Is this Peak Jilly?

[JoyousAsOtters]

I have just made myself an omelette using wild garlic foraged from the woods on a walk with my labrador. I can confirm wild garlic is quite whiffy, not sure I’d go so far as to describe it as a ‘sexy reek’.

Have I reached Peak Jilly or is there anything else I could be doing this afternoon that would be Jillicious????

Why did everyone have a 'trembling, smudged mouth'?

I say in jest as a love Jilly vair vair much especially her Antheas and Hermiones.

I've been listening to the Rutshire chronicles in Audible to while away my commute. They're hilarious, so some bits make me wince a bit. When I first read them in my late teens/ early 20's I lapped them up every word

I loved the name books, Imogen and Harriet were my favourites.

Anyway, in true Jilly style, I decided to bunk off today. Despite having masses of work to do, I sloped off to wander though the bluebell woods with my rather badly behaved spaniel. Despite the fact I couldn't be bothered to put on a bra, I didn't run into any impossibly good looking men.

Rivals is my TOTAL fave. And I'm so tempted to read it again. I've entire Jilly's back catalogue on my kindle. Read it all again when I was pregnant with DD three years ago. Whole winter was spent on going to bed early and reading JC. These were the days

@VioletCharlotte does Jilly narrate these?

@bugeyedbarber Available on Audible. No, not narrated by Jilly you can check out samples on Audible.co.uk - the readers are Gerri Halliday, Sherry Baines and Sian Thomas.

Gosh you're all doing marvellously!

This morning's dog walk across idyllic dew soaked fields was, alas, not awash with attractive MFHs or similar, just the local school groundsman in his tractor, who spoke with a gratifyingly Gloucestershire accent - so far, so Jilly.

But I do have a few Jilly-possible opportunities today. Got to pick the DCs up from summer tennis club at lunchtime (local boarding school, very beautiful, slightly crumbling building) AND poor old JoyousCat2 has clearly been in a fight and can't see out of one eye so I need to pop to the vets with him later.

Glamorous vet sounds quite JC doesn't it? It's a big country animal hospital with several male and female vets, I haven't met them all yet.

Apart from buckets of scent, obviously, what should I be wearing???
Not sure shirt and shoulder pads would do it today (or any day past 1983 quite honestly) - I do have scuffed espadrilles though, so could at least Jilly up my feet.

Ballgown? Lindka Cierach hat? Jods?

@JoyousAsOtters I think you should wear a sundress with the buttons undone to show off too much, mahogany brown cleavage. And of course, you must have freshly washed hair and be painted and scented

Cashmere jumper dragged out of the cats basket and sawn off cords? Espadrilles on dirty feet, slap on some base and scent, and you’re good to go!

Or a sludgy green T shirt to match your eyes

OK no Rupert / Viking / Declan esque encounters at the tennis I'm afraid, just the usual mums and nannies picking up. Although one of them yesterday was wearing scuffed up trainers, leggings and an almost floor length fluffy fur coat so that seemed promising.

I then had the conversation I always have with the JoyousDCs about why we don't send them to that school, trying to explain the only 7% in the country go to independent schools, let alone beautiful Cotswold countryside boarding ones, etc etc.

Of course it's more like 95% of Jilly's population, with the remainder at 'sink comps' or similar.

Tennis coach would be promising as Jilly-fodder of course but unluckily for him he is from the North West so would doubtless be subjected to ridiculous accentified spelling a la Oop North in a JC book.

James Gallway of cunnilingus was Rannaldini btw

Loving all the outfit suggestions!

Trying to think of something frightfully Jilly to buy in duty free while I'm waiting for a flight.....hmmm....

Fracas!

I think my favourite men are Billy and that one Daisy married after leaving her dick of a husband, cannot remember his name now though!

I almost made a tit of myself in Waitrose earlier as I forgot to put shoes on and went in my slippers, Jillyesque enough?!

Ricky France-Lynch - He had a large crumbling estate, a nine-goal polo handicap, and a beautiful wife who was fair game for anyone with a cheque book .

He also drunk drove and killed his child! Jilly was extremely blase about driving while pissed generally, but making Ricky F-L the tragic hero was something else - no one seemed remotely bothered other than to feel sorry for him. It was a different time

Does anyone else imagine James Vereker from Rivals as the younger version of the awful teleshopping guy that Bridget Jones' mum runs off with?

One of our friends was used as the basis for a Jilly character. It caused much hilarity amongst us all.

Bits of the character were clearly based on them word for word but other aspects had undergone a right good Jillying-up which makes for an oddly disconcerting read whenever I do one of my periodic re-reads.

Gosh, Cops, which character? I am agog.

I am curled up on a collapsing sofa clutching a large glass of Sancerre —cheap pink fizz from the Co-op— and blinking enormous green eyes and sooty lashes behind huge glasses. Rupert/Bas/Viking is about to gently remove my glasses and say I look gorgeous without them, before kissing me so thoroughly my knees give way.

I've got a very ancient collected early non-fiction works of JC called Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread, found, very Jillyishly, at a deeply rural Church Fete in Wiltshire (which has large chunks of Rutshire in it - definitely the racehorse trainers bluebells wild garlic and sloe gin). It's got some really early comic observation writing, which I think dates back to before her marriage, about people at work in offices, and which I think was first published in The Sunday Times. It's fascinating to see the earliest evolution of some of the more developed stock characters who turn up later!