Wednesday 7th December

I have always disliked these so-called reality television programmes that are everywhere now on television, none more so than Masterchef.  The competition element is always contrived; after all – why can there not be two or even three master-chefs, if they are equally capable.  There is always the silliness of having an imposed time limit, as if in reality ones guests would walk out if you hadn’t quite got the dish correct in the allotted forty-five minutes. And the silly music and the almost gestation length pause before they announce (in no particular order) the survivors or the losers, and the inane comments from the competitors, stating in almost identical but I am sure well-rehearsed lines how much staying in the competition means to them, I mean who cares how much it matters to them; whether they can cook is really all that matters. The thing I hated most though were the commentators John Torode and Greg Wallace, with their shouted “Only five minutes left” and equally stupid statements – not even sentences half the time, “Boy, can this boy really cook” and “Now, the real competition starts” and the way they kept barking at each other just like rutting stags in the mating season.  Still, I kept watching because the thing with all these shows is once you start watching you are hooked; I think I was watching for the enjoyment of seeing the flaws as much as for who won, because again, it really doesn’t matter who wins, it is the doing of the thing that is why you watch – to see the achievements and the disasters, and to nod quietly to oneself, ‘Yes, I could make that, that wasn’t so hard’.

But suddenly the programme has excelled itself – the pattern is actually usually the other way round, after an exciting start each series becomes weaker and they start introducing sillier and sillier aspects, so that you end up with motorbikes on ice, tossing pancakes to a Samba – well, you get the picture.  But tra-la-la on the trumpet and enter Michel Roux Junior with his Gallic good looks, tiny graying beard, piercing eyes and superb skill and knowledge and the even more formidable Monica Galetti, who is knowledgeable, intelligent and so good in front of the camera that if the food weren’t so delicious you could almost eat her instead. John Torode has wandered off to grill his kippers elsewhere leaving a gentler, funnier, and set against the other two, a kinder Greg as judge.  Michel is always reasonable too, he never neglects to say something good about the food, and he is precise in telling them exactly what is lacking or not quite perfect.  The contestants are already chefs in training so the standards are that much higher, no longer your talented amateurs, but people who already can cook.  And the result is not only culinary excellence but a great and entertaining show, there is still the irritating voice-over and the contestants telling you how much it means to them, and the sad shots of the losers hanging up their aprons and walking out head hung low, but suddenly it is about real cooking and taste and technique and presentation. I love it, and even though I rarely cook properly these days I feel I am learning something new each week.  I just wish Michel Roux Junior could come round to my house for a little candle-lit soirree where I could try out my French and maybe buy a new frock, though I am sure my soufflé might not be quite up to his standards we could have fun trying it out.  Hahaha

Tuesday 6th December

Having effectively lived the first seven years of my life in Cyprus, I had never really experienced winter.  I cannot remember even being really cold, and the sun always seemed to be shining, at least in my memories.  Imagine the shock then, to arrive in rainy London and experience my first dreary wet and windy winter.  I just never seemed to be able to get really warm in Putney, there was no heating at all in my bedroom, and it was one of those typical late Victorian houses with the small bedroom at the back open to the elements on three sides, and with a long draughty sash window that used to rattle in the wind and keep me awake, as I clutched the still warm hot water bottle, wrapping my whole little body around it in the hope it would save me from the cold.  I felt that somehow I was being punished, not only had we been rather unceremoniously bundled out of what, for a child at least, had seemed Paradise and into noisy, rainy, drab and dreary nineteen-fifties London, but I had lost my father into the bargain.  Maybe I mixed up the two things and thought I was being punished for losing my father, as if it had all been my fault, and my particular penance was to suffer these awful winter months of driving rain and snow and frost and biting wind.

As time passed I am sure I got used to it, and began to appreciate the beauty of Winter; the gentle white duvet of freshly fallen snow in the park, the sparkling frost on each blade of grass, the icicles hanging from the gutter neatly in rows and the bare black tree branches against a clear blue sky.  I still detested the cold at night though, and have ever since insisted on eiderdowns and counterpanes on my bed, where netted down by the warmth and weight of many layers I at last feel secure and warm.

