"Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson

My Childless Collective Nomo Book Club co-host and I are always looking for potential books the group could read and discuss together. So when she told me she was currently reading "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson and thought it might fit the bill, I decided that I would check it out too.   

I vaguely remember seeing "Major Pettigrew" on the shelves and hearing good things about it when it was first published, back in 2010.  As the story begins, 68-year-old retired  Major Ernest Pettigrew -- the very picture of a proper English gentleman -- has just learned of the death of his younger brother, Bertie.  (His wife, Nancy, died several years ago.)  Reeling from shock, he answers a knock on the door: it's Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a widow who runs the local convenience store, and she's collecting on behalf of the paper boy, who is sick. She quickly recognizes the Major's distress, makes him a cup of tea and stays to chat and offer her sympathy. 

This marks the beginning of a seemingly unlikely friendship:  the two come from very different cultures and different social classes, but they share a common bond of grief and loneliness, as well as a love of books. 

Of course, not everyone approves of this budding relationship -- including many of the villagers (who have been promoting one of their own single ladies as a perfect match for the eligible widower). It includes the Major's adult son, Roger, who works as a London financier, but has decided to rent a nearby cottage for weekends with his American girlfriend.  And it includes Mrs. Ali's young adult nephew, Abdul Wahid, a devout Muslim, who lives with her and helps her run the store since the death of her husband. There are a number of subplots interwoven throughout the book, including Abdul Wahid's estranged girlfriend and her young son (whom Mrs. Ali adores), a prized set of valuable antique guns that once belonged to the Major's father, the golf club's annual dinner and dance, and a proposed development of luxury homes on the estate just outside the village.  

Beneath the wry British humour and gentle social satire, the book deals with some serious themes, including grief and loss, family conflicts, clashes between generations, city versus country living, aging, classism, colonialism and racism. The writing is great, the characters are vividly drawn, and (bonus!) Mrs. Ali is that rare creature -- a warm and sympathetic CNBC character -- an older one, too!  

On the minus side of the balance sheet:  several of the characters, most prominently the emotionally repressed Major Pettigrew, seem solidly stuck in a rapidly fading past. I had to check a couple of times to remind myself that the book really IS set in present-day England! (My co-host thought the same thing!) Maybe I'm naive, but I cannot imagine anyone in Britain -- even 20 years ago -- would have thought the colonial Indian theme (including costumes) of the golf club dinner & dance was appropriate! -- or that the relationship between the Major and Mrs. Ali would have caused such a stir among the villagers. And the climactic scene of the book was a little melodramatic. 

For those reasons, I can't give this book a top rating. After some internal debate: 3.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded down to 3 on Goodreads. 

(Apparently, the book was optioned for a film adaptation that, to date, has never been made. Too bad!  I think it would make a great little movie, or a mini-series on PBS Masterpiece.)  

This was Book #35 read to date in 2024 (and Book #3 finished in December), bringing me to 78%  of my 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 8 (!) books behind schedule to meet my goal. :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2024 tagged as "2024 books."    

Odds & ends

• Well, the federal government has ordered Canada Post workers back to work as of today -- but the post office is warning that it will take quite a while to deal with the backlog of incoming and outgoing mail.  Too little, too late for Christmas cards & packages. The strike began more than a month ago, on Nov. 15th. I didn't even buy any cards this year, because I knew these things sometimes tend to drag on, and I didn't want to knock myself out trying to get them done (at an already busy time of year) when they might not even be able to be sent until well into the new year. 
• So for the first time in my adult life, I'm not sending a Christmas card. Not sure anyone will miss it!  (lol) but I always enjoy doing them and look forward to getting them in the mail (although the number I get has been dwindling over the years).  I posted about this on Facebook. (I'm guessing some of our friends & relatives outside of Canada probably didn't even know there was a strike going on.)  
• A few people have urged me to send out cards/letters (even via email) in the new year instead. I might, but it definitely wouldn't be until after the new year...! 
• I'm feeling a lot less foggy from my cold today -- but still coughing a lot (which has kept me awake at night for the last several nights). So I called our dentist's office this morning to rebook my rebooked appointment for tomorrow -- one less thing on my to-do list to deal with! I'll now be going there in early January. 
• The bruises and scrapes from my tumble last week are also fading, and should be just about gone by the time we fly to see my parents. (I haven't told them about what happened. "Why stir the pot?"  my sister said when I asked her if I should.)  
• Jody Day flagged this Substack post, saying "Sue Fagalde Lick NAILS it about the complex emotions on the effort/cost of sending gifts when you're a solo elderwomen... and the tiny amount of recognition or reciprocity we often see..."  (Partnered and/or younger childless women too, but I recognize it's especially difficult when you're solo and older!):  "Santa, I need some help over here!" 
• Jody also wrote a piece for the World Childless Week website that a lot of us might need/want to read right about now: "No Room At The Inn For People Without Children." 
• Y.L. Wolfe about being a perennial outsider in her new (and aptly named) Substack "On the Outside."  Needless to say, I could relate...!
• From the Life Without Children Substack: "Tears, Sweat and Blood — Seeking an Answer to Unexplained Infertility." Subhead:  "How an ancestor helped to solve the eternal question, ‘Why me?’ " 

