Victoria and Agatha

Current reading, between finishing the Winterson essays, the Alice B Toklas, and the Pollan book on LSD, is this biography

Which I may not finish. It tends to be full of the biographer's personal opinions, as much as the history of the person. She did thorough research into Christie's writings, voluminous as they are, quoting a lot from her Mary Westmacott novels, less well known than her Christie ones.  Like a lot of writers, the interesting parts are the books rather than the life, writing being a solitary pursuit.

Christie was a more complex personality than meets the eye, with an interest in the occult, and a wildly self-contradictory stand in women's lives. 

She had been brought up to believe marriage was the only possible life for a woman, yet she let nothing stand between her and her ambition to write. 

She did marry twice, to unfaithful men, though it's not certain whether she knew her second husband had a long time lover and continued to throughout their marriage. 

She largely financed the archaeological expeditions on which his archaeologist friend was also involved. It was common knowledge to everyone on the digs that he had the relationship, but maybe she chose not to know.

I haven't got far enough to see how this biographer handles that chapter, and may not, the book being a very slow, only modestly rewarding, read. 

Last night's movie was excellent, to my surprise. 

I checked it out because of the interiors and costume design and found it was very well done, acting excellent and I recommend it as a drama even if you're not interested in royalty. The power struggles are gripping.

And here's a montage of the general design

Good actors wear costumes like clothes, not like getups, and these actors do that. Screenplay by Julian Fellowes, nuff sed. It's good.

Then this morning, early sun with my breakfast of tea, biscuit and a ripe plum.

And last evening, a bit of painting

I've been looking at paintings by Dufy lately. You can probably tell.

Happy day everyone, trying to keep breathing this week. 

Tomorrow I call to arrange payment to the surgical center, just found out the doctor's office took only his fee, not both. And start the preparatory eye drops, for which I think I need a chart and alerts on my phone. 

I'm trying to look ahead to when I'll enjoy better vision. Bt the time of the second eye, I'll be an old hand at this. At least that's the plan.