Whst would your Rosamunde Pilcher life be like?

[Bigearringsbigsmile]

I would be living in Cornwall but with a granny in Scotland who I would stay with in September and sometimes for Christmas.
My father was an artist but has died. I do jobs in various offices- nothing that can't be dropped so that I can leave at a moments notice to go to Scotland or Switzerland or somewhere.
I love wearing the red cashmere jumper that I found in the wardrobe of the cornwall house and I look really elegant in it because I am so slim....fragile looking really.
I can whip up a dinner party at a moments notice but it will be around the kitchen table- but my kitchen smells of garlic and herbs and has a huge scrubbed pine table so that's ok.
I would meet my dream man through friends and although he would be much older than me it would be fine because the ideal ages for a couple are for the woman to be half the man's age plus 7.

Tell me about yours!!!

She is exactly what I need to read right now to inject a bit of arty glamour into this dreary autumn!

I have also strayed in from the wrong book. I saw something nasty in the woodshed when I were three year old and now I sit in my room upstairs alone, keeping my strength up with several square meals a day brought up on trays by Mrs Beetle. No mollocking or clettering or scranletting for me! But when the sukebind be in flower I go downstairs for the Counting. ‘I maun have ‘ee all aroun’ me’, as I tells the family. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm and I mun make sure Robert Poste's child dun't change that.

@Hallelujahchorus I can help with your confusion about which novel you've wandered in from: check your sex life, and ask yourself if it involves someone significantly older, younger, for money (in a non-exploitative way), related to you, the spouse of someone close to you, or multiple people at once. If the answer is "yes", you are a Mary Wesley character.

This morning I made a stew for dinner pretending to be a Rosamund Pilcher character, while convincing myself that the drying laundry hanging around the kitchen is charmingly bohemian, enhanced by the jauntily arranged flowers on the table, plonked into Granny’s chipped old milk jug.

Later, I will catch public transport in the manner of a Mary Wesley character, and do something unexpected and spirited that makes a complete stranger fall in love with me.

Last week, I attended a party in the style of a Jilly Cooper character. One of the good eggs who scrub up OK, who the women pity and are not threatened by, and who the men confide in and consider a jolly good sort but don’t especially want to shag. Though, perhaps, one day I will lose a stone and drown myself in Shalimar or Fracas and see what happens…

Not as prosaic but last night I was wiping down my large pine table and thought….oh I’m making my book life come true. Also “young wealthy widow” sounds not bad …some days! The fun auntie with her high heels clicking on the parquet floor as she crosses the foyer to welcome my unexpected visit.

I'm currently wishing I had a real life Mrs placket who would turn up now, sort my house out leaving it clean and sweet-smelling and then drink tea at the kitchen table with me.

I'm currently wishing I had a real life Mrs placket who would turn up now, sort my house out leaving it clean and sweet-smelling and then drink tea at the kitchen table with me.

I'm currently wishing I had a real life Mrs placket who would turn up now, sort my house out leaving it clean and sweet-smelling and then drink tea at the kitchen table with me.

I'm currently wishing I had a real life Mrs placket who would turn up now, sort my house out leaving it clean and sweet-smelling and then drink tea at the kitchen table with me.

Oops! Sorry!

It was definitely another time

I'd live in a charming Zone 1 London flat, the ground floor of a stunning Georgian house in a leafy square. The flat would be filled with light and with stunning art pieces that I'd picked up on trips to darling Ibiza. I'd be contemplating the meal I'd be throwing together for my bohemian, but not too bohemian, friends later that day. My brow would wrinkle slightly as I thought of my disappointing daughter not realising that I had been a neglectful mother who had given her an emotionally starved childhood resulting in her escaping from me the first moment she could grab. But I would not let such thoughts bother for me for too as I have some flowers to arrange.

I would make everything really long winded by describing every single thing I see at all times.

I would move to a dinky little country cottage, make beautifully embroidered cushions which sell for extortionate prices. I would become great friends with a well heeled local couple and around six weeks after the woman and young daughter are killed in a road accident I would marry the bloke, live in his house in Scotland and live happily ever after.

Well I am BACK! I wore an arty Aran jumper not the Barbour BUT I went to an antiques and art fair in genuinely a remote Georgian Irish manor with ye old oake treees and fetching cows in park etc? AND…

On every romantic Georgian fireplace, with club fender and wood fire burning, was an artistic arrangement of autumnal leaves and branches with berries on, thrown in together and falling perfectly in to place.

Oh lovely! We're the wood fires burning with apple logs?

I always remember one of the characters having a villa in Ibiza, and she opened the door wearing a silk kimono. That made me feel quite jealous. I want that life! I can’t remember which book it was, though, and I’ve read every single one. Perhaps the character was called Pandora and she committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake in Scotland. Or is my memory deceiving me?

@Bohomovies I'm fairly certain that was September and your memory is not deceiving you 😊 she came across as utterly glamorous and care free but you knew that there were untouched depths with her. I wish I could read all RP's books again from scratch, such comfort they bring 😊

Her name was Pandora. She was the wayward sister of Archie Balmerino. Her villa was in majorca though. I always imagined it to be in Andraxt.
The description of that villa was absolutely gorgeous. Do you remember the silk shirt she lent to Lucilla? Midnight blue silk splashed with silver sequins- dreadfully vulgar but terribly glamorous!! And they sat by the pool sipping champagne and listening to Rachmaninoff.....sigh

I need comfort reading and some escape to an another life that might have been (lol). Love Mary Wesley so suspect I'll like Rosamunde P too. What books do you recommend I start with?

I think Coming Home is her best book. There's a good TV adaptation of it too.

I loved The Shell Seekers as a teen but when I read it again during lockdown found my opinion of the characters was somewhat altered!

The Shellseekers and/or September. I think those are the only two I've read so possibly they were her most successful. She had a long career writing short stories for women's magazines and possibly Mills & Boon or similar before she finally hit the mainstream with The Shellseekers, IIRC.

I have also read a collection of her short stories, published after she became well-known. I really only remember one now, very much of its time (probably the 70s or very early 80s). A stay-at-home wife/mother is looking forward to a quiet evening in with her husband, who has just returned from his busy and important job. He is hoping for a big promotion and in pursuance of this the following evening they are due to entertain his boss and his wife to dinner and she has everything planned, ready to buy and cook the following day. (I think she has cleaned and tidied the house from top to bottom that day.)

To their horror, however, the boss and his wife turn up that evening and she has to improvise (and I do mean she - he sorts out drinks and keeps them talking while she dashes into the kitchen). Can't remember what she does for a first course, possibly opening a tin of consomme and tipping in some sherry. Then I think she defrosts a tub of chilli and serves it with spaghetti because she hasn't got any rice, and she tells them it was a tip in a magazine she thought she would try, and doesn't it work well? They all agree, of course. Then she serves vanilla ice cream because it's about all she's got available.

At the end of the evening it becomes clear that the boss and wife have done this deliberately to assess whether she has the makings of a good corporate wife, ready to entertain anybody at a minute's notice, and she has passed with flying colours. By modern standards jawdroppingly awful, and yet I have always remembered this story fondly, because I do like stories of people rising to a challenge and I also like happy endings, however improbable.

Don't read September before the shellseekers because it's a tiny bit of a sequel.
Coming home is the best one i think. You can really get list in it.

Yes! I remember that!