Swallows and Amazons, Lenin, Trotsky and true love

When we aren't seeking blips with increasing desperation, or fretting about still yet another hold up on the house renovation, I read. Or read about reading. Or read other people writing about reading. Or learn unexpected things about writers.

When I was little I read Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series. So vividly written were they that I could have got into one of their sailing dinghies, and sailed it without hesitation. Aged ten, anyway.

What I didn't know was that Ransome had been previously a Bolshevik sympathiser in Russia, a British agent, had known Lenin and Trotsky, then fell for and married Trotsky's secretary. I wonder what she made of the Lake District.

New words for the vocabulary too. I read in Simply Foxed about a case of arriving home triumphant from the bookshop, with a new purchase, only to find you already have it. You're a bibliolathas, a forgetter of books. [Google it to find out more: it's fascinating.]

The second new word, I made up myself. Given the weather [see extra] Norwestie is hibernating. Between meals anyway. Driving to and from her walk yesterday she slept there and back. She's a hibernaut!!!


Sorry about that.