Top Song of La Bonne Vacance

We revisited some really old albums during our holiday, including This Year's Model. My favourite on it is Little Triggers.

La Bonne Vacance

What a great holiday! Despite 50% poorish weather, an unexpected visit to le medecin (doctor) and a wrenched ankle (damn you, wedges!) - not to mention a painful exchange rate - it was a truly bonne vacance.

When Les Tumperkins go en vacance, we like to immerse - and philosophise. And there's always much to observe and to ponder in La France. We love France. It has to be said (and there is a sense in which this has to be wrung from me) they are just so bloody good at everything. It's hardly surprising they're so very pleased with themselves. They deserve to be.

Monsieur Tumperkin and I tend to wile away the evenings en vacance, once les enfants are in bed, drinking wine and exchanging our thoughts. (We are particularly into our discussions about the French because Monsieur Tumperkin is reading Citizens by Simon Schama. He has been reading passages aloud and expressing astonishment at my better than passable knowledge about the French Revolution. All of which, incidentally, has been gleaned from romance novels). The thing that struck us on this holiday in particular, is that professionalism is a French national attribute. The French professionalise everything to a quite astonishing degree.

It really is quite heartening to go somewhere where the supermarkets haven't killed every small and independent shop. Every small hamlet in France seems to have its own boulangerie, charcuterie and epicerie. And usually a fromagerie and artisan patissier/ chocolatier too. Not to mention a Cave du Vins.

Even the pharmacies are different. In France they don't seem to have an equivalent to our high street chemist shops that sell everything from sandwiches to sticking plasters. They are much more selective than that. The French pharmacie - in my limited experience - is a gleaming shrine to health with beautifully balanced pyramids of expensive boxed products and the assistants all turned out in brilliant white tailored coat dresses, and all using those incredibly elegant, formal French manners. (Bonjour, Madame. Comment puis-je vous aider?). So unlike the sullen school-leavers and mumsy matrons of the British chemist shop.

And god, those manners! They are so very alien to us. The British are generally mannerly but in an entirely different way. French manners are a bit like American manners. The kind that are good and well taught and yet forceful. Businesslike. The sort of good manners that feel frightfully rude to us Brits sometime.

One of the highlights of our holiday was a visit to Puy du Fou which is this magnificent historical theme park. There are no rides. Instead it's got all these venues/sets where they put on amazing spectacular outdoor plays. Les Grands Spectacles! We managed to see three of the shows when we went - we had hoped to do four but were a bit late for the muskateer one. But we did see The Battle of Donjon, The Vikings and The Gladiators. (There isn't any French revolution related stuff in case you're wondering....)

This visit was great for many reasons. First it was just really well done. Submerged vessels that rise up, fire stunts and equine acrobatics, chariot racing etc. Spectacular stuff. We didn't follow most of the narrative, but it was all very stirring with lots of impassioned speeches about Freedom and Equality etc. Secondly, it really tickled the funny bones of Monsieur and Madame Tumperkin. The said impassioned speeches - so typically French! - and the music which was of mini-series-like sonorousness. Not to mention the general theme of the French being just fantastic. Unashamed patriotism bordering on rabid when, in the Battle of Donjon, the English soldiers came on with black rimmed eyes and blood dripping from their mouths - their greeting of boos defiantly met with spitting and scowling. Much fun.

Thirdly, there was the crowd. Very into it, they were. There was lots of troops of scouts and guides, all wearing incredibly old fashioned uniforms - boys in shorts, long socks and those proper scout hats and the girls with dashing little scarfs round their necks and berets! Fab. We had a whole regiment of guides behind us during the gladiator show and they were fantastic. They had an enormous and collective crush on the hero of the piece, a Gaul-centurion who was trying to save his Christian girlfriend from gladiators and lions and an evil Roman despot. He was all in white and when the chariot race happened, they were all shouting (passionately hoarse they were) "Allez la blanc! Allez la blanc!". They cheered all his speeches and blew him kisses and when the show ended and the crowd was applauding, the hero turned to them and blew kisses to them and bowed - and they all screamed with delight. Tres charmant.

