A brief vacation

You must know the delightful scene in Mapp and Lucia (true, they're all delightful) when Lucia decides to fake having influenza so as to avoid meeting Mr. Wyse's sister, the Contessa di Faraglione. If they had met the Contessa "would see in a flash" that Lucia is not the Italian scholar she has always claimed to be, and this exposure must be avoided at all costs. As she is explaining her plan to her parlormaid Grosvenor, sitting very primly and beautifully dressed in her office and writing the notes of regret she will send to friends apologizing for her coming immurement -- "where could she have caught influenza?" -- Lucia says: "Such a whirligig of social life here in Tilling, I've got very behindhand in my reading, correspondence, and accounts, that sort of thing. So for the next week, I plan to live the life of a hermit. No engagements, no callers ...." And Grosvenor is brought in to the secret, the notes of regret go out, and all Tilling is agog at the thundering great coincidence of Lucia being ill, her best friend Georgie (also a supposed Italian linguist) retreating to the seashore, and the Contessa arriving all in the same week.

I have decided to borrow a page from Lucia's book and, not to get influenza (hear me, Lord) but to take a brief vacation for a few weeks. I shall, à la Lucia, catch up on my reading, correspondence, and accounts, learn more about beer and sake (the oddest drink, surely, provincial though it sounds to say so), and perhaps cook something new. If I employed a gardener named Coplen I would ask him very fimly to do something about all that Solidago, goldenrod, and if I employed a Grosvenor or a Foljambe I would speak equally firmly about the dust. But since I am my own Coplen and Foljambe I must see about the rooms and the perennial bed myself. I shall be back, "dear things," shortly. And I wonder what Lucia would blog? Just an idle question. I'm sure it would be wonderful.

Au reservoir!