Speech friends

This review of the much-loved 'Miss Read' books reminded me that I had a copy of A Peaceful Retirement languishing in my TBR pile since my own retirement from teaching almost three years ago. I immediately rescued it and it has been my book at bedtime at the end of the last few exhausting days of sorting, packing and disposing of many hundreds of books.

As Nan pointed out in her review of Village School, these books are usually classed as 'gentle reads' but that is a misleading description; they are not accounts of a cosy life in rural England in the 1950s but accurate depictions of the sometimes harsh realities of that life. 'Miss Read' is a close observer of people and their behaviour and she brings the villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green to life in the same way that Elizabeth Gaskell and Flora Thompson capture the essence of life in Cranford and Lark Rise.

While her friends bemoan the fact that Miss Read has entered retirement as a spinster, she is far from being in need of pity. She treasures her independence, leads a full and interesting life and has a suitor or two in the background should she ever tire of the single state. The peaceful retirement she envisaged is, in fact, so busy that she would have great difficulty in fitting a husband into it. Like most of us, she had certain expectations of life in retirement only to find the reality to be quite different and 'peaceful' might not be the most appropriate adjective to use.

One of the intentions that Miss Read doesn't manage to fulfil is that of keeping a diary. She has always been a keen reader of great English diarists such as Kilvert, Pepys, Evelyn and Woodforde and recognises the importance of preserving the observations of ordinary people for future generations. She also sees that keeping a diary or journal has another function, fulfilling a need in the writer:

Over the years I have had so much pleasure from other people's diaries and I was interested to read recently that some psychiatrists recommend the activity. The theory, so I gathered, was that everyone needed a 'speech friend'.....
..... I recalled Virginis Woolf's comment on Parson Woodforde's diary-keeping: "Perhaps it was the desire for intimacy. When James Woodforde opened one of his neat manuscript books he entered into conversation with a second James Woodforde. The two friends said much that all the world might hear, but they had a few secrets which they shared with each other only."

Miss Read might have failed as a diarist but she would have been an ideal blogger. I think we bloggers use this medium in the way that Parson Woodforde used his manuscript book, not only recording observations and opinions but also perhaps as a way of conversing with our inner self. I think that I can recognise a 'speech friend' in my monix persona and our secrets are safe!