It is only in my later years that I have even begun to look forward to Winter; I always used to dread it, the end of summer, the passing of Autumn, and the long bleak cold months before the first signs of Spring.  But now I no longer fear the winter, but actually look forward to it, that cold wind which takes your breath away, also reminds you that you are alive and so so insignificant against the elements.  And what can be better than a walk in the frost and snow, each footstep crushing the new fallen fluffy snow into hard little impressions of your boots, and that first snowfall of the year, when for a few hours you can almost smell it in the air, and then the first floating flurries and the feeling of renewal as they land blotching your face, and reminding you again that at last Winter has arrived.

And besides what good would hating the Winter do, it is, like so much else in life just something we have to go through – maybe just to really appreciate the return of Spring.  Edward and I had some friends who literally wintered abroad every year, in the Canaries or the Caribbean, chasing the sun all year round.  How awful to never experience the bite of winter, to never be able to return from a really cold walk in the snow and pour yourself a nice hot drink and sit by the window and look out on all this splendour.  So no, I no longer hate the Winter at all, even if I still miss Cyprus a bit.

Monday 5th December

I was never a fan of televised sport, having always considered it a man’s thing, and as we had no men at Putney it was just never an issue.  Grandma, I remember did like to see the county cricket scores, and would watch with some intensity as if the runs of Colin Cowdrey had some real significance for her, and what she did with this information I have no idea.

It was living with Edward that I got my first real taste of TV sport, he simply loved it, and would happily spend the whole of Saturday afternoon watching Grandstand, this at least allowed me to get on with some cooking (or reading).   Rugby was his favourite, he had played ‘Rugger’, as he always called it, at school and occasionally had turned out for a friendly game in Richmond Park, but that was years before I met him.  I have never understood the game; I can just about watch a game of football if I have to, but the arcane rules of Rugby, and why there should sometimes be a line-out, and sometimes a scrum leave me baffled. There is also the added complication of whether they are playing ‘Union’ or ‘League’, and the awful sense of betrayal when a leading player switches regimes, but I really don’t see why not, the games are so similar that the same skills, or I suspect, muscles, must be employed.

Sometimes I would come into our sitting room to find Edward fast asleep and the TV a sea of green baize, as the snooker would be on; and then when I switched the set off he would wake and exclaim, “But I was watching that.”  One time I simply sat down, and rather than switch off and wake him, I watched.  And you know what, I was hooked.  Oh, not instantly, but slowly the strange beauty of the game started to weave its’ magic on me, or was it just the restful colours and the slow glide of the mostly red balls across the green table.  Also the camera angle hardly changed, and the soft, almost murmur of the commentators’ voices (whispering Ted Lowe), the hushed audience, and the immaculately dressed players seemed miles away from the push and shove and mud and sweat of Rugby or Football.

This was a new world to me, a sport where men could behave like gentlemen, almost a hang-back to an Edwardian age of elegance; and they were gentlemen, happy to shake hands if they lost or applaud a good shot, or even to argue that they had indeed fouled when the referee thought they hadn’t.  What a wonderful change from the ‘Winning is everything, Losing is nothing’ philosophy of so many sportsmen. I’ll never forget some American athlete at the Atlanta Olympics declaring that not only had he won the race and run it perfectly, (a bit of humility wouldn’t go amiss) but that he had annihilated the other runners, “I slaughtered them, I just murdered the field man, I left them for dead.” Really?  I thought this was sport young man, not war.  And this attitude is creeping into everything, coming second, or even getting to the finals is seen as failure, winning is all that matters.  But I was always brought up to believe that taking part was everything, doing your best, playing the game, not winning at all costs, and celebrating the goal when you know the ball hasn’t really crossed the line, or trying to put off your opponent when they are serving at tennis, and cheering a double fault. I suppose that they are motivated by the money and the prestige, but I wonder if they ever question themselves.