This is a very typical Tumperkinesque reaction to any kind of grand spectacle: plain enjoyment/ sly amusement/ helpless admiration.

It would never happen here. No such theme park could exist in Britain. Because the British - and this is a great thing. I count it a virtue - it is the thing that makes my heart swell with pride - we just don't care that much. And we are too scrupulously fair to depict a long-ago enemy with blood dripping from his mouth so as to elicit squeals from girl guides.

So yes, we are back, appreciative of our French holiday but still very content in our amateur British souls.

Au revoir, mes amies

Je suis et le Monsieur Tumperkin et les deux fils are going to France! Oui oui oui! C'est magnifique, n'est-ce pas?

Oh la la! Je need to practicez ma execrable francais, non?

Mais, j'ai une tres practical approach a les languages je cannot actuallment speak. Je just pepper l'anglais avec phrases a la francais plus les gestures de les mans. Parfait! Et so long as je make sure to tell tout le monde that je suis eccosaisse et not anglais, it usually turns out that the lovely French people can speak l'anglais after all! Especially in Celtic Brittany, n'est-ce pas?

Offline whilst je suis on mon holiday. Have a magnifique couple of weeks, mes amies!

Keeper Shelf: Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh (or Pride & Prejudice with Knobs on)

I promised a review of this book, which I do truly love.

I love it for many reasons:-

1. It is the ultimate Balogh. It's got all the classic elements of a great Balogh novel including great, restrained dialogue, a beautifully matched H/H, wonderful characterisation, lovely dialogue, outdoor sex and a satisfying resolution with real character growth.

2. Even better, it is Balogh-does-Pride-and-Prejudice-with-knobs-on. It's not identical to P&P, but it does have the marked differential in status between the H/H, a stiff-necked, somewhat formal Darcy-like hero in Wulfric, a merry, sensible heroine who recognises her own worth a la Lizzy Bennet in Christine, a very bad first attempt at a marriage proposal by Wulfric, a gradual recognition by Wulfric that he loves Christine, a 'rescue' by Wulfric of Christine which helps her recognise his true value, and finally, finally, the second successful proposal. Plus bonus outdoor sex.

3. Wulfric is the all-powerful Duke of Bedwyn and if you read this series consecutively, by the time you read Slightly Dangerous, you'll have a firm grasp of his character as a lofty aristocrat with a propensity for peering at people through his quizzing glass. This book has lots of very satisfying scenes in which the heroine challenges Wulfric's chilly hauteur to great comic and emotional effect. Christine tosses his quizzing glass into a tree and he has to climb up to fetch it. She falls in the Serpentine and he has to get drenched rescuing her. She disconcerts him and needles him and humanises him. This series of scenes culminates a really lovely scene with all the Bedwyns at a lake when Wulfric abandons his dignity to perform a daring dive. His siblings are amazed to see him throwing caution to the wind and just living. It's lovely and touching.

Here's a passage from marriage proposal 1 that shows his pride to great effect:

"I did not think you indifferent to me," he said. "And contrary to popular belief, one coupling does not kill physical attraction. Your prospects of living a full life here seem slender. Life as my duchess would offer you infinitely more. Do you say no, Mrs Derrick, only to punish me? Will you perhaps punish yourself too in the process? I can offer you everything you have ever dreamed of."

The fact that she was tempted - drat her, she was tempted - fanned the flames of her anger.

"Can you?" she asked sharply. "A husband with a warm personality and human kindness and a sense of humour? Someone who loves people and children and frolicking and absurdity? Someone who is not obsessed with himself and his own consequence? Someone who is not ice to the very core? Someone with a heart? Someone to be a friend and companion and lover? This is all I have ever dreamed of, your grace. Can you offer it all to me? Or any of it? Any one thing?"............

......."Someone with a heart," he said very softly then. "No, perhaps you are right, Mrs Derrick. Perhaps I do not possess one. And, if I do not, then I lack everything of which you dream, do I not? I beg your pardon for taking your time and offending you yet again.