#MicroblogMondays: Adding insult to injury....

Thanks to those of you who empathized over the fall I took last Tuesday. I have to say (again) just how lucky I feel. It was a scary experience -- but it could have been so much worse!  

I'm actually kind of amazed at how quickly I'm healing.  I still have a faint purplish shadow and some abrasions on my left cheek (which, at a glance, could probably pass for rosacea...!), but they're healing fast. There's another abrasion above my left upper lip that's healing too -- less and less noticeable every day.  It looks like I'm recovering from a large cold sore!  The lip itself is a lot better too.  The scrapes on on my hands are still noticeable, but they're gradually healing.  The bruises on my knees too, but they're not so noticeable under my clothes!  

I did feel a lot of fatigue for a couple of days afterward, which I chalked up to the shock & trauma. But then I started having a lot of sinus drainage (more than usual)... which caused a scratchy throat, and triggered coughing.  By Saturday, I suspected I was coming down with a cold. By the time I woke up on Sunday morning, I knew it. I developed an awful cough, had a crappy night, and feel pretty crappy this morning too. (Thanks a lot for passing it on, dh...!)(eyeroll) 

My first instinct was to take a covid test yesterday, which was, thankfully, negative. I repeated the test this morning (also negative). So I guess it's not covid, which is a good thing -- but it is still nasty! 

Then (yesterday morning), BIL called. It was Older Nephew's birthday. We hadn't heard anything about a celebration, either at BIL's or at their place -- not surprisingly, since Older Nephew's wife is less than a week away from a scheduled C-section! and obviously has other things on her mind!  ;)  Now BIL was proposing to drive up there with a cake, and they wanted to know if we wanted to come. 

Well, of COURSE we wanted to come! -- BUT. There was no way on this green earth that I was going to expose a 39-weeks pregnant woman to my germs. I always worry about any pregnant woman until the baby is here and I know both of them are okay -- but obviously, this is my niece-in-law (and Great-Nephew #2), which ups the worry factor considerably (not to mention the incredible GUILT I would feel if one or both got sick because of me!). 

So dh went with them, by himself -- and I stayed at home and felt sorry for myself, lol.  

What's REALLY frustrating is that this always -- always!! -- seems to happen right around this time of year. I don't know if it's because there are lots of bugs going around, if pre-holiday stress lowers the defenses of your immune system or what -- but THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME FOR THIS, BODY!! 

It's a busy week ahead.  We'd planned to go to the mall this morning to do some more Christmas shopping, and get in some of that EXERCISE we're supposed to be getting (to lose weight & lower our cholesterol, along with eating better). Needless to say, with dh sick and now me, that hasn't been happening. I would say I'm 85-90% done shopping, but I still have two gifts and some more stocking stuffers to get.

I'm supposed to head back downtown to the dentist on Wednesday for the checkup and cleaning I missed.  Hopefully, I will be able to make that appointment, because I really don't want to postpone it until January -- but I'm having my doubts...!  (I'm pretty sure there was no real damage done when I fell last Tuesday, but it would make me feel better to have that confirmed ASAP.)  

Our new great-nephew is also arriving later this week!  Unfortunately, even if I was feeling better, it's doubtful we'll be able to see him before we head off for the holidays. :(  But the night before the operation, Older Nephew & his wife are bringing Little Great-Nephew (and the dog!) to stay with BIL & SIL, so we may be able to see LGN then -- again, so long as I'm feeling better.   