No, give me snooker any day, with the handshake and the wry smile of the loser, and Willie Thorne and John Virgo in the commentary box as the mercurial Ronnie takes us on another emotional roller coaster ride.  Come on Ronnie.

Sunday 4th December

Where to start?  Well let’s go back to Putney and Grandma exhuming like an Egyptian Mummy her Christmas decorations from our storage boxes – and they were ancient, truly ancient.  Not that I had any idea of that, I was not in the habit of visiting other girls houses so had nothing to compare with.  The first thing to say is that they were all made of paper; I don’t remember any foil decorations in any of the shops we frequented.  Intricately cut and folded paper garlands that concertina-ed into almost nothing, but were frilly and ornate when pulled apart and hung up from corner to corner of the room.  Every year these were re-used and patched with sellotape when they broke, their colours faded so that the red became brown and the green was a dark muddy wishy-washy apology for green.  I added paper chains as we were taught how to make these at school, and the gummed paper could be bought in packs at Woolworths.  We also added to Grandma’s pre-war swags with crepe paper twists, in white and red and red and green and yellow and green.  My mother and I meticulously cut and twisted these carefully across the room, tying the ends together and adding a few balloons in bunches around the light shade.

One day when I was about eighteen I read an article on using natural materials for decorations, and painted a whole branch and twigs with white and gold enamel paints, you know, those little Humbrol tins they used to sell in model shops, and bought some long pointed purple and blue tear drop baubles to hang on it.  It looked so modern and stylish, even in our old-fashioned sitting room.  We always had holly too, and a real tree, which we would wedge in a galvanized bucket which was then hidden by crepe paper, but we never had lights, I think Grandma must have vetoed them either on grounds of cost or safety.

In the early nineties Edward and I bought our first artificial tree, but although having no dropping needles was a bonus, it took an age to assemble and pack away again each year, and each year too it looked sadder and sadder.  We had lights and glitter garlands and themed baubles, but something in me always hankered after the simpler old paper swags we used to have in Putney.  And one day in Liberty, in the days when they had an oriental Bazaar downstairs I picked up some Chinese paper lanterns and garlands, and even though Edward pulled a bit of a long face, we had an old-fashioned Christmas again.

Now, the shops are filled with shiny and garish plastic and foil, and lights of every description.  One even sees people decorating the complete outside of their houses with Father Christmas and his sleigh and Reindeer all lit up, like the Blackpool Illuminations – one wonders how they afford the electric bills. I prefer to just have a couple of discreet swags over the fireplace these days, and a wreath on the front door, and a small pre-lit artificial tree which stands on my table in front of the window.

It really is a chore getting them out, but somehow it doesn’t even feel like Christmas without some decorations.  I have asked my mother, but she thinks they were thrown out years ago, but I really wish I still had Grandma’s old sellotape-repaired and faded and jaded garlands to hang up again, I would really feel Christamassy then.  

Saturday 3rd December

We generally try to fill our lives with stuff to stop us thinking about anything that really matters.  Possibly this makes sense as some sort of defence mechanism, but in reality we are just refusing to face up to life.  And who can blame us, when we are nightly confronted with the looming financial crisis, and then maybe a new war in the offing against either Syria or more likely Iran, and every now and then we are reminded of the ever desperate condition of the famines in Africa, which no matter how many trade and aid deals are signed appear to be as prevalent as ever.  Is it any wonder we would rather watch I’m a Celebrity or Strictly, with their light-hearted air of a never changing world of pure fun and happiness.  And it is amazing how many people do not even watch the news on TV anymore.  It was always the most important thing we watched at Putney, Grandma demanding silence (and getting it) while Mr. Woods read the news in a solemn voice.  ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ was one of those mantras that would appear ridiculous to today’s modern families with their cack-handed attempts at democracy; actually asking small children where we should all go on holiday this year or what we should buy in the Supermarket.  In our day you were never asked for your opinion or even a suggestion that having one you might be asked to express it. ‘The very thought’ as I can almost hear Grandma hooting with derision.   But still, times have changed and probably for the better in the long run.

