I’ve spent a lot of time with Vera Stanhope over the last few weeks. I’ve admired her brilliance, been frustrated by her scruffiness, and worried about her existential wellbeing. In real life, I don’t think I would enjoy Vera, but in quarantine she’s been a very welcome distraction. Vera will certainly be added to the list of fictional detectives who have compelled me into and through a lifelong series of escapist adventures, and heaven knows escapism has been even more important lately. Fiction has always been my best escape.
“I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist.”
― Berkeley Breathed
It’s been a gorgeous June, and I’ve also indulged in some garden escapes, both at home, where our pond with its new liner has attracted toad song which has resulted in copious toad spawn and will soon produce hordes of toad tadpoles :
and nearby at TBG, where I can admire the gardens (roses, the last of the peonies, the first of the lilies) without further destroying my knees.
“If you get far enough away you’ll be on your way back home. ” Tom Waits
Really, why go anywhere? I’m in my own home with people I love and, basically, everything I could want. Unless I want to get out, visit other places, see other people, and eat a good meal that someone else prepares and serves. I want all that. So far I don’t want it enough to risk getting sick.
Someday I hope to look back on this summer from a distance, and I hope it feels as unreal then as it does now.
“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.”
― Neil Gaiman