Based on the timeline of how dh's cold ran, I *should* be feeling better by the time we're scheduled to fly. I will, of course, wear a mask in the airport and on the plane. Too many germs around right now (and I don't want to add to them, or pick up any new ones!). 

Wish me luck...! 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"Miss Buncle's Book" by D.E. Stevenson (re-read)

My D.E. Stevenson online fan group recently wrapped up our chapter-by-chapter reading and discussion of "Miss Buncle’s Book" (an early DES novel, first published in 1934), which began in early October.

(I first read this book not long after I joined the group back in 2014 -- my original 2015 review is here.  I re-read the book myself before our group read began, and that more recent review is  here.) 

Quiet, guileless, unassuming Miss Barbara Buncle has been forced to look for ways to increase her income, as her dividends have been rapidly shrinking (no doubt because it's the Great Depression).  She decides to try her hand at writing a book -- which turns out to be a thinly disguised portrait of Silverstream (the village where she lives) and its residents (all assigned different names, but still highly recognizable). 

Not only does Barbara's book (aptly named "Disturber of the Peace") immediately find a publisher, it becomes a bestseller -- nowhere more so than in Silverstream, where the enraged residents immediately recognize themselves and set out to learn the true identity of the author (who goes by the obvious pseudonym of "John Smith"). 

"Miss Buncle's Book" is a classic DES novel, often the first one by this author that people read.  Stevenson's books are very much products of the time & place they were written -- a little old-fashioned, perhaps -- but well-crafted, funny, charming romances, comedies of manners and family dramas featuring engaging characters and lovely descriptions of the natural world.  (This book in particular contains a lot of social satire!)  I can easily see this one as mini-series on PBS.  :) 

Stevenson wrote two sequels to "Miss Buncle's Book" -- "Miss Buncle Married" and "The Two Mrs. Abbotts,"  both of which are on our schedule of upcoming reads for 2025-26 (and both of which I previously reviewed here).  (My previous reviews of those books here and here.)  So is "The Four Graces," where Miss Buncle makes a brief cameo appearance. (My review.) 

Our next book, however, will be "Peter West" -- Stevenson's first published novel from 1923, which originally appeared in serial format, and was republished in 2013. It's the one DES book the group has not read in its 26 years of existence!  We'll begin in January. 

I wasn't on Goodreads the first time I read "Miss Buncle's Book" in early 2015, but I retroactively logged it and assigned it a 4-star rating. I kept that rating when I re-read the book earlier this fall, and it still stands now.  :)   

4 stars on both Goodreads & StoryGraph. 

This was Book #34 read to date in 2024 (and Book #2 finished in December), bringing me to 76%  of my 2024 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 8 (!) books behind schedule to meet my goal. :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2024 tagged as "2024 books."    

Odds & ends

• In a 2023 article from The Guardian (which only recently came to my attention), author Emma Gannon offers some thoughts on building a childfree life full of joy and meaning and alternative milestones. 
• I can't remember where I found the blog/website "Life Done Differently," but it's written by a childfree woman in New Zealand who has been travelling around the country and living out of her van for the past few years!  She hadn't posted in a while, but a new entry popped up in my blog feed recently -- she's currently settled in Christchurch, and has some thoughts & advice on "A Year of Making Friends and Building Community" that I thought was very relevant to  CNBCers! Enjoy! 
• "Being an aunt is not the same, but it’s pretty darned good," says Sue Fagalde Lick on her "Childless by Marriage" blog. (I heartily agree!)   
• Y.L Wolfe, whose work (often about childlessness) I've been reading on Medium for a few years, now has a Substack, "On the Outside." Check it out!  
• Caroline Stafford, who runs a bakery called The Kitsch Hen in the U.K.,  wrote a guest post last summer for Emma Barnett's Substack ("Trying with Emma Barnett") about "Trying... to build a life without children." (Jody Day recently shared it via Substack Notes.)  
• I highlighted a special Instagram post from The Kitsch Hen on this blog back in 2020.  :)  
• Jody Day, on her Gateway Elderwomen Substack, examines "The 3am bag lady blues" -- the fear many women (and childless/single women in particular) have about growing old in poverty. 
• This brought to mind a post I wrote after seeing the movie "Blue Jasmine" -- which won Cate Blanchett an Oscar -- 11 years ago now!  -- "Bagging my fears."  
• Having lost my own job less than a year after writing this and spending 10 years in early retirement so far, I'm not *quite* so fearful of winding up a bag lady today as I was then. (So far, so good...!)  But the fears of growing old, alone and isolated, remain.  