But why is it that we all prefer to run away from the truth rather than face up to it.   Is it that we all feel so impotent in the face of cold reality?  Is it that we feel unable to change the way the world is anyway, without realizing that we are the world, and the way we are does affect everything else.  I used the word democracy in the previous paragraph, and of course our form of democracy is far from perfect; how many decisions has this Government already taken on questions that were never mentioned in either their manifesto’s or during the election campaign at all.  We seem to have resigned ourselves to a once every five years combination of end of term report and beauty contest, where we pick the most likely looking and sounding candidate and just say ‘Get on with it and we’ll see how you have done in five years time.’

A couple of my friends have commented that the internet will change everything, and yes in theory there is no reason why in the near future almost everyone could be consulted about, well, almost everything.  And though I am sure this sounds wonderful, it would in all probability soon be overtaken by the big parties to mobilize peoples opinion, and like the National Lottery it would soon stop being a novelty but a chore, and more and more people would drop out, and the prizes diminish too.  Even now, if you look at the comments posted on the BBC news items, they are either ludicrously from cranks at either end of the political spectrum, or so ill-informed as to beggar belief.

So how do you engage people, how do you make them think about, let alone act on, what is important, what really matters?  I am afraid that like everyone else I do not have the answer. And maybe this is the true heart of the matter.  People are actually so ostrich headed, or lazy, or apathetic, or in complete denial, or worst possibility of all – so stupid, that they would rather just sit on their sofa and moan about the cost of living or the state of the world than actually want to get up and change anything.

Anyway, I must dash, I have to catch the repeat of X-factor.  Only kidding.  Hahaha

Friday 2nd December

What is it about these Scandinavian writers? Where does this fascination with death and pain, and the whole macabre side of crime come from, and more to the point, where does the incredible talent for writing this stuff come from?  Is it the darker longer colder winters that bring out this side of human nature, or just a fascination with the darker colder side of people? Just look at the plays of Ibsen, not a lot of laughs there, very little in the way of happy endings, at least the ones I have seen.

I thought I had had my fill of Scandinavian crime after reading in pretty quick succession ‘The Girl Who’ books by Stieg Larrson, with his quite unlikeable but incredibly resourceful heroine Lisbeth Salander, and the very unlikely but well written storylines – but I was attracted to this book by both the reviews, which were unanimously good, and the title ‘The Snowman.’  A few years earlier I had read the brilliant ‘Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow’ by Peter Hoeg, which was set in Greenland of all places, so the recurrence of the word Snow was a good omen I felt.  I had also watched ‘Wallander’ on BBC2, and those bleak wintry landscapes had worked their way into my psyche, I was just itching to read the book, and on an impulse I bought it and rather than waiting a few weeks, building up the anticipation of a new book, savouring it, as is my usual modus operandi, I dived straight in on the bus home from Waterstones.

I find both a fascination and a frustration in all the street and place names in these Nordic thrillers, with all those slashed ‘O’ s (my keyboard may be capable of printing Scandinavian characters but I am not competent enough to find out how) and a positive contagion of consonants. In this book, set in Norway by the way, there were also quite confusing character names, including a male Gert, which I kept thinking of as woman’s name. (I had an obscure relative called Auntie Gertie, after Gertrude).  The saving grace was that the hero detective was called Harry Hole, god knows if that was it in Norwegian too – they are weird enough to accept that as normal.

Well, it was quite pacey and a good page turner, but I found the plot confusing with a lot of blind alleys and the story seemed to jump about a lot between time and place so I kept losing my way.  Not that I find I read nowadays for the story anyway, I mean who really cares who the killer was, or what clues we all, except Harry, missed on the way to finding him out.  One reads these books to try to discover what it is that drives people in extreme circumstances, both the killer and the detectives hunting them, and the seedier, sadder, more lonely and obsessed and generally ‘fucked up’ they are, the more we seem to like them. Gone are the days of the immaculate Hercule Poirot or the very proper and very English Miss Marple, now we like our detectives flawed and near to breaking down and slipping into criminality themselves.

