The Lovely Summer Continues

Heading into the middle of August, I'm pleased to report that the weather in Lambertville could not be nicer. Not, that is, from my point of view. I like it cool, dry, and partly cloudy. I'm sitting at the dining room table right now with all the fans off, a gentle natural breeze wafting through from the front of the house to the back. The temperature in here is 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Harold has gone to work, all our summer house guests have been and gone, and while I miss them, it's nice to have the house to myself.

Now you may say, all right, then, why aren't you working on BUCKER DUDLEY? At least two readers have expressed the desire to read Episode Four, which you promised to put up for them on Kindle for 99 cents a shot. I guess I'll get to that in a little while. Right now Polly is in a half-burnt store in Toronto (called, at the time, York) in her moose-hide Indian Maiden outfit, trying to sell the storekeeper three rabbits she snared in the woods, while avoiding the eye of her archenemy, Cousin Arthur Garnett. The next scene I have to write involves a frantic chase through the streets of the town. I have to think up the 1812 equivalent of a phone booth so that she can change into the sailor boy outfit of Bucker Dudley and escape her evil cousin's clutches. But I'm feeling too languid right now to do this.

Instead I'm thinking about the coming fall, and what I might feel like wearing when the weather gets even cooler and drier. (And also how we're going to survive the next hurricane and ten-day power outage, and whether we need an automatic gas generator, but that isn't fun to think about.)

What's really fun to think about is clothing. Flying in the face of common sense, I just sent away for some plaid wool stuff to make a suit with. The plaid has a six-inch repeat, so that if I ever finish the thing and wear it out of the house I'm going to look like a Scottish Sherman tank grinding down the street. I don't care. Autumn is for plaid. Plaid is for autumn. Hey, I already have a pair of boots to go with the suit.

Okay, back to work now.

Kate Gallison