Pre-Christmas annoying things & small pleasures

REALLY annoying thing:  I took a tumble today (no stairs involved this time, though) & banged up my face.  :(  :(  :(    Just before Christmas, of course...! (Just call me Klutz Kringle.)  It could have been worse, I guess, but combined with my rosacea/redness (see "Other annoying things," below), let's just say I've looked better. 

 

We had dentist appointments in the city today -- got there early and parked in a lot near both our dentist & optometrist. I left dh in the car to head to the optometrist's office (right across the street from the lot) to get some lid/lash wipes for my eyes. Most of the lot is surrounded by a low fence, but I headed for the street through a narrow gap between a parked truck and a concrete planter. 

 

And tripped, went flying, and fell. Bit my lip and banged my left cheekbone. (Big red bruise/abrasion. A few small cuts/abrasions on both my palms, too, and I later discovered a mildly skinned left knee under my jeans.)  Can't remember if I knocked off my glasses, but the lens on the left side got all scratched up with gravel (fortunately, on the outside edge, side, so I can still see OK, but...!) -- and I could see the lens had come a little loose from the frame.  

 

I picked myself up, dusted myself off and went back to the car to inspect the damage. (Poor dh! He felt so guilty that he hadn't come with me!)  I was a pretty pathetic sight, and needless to say, I was pretty shaken up. I had some wet wipes in my purse, so I wiped off my face with them (dirt, bits of gravel & some blood -- almost entirely from where I bit my upper left lip). Felt my teeth with my tongue and they were all still there and all seemed intact, thank goodness. I thought, well, at least I can get the dentist to check them out!  Put on a mask (thank goodness I had one with me; it hid just about all the damage) and headed for the dentist. 

 

I told the woman at the desk what happened and asked if she had a cold pack I could use. Took off my mask to show them and boy, they jumped into action. She got me a cold pack and asked the dentist to come see me right away. My hygienist took me into her little cubicle and had me lay down in the chair with the cold pack on my face. The dentist came in & poked around my teeth, and he got me some Advil. He said he didn't see any damage (thank goodness!);  a couple of the bottom teeth were maybe just a LITTLE loose, but he felt they'll be OK over time. He did say sometimes when you take a blow to the face like that, teeth can sometimes discolour or die (!) but we'll keep an eye on it and cross that bridge if/when we get there.  

Both he & the hygienist said they didn't think they could (or should) do the full exam & cleaning today;  my lip was already swelling up. I told him it felt like when he puts freezing in for a filling!  So now I have to go back next week! (so long as I'm feeling better & the swelling has gone down). They will probably do some X-rays then, just to make sure all is well. They just let me lay there, holding the cold pack on my face, while dh had his appointment. (His dentist -- a super nice man who has also done work on me -- came in to say hello and ask how I was before we left.) 

After we were done, we headed over to the optometrist's office. I kept my mask on and got my wipes, and then asked if he had a couple of minutes to look at my glasses. I explained to him what happened and showed him my glasses (while keeping my mask on!). He fiddled with them, had me try them on three times until he was satisfied with the fit. He said to come back & see him if I want to replace them. The lenses ARE 10 years old;  I broke the frames about 6 years ago and luckily was able to replace those and use the same lenses -- but I've been thinking that even if my prescription hasn't changed, it's probably time for a new pair (don't you think??).  Dh's glasses are almost that old too, and he's been itching for new ones.  So I may make appointments for us when we get back from Christmas. (They'll be fine for now.) 

 

We stopped at a drugstore on the way back to the car and I bought a cold bottle of water -- I drank some but  mostly held the bottle to my face, like an ice pack. When we finally got home, I washed my face and put some witch hazel and polysporin on my bruises, and I've been using an ice pack, on & off. It looks a little better than it did, but still not great. Hopefully I'll be mostly better before we head west to see my parents! (I suppose I could always use some makeup to cover up or at least minimize the bruising.)   

