinated by this, and fearful that I would be one of the people to agree with the crowd. I hope I never have to discover how weak I am.

Another section of the same article referred to finding that one had so many choices that one became paralysed by indecision. This is what happened to me when I thought about going on a cruise, and in the end, I booked a holiday at the hotel we’ve been going to for ten years or more, because no choices were required of me. I’m finding the same thing’s happening with Tainted Tree. I’m getting so much feedback, I don’t know who to take notice of. So it’s ground to a halt.

When the family had left, today, we went off to a posh hotel for tea with M’s several cousins and one aunt, whose 89th birthday it is tomorrow. None of us, would I think, normally pay out quite such a large sum for tea, scones, sandwiches and gateaux, though we all enjoyed it and the cakes were quite delicious. It was nice to see this part of the family and I presented Auntie with a copy of A Bottle of Plonk, having first checked that she was not likely to be offended by any chapters. But one of the other cousins assured me she was not ‘prissie’ and, in fact, when she saw the book, she was delighted. I shall have to check if she enjoyed it. One of the cousins, who’d obviously read the first bit on the website, (http://www.goldenford.co.uk/main.pl?plonk_c1) asked what happened to the hero and heroine – Richard and Julie, when confronted by his mother. I explained that the novella is not the story of the couple, not being a conventional novel, but the story of the bottle, which moves from one situation to another, with a fairly large cast of characters – and that you have to wait till the end to find the answer. I also, as an afterthought, suggested she might like to download a copy from Virtual Tales, (http://www.virtualtales/) at only 4 dollars. Alas, I know from experience that if someone enjoys a book, they rarely tell their friends to buy a copy. They are much more likely to loan them their own, as an act of friendship. For example, a single copy of The Fruit of the Tree did a tour of my village, and Auntie has certainly loaned her copy to one of her nephews. And no doubt, a much thumbed Plonk will eventually do the rounds of the family.

2 comments:

Jan said...

Thanks for this lovely posting, really enjoyed it ...AND so agree with GD3's comment on chocolate!

Jackie Luben said...

Thank you Jan, and yes I agree with GD3 too, in spite of attempting to turn over a new leaf iin the last few weeks, and averting my gaze from chocolate and cakes. (Apart from yesterday, when it would have been criminal not to eat the gateaux.)