I finished the book in two days, which was quick for me, as I am generally a slow reader, going back and re-reading whole pages at a time if for any reason my mind has wandered, or I found a particular passage beautifully written or just saying something that strikes a chord in my soul.  Not this time though, I could have omitted pages at a time and would have missed little I suspect.  A good read, but I don’t think I will be rushing out to seek out other stuff by Mr.  Nesbo.  Maybe I have gotten that Nordic existential gloom out of my system for a while.  Next up ‘The Bertrams’ by my old standby Anthony Trollope, no more gruesome murders, no more alcoholic detectives for a while, just an England that maybe once existed but like a beetle in amber is now beautifully frozen in time.

Thursday 1st December

So, another month passes, and what more important subject to discuss than whether to use a dishwasher or carry on washing up by hand.  Forget the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement; a tacit admission of failure – not that the other lot’s slower recipe of cuts and tax rises would have been guaranteed to work either; forget the Euro-zone crisis, forget the windy squally weather, and bask in these reflections of real merit.

As a child growing up I did the washing up, well, after breakfast and dinner anyway. This was my task, one of the little jobs I was given, and ever eager to please I never considered it a chore; children growing up in the fifties were encouraged to help around the house, not like today’s pampered little monsters who would downright refuse to just run the hoover over, or take the washing out of the washing machine for mummy, or even to help clean up their stinking little pigsties of bedrooms.  I know this as many of my friends are parents, and I have to listen to their complaints and competing stories of the absolute idleness of their offspring, especially young teenage girls, who may look so pretty with their hair gelled and make-up on, but if their boyfriends were ever lucky enough to gain access to their bedrooms would be horrified by the dirty knickers under the bed, old socks and tops scattered on the floor, and make-up spilled all over the dressing table – or maybe they wouldn’t be so horrified, but would be comforted at finding such a home from home.

And washing up I particularly loved, it’s that lovely warm feeling as you sink your hands into that hot sudsy water for the first time, very comforting – and not for me the hideous yellow Marigolds hanging like amputated hands on the wooden draining board, I went in commando style.  I always gained a quiet satisfaction afterwards from seeing the little pile of cleaned and dried plates and cups and saucers on the dresser, and the knives and forks all filed correctly in their allotted places in the drawer, and even the thick old heavy saucepans were more a challenge than a chore.

Edward, of course, insisted on me having a very expensive Bosch dishwasher when we moved into this house, and it has a false front too, so that it matches all the other cupboards, and the fridge and the washing machine, all anonymously hidden behind sleek white and stainless steel, very modern, very Germanic, very bloody boring.  I had wanted an old-fashioned ‘shaker’ style kitchen, but Edward’s modernism won out. He was always telling me off for washing up a couple of cups, “Stick them in the dishwasher” he would say “that’s what it’s there for.”  But I found it more time-consuming stacking and emptying the wretched thing, and then the annoyance when you run out of plates and realize they are all dirty and in the dishwasher, or after having stacked it you find you have run out of tablets again, so have to un-stack and hand-wash them anyway, or it needs salt, or there is a lime-scale build-up on the glasses, or you have a leak behind the thing and have to get a man in to drag it out and replace the connectors.  I never bother with it now, and am almost scared to open it in case it smells from lack of use; I have reverted to my favourite old washing-up bowl and bottle of fairy liquid, and the comfort of immersing my hands in the suds, I am afraid.  I would happily have the thing removed but what on earth would I put in the gap, and you never know, I might one day have a dinner party again and then it might just come in handy – but I doubt it.

Wednesday 30th November

I really hadn’t meant to write about films two days running, but I had already planned and started writing yesterday’s blog ‘The French Lieutenants Woman’ when I heard on the news that Ken Russell had died.  Well, he was eighty-four, and I suppose he must have had a good life – at least he made a lot of films, though like writers and artists everywhere, maybe he ended his days thinking he had made the wrong ones.

