You know that feeling you get when you’ve just done something incredibly difficult and un-doable? That sense of elation and accomplishment that settles into you like really good scotch? I have that feeling now.

I’ve given away over a dozen copies of Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear. If you know me, and I haven’t bought you one, I’ve probably lent you mine or told you to go get it. Now.

I first fell upon The Gift in the late nineties as a postgraduate student at Manchester. When I was immersed in offender profiling and victimology and had John Douglas’s number tucked away on my mobile.

In short, The Gift is this: Women, when it comes to danger, do not ignore your gut because (you think) it makes you feel silly or weak. That gut is an evolved form of intuition that will keep you safe. And de Becker knows from safe. He’s a security specialist who designed an assessment system used to screen threats to U.S. Supreme Court Justices.

I’m reminded of this because I saw something about Oprah having de Becker on her show today. No idea if it was a repeat. Or even what times or stations it was on. Either way, here’s the book on Amazon. Please go have a look. And let me know if you caught the Oprah episode.

My sister’s birthday was last week. She wasn’t 30 - or anywhere near - but I sent her a huge card with a compromising photo of herself (think: ’shower cap and wild game’) that said she was. I didn’t get a thank you, but I did get a there are no words, which I took to mean it served its purpose.

Her husband bought her a set of classics any bibliophile worth their salt would appreciate.

“That one. It’s large print, right?” He said, pointing to a particularly hefty edition.

“No,” said the sister.

“And they expected me to read that in high school?”

Her husband is an engineering super brain - he just doesn’t care for Victorian authoresses. Sister plans to remedy this.

“I’m going to start reading it to him every night at bed time. He says he’ll let me.”

I’m thinking he probably didn’t hear a word she said. Just nodded ‘yes’ like a lot of men like to do. I could be wrong. Or he could learn the value of reading a contract before signing off on it. We’ll see.

She also made him swear, should anything happen to her, he would make certain their youngest daughter read Pride & Prejudice and knew it was from Darcy himself, whence came her name.

Sister: “So I was watching American Idol last night and you know what? Simon Cowell really does remind me of him.”

Me: “I did say.”

Sister: “Except Him’s nicer.”

Me: “No he isn’t. He just likes you. That’s all.”

The very same ‘Him’ and I got in to it last night.

Him: “Why did you send that photo out unprocessed? When you send out images that I take, it’s a reflection on me.”

Me: (Already mad.) “She’s family. Not Time Magazine. And there was nothing wrong with the photo.”

Him: “Are you blind? How can you possibly look at that and think it’s in focus? Get your eyes checked woman!”

Each plate, each cup, even the little miniature saucers to sit the cups on, came separate in their own individual boxes. Bundled and wrapped in plastic bubbles and cardboard to show that they were special. Not like those cheap deals her neighbors got from the Dollar Mart that came all bunched up together and with always a bowl or a plate or a cup broken before it even saw the kitchen.

Her set was white and thin. With purple and yellow flowers following a fine gold trim that lined the edges of everything. Even the base of the tea cups. And everything had a sticker on it that said what it was and where it had come from. China.

“Now the word symbol scares a good many people off, just as the word art does. They seem to feel that a symbol is some mysterious thing put in arbitrarily by the writer to frighten the common reader — sort of a literary Masonic grip that is only for the initiated …”

- Flannery O’Connor

After watching Jane Austen’s finest (version 2005) and developing not a little crush on Matthew Macfadyen…

I’ve spent hours-into-days staring slack jawed at the Painted Hall. Wanting to touch, but not touch, the Veiled Vestal. Wishing the huge yew maze was large enough to get lost in. (It really isn’t.) It’s this thing you do in England. On weekends. If you fancy a picnic. Or a scenic stroll. One feels obliged to take advantage of all the many beautiful things on their doorstep. Pemberley, by way of Chatsworth, was once on mine.

“How d’ya feel?”

“Seventy-One.”

He’s spent the last two days on top of the mountain. Chopping wood. Because the ten tonnes of coal he’s hauled in for the winter isn’t burning like it should.

“Is it in your chest?”

“Nah. I’m ok. I don’t feel old at all. I just got a little cold.”

He’s had five heart attacks and his lungs don’t work as well as they should. They’re petrified by coal dust. His life seems so much harder than it has to be. We try to bring him down. Down from the mountain. Where things are easier, if not better. He won’t come.

But he’s never said he felt old before. Like he almost did today. When he said he felt seventy-one.

Pa and his Snake Stick