Monday 22 November 2010

Monday 22nd November


                Verity came round at the weekend to ‘sort me out’, to use her phrase.  It seems that my blog is not living up to her expectations, that there’s not enough about village life in it because I’m forever going into town and writing about that instead.
                “If you’re going to call it ‘Notes from a Small Village’, then it needs to be about the village,” she informed me.  “It’s no wonder that no-one’s reading it.  Who wants to hear about the cost of parking in the town?  They want to know what’s going on in the village.  And that’s another thing.  You need to be more careful in your descriptions of people.  Jessica Frobisher called me yesterday to complain about your blog.  Apparently you put her and her dogs in it and were rather unflattering.  You can’t write about living in a village and slag everyone off!”
                I found it a little hard to get a word in edgeways, Verity was running at such full steam.  I would have tried to point out the contradictions in what she said, since clearly Jessica Frobisher was reading it at least.  Reading it and writing comments after it are two quite different things.  But if Verity thinks I shouldn’t be putting things in that don’t happen in the village, then I won’t mention going to see the new Harry Potter movie at the weekend (quite dark, literally and metaphorically, but then so’s the book, so it would have been a bit odd if it hadn’t been) or meeting up with some friends for a coffee in our nearest ‘city’.  I would describe Delyth’s party, which did take place in the village in a rather nice converted barn that the owners run as a venue for weddings and so on, but if I have to be more careful about descriptions of people, then I can’t really name the ones who’d had too much to drink and started singing loudly and tunelessly as the entertainer was just getting starter, nor the ‘gentleman’ who greeted me as his long-lost wife, with associated grope, even though I’ve only ever seen him in the queue at the post office before.  I’ll just have to say that wine flowed freely and was drunk in similar quantities.  At least in a village, most people don’t need to worry about driving home afterwards.
                You may have gathered that I am a little peeved with Verity at the moment.  Doubtless it will wear off in time, but until then, I will be posting severely censored blogs and we’ll see if anyone would rather read those, Verity!

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