 

Dh told me it was on the news that U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell tripped and fell today too. I said, "Yeah, but he's 82!"   

We have haircuts on Friday. I told dh that I'm going to tell our stylist that my fat lip is the result of a filler injection gone bad, lol.  

*** *** *** 

Other annoying things: 

• Hitting "mark all as read" (as in ALL the unread emails in my inbox -- and there were a LOT) instead of marking one particular email as UNread. Grrrr.....
• The Canada Post strike (now in its 4th week -- going on since Nov. 15th! -- and not looking like it will be resolved anytime soon...) -- which means I probably won't be sending out Christmas cards for the first time I can remember since I started doing it as a kid (probably ever??). Or receiving any either -- one of my great pleasures at Christmastime (although, granted, there have been fewer and fewer every year in recent years...).  
• My rosacea has been acting up again, especially since it turned colder. I think the lack of humidity in our condo has a lot to do with it (although we've been running the humidifier constantly). I don't mind the fine lines and grey hair that comes from aging, but people used to rave about my beautiful skin, and I took pride and comfort in that -- so this is a real blow to my ego! 
• In the latest installment of "Adventures with my Kobo E-reader,"  lately, when I try to sync my reader and download my latest purchases, the sync progress seems "stuck" on "Updating books."  
• I've waited up to half an hour or 45 minutes before cancelling the sync -- and then tried again, two or three minutes later. Weirdly, I've found that often does the trick -- it almost immediately starts downloading my books and completes the sync! (Knocking wood...!) Definitely better than signing out of my account and then back in again -- and then having to download all the books I want downloaded all over again, so they're ready to read when I want them! -- but still annoying...! 

Small pleasures: 

• A photo on Instagram of Little Great-Nephew with Santa!  :)  
• Stopping to take a peek at Santa myself whenever I'm at the mall. Always a day brightener!  
• Having our Christmas tree up and decorated, and the extra light it gives off at a dark & gloomy time of year. 

#MicroblogMondays: Blue skies

I recently signed up for Bluesky, the much saner (so far, anyway...) alternative to the cesspool that has become Twitter/X.  So far, so good!  and many of the people I follow over on X have similarly made the move. (I haven't deleted my Twitter/X account yet, but rarely visit these days, and likely will delete soon. I want to check my "following" list there vs Bluesky and make sure I won't be missing out on any favourites before I cut the cord!)  

One of the few things I find I don't like about Bluesky, though, is that your profile is completely public: unlike Twitter/X or Threads or other social media platforms, there is no ability to accept or refuse/delete new followers. You just get a notification that you're being followed.  

I don't have a huge amount of followers -- 56 at the time of writing -- but of those 56, 44 (almost 80%!) are complete strangers to me -- most of them men. (eyeroll)  (Just 12 are people I know, from online or "in real life.")  I haven't posted anything original there yet (and likely won't do that too often, if at all), but I have "liked," "shared" and (very occasionally) replied to others' posts (generally people I know). It's one thing to know that anything I reply to is up there for all to see, but quite another to know that my profile and all my activity is completely open for total strangers to peruse. I'm not a public figure;  why they would want to follow me (and how they found my profile) is a mystery to me. (Yeah, I know  -- they're hoping I'll follow them back -- and a lot of them are likely bots, right?) 

(As I was writing this, I got another notification of a new follower:  Elon Musk. On Bluesky. Yeah, right...  THAT was an immediate block!  lol)  

You do have the ability to block people on Bluesky, and while I haven't blocked anyone yet, I'm considering doing so. I figure that someone who's following a couple thousand other accounts won't miss me if I block their ability to see my stuff in their feeds. (I doubt they're really interested in what I'm sharing there anyway;  as I said above, they probably just hoping I'll follow them back to boost their follower numbers. And I'm certainly not doing that.)  

Thoughts? 

(I realize this concern about privacy sounds completely irrational when I've been spilling my guts here in this blog for the past 17 years to all and sundry (albeit semi-anonymously)...!  lol  But I don't expect too many people are hanging out here if they don't have some connection to pregnancy loss, infertility and/or childlessness themselves.)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.