Lunchtime Talk

One of my favourite books, as a child, was 'The Secret Gardent' by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Last Christmas my lovely, recently-recovered-from-cancer Aunt gave me the exact copy I had read all those years ago. It was inscribed to her by her mother, dated 1950.

Reading over the holidays at Terrigal, I found both the story delightful, but a whole section of almost 'new age' ideas.

- thoughts create reality
- the power of positive thinking
- magic is everywhere

"Of course, there must be lots of Magic in the world' he (colin) said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Prehaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment."

Yesterday, at lunch was a talk at the State Library about the life of the author. I joined the short-haired, comfy shoe set for it.

You can read a summary of her life on Wikipedia, but I came out of the event, thinking, about the ups & downs of life. Harsh lives, poverty, marriages, deaths but also achievements and hard work. FBH loved gardens and found lots of joy in creating three of them, Long Island, Sussex & Bermuda. She was also a prolific writer, wrote 50 novels, but is only remembered for her 3 children's book (little lord fauntleroy, the little princess & secret garden). She was also reponsible for setting up author's rights on plays based on one's books, as copywrite & licence fees did not exist.

The talk gave me a greast sense of perspective. Life is more interesting with all the challenges and accomplishements seen as a sum total. Each moment is hard to understand sometimes, why things happen, the good & the bad...but it's a end result being anything from a mini-series, soap opera or cycle of weather, that it ends up looking like.

Each new event is adding to the story. It's just seeing that 'cat's life' is never dull, always interesting & she'll eventually find true love.