I’m torn, at present, between feeling that I’ve done enough and want only to have a peaceful, maybe self-indulgent life and the recognition that it’s up to me to make what I want to out of life, before I’m too old. I’m stuck right in the middle. Sense and sensibility, maybe? But more of this at another time.

Coming back to Sense and Sensibility, in the Jane Austen way, they’ve really mucked up the book at the BBC. They did it with Mansfield Park recently, kept putting in bits that JA didn’t say, to flag up ISSUES. It’s even worse with S&S, I haven’t even managed to listen to the whole of the first episode. Leave Jane alone.

Mind you, the other day, I had a great problem listening to a radio programme where the reader, whose blushes I’ll spare though she’s a well known actress and old enough to know better, referred several times to Manderlay, as in the Road to, instead of Manderley, from Daphne du Maurier’s book Rebecca. It destroyed it. The first sentence, starting – Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again – is one of the perfect sentences of English literature. Manderlay wrecks it. MANderley versus ManderLAY. The rhythm is completely wrong. I had to turn off the programme, though the Manderley bit was only a small part of it. Instead, I listened to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Have His Carcase. The great thing about detective novels, for me, is that they are forgettable. Apart from a few, I don’t remember whodunnit, they’re new every time, however many times I’ve read the book or heard the dramatisation. With this one, I remembered the plot twist, but that was about all. I’d even forgotten that the body was washed out to sea. I did note the fair hints at the said plot twist and I’d guessed the murderer, which was fairly obvious really, but the finer points of the plot were lost to me. I can listen to the next repeat in a year or two and be none the wiser.

11th November is the 99th anniversary of my mother’s birth. When I was growing up, I always thought she was quite proud of having been born on Armistice Day as it was distinctive. Many years later, she told me it had been difficult, to have had her birthday on what was, in those days, a day of national mourning.