I’ll call S a charity worker even though that’s inexact. What’s
true is her work demands a sense of vocation, certain aspects would put off
someone less sympathetic, she immediately gets on with people and she’s
well-informed. Her husband is also “not exactly” a charity worker but is much
closer to being one.
The obfuscation is intentional.
S’s answers to my questions were not only factual but
reassuring. I didn’t want to waste her time but the atmosphere suggested a
couple of minutes’ chat wouldn’t go amiss. “Just suppose,” I said, “you and
your husband were faced with an unexpected day off; how would you ideally spend
it?”
“Reading,” she said.
Break for stage
directions. Journalistic questions are not plucked from the ether; many are
intended to provoke a foreseen (possibly revelatory) answer. But not in this
case. I had no real idea beforehand. If I say I was surprised by the answer it
might imply I’d seen S as a non-reader. Perish the thought! I was, in fact,
delighted. End of break.
I do a lot of reading, myself (less so in old age, I fear). Mainly when the
mood takes me. But am I such a devoted print-lover as to allocate a whole day
to a book? The answer must be no. Am I missing out, then? Might there be bigger
rewards if I were?
A situation that had me – agreeably – questioning myself.
Pure gold.
Her simple answer was “Reading.”, which you seem to have taken to mean reading from a single book, practically without pause, for what period of time? All the daylight hours? A “workday” (eightish hours)? Might she have meant a chapter or two, mixed with a long pause for lunch, maybe even a bathroom break or a trip to the store? Is it because in your past you’ve read so voraciously that a vote to read on a day off means immersion to the nth degree? Maybe she mixes catalog reading with Substack perusals.
ReplyDeleteMikeM At her peak, and for several years, VR read 220 books a year. That's a book every 1.65909...09 recurring, days. But in and around that nigglingly precise figure VR worked in a government department, cooked and ate proper meals, chatted with me, watched a bit of telly, vilified the Tory government and went to bed at about 23.00 hr.. The tendency when reading a book is to start at the beginning and finish at THE END. Subtract the time devoted to domestic and salaried drudgery and brain expansion and it seems likely VR would have polished off an average work of modern fiction (say 300 pages) within her waking hours. Or the last half of Book 1 and the first half of Book 2 but let's not complicate things. S's response to my question was both enthusiastic and immediate and I inferred she belonged to the same to the same book-gobbling elite as VR. More particularly, I felt that her response must surely be something of a rarity these days and deserved publicising..
ReplyDeleteI am visited by a flash of memory. During my National Service in Singapore, when I should have been repairing airborne VHF transmitter/receiver kit I lolled on a bed in Sick Quarters while doctors tried their best to rid me of persistent athlete's foot. As I worked my way through the SQ library. One weekend I devoured four novels, all of which I have forgotten. But spare me some rope, this was in 1956. Later, as the SQ patients ebbed and flowed I learned to play the card game, euchre. A skill I have also forgotten.
A veritable multi-tasker.
Thanks for your immensely polite re-com to my snarky comment. L is quite an avid reader, so I’m accustomed to that branch of enthusiasm - maybe fooling me into thinking it’s more common. While I probably spend a couple ( a few?)! hours a day reading, it’s a hodgepodge of news articles, social media posts, poetry and reviews. Well diluted with video forays. The last book I finished was written by a friend - fiction - and it held my interest because she clearly drew upon herself, her acquaintances and her physical surroundings to furnish the book. People and places I’m familiar with. Thought I might find myself, but I did not. I did discover my friend is remarkably skilled at turning beautifully written and universally applicable passages - a skill I’d never noted through her first couple books and many many blog posts. Moving stuff. Without our common database I’m fairly sure I’d have quit the book before I came to find and appreciate the lovely bits. The author/ protagonist comes across as quite grumpy - an accurate portrayal. Perhaps I’m drawn to these types. The novel I completed prior to this (The Cookie Tree) was probably your latest. I could not get through “Scoop”.
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