1. I bought a muumuu a couple of weeks ago at Sears. Sears pajamas are an excellent and fashionable bargain.
1a. When the ladies around the library mention a sale at Sears, I listen with interest.
2. An elderly lady signing out books about the history of the Acadians in Canada complimented my (super comfortable and stylish) sandals, claiming they looked very "sensible." I was so flattered.
3. I am reading a LOT of Joanna Trollope, and would love to just stroll right into one of her domestic melodramas. There really is nothing like a British woman novelist, I tell you (see also: Fay Weldon, Barbara Pym, et al).
3a. After googling Barbara Pym, I am both stoked that she also went to St. Hilda's College (okay okay, it was the one at Oxford, whatever. Close enough, says I) and disappointed that the Barbara Pym Society has a Facebook page. I would rather believe that they communicate via tart, typewritten telegrams.
3ai. Nevertheless, I am now thinking of joining the Barbara Pym Society.
4. I find myself feeling a kinship with the people who take the time to write letters to the editors at People Magazine. Example:
Thank you for the interview with Rebecca Budig. I have admired her since her debut as Greenlee Smythe on All My Children in 1999. I met Ms. Budig recently at the Beverly Center shopping complex in Los Angeles, and she chatted and joked with me as if we had been friends for years. I wish this special lady much happiness!
from Magnolia Boddy, Los Angeles, Calif.
Indeed, Magnolia. Don't we ALL wish this special lady much happiness.
4a. If we're truth-telling here, I should probably admit that in 1994 I went to see Heather Tom, aka the original Victoria on the Young and the Restless, at the Eaton Centre in Hamilton. She entered the room via descending glass elevator, and it was awesome.
5. I am seriously offended by reinterpretations of classics from my childhood. Example: Ramona and Beezus on the silver screen. I don't care if it's great and critically acclaimed (which I bet it isn't. I'm not even checking, that's how mad I am)--it will be a cold day in hell before I will accept Ginnifer Goodwin as Aunt Bea.
5a. I think Beverly Cleary would be okay with this anger--she strikes me as a pretty scrappy old lady. JUST LIKE ME.
If you need me, I'll be planning my trip to the UK to go on the Barbara Pym Walking Tour.
The Joanna Trollope novel is so popular and so associated with a particular class and age of woman in Britain (not 80, but maybe in her late forties, about to become or already is an empty nester with sons/daughters at university), lives in a semi-rural but elegant setting, wears green wellington boots and has a golden retriever) that it created its own genre name: the AGA Saga (named for a popular wood stove fashionable in the upper middle class rural set in Britain)
ReplyDeleteMy two pence:
ReplyDelete1. Why isn't "Magnolia Boddy" one of my aliases?
2. I am the kind of old lady who only reads the classics and drinks sherry in the afternoon...okay, more like 11am, but who cares? My children never call anyway.
3. Now that you're in your thirties, Hollywood, flash-in-the-pan pop stars, and teen television dramas will repeatedly rape your childhood while all around you 20-year-olds will exclaim, "Have you ever heard of a movie called 'The Princess Bride'? It's, like, really old, but, like, totally HILARIOUS!"
Welcome.
That was three pence, if you're counting. and re. number 3, I am okay with said rape if it stars Zac Efron wherever possible.
ReplyDelete...ohhh, that could be interpreted poorly if read in a vacuum.
ANDREW, you have CHANGED MY LIFE with this revelation.
ReplyDeleteI totally read that in a vacuum.
ReplyDelete