הקדמה: הפוסט הזה לא קשור לטכנולוגיה, הוא פשוט מושפע ממזג האוויר הגשום והמקסים שהיה בשבוע שעבר 🙂
אני אוהבת ימים של גשם. אני אוהבת אותם כמובן מתוך המשרד/הבית המחומם והיבש, אבל גם ברחוב הקריר והרטוב (איכשהו בימים האחרונים יצא לי להסתובב ברחוב יותר מכרגיל – בליווי ילדים לקניית בגדים, בביקור אצל הרופא – וזכיתי להרגיש את הגשם אפילו בתוך מגפיי…).
אין לי הסבר רציונלי למה (אם כי אני מניחה שיש לזה קשר לידיעה שהארץ זקוקה לגשם), אבל כל כך שמחתי בימים האחרונים על שכל פעם שהצצתי מבעד לחלון, או נהגתי במכונית, או הלכתי ברחוב – ירד גשם. ממש אנגליה 🙂
אבל חזרה לנושא הפוסט. אז כשיש גשם בחוץ, יש ספרים קבועים החביבים עלי. כן, אני סובלת מדמנציה מסויימת הגורמת לכך שזמן קצר אחרי שאני מסיימת לקרוא ספר, רובו נשכח מזכרוני, וכך אני מסוגלת לקרוא אותם ספרים שנה אחרי שנה, והם בעיני כחדשים…
הספרים הכי חביבים עלי הם שני קבצים של סיפורים קצרים מאת רוזמונד פילצ’ר – Flowers in the Rain ו-The Blue Bedroom. הסיפורים מתרחשים באזורים שונים בצפון אנגליה, וחלקם בסקוטלנד. מטבע הדברים, מזג האוויר ברוב הסיפורים הוא גשום וקר, ועם זאת, האווירה בהם היא רגועה ונעימה. תמיד יש בהם אהבה – לפעמים אהבה רומנטית, לפעמים אהבה של משפחה. האהבה הרומנטית היא עדינה ומרומזת, האהבה המשפחתית היא חמימה ועוטפת. סיפורים שקטים ורגועים, המתרחשים באוירה חמימה וביתית. הולך מצוין עם כוס תה.
ליקטתי כאן כמה מהקטעים אהובים עלי. אם תאהבו אותם, אני ממליצה מאד לקרוא את הספרים.
מתוך The Blackberry Day:
The night train moved out of Euston Station, headed north. Claudia, already changed into her night-gown and robe, pulled up the blind and sat on the edge a the narrow bunk, watching the city slip away, lights and dim streets and high-rise flats wheeling off into the past. It was a cloudy evening, the clouds stained bronze by a million street lamps, but as she watched, the clouds parted for a moment and a moon sailed into view, a full moon, round and shining as a polished silver plate.
She turned off the lights, got into the bunk, with its cotton sheets all crisp and tight as a hospital bed, and lay and watched the moon, lulled by the smooth, gathering speed of the train. Inevitably, she recalled other, long-ago journeys, and for the first time, she thought of tomorrow and felt a mild stirring of excitement, It was as though what she was doing had become a positive action, not simply a compromise. Not simply the next best thing.
ועוד טעימה, מפתיחה של הסיפור Chirstabel:
Mrs. Lowyer awoke at her usual civilized hour of eight-thirty in the morning, to the hum of the combine harvester in the barley field. It was a good sound to wake up to on a late summer morning. She had always been very fond of this time of year; loving the precious golden sunshine of Indian summers, the brilliance of laden rowan trees, the first taste of blackberries. She had been married – a long time ago -in September, and her only son Paul had been born a year later in the same month. And now his daughter was going to be married in a week’s time. Mrs. Lowyer lay in bed and watched the sky through the open window (she had never been able to bear sleeping with drawn curtains) and saw it blue as a robin’s egg between soft, slow-moving clouds.
After a little she got up, put on her dressing-gown and slippers, and went to the window to inspect the outside world. Her window was at the back of the little house, overlooking the scrap of garden. Beyond the fence was the great, golden field of barley, and beyond that again, Shadwell, the old house whee her son and her wife now lived, and where Mrs. Lowyer had lived and brought up her family for more than thirty years.
וחלקים מתוך A Walk in the Snow :
And now, the next morning… still darkness, silence, and cold. Antonia reached out a chilly hand and tried to switch on the bedside lamp, but nothing happened. There was no alternative but to sit up, grope for matches and light the stub of candle that had seen her to bed, and it was astonishing to see, by its pale flame-light, that it was past nine o’clock. With a sort of puny courage, she threw back the covers and stepped out into the icy cold. Drawing back the curtains, she saw the whiteness of snow, black trees etched against the half-light, no glimmer of sunlight. A rabbit had made its way across the lawn, leaving a trail of footmarks like sewing-machine stitches. Shivering, Antonia pulled on the warmest garments she could lay hands on, brushed her hair by candle-light, cleaned her teeth and went downstairs.
…“And yet there’s something comfortingly timeless about plucking birds. You think of generations of country women – doing just this thing, sitting in their kitchens and talking to their daughters. Probably saving all the down feathers for stuffing pillows and quilts. Anyway, we mustn’t be sentimental. The poor birds are already dead, and just think of the delicious roast pheasant for dinner. I’ve asked the Dixons and Tom to come and eat them with us”.
ומתוך הסיפור marigold garden:
What was it about her that was different? What was it about her that made everything magic? He had heard a word, “propinquity”, and he looked it up in the dictionary, and it had said nearness in place, close kinship.
They were indeed near. He saw her, if only briefly, every day. Helped her start her little car on frosty mornings; rode with her on April Sundays; swam with her in the river, when the leaves were thick and heavy overhead, and the brown, slow-moving water danced with sun-shafts and midges. They swept leaves together in the autumn, and built bonfires fragrant with wood-smoke. He remembered her at haymaking time, wearing a tattered old straw hat like a hobo, and with her arms sunburnt and her face running with sweat. He remembered her at Christmas, in a holly-red dress, her eyes as bright as an excited child’s.
And as for kinship… if that meant laughter and companionship and keeping silence without constraint, then they had been kin. If it meant going to a party with her and glowing with pride because she was more attractive that any other girl in the room, then that was kin. If it meant not minding whom she danced with, because, inevitably, it was always Miles who drove her home; slowly, dawdling down the dark lanes, discussing, like an old married couple, everything that had happened – then that was kin.