Ancien Regime II
What we have all been waiting for, of course, is Miss Dog’s response to the arrival of Mrs Grey. “Patronising delight” would more or less seem to cover it. Miss Dog clearly sees Mrs Grey as a dear old governess or nanny, retired to a couple of little rooms beside the chapel of the Villa (unlike the late W.H. Auden I have no aunts who have loved plants, but I do have an aunt who was still having her little day run by her ancient Nanny when she, the aunt that is, was in her sixties — the age of the Nanny was by then beyond computation). Anyhow, to Miss Dog’s repertory of “Ah Assunta, I am so tired, I do not feel well today, you will go and bark at the tractor for me,” has clearly been added “Ah Assunta, today I am so unhappy, you will go to poor Signora Grigia and ask her to say a rosary for me and perhaps she has finished the little drawn-thread napkins for when Monsignore comes to lunch for the Ferragosto, oh and Assunta, I have lost my copy of FMR, why must everyone make everything so difficult for me.”
August 7th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Since I did (and still don’t) know what FMR stands for - please forgive my ignorance - I did the usual and googled the whole thing. I am now torn between Festival Mushroom Records, Financial Management Regulations, the Forced Migration Review, and, my favourite, the Friends of the Mississippi River (www.fmr.org), who feel that “To live by a large river is to be kept in the heart of things”…
August 7th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Sorry: did NOT, of course.
August 7th, 2005 at 3:09 pm
The Unforced Migration Review seems about right. However, FMR, the initials of a very exquisite Italian called Franco Maria Ricci, is a rich lady’s magazine about Culture and Taste, nothing too tiring, of course, but lovely photographs. We hope you enjoyed the pictures of marbled paper which we got Dr Key to put up at your request!
August 7th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
I’m all for the Friends of the Mississippi River myself. The last time I saw it it was moping along in a very dark, downcast sort of way somewhere south of New Orleans & clearly needed cheering up. On an entirely unrelated point, why are you lurking beneath the bureaucratic pseudonym of ’site admin’ . . . and these comments are, it seems, still being consigned into the dark pit of ‘Submitted for Moderation’ that undiscovered country from which no comment, it would seem, ever returns . . .
August 7th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
Ah, well clearly that one wasn’t so consigned. Hurrah!
August 7th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
Whoops, commented too soon . .