I recently received an email from a friend who sat next to an extraordinary woman on a trans Atlantic flight, a Canadian, but Irish-born - who regaled her with stories of her colourful life for most of the trip. She looked about sixty but told her she was 81 and that she was on her way to Mauritius to join an adventure-type holiday despite having a metal plate in her leg (the result of an old skiing accident) plus a recent knee replacement and a black eye (a domestic accident). She had a pilot's licence, four children, eleven grand-children and she spoke Arabic and German. When my friend left her at Heathrow, she was only half-way through her journey.
Hmm...if I get bored in my sixties perhaps I'll go round telling people I'm in my eighties and make up imaginative stories about my life!
I also did enjoy this quote from the book:
"Sylvia thought how all parents wanted an impossible life for their children - happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending. No plot of any kind. What uninteresting people would result if parents got their way?"
All very true but as a friend remarked, we could do with less plot sometimes.
And the final words of the novel were left to Austen:
"The mere habit of learning to love is the thiing."
I thought this "contemporary photo" of Jane Austen captured her essence much more than that rather dreary and unflattering drawing by her sister.
