Jilly Cooper time

[Disabrie22]

It’s that time of year again - when I want to be a character in a Jolly Cooper novel - and only eat orange and steak for a week so I can squeeze into a too tight dress with a stain I’ve artfully covered with a brooch, after I have drenched myself in scent so I can get off with a dangerous drunk mysterious man who is loaded with cash and will whip me away to San Tropez, where I will only have an old bathing dress with moth in the seat which I keep falling out of. There I will meet a loveable old lech covered in Man Tan and flirt wildly while getting tight after too much gin.

I've been taken to Pucci after cutting my fringe with scissors used to trim the bacon fat......

I have just found the bloody spaniels have got into the pantry and wolfed down all the salmon mousse I was chilling for my supper party tomorrow, and bloody teenage daughter who has tanned legs to her armpits and thick honey gold hair has just rung to say no one has picked her up from the airport...

OMG.. Both those things actually did happen to me last week... My life Is really a jilly cooper novel...

I need to shut myself away for two days as I’m overweight, have bad breath due to bad digestion, leg hairs that you could plait and roots showing. I shall emerge in 48 hours, slimmer, tanned, fully de-furred with my long clean hair swishing around my shoulders smelling of fracas!

Disappointed that everyone is smelling of fracas when the disturbing lemony scent of quercus is a guaranteed winner.

Just off to drench myself in diorissimo before fallingheadlong in lust with someone totally unsuitable but bloody damn gorgeous!

May now have to locate copy if Score to read forgge eleventy billionth time!

Yes and he was quoting yeats, with dark circles under his eyes from late night writing, brushing his shaggy hair away as he drunkenly presents me with a handful of flowers picked from the meadows around us.

Oh god I am laughing so hard! I love this thread (obvs reading it sat in the wild garlic drinking Krug and smelling madly of Diorissimo).

Perfectly timed thread given the weather. I was only noting to myself today how the cow parsley is dancing on the verges. I just need to clatter polo ponies three abreast down the high street now.

Tonight there was a rumble of thunder and I thought it was the end of the heat wave. I was ready to dance in the rain.

My awful sunburn and wobbly thighs, due to some horrid bug that’s had me vomiting for days, have miraculously morphed into sun kissed lithe limbs.

In winter, my cankles are transformed by fishnet stockings. Because the Right Clothes are transformative when blended with Alcohol and Confidence.

I’m positively spilling out of my hideous dress and need to calm my wild curls and take the shine off my face..

I’m re-reading Prudence. You can’t beat those ancient novellas. Filled with handsome angry men with ‘ a muscle going in his cheek’, at least three of them in this book alone- love it.

I quite fancy turning up at a polo match next weekend to watch my lover play a few chukkahs. I'll obviously wear a love token from him somewhere ostentatious - maybe a handkerchief holding back my luxurious tumble of glossy tortoiseshell hair? And I'll be sure to play with it while making pleasant chit chat with my lover's wife, so that he's guaranteed to stumble on his way to mount his pony and let in a couple of very easy goals due to his utter distraction.

I’m off to bed now. I shall mostly be wearing dogs (three ancient lurchers and a mangy terrier) I need my beauty sleep (following my grapefruit diet) in order to look good in my nipple-grazing dungarees...

I’m impossibly sloany wearing a Peter Pan collar dress and an Alice band so people forget I am the mistress who has made the husband leave his dependable old boot of a wife who will soon find love with a chubby cherubic faced man with a beer gut and loads of cash who says “you’re perfic come live with me and me my love”

I’m also getting tight at the office party so I can pluck up the courage to snog the boss as the drinks trolley goes round

I’m never considering any man who arrives without such a briefcase

I shall motor down to the debauched lavish party whilst lifting my thighs slightly off the seat so as to appear less chubby. I shall then make passionate love to an angry Argentinian second string polo player whilst crying hysterically over the pony who broke its leg after being poisoned by a stray beet thrown over the door deliberately to nobble it. Whilst mucking out frantically in order to impress the swarthy gypsy type who manfully whips the wild garlic as he strides across the fields.

I ADORE this thread and before I go to lie on the sofa eating the leftover smoked salmon, drinking gallons of dim perignon and smoking furiously, can I ask what are your best top three Jilly Cooper books?

I did dance in the rain briefly, but it only lasted 10 minutes. I’ve gone back to googling how much hay I can exchange for a kidney. I’m literally living in a jilly novel except the man with the well equipped briefcase has yet to appear

Riders, Imogen and the one about Rannaldini??

I’ve girded my loins with laxative and sprayed myself liberally with Je Reviens. Best pants on to flash when I jump into my lover’s helicopter.

Rivals my favourite. Polo I thought was very sad. And afterwards when I realised she wrote it while finding out that Leo was having an affair made it sadder. Riders should have won awards and the man who made husbands jealous was very funny

Riders, rivals and the man who made husbands jealous.

Though actually, appasionata is a beautiful tale. The Marcus and RCB (still Mecca for most women) make up is stunning.

Helen Campbell Black is a tart- marrying 4 men in quick succession!!!

Perdita doesn’t deserve Luke.

@Visitorthedog have you found his lucky belt yet? It’s under your seat.

Riders' Imogen and Emily were probably my favourites. Have a soft spot for Rivals as well though.
I've recently discovered the audiobooks of some of the Jilly Cooper books on audible and have been re-living the joys of them. Perfect for long journeys! I think Riders was about 30 hours.
I will admit though that some of the storylines don't feel quite the same now I'm a bit (ok a lot) older. I first read them all as a teenager and they really did seem so glamorous at the time!