Just in Passing....

If any of you have been watching the BBC's recent dramatisation of "Cranford" it might be of some little interest to you to know that I have been watching it too. With great delight - not least because it has suggested that there is still a fondness for that sort of thing, which is also, to a certain modest extent, my sort of thing...

That wasn't actually what I wanted to tell you though. What I actually wanted to tell you was that in watching Francesca Annis's splendid portrayal of Lady Ludlow, it began to seem to me that here was the face and manner I had always somehow had in mind for my own Lady Macauley!

So, if it would please you to be able to envisage her at all, that is what I believe she would have looked like, and that her demeanour......

I shall be back later to end the story on a happier note. In the meantime, I can tell you that they have buried the poor old lady in the cold ground of the little churchyard where Jack has lain these almost thirty years - and are now gone down to Flory, where they mean to try to celebrate their first Christmas without her. In the spring, they will go to Tuscany.....