Sarah, the Stain, and Alternative Entertainment.

Anybody familiar with The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and who has been reading my recent posts on the subject, must have been smirking up their sleeve and waiting for me to get a shock. Sarah, it seems, is not who (or what) we thought her to be. Sarah has been deceiving us (by which I mean Charles and me) with her finely tuned feminine wiles; the stain on the undershirt was proof enough.

Being a lot older than Charles, and having been the victim of similar wiles myself, I should have seen it coming. I didn’t. Charles was shocked; I was shocked. Charles got angry, and I got angry. Charles turned on his heel and stormed out. I closed the book and refused to read the next chapter.

I will, of course, finish the book. I can’t leave poor Charles to face his uncertain future alone, can I? We’ve been through too much together, and we’ve both been hoist by the petard of an overactive conscience. Besides, Sarah remains (for me at least) a beautiful and enigmatic creature; I want to know why she did it just as much as Charles does. She’s declined to give him an explanation so far, but I expect all will become clear eventually.

*  *  *

Change of plan, therefore. Having been shaken to my undershirt (figuratively speaking) by Sarah’s involuntary (though entirely predictable, as she would have known) revelation, I decided to lighten up by watching the Wizard of Oz remake, Tin Man. I only managed half an hour. It was all too frantic and messy, and I found the obvious superficial allusions to both Star Wars and LOTR irritating. Besides, Dorothy’s looks, mannerisms and facial expressions reminded me so much of somebody I know that I was becoming increasingly uneasy.

*  *  *

So then I progressed to listening to On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius. I thought of making a post about the music and what it evokes, and maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll decide it would be too tedious even by my standards.