And this time when he turned away he kept going - beneath the trellis, down the steps, out through the garden gate, which he closed quietly and precisely behind him, and down the street, presumably to the inn, where he had probably left his carriage.

4. Let's not forget that there are two character journeys within P&P. The pride is all Darcy's. The prejudice is Lizzy's, and in this case, Christine's. Just like Lizzy Bennett, Christine takes one look at Wulfric and presumes to know exactly what he is. In both P&P and Slightly Dangerous , the heroine is impulsive and warm and the corollary of those traits is a tendency to wrongly judge a man who is not cut from the same cloth. Only through exposure to this man do they learn of his true worth. I like that Balogh makes it clear that whilst Wulfric has been somewhat humanised, he remains essentially the same, although known through and through by Christine.

"I will always be the stern, aloof, rather cold aristocrat you so despise," he said. "I have to be. I - "

"I know," she said, looking up quickly. "I would neither expect nor want you to change. I love the Duke of Bewcastle as he is. He is formidable and magnificent and dangerous. Especially when he hauls villains to their feet with one hand and dangles them above the floor and throws terror into them with a few soft words."

The familiar laughter lurked in her eyes.

"But I always be Wulfric Bedwyn too," he said. "And he has discovered that it can occasionally be fun to dive into lakes out of forbidden trees."

The laughter spread to the rest of her face.

"I love Wulfric Bedwyn," she said, and there was a wicked inflection in her voice.

If you have not read this book, you really ought to.

Skimming the keepers

There's been a lot of this (above) sort of reading recently. Legal reading. I've been mobbed at work with hearings galore and whilst that can be satisfying in its way, I'm glad to have reached the end of a particularly busy period. One more week in the office next week and then the Tumperkins are off on holiday!

I've not really had the heart for a new book over the last couple of weeks. Instead, in my spare moments, I've been reaching for the Keeper shelf (not to mention the secret drawer).

When I'm stressed and busy, I need an easy way to tap into the pleasure of romance-reading and Keepers are the ideal way to do it. I don't so much re-read them as skim them - perhaps spending about an hour on a book - re-reading the parts I love in detail and skimming the rest.

Over the last few days, I've re-visited the following:-

Strangers in the Night by Charlotte Lamb. This is a maybe 1979/1980 vintage category . I love it. It's one of those Lamb books that bucked standard romance conventions. The heroine is an actress and the hero a playwright. There's another male character with whom the heroine had an 'encounter' when she was a teenager. The way the blurb on the back is written you would think it's this character who will be the hero and that the hero is actually the current-man-in-the-heroine's-life-who-she-will-dump. Not so. Features date rape and sexual power play.

The Notorious Rake by Mary Balogh. Classic Regency category from the early 90s. It features many Balogh staples including lots of sexual healing and the almost obligatory outdoor sex scene - although in this case it comes really early - in chapter 1! Yay! Love the hero in this one. Especially the fact that as a young man he was earnest and bookish and not rakish at all. Also, his self-loathing feels real and understandable.

Equal Opportunities by Mathilde Madden, an erotic romance between a young man in a wheelchair and a woman who is turned on by men in wheelchairs. I've never reviewed it, but have mentioned it before. I can understand that some might find the central premise worrying but it's really very good and Madden deals with the heroine's kink and the hero's disability in a way that I found satisfying and real. David is better-looking than Mary and they both recognise he probably wouldn't have considered a relationship with her before he lost the use of his legs. The fact that David's disability is both the reason for the relationship and absolutely central to their sexual practices, is both disturbing and strangely empowering. There's a great scene in which David is at a party and a pretty girl treats him as a completely non-sexual person. Then Mary arrives and she's just desperate to jump his bones. For all her kink, she does see him as a person in a way that the other girl does not. Highly recommended. There's an interesting interview here in which Madden explains her thinking and research.

Another book that I skimmed with the very greatest of swooning enjoyment, just last night in fact, is my very very favourite Balogh: Slightly Dangerous, a book which is long overdue a post from me. It's omission I will rectify in my next post.