I was never a big fan of Ken Russell; I had seen a couple of those early docu-drama’s on BBC2 in the sixties, and beautifully filmed as they were, I found them overblown and more than somewhat exaggerated; why should the fact that someone composes extraordinary music mean that their lives are really so extraordinary, it just doesn’t follow. Also before meeting Adrian I had never read any D H Lawrence, another writer who seemed to be caught up in the whole sixties artistic revival, along with my own Virginia Woolf.  Adrian was fanatical about him, and had read everything of his, from Aarons Rod to Sea and Sardinia, he had them all lined up in uniform Penguin paperbacks on his bookshelf.  I was dragged along to see the Ken Russell directed “Women in Love”, which I attempted to read after seeing the film – but I found it all a bit preposterous, and Lawrence’s passionate writing never quite stirred my heart into flames.  The film was good though, and cinematically a triumph, I found it a bit confusing having not already read the book, and some of the scenes such as the London Salon where Hermione dances like a possessed dervish and the famous scene of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling in the nude with their bits flopping about were not exactly helpful in telling the story.  Adrian loved the film more than I did, and had already seen it, so irritatingly kept telling me ‘this is a really good bit coming now”, and spoiling it slightly for me.  We also saw the Music Lovers, which was another Ken Russell film about Tchaikovsky, never my favourite composer, but at least I knew some of the music in the film.  This started off quite well, but again veered off into the ridiculous, especially in the 1812 Overture, where heads were actually being blown off by cannonballs, and I must admit that the sight of Glenda Jackson’s pubic hair is not a sight I wish to see again, quite unnecessary I felt.

I have never watched any of Ken Russell’s later films, the reviewers seemed to feel he was becoming more and more ridiculous with each release, and the Devils was universally slated.  I never read any other books by D H Lawrence either, and don’t expect to, but I did watch ‘Women in Love’ when it was shown again on BBC2 a few years back.  All the memories of Adrian came flooding back, and it was as if we were still sitting in that little picture house in East Finchley, the Pheonix it was called, on a warm summer evening in nineteen seventy-two, as the story of Ursula and Gudrun unfolded before us.

A magical time, and one we seldom repeated, so my heart always skips a tiny beat when I think about that whole Ken Russell/D H Lawrence thing.

Tuesday 29th November

I read the book first, but this was one of those rare times when the film equaled if not exceeded my expectations, and my expectations were quite high.  I had read the novel by John Fowles soon after it was  first published in 1969; I was then and am still in the habit of buying favoured authors works in first edition hardback, and I remember I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one, even though they seemed to cost a fortune back then it was one of my few indulgences.  I had read ‘The Collector’ and ‘The Magus’ and was hooked on these psychological novels, where I felt the novelist was almost playing games with one, pushing you this way and then that, and besides the writing was elegant and I enjoyed the stories. I have tried a few of his later works but he seemed to go off the boil a bit after what has remained my favourite of his, and the often re-read – “The French Lieutenants Woman”.  And we never really find out anything about the French Lieutenant either.

But it is the film rather than the book I wanted to talk about.  It starred Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons and came out in, oh I think, 1981.  It was a huge hit, and I can remember every cinema showing it, the Titanic of its’ day, but this was nothing like Titanic, which personally I thought was utter dross. The thing about ‘The French Lieutenants Woman’ was that it appealed to all age groups, and the reason that every cinema was showing it was because so many people who would never have dreamed of going out to the cinema to see a film were somehow caught up in the excitement and there were actually queues outside small provincial cinemas all over the country.  Was it the quiet and understated hunkiness of Jeremy Irons, or the emotional intelligence brought to the part of Sarah by Meryl  Streep, both were hot Hollywood actors at the time, but I think there was something else going on.  This was a film, which like the book, treated the viewer as an equal and an intelligent equal at that. The book is clever in that it has not one but three actual, or possible endings, which still annoys me slightly as I would like to settle on one as my best ending but can never decide if Sarah would be better off as an Artist now, and with a child and a possible happy future with Charles, or the sad little third ending where she seems to be rejecting any affection with or from him.  The film however goes one step further in that it is a film within a film, with Jeremy and Meryl as modern day actors making the film we are seeing of The French Lieutenants Woman itself.  So one switches; between modern day actors actually having a affair and then the film itself, and the contrast between the Victorian film with all its suppressed sexuality and desires shown by glances and looks and the actors themselves quite openly and no holds barred sexual encounters is nothing short of brilliant.  The film of the film, as does the book, owes a lot to Thomas Hardy, being set in and influenced largely by the West Country, in this case Lyme Regis, and is so beautifully filmed it matches almost any period drama you want to mention.

And the film has two endings, one as in the book with Charles finding Sarah again when she is a happy Artist with a child, probably Charles’s, and ends with him rowing her across a beautiful lake.  There is also the modern day ending and again this is much sadder with Sarah, or the actress who plays her just as in the book rejecting poor lovelorn Jeremy.

I have it now on DVD, one of the few I actually possess and often on a cold winter evening curl up with puddy-tat and watch again as Jeremy and Meryl, with her air of unexplained mystery, re-enact the splendid ‘French Lieutenants Woman’.

Monday 28th November

I bet you were wondering when I would get to this one. Well, after encountering Gluttony, Anna and her sister Anna, the dancer, head for Boston where they discover or rather are the object of Lust.  And Lust may well be the oldest of all the deadly sins, one can almost imagine Neanderthal men Lusting over Neanderthal women, or maybe they didn’t so much Lust after them but just have them, perhaps Lust is a more recent invention.  We read about the rich and decadent Romans and their orgies (echoes of which appear to be alive and well in recently departed Berlusconi’s Italy) but one wonders how much Lust was really involved or if it was more just an oversaturation of all the vices, from cruelty to over-eating and sex and the desire to perform it was just one of the items on the menu.  In more sexually repressed times I think Lust will have had more than a walk-on role.  Apparently there were so many prostitutes plying their trade in London in the nineteenth century that they made up about a tenth of the population; I should imagine that for certain gentlemen, (though hardly worthy of the title), sex with courtesans or highly paid women of easy virtue or the inhabitants of well-known but discreet bawdy houses or just plain street women was far more common an occurrence than actual congress with their wives.  These wealthy and respectable men would find it perfectly normal behavior to over-eat, drink large quantities of claret and port and round the evening off with some dirty, but maybe highly enjoyable, sex with a prostitute, and as personal hygiene was not considered anything like as important as it is today, the spread of disease was prevalent, if a trollope didn’t have the clap already she would soon get it from a punter.

So, what exactly is Lust?  It is apparently, not so much the committal of the sexual act, but the unnatural and overriding desire to have somebody; literally the Lusting over someone.  So, in modern day usage we think of Lust as the desire which causes us to be over-attracted to someone before the act, or as in Lust for power where a politician is ruthless to get to the top, or even Lusting after money where one will do anything to get the filthy lucre; whereas the Lusting over rather than the committal of, or not as the case may be, is the deadly sin referred to.  In other words it is the thought rather than the deed, which is a sin.  But if the act is not consummated or even attempted, is a little quiet Lust so awful.  I am sure that we have all quietly fantasized about people we do not know, and even some we do know, and wondered just what they would be like in bed, though when this tips over into Lust, which one imagines is a state where all one thinks about is the person of one’s desires, one’s ‘Lustee’, I suppose, is hard to measure.  When does a desire become an obsession, maybe only the ‘obsessed’ knows, and by then it might be too late.

I have only once been in that situation, as you might read in the book ‘Catherine’s Story’, and I justified that by convincing myself that I was in love with that person.  So is real Lust just another variation of Greed and maybe a bit of Jealousy, if the person you are Lusting after belongs to someone else.  And in any case if the object of one’s Lust Is unaware of your Lust who is really hurt by it.  But like all of the seven deadly sins, I am discovering that it is to the committer of the sin rather than the object that the damage is done, so the person who is consumed by Lust is actually more harmed by it than anyone else.

In any case, none of this really matters, as Anna and her sister soon leave Boston for the town of Tennessee, where they meet the far more interesting sin of Greed, something we maybe all know a bit more about than Lust.