I had a lovely long lie this morning and James brought me my breakfast in bed. Then I had a luxurious bath using one of the Lush bath balls that Davie gave me for Christmas. I read my book and relaxed. After saying that I needed a break from Proust, here I am back reading him again; I have just finished In Search of Lost Time Volume 4: Sodom and Gomorrah. Proust is somewhat obsessed with sex! I think I have a love / hate relationship with Proust - sometimes I find his writing to be really excellent and very insightful into human feelings, however sometimes I find him to be really annoying. He is certainly long-winded, snobbish and goes off at tangents. Yet somehow I keep going back for more! Volume 4 was the last to be published in Proust's lifetime so the next three have not been finally edited and approved by him. This means, according to the introduction of Volume 5: The Prisoner, that Proust may well have ended up changing these volumes quite a lot, because he usually made lots of changes right up until the final version went to print. So I may now not even be reading what Proust intended. Oh well, three volumes to go!
In the afternoon the house gradually filled up with girls reuniting with their boys, and James and I went out to try to choose new settees for the back room. The bad news is we still haven't chosen them but the good news is we remained on friendly terms. This is something we have not always managed to do in the past when shopping for household furniture, because we both hate it. Later on eight of us including Grandma sat down for a jolly dinner. And so ended the Christmas holidays on a pleasant note.
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