Heat, Houses, and Honourables

Hi everyone. It’s been hot here this week and getting hotter for next week. It’’s proper scorchio! (Heaven bless the memory of Caroline Aherne). Very difficult to do anything except sit and try to keep as cool as possible. Today it’s 29 degrees, which I know is cooler than a lot of places, but it’s still pretty blooming hot. What do you all eat when it’s this hot? I seem to be living on crisps, tomatoes, toast, cold chicken, celery and fruit. Just now it feels like I’ll never eat hot food again. I’m lying on the sofa watching 40 Glastonbury Gems on iPlayer and not wanting to move at all, not even for Blur’s Song 2. Although I did sit up and smile at Brandon Flowers singing the Smiths’ This Charming Man with Johnny Marr. I do so love The Killers.

Anyhow, a better week this week consisting of laughs with my sis who arrived on Monday with LONG SLEEVED TOPS and TROUSERS in her bag. “But I haven’t got any summer clothes” she wailed, “I’m always cold!”. “Not in 28 degrees C, you’re not” I said, and promptly gave her a pair of shorts and some vests to wear in the house and garden. “Gosh, this is cooler!’ said she. She also said she hadn’t exposed her legs for about thirty years, so I helped to liberate them. Four days later when she went home she had two linen dresses and a floaty long skirt and was very happy. Hurrah for me.

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After last week I organised a private appointment with a renowned cardiologist for advice for A. He said that A was over-medicated and promptly stopped two of his meds and halved the dose of two more. So we’re hoping this will make a difference. He’d like to do more intervention-wise to see what’s going on, so we’re thinking about that and will make a decision when the consultant is back from hols in August. A lot to think about. Also about how we pay for it. 😬 I thought you might just want to know progress as you have been so incredibly supportive. Thank you, thank you.

On to other things. This caught my eye when browsing Right Move (as one does). If you like property with literary connections then this cottage for sale/auction in our little seaside town might be just right for you. It was built in the 1960s for the novelist R F Delderfield (A Horseman Riding By, Diana, To Serve Them All My Days etc.) and is a cute 3 bedroom home built to a circular plan to make the most of stunning views over the town and across the whole of Lyme Bay. The guide price is low, and I can’t think for a minute that it won’t exceed that, but still. Yes, it’s pretty close to the cliff edge and it did lose a bit of its garden to the beach below recently, but hey, imagine living there…

https://www.bradleys-estate-agents.co.uk/properties/21861495/sales

On to reading. There are detective novels that ask, "Who committed the murder?" And then there are Dorothy L. Sayers novels, which ask, "Who committed the murder, and can we also have a spirited discussion about class, honour, medieval theology, and whether anyone in England has ever expressed an emotion directly?"

This week has been a return to the Golden Age of crime fiction with Dorothy L Sayers’ aristocratic protagonist, Lord Peter Wimsey. Clouds of Witness is her second LPW novel and is the one where Peter’s older brother and holder of the Denver dukedom is arraigned for murder and is standing trial in front of, literally, his peers. It’s an awkward family predicament, to put it mildly, and Peter finds himself trying to uncover the truth while navigating loyalty, honour and a family that isn’t especially good at talking about its feelings. (Being English in the 1920s, they prefer a stiff upper lip and long silences.)

I’m gradually making my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, and Clouds of Witness feels like the point where Peter really becomes Peter. It’s a good mystery, and I enjoyed it, but I got more out of the development of Peter’s character than the puzzle to be solved. Behind the wit and occasional buffoonery, the cleverness and the apparently effortless charm, you start to glimpse the shadowed, more thoughtful, compassionate man Sayers shows us in the later books.

The novel is full of everything you’d hope for from crime fiction at a time when social rank is as carefully mapped as the London Underground, servants appear almost invisibly, and everyone seems to know exactly where they belong. Today’s readers may occasionally need to remind themselves that yes, these people genuinely think questions of precedence at dinner are important, as well as raise an eyebrow at some of the assumptions about class and nationality that drift through the text. Golden Age fiction requires a certain tolerance from the modern reader. There is a country house, a misty moor, an unhappy lover, a body in the conservatory, much to-ing and fro-ing between London, Paris and New York, a dally with communism, hidden relationships, and re-iterations of how manners always maketh man. But Sayers isn't simply celebrating the aristocracy; she's dissecting and examining it. Privilege creates obligations, expectations and blind spots in equal measure; everyone is trapped by the role they're born into, whether they're wearing a coronet or polishing the silver. It’s not my favourite Sayers—the pace slackens in a few places with interminable conversations over tea before the fire—but it is clever and fun, and I can see why so many readers become devoted to Lord Peter. I’m beginning to rather like him myself and am looking forward to the next in the series.

Interestingly the title is taken from the Bible, Hebrews 12:1.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

Which I think is something to do with the massed past heroes of the faith looking down on and cheering on little believers running their own spiritual race. Or the Duke of Denver, in front of all his peers (in every sense) getting out of a tight spot honourably, in spite of his foibles and flaws.

I hope you can keep cool wherever you are over the next few days and enjoy the warmth without putting yourselves at risk. I feel sure it won’t be too long before we’re grumbling about cold and rain and wondering where the summer went. Have a good week, and I’ll write again soon. x