The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I don't know when I will be able to get on again before Thursday night, as my beloved said; perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not at all.

So I'm nearly all packed; the only reason I'm not all all packed is because I am bad at deciding things. Some clothes are to be used as padding for my possessions, most are going in my cases and being checked by the airline -- but which? Yeah, so I'm looking at the piles grimly. la_rainette, I feel your pain.

I found my copy of Ballet Shoes, and when I picked it up and flicked through it, I discovered I couldn't put it down again. This is a book I will read aloud to my children someday; like A Little Princess, passages from it sometimes come unbidden into my head when I am feeling very un-grown-up. So yeah, take away my computer and I knock out 300-page children's classics. It is a wonderful book. It's sort of old-fashioned, but well-told, with a distinct and matter-of-fact voice right out of a Proper British Interbellum Childhood. It was the book that made me realise that if you have got a talent at one thing, then all you can sensibly do about it is follow, and keep to your craft, and... I don't know. It expressed very well for me the idea that sometimes art is what you have to do. You don't think about it being any other way. And that's the way it was for me and writing, even when I was seven or eight years old and in hospital. I had so many stories in my head. They were waiting and clamoring. Can't explain it. And I read this damn book so many times the covers cracked and fell off. It has traveled with me since I was eight and all my travels began. It's traveling with me again.

When I read it to my kids I'll do all the voices, Pauline and Gum and Theo and Nana. And has anyone ever noticed how Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith lived together, shared dishes and glassware, took all their holidays jointly and sent telegrams and birthday-presents together?

Yeah. This book groomed me for lesbian marriage but good.