The Ocean at the end of the lane

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'm a bit late for the first and a bit early for the latter but I mean well. As of every year we leave the city to spend the holidays with family and life outside my little coccoon in Rio is very difficult.

No high speed internet connection, no AC in every room, sharing a garden table with my 4-year-old and his batman gear... that's no easy feat.

I've been reading 'The Jane Austen Book Club ' and somehow it made me think of the boy from the Ocean and his father. It was Grigg and his father on their road trip, the pool and the messiah that got me thinking about ties, bathtubs and nannies... 

Anyway, my synapsys are fine but my internet connection is shitty here and I can't babble and find nice pics because my mobile wifi is fifty shades of lame.

Here you have it:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman

chapter VI

page 40

"My mother sighed. ‘It is not going to be Gertruda all over again, dear. Ursula’s a very nice girl, from a very good family. And she positively adores the two of you.’

My father came home, and dinner was served. A thick vegetable soup, then roast chicken and new potatoes with frozen peas. I loved all of the things on the table. I did not eat any of it.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I explained.

‘I’m not one for telling tales out of school,’ said Ursula Monkton, ‘but someone had chocolate on his hands and face when he came down from his bedroom.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t eat that rubbish,’ grumbled my father.
‘It’s just processed sugar. And it ruins your appetite and your teeth,’ said my mother.

I was scared they would force me to eat, but they didn’t. I sat there hungrily, while Ursula Monkton laughed at all my father’s jokes. It seemed to me that he was making special jokes, just for her.

After dinner we all watched Mission: Impossible. I usually liked Mission: Impossible, but this time it made me feel uneasy, as people kept pulling their faces off to reveal new faces beneath. They were wearing rubber masks, and it was always our heroes underneath, but I wondered what would happen if Ursula Monkton pulled off her face, what would be underneath that?

We went to bed. It was my sister’s night, and the bedroom door was closed. I missed the light in the hall. I lay in bed with the window open, wide awake, listening to the noises an old house makes at the end of a long day, and I wished as hard as I could, hoping my wishes could become real. I wished that my parents would send Ursula Monkton away, and then I would go down to the Hempstocks’ farm, and tell Lettie what I had done, and she would forgive me, and make everything all right.

I could not sleep. My sister was already asleep. She seemed able to go to sleep whenever she wanted to, a skill I envied and did not have.

I left my bedroom.

I loitered at the top of the stairs, listening to the noise of the television coming from downstairs. Then I crept barefoot-silent down the stairs and sat on the third step from the bottom. The door to the television room was half open, and if I went down another step, whoever was watching the television would be able to see me. So I waited there.

I could hear the television voices punctuated by staccato bursts of TV laughter.

And then, over the television voices, adults talking.

Ursula Monkton said, ‘So, is your wife away every evening?’"

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THE bucket... ah... the bucket!

I really liked this book...

It was named 2013 Book of the year. Wow!

Congrats to the winner of the Christmas giveaway.

Happy warm tea, the mug warmer is yours!

Jane Austen's Book Club

Hello and Happy Birthday!
Not to me... I still have a few more days BEFORE doom. 

Today is Ms Austen's day!

The other day, when we met to celebrate our Austen friendship, one of the girls teased me saying that in 200 years lovely women could be gathering to talk about my books. We all laughed and laughed. And here we are, thousands and thousands around the globe celbrating Darcys, Tilneys, Bennets, Woodwards... Austens.

We're all a bit better because one day, her father allowed her to write and encouraged her to publish. Am I too sentimental? Forgive me, the world is about to crumple around me!

Imagine turning 238 looking this good?

Ms Austen has been enchanting people not only with her own books but the books she inspires all around. I've listed some of my favorite and today's 40th page is one of them.

The Jane Austen Book Club

Chapter two 

in which we read Sense and Sensibility with Allegra

page 40

"... I forced my silver ring onto his finger. It caught at the knuckle, but I pushed it down. 

He said how touched he was. He swore he’d never take it off, and then he tried to take it off and he couldn’t. His finger began to swell and turn odd colours. We went to the restroom of the pub and tried to soap it loose, but it was too late, the finger far too swollen. We asked for butter and got it, but that didn’t work either. His face was now turning an odd colour as well, sort of a fishy white. 

You know how pale the Irish are; they never go outdoors there. We went back to the hostel and I tried to take his mind off it by fucking him, but this was only a temporary diversion. His finger was round as a sausage and he couldn’t bend it anymore. 

So we went looking for a taxi to take us to a hospital. By now it was about three in the morning; the streets were dark, cold, and silent. We walked several blocks, and he was actually starting to whine, 
like a dog. When we did finally find a ride, the driver spoke no English. I made siren sounds and pointed, again and again, to the finger. I pantomimed a stethoscope. 

When you picture this, you have to picture me very drunk. I don’t know what the driver thought initially, but he did get it at last, and then the hospital turned out to be less than a block away. He coasted forward and let us out. He was saying something as he drove off. We couldn’t understand it, but we could guess. 

The hospital was closed, but there was an intercom and we spoke on it to someone else who didn’t speak English. He begged us to be intelligible and then gave up and buzzed us in. All the hallways were dark, and we walked down several until we saw some lights in a waiting room. I used to have dreams like that, dark hallways, echoing footsteps. Labyrinths that twisted and circled, with the directions printed on the walls in some alien alphabet. I mean I had the dreams before this happened, and I still have them sometimes: I’m lost in a foreign city; people talk, but I can’t understand them.

So we followed the light and found a doctor, and he spoke English, which was a bit of luck, really. We explained about the ring and he stared at us. “You’re in internal medicine,” he said. “I’m a heart
surgeon.” I was prepared to go back to the hostel rather than put up with such embarrassment, but then it wasn’t my finger. (Though it was my ring.) But Conor— that was his name—was not leaving. 

“It hurts more than I can say,” he said. Which is sort of a koan, if you think about it..."

---

Shall we take the day off and read?

And then watch the movie ?

Congrats dear Jane!

238 candles can only mean a big big cake!

Disclaimer: 40 pages 40 is my way to come to terms with celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. By promoting 40 awesome books I like in no way I intend to dupe the original authors. If you, as me, like what you read, buy them!

All 40 books can be found on the right side bar. ►

All images found on Google. Kudos to the original poster.