In Which I Talk Like Georgette Heyer

My husband has been traveling a ton. Out of five weeks, he was gone three and a half, and then Friday I got this text: “Hi Love, Sorry but I need to work at the office late tonight to finish the second part of this urgent doc.”

Anyone who knows how I’ve been doing lately will guess at the nature of my response: “Alright. Too bad since I’ve sunk to the point of depression where I ordered another Georgette Heyer book on Kindle, finished the rest of the ice cream, and can’t leave my bed. But I’ll be fine. After all, you’re home tomorrow for an entire day before you have to leave again.”

He responded: “Ok I’ll work from home.”

I love Georgette Heyer and her romance novels set in the regency period. I can easily get lost in them. I’m grateful that she was very prolific and there are 50+ books to read. I’m currently going through some of them a second time since I’ve already read everything. So I know you’ll not mind if I drift into regency speak to tell you just how blue-deviled I really am – and this despite the most enchanting spring.

We are surrounded by  a riot of colour and scents –

the profusion of spring.

The apricots are budding

and the linden tree too.

The small tulip tree has its one cherished blossom on display.

And the spring flowers are at their finest.

This is the warmest Paris has been since 1880, but that is dutch comfort. If there is a sudden freak frost (which is a distinct possibility since we are mid-March) we shall truly be in the suds. There won’t be a blossom left untouched, and we’ll have to forego our harvest of peaches, plums and apricots, leaving us without a feather to fly with – at least where the fruit is concerned.

Perhaps we are raising a breeze over nothing, because as it stands now, it seems impossible that we’ll be razed by a frost.

It was all hands on deck with these two regular out and outers for getting our new trees in the ground.

Everyone helped, even this pink of the ton.

Well, everyone except this damsel, who tried to cut a wheedle, saying that she was quite done up with her arm in a cast, and she’d as lief sit quietly to calm her overwrought constitution. . .

When there is something distasteful to be done, she knows how to make herself scarce. No one can say of her she has more hair than wit.

But I told her she was doing it much too brown. She wasn’t going to get me to buy such a Banbury story, and should stop pitching the gammon and start picking weeds.

Our garden was starting to take shape, and I began to hope that we might come about right and tight.

But then today, our faithful hunting hound has shown himself to be a complete rake. Or rather, he has kept true to his nature; for no sooner did my husband leave me (again) to travel to London, did the beast lead the way on a hunting expedition (not of my choosing), and bring me a pigeon with its wings still flapping feebly. Nothing could induce him to give up his prize, and though I fully meant to leave him outside of the gate until he dropped it, he ran around to the front and sat patiently until someone saw him and rang the bell, and my kids let him in.

This put me out of all countenance and I was in high dudgeon, let me assure you. The bird is now properly mauled and no longer flapping its wings. The dog, I wish at Jericho. But the corpse has at least kept him so occupied he doesn’t have time to kick up anymore larks.

So you can see why I might be a bit knocked-up, fagged to death, and in a bit of a miff. My husband is gone, there is much to do, and it’s bellows to mend with me. You see, life has brought me to a Point Non Plus.

But as long as I have health, loved ones, and a roof over our heads . . . as long as the warm afternoon sun will filter through and light up the bouquet of spring blossoms I have surrounded myself with, I am determined not to be mawkish.

You won’t find me wearing the willow.

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Need a code for the slang words? Most of them are found here.

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