Bri Fidelity > Recent Status Updates

Three big problems:

1. I don't like any of these allegedly lovely people or their allegedly enchanting upper-middle-class enclave.
2. The viewpoint character should really be one of the inhabitants of this evil property and not the neighbour-lady, surely?
3. Even after a whole novel of this nonsense, I don't think I'd actually believe this property was evil even if I were the neighbour-lady.

'Like me, she had gone "out" and studied hairdressing. She had never stayed current with the new styles though, and everyone had their hair done at her place. All the hair in town remains in a 1980s limbo. Farrah Fawcett or Princess Di dos for the ladies or Bon Jovi-like mullets for the men. I love my mullet.'

Definitely one of the weirder and more prolonged poltergeist cases I've ever encountered (the family give the ghost his own bedroom, and dolls to play with, and he puts up his own Christmas decorations; he writes fan mail to mid-century bishonen Jeremy Spenser; his ever-evolving backstory is a thing of wonder) and also one of the most alarming, since the stress almost certainly killed the family matriarch.

Debbie's narration gets more diva-like the more she settles - post-1980s - into her role as rock royalty. Which is fair.

'In the first half of the 18th Century, it was estimated that around 20% of weddings were clandestine. The most popular setting was the Fleet debtors' prison - of all places - and later the prison environs; ceremonies were conducted by clergymen who were already in jail, thus could not be threatened with imprisonment, and who turned a deeply irreligious blind eye to pregnancy, coercion, incest and bigamy.'

My favourites were the tales of bipedal dog-headed dudes, just strolling around Britain in people-clothes trying to look inconspicuous.

No, really, that's a consistent part of the lore: the feeling witnesses get that these poor dudes have a human disguise that has somehow failed and now they're, like, trying to brazen it out until they get home. (Which is such a British thing to do.)

'Ibrahim is going to Darwell Prison on Wednesday, to talk to Connie. Johnson. He asked me what magazine she might like to read, but I wasn't sure. I like Woman & Home, but I didn't think it would be Connie's thing, so I asked Joanna, and and I told her that Connie was a thirty-something drug dealer who always wore lovely shoes, and she suggested Grazia.'

'March it is, and march I must.'

Oh, good; it ended without Captain John being revealed as a sex predator.

Between him and the cobra, I have literally no idea how Harriet's parents are running that household.

'This is not an artistically rounded-off ghost story, and nothing is explained in it, and there seems to be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be told. You must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you have ever come close to, are like this in these respects[.]'

-- Edith Nesbit, 'The Shadow'

For some reason, I thought this would be more whimsical and less harrowing.

I... actually prefer the film.

The Victorian adventure plot is livened up by the appearance of cyberpunk girl User Annie, who talks in an indecipherable attempt at netizen jargon and hails from the far-too-near-for-this-nonsense future of 1999:

'Clive asked where the woman was from, and that, at least, drew a coherent answer. "San Francisco," she said[.[ "Default option San Francisco," she went on. "Absolute address was London before Dungeon."'

'Another sound, closer in distance and yet more alien in spirit, was heard. It might almost have been a chuckle, and Clive breathed a silent prayer that if prayer that if it was indeed a chuckle, it was that of a hyena and nothing worse.'

Weirdly charmed at the notion of hyenas being capable of the entire range of human laughter.

'Next to it was an oversize glass jar, half-full of crinkled dollar bills with a masking tape label that said:

'"I'VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS" JAR.'

Barbara missed her calling as a travel writer; all her latter travelogues are wonderful.

'I continued to balance in the waterfall on the edge of nothing, without even a rope for company, and tried to philosophise. The world was coming to an end, but there was chocolate in my jacket.'

'As the sisters work, the sound of their shovels has an easy rhythm, like a baby clapping hands or tears falling. There is only one truly bad moment. No matter how hard Sally tries, she cannot close Jimmy's eyes. She's heard this happens when a dead man wishes to see who's next to follow.'

'It would be years before they'd see each other again. They'd be grown-up women by then, too old to whisper secrets or climb up to the roof in the middle of the night.

'"Come with us," Gillian said.

'"No," Sally said. "Impossible." Certain facts of love she knew for certain. "Only two people can elope."'

What a rotten thing to do to Annie Blackburn, Frost.

The noirish tangle of her early life seems both unnecessary and chronologically suspect, too - if Vivian and Norma never had a mother-daughter relationship, then why does Norma call her 'mother' even when they're alone, and why does she seem so personally hurt by her behaviour? Why hasn't Norma already met Ernie Niles?

Huh. The only audiovisual version of this I've ever watched all the way through - the 60s TV serial, with Maxine Audley and Gary Bond - is actually off-model: it uses the less romantic original ending, with Pip only meeting Estella once more, while shopping in Piccadilly with Joe's son.

I'd prefer it if I it weren't so abrupt. And I do think Pip, at least by the final act, deserves a win.

Poor Joe Gargery has almost a bleak a time of it as Pip - moving seamlessly from an abusive childhood into an abusive marriage.

'Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.'

'What knowledge did she have that he had never known? He could only marvel. One thing was clear: she had travelled forward in time; she was young and she was ancient. 1976 was a time of big change in the New World. In the papers he'd read about women's struggle in the university and marches for power to black people, so she'd arrived at a good time, if any, to come back.'

'In the long history of crime it has very, very seldom happened that a woman has betrayed one who has taken refuge with her[.] It may almost be said that such betrayal had never taken place unless the betrayer has been actuated by love of gain, or by longing for revenge. So far, perhaps because she is subject rather than citizen, her duty as a component of civilised society weighs but lightly on woman's shoulders.'

'Charmaine has tried for an in-flight movie[,] but her screen isn't working. Neither is the Recline button on her seat, and someone's ripped most of the pages out of the in-flight magazine. In her opinion, the airline people do things like that on purpose, to rub it in that you aren't in Business.'

An immediate subversion: most of the cartoonish gay characters are merely pretending to be gay.

I'm still annoyed, but now it's more complex.

The only thing more obnoxious than a Margaret Atwood gay character is a whole flock of Margaret Atwood gay characters.

'Would Doris Day's life have been different if she'd called herself Doris Night?'

'Perhaps there's an angel beside her, relaying messages from God. Or maybe it's an alien. She's sifting through the possibilities, trying to make sense of it. She's settled on God, the obvious choice for a lapsed Catholic. Now she'll have to think about evil, consider the possibility of sin. Aliens would have been a cleaner prospect. Less inclined to judge.'