Hot

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year. We went to Eastbourne, stopping for lunch at Middle Farm in Firle (very good it was too) where they have 200 different ciders for sale.

In the evening- just as the sun was setting- a thunderstorm blew in from the South. The sky- in between the frequent flashes- looked like flying porridge.

Eastbourne Pier

Reading Tess

I'm reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles very slowly. It's a beast of a book and I can't take very much of it at any one time. It's too dreadful.  I know Angel can't help being such a shit but when he accuses Tess of being "an untutored peasant" I want to knock him down and jump up and down on his exquisitely sculpted face.

Quite a few times.

The dreadfulness isn't just because of bad things happening to good people- books are full of that sort of thing and normally I don't turn a hair- but Hardy is just so true.

Angel Clare, ce'st moi.

The truthfulness extends to the smallest details. Hardy's evocations of landscape are wonderful- beautiful but also precise- and go on being beautiful and precise even as his characters suffer.

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound- a few blighted"

"Which do we live on- a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."