What strange weather we’re having!

It’s supposed to be spring, isn’t it?  The past few days have been more wintry than most of our winter has been!

A couple of days ago, hubby and I took our two dogs for a walk around Fountains Abbey and the Studley Royal Water Gardens, which is a World Heritage site about 20 minutes drive from our house.

Click here for the National Trust page about the Abbey and Gardens

We probably visit there around once a month as it’s a National Trust property as well and as members we get in for free as part of our membership. It was a lovely sunny, if somewhat chilly, morning when we arrived and we’d planned to have lunch at the café by the lake after our walk. They make some very mean paninis there, our favourite having a filling of mushrooms and melted blue cheese. Washing one of those down with a cappucino would have set me up for the afternoon. “Would have” being the operative words. After walking up through the Water Gardens, around the Abbey ruins and heading back through the Gardens again, we were visited by a hailstorm. We experienced two more before reaching the lakeside car park again. Having the dogs with us meant we would have had to sit at one of the outside tables, which was no longer an option due to the inclement turn in the weather. The temperature reading on the dashboard thermometer was 1.5 degrees Celsius at one point on our journey home.

Yesterday, I was working about 45 minutes drive away from home, listening to Rumours and Recklessness by Nicole Clarkston on my iPod via the car stereo during my journey. This took me up and over the wonderfully named Blubberhouses Moor which looked quite lovely in the morning sunshine. Coming home was a totally different matter, though. Not long after I’d left the pharmacy I’d spent my working day at, I could see that there was some sort of “weather event” happening up on the Moor. Even before I started the climb up, it had started snowing and this soon turned into a full blown blizzard. As you can see in the photo, the temperature had dropped to 0 degrees Celsius!

Pride and Persistence by Jeanna Ellsworth

I first read this not long after it was published and was totally delighted with it and the concept behind it. It’s recently become available from Audible so I immediately spent one of my subscription credits on it. I love audiobooks! They’re great for getting a reading fix when you can’t actually read because of doing something else. I listen when I’m driving to and from work, cooking, and winding down for sleep after a long day, to name but three situations.

I’ve read somewhere that folk have likened it to a film call 50 First Dates. Having not seen that one but knowing and loving Groundhog Day, that’s what springs to my mind with Pride and Persistence.

The premise is that Darcy sustains a head injury and broken foot falling from his horse after giving Elizabeth his letter following the disastrous first proposal at Hunsford. He’s unconscious for a while and has memory loss when he comes round. He doesn’t remember that proposal! Elizabeth helps care for him at the parsonage as he’s too ill to be moved. Each time he falls asleep, he loses the memory of what has happened so more proposals ensue. I won’t say any more but there’s a lot of poignancy but also a great deal of humour in this. Jeanna Ellsworth’s experience as a neurology nurse certainly shines through here. Warning: this Mr. Collins is totally gross!

There were a few Americanisms (pants instead of breeches, on one occasion, is the one that really jarred with me) but not enough to spoil the book/audio overall. The narration of the audio was also pretty good. I suspect that the narrator, Nancy Peterson, is not using her native accent but brought off a creditable English one. The main exception was the pronunciation of Hertfordshire. We pronounce it “Heart-fordshire” whereas she used “Hurt-fordshire” but at least she was consistent with it. I’ve heard some real horrors by narrators in the past, some of whom just seemed unable to make their minds up as to how a name or place should be pronounced.

I can recommend both book and audio to anyone who hasn’t yet read this. There are a number of lovely romantic scenes but nothing explicit so this would be suitable for all audiences.

Date listened to: January 2016

Source: Audible audiobook purchase.

Review originally published on: Goodreads, Audible, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk