One of my absolute pleasures is spending a day in the garden writing and, or, reading about new things; or both. I am rarely however able to do this as I seem to have precious little time, or inclination to spend a day, just at home being me. The rise of the laptop a decade or so ago revealed how al-fresco pleasure and internalized perspiration are one bedfellow and the same. Yet, brave heart and all that jazz, today I have done just that.
Many years ago, June 2012 to be precise, I set myself a task of writing 1000 words on a random topic every day for 2 weeks. That was at a time when I stayed over at Julie's Wiltshire home and found myself at leisure for 14 days. I did write 14,000 words in a fortnight. Actually it was considerably more. Topics ranged from fog, to travel, a lucky-dip surfaced and a few nuggets of, "today I did". Which is mostly what I have been delving into since waking today - What Anne Lister did in 1828. In that year this truly remarkable person who I am enthralled by, Miss Lister of Shibden, traveled to Scotland with Sibella Maclean. En route they traveled up through Northumberland, and to quote from a new website which is daily releasing excerpts from her diaries;
May 19th 1828.
" ... Thick foggy morning. Could not have seen much even had I been on the outside. At 8 40 stopt at Belford to breakfast. A good inn & neat little town. Off again in 35 minutes having in vain sat quarter hour in the water closet. 2 very respectably mannered young men my companions. 1 a West India merchant just come to see his friends at Berwick had made a good fortune...."
In the course of this two months on the road Anne and Sibella became lovers. Many historians and writers of Anne focus on her homosexuality. I don't. It is interesting and it may have accounted for who she was, but for me there is a depth to Anne way deeper than she 'grubbled through petticoats'. Obsessive of time, weather (her time in the water closet) and the minutiae of life, her diaries are littered with social facts of the late Georgian period. Which is why I've spent nearly all day reading a new account of this journey, in the context of 'genteel travelling'.
I sat back at 5pm and looked at this image....Julie's laptop, and the detritus of a day spent with Miss Lister of Shibden.
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