What a delicious morning! Just when I should have been getting up Moth (very elderly cat ) made a very rare trip upstairs and clambered onto the bed. She lay purring loudly in a patch of sunshine and it wouldn’t have been fair to leave her would it?
I nipped down to the kitchen, quickly prepared scrambled eggs and black coffee and took them back to bed with my copy of “Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day” This is one of the Persephone Books-reprints of early twentieth century neglected novels. www.persephonebooks.co.uk
Miss Pettigrew, a penniless, middle aged, nervous and unattractive, out of work governess is sent by an employment agency to apply for a post..As soon as she enters Miss LaFosse’ home strange and wonderful things happen to her.
She experiences Life as she has only known it in films. For the first time in her life she tastes alcohol, wears make up and beautiful clothes, eats delicious food, is taken to a cocktail party and a night club. She is treated as an equal, admired for her brain and her appearance. She helps two couples to solve their quarrels and finishes up with her own first beau and a fabulous job offer.
Miss Pettigrew deserves her good fortune not because she has had such a drab life but because all day, even when she is really scared, she keeps going outside her comfort zone to experience something new.
She refuses to hear negative voices from the past. (“Powder, thundered her father the curate, the road to damnation”)
She is an inspiration and a real lesson in what can happen if we stop listening to the “I shouldn’t and I can’t” voices in our heads and only hear “I can and I will”.
My favourite Persephone!
Posted by: elaine Simpson-Long | 26 October 2009 at 08:19 AM