perfick....

I have been sitting working at my computer this morning, sorting out some orders, sending invoices, checking the bank statement and doing my internet banking.  Lots of stuff going around in my head and jumping from one thing to the other, in my usual style.  I have been looking for some blog inspiration as well.  I found this lovely site "The Love Whisperer".  All mushy and pretty and about love (most of it pretty sad, love and mushy, pretty stuff) and it plays you this wonderful sound soundtrack as you read.  Lots of new voices and new music. Very clever (me thinks).  Sometimes as you read you think of something you could write about, something a bit more meaty and thought provoking than usual.  

I sat thinking, listening, reading and knowing that what I should really be doing is getting ready to leave the house and forget about blogging.  I was not finding inspiration blog from the mushy love sites.  Time to go.  But hey -  a text message from Annie arranging to drop off some glasses at my house.  I reply that I am home.  She replies "Perfick".

That one word now has switched on the light and brought back a flood of memories going back about 23 years.  Memories of the only time in my life that I have been seriously sick, of being yellow, itchy, so terribly nauseous and confined to bed for more than a month.  A month when things just happened, friends rallied around, meals arrived on the doorstep and I lay in bed.  Flowers filled the room, new magazines piled up next to my bed and I slept.  Heads popped in to say hello from the door (all too frightened to come close because it was a certifiable disease).

I got better and stronger and was soon able to open my eyes for long enough to page through a magazine.  Buried on the pile was "The Darling Buds of May" by HE Bates (long before the TV series with Catherine Zeta-Jones was aired here) with a note from Annie to me to "Get Better".   I had never read Bates, it seemed very old world and strange to me at first but after the first chapter I was hooked and in love with the Larkins.  Ma and Pop, five children (many named after flowers) who lived in the country, who ate lots of deliciously described food, drank copious amounts of alcohol and generally had a wonderful time. 

"Ma shook all over, laughing like a jelly. Little rivers of yellow, brown and pinkish-purple cream were running down over her huge lardy hands. In her handsome big black eyes the cloudless blue May sky was reflected, making them dance as she threw out the splendid bank of her bosom, quivering under its salmon jumper."

Memories are wonderful and how amazing that the one word "Perfick" got me on a completely different path thinking about the Larkins and the English countryside and the crazy, carefree life that they lived.  Have to get my hands on a copy.