A Load of Trollope

For the last couple of months I have been spending chunks of my time in Barchester. It was Radio 4 that started it. There was a serialised adaptation, a very good one of the last chronicle, and I loved it.

This year work has taken me to Salisbury several times, and as I have walked through the cathedral close, I have felt guiltily aware that while I have enjoyed BBC television adaptions of Trollope, I have never read the books.

Well that’s changed now. He wrote a lot, so I still have opportunities to read more but the for the moment, the Grantlys, the Dales and dear Johhny Eames can get on with their lives without me peering over their shoulders.

Trollope’s frequent references to womanliness and manliness grated at times, but he also made me laugh, something Dickens seldom manages with this reader. His writing is less sentimental, more forgiving. I get the feeling he liked people more than Dickens did. Certainly I know which of the two men I’d prefer to spend a day with if I could time travel.

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Minor Addictions

I don’t think I have an addictive personality, but I could be wrong. I took about twenty photos of MasterB this morning to add the several hundred I already have. There was another purpose. I was using a secondhand camera, an older version of my little Olympus and I want to see if it is working properly. The images are not as sharp as I should like. I think it focuses slightly differently from mine, so I need to play with it a bit more. Either that, or it has been dropped. I am thinking of giving it to Aunt. She tends to worry about new items of technology and this camera is definitely worn, so perhaps she’ll feel more relaxed with it. She’s ninety next month. I am also thinking of getting her a Blackberry Playbook, but I need to find out what her broadband charges woud be.
MasterB was playing on the stairs; rolling around and dilly dallying. I was standing on the flight of stairs below him, so poked the camera through the bannisters to take some photos. Predictably he moved in on the lens.

One of Cousin’s friends loves playing the slot machines. It’s a pastime that Cousin and I don’t really understand. I used to love the fairground one armed bandits of my childhood where you could play for a halfpenny a time, or if feeling really flush, a penny. Sixpence could last the whole visit. Cousin remembers liking even better changing a sixpence into halfpennies and feeling wealthy with so many coins in her hand.