In which horses run free

Last night there was some sort of fence malfunction and the horses got out. (Malory Towers is a fairly fancy school, and among its features is a pasture with horses in it, or, as last night, out of it.) They didn't get far, it was all dealt with very professionally and was not really worrisome, but you haven't heard hysterical shrieking until you've been in a house full of eleven-year-olds witnessing Horses On The Loose. It was as if we were in Jurassic Park and the raptors had broken free.

This morning I went up to the house to wake the children and the horses were back in the pasture, looking sedate. It was a quarter to seven in the morning and sunny, the cool night air slowly warming through, dew-damp cow parsley on all sides. It does get nice here, maugre my complaining.

(I've been using the word "maugre" at a rate of .75 times a week for the past month or so, and I've only now bothered to check that it actually means "notwithstanding; in spite of".)

I should do something research-oriented, like read "Emma". Thing is, I really don't like it very much; it's probably my least favourite Austen, beating "Sense and Sensibility" (which is not nearly enough like the Emma Thompson film) and "Mansfield Park" (which I actually don't mind; I think Fanny Price is unfairly maligned by critics).

Oh, I'm becoming one of those internet people who write quite a lot about Jane Austen. I do promise, though, never to refer to her or any 19th-century female writer by her first name, all chummily. Even if, as in the case of Charlotte Brontë, she can be confused with her sisters and has a last name with a difficult-to-locate symbol in it.