I tell people far too frequently that some places have a bad month. I\u2019m in the middle of Canberra\u2019 bad month. I can’t escape it, either, and have not been able to since COVID first hit. This is one of the charming side-effects of being one of those who are vulnerable. This July is particularly nasty. It just is. It\u2019s not the wind from the snow or the cold nights. It\u2019s not lack of sunlight, though it might be the weak excuse for bright sunshine. It\u2019s only partly drafts and open doors and friends forgetting promises to help. In fact, two friends are actually helping later in the week and I shall be that much less uncomfortable and I shall see them and July won\u2019t be nearly as bad, that one day. Other friends have, these last few years, responded to my July-depression with \u201cI can do this thing and it will help\u201d and two thirds of them have succumbed to July before they could. This is the nature of July in Canberra. (I strongly recommend that if you have any friends who are confined for all these years, don\u2019t make promises. It\u2019s better not to promise than to give someone hope and then not follow through.)<\/p>\n
What gets me through July, every year, but this horrid year in particular, is story. Only I\u2019m grumpy and don\u2019t want to talk about what I\u2019ve been reading. I don\u2019t want to drag you into my morass. Instead of telling you what I\u2019m reading, then, I\u2019m going to give you the names of three books that make me smile when I think of them. I\u2019ve read them so often and I suggest them to everyone all the time. Just talking about them pulls me out of the winter gloom.<\/p>\n
Not everywhere in Australia has winter gloom, by the way. An hour and a bit from here and you have the best snowfields in the world in July, but I cannot reach them and I cannot ski. I don\u2019t want to ski. I want to make snow angels and drink mulled wine and eat hot chips and talk half the night with friends. This is not something that\u2019s achievable. What is achievable is to think of novels set in that part of Australia. Elyne Mitchell\u2019s Silver Brumby series are those novels. They have been with me since I was a child, and one of the joys of moving to Canberra, 30+ years ago, was knowing that, if I looked carefully outside in a drive towards the deep mountains, past Cooma, I might see Thowra.<\/p>\n
One of my favourite scenes in the Silver Brumby<\/i><\/a> itself, has wattle, and the early, early wattle has just come out around the corner from me. A cold wattle, pale yellow and, just this once (because we missed autumn storms) concentrating wildly with the glowing leaves of the maple next to it. I wanted to take a picture, but it was dusk and it was the first time I\u2019d walked anywhere in a month and I simply could not carry my camera. My phone doesn\u2019t like pictures in the half-light. Still, the red maple and the pale golden wattle shone, and I thought of the Silver Brumby<\/i>, and I smiled.<\/p>\n While I\u2019m thinking of my childhood, let me dream of the Scotland of Peter Dickinson. I was supposed to be in Scotland this week, in Glasgow, attending a conference on fantasy. My paper had been accepted and I was wildly exciting. Then COVID had its say, and I\u2019m stuck at home.<\/p>\n