{"id":5385,"date":"2017-08-24T22:26:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T12:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=5385"},"modified":"2017-08-24T22:26:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T12:26:46","slug":"falconers-lure-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/falconers-lure-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Falconer\u2019s Lure\u2019, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter Four: Colebridge Market<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is my favourite sort of chapter, in which nothing very exciting happens (people do the weekly shopping and have haircuts) but we discover lots of interesting things about the characters.<\/p>\n

Firstly, we learn the children only have one living grandparent, Mrs Marlow\u2019s mother, who is glamorous and Parisian and gives unsatisfactory girly presents instead of the cold hard cash that the twins would prefer. Grandmother stayed in Paris all through the war, which suggests she either got trapped there (and is pretty tough to have survived the occupation) or was a Nazi collaborator. Also, Mrs Marlow has a sister called Molly. Captain Marlow\u2019s parents were killed when he was a teenager and he spent a lot of time at Trennels.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the Marlows have been at Trennels for a thousand years, \u201cfour hundred years before the Merricks\u201d (ha, take that, Patrick!). Rowan also explains to Nicola that their father is going to give up his Navy career to farm at Trennels, because \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be proper\u201d to have non-Marlows there (and probably because he likes the idea of strutting about being the local squire). Nicola is horrified that he\u2019s giving up the chance to be First Sea Lord. In fact, at one stage, Giles<\/em> even offered to give up the Navy instead of his father (I bet he did it fully expecting everyone to reject the idea outright, which they did). But the current farm manager is on the verge of retirement, so someone<\/em> needs to take over. Also there are lots of debts \u2013 not because the farm is unprofitable, but because Jon was hopeless with money \u2013 hence the need to sell the London house. Mind you, this is the sort of \u2018poverty\u2019 in which they have a huge house, plenty of land they could let if they wanted, two vehicles, a pony and enough money to pay school fees for six children at expensive boarding schools.<\/p>\n

Like Nicola, I\u2019d thought Rowan would want<\/em> to live in the country, but Rowan thinks the whole thing is \u201cputrid\u201d. Karen is happy because she gets her own bedroom, Ginty, Ann and Peter prefer the country to London, and poor Mrs Marlow is making the best of it, even though she thinks it would be more sensible to get a tenant farmer for Trennels. Nicola suggests Karen run the farm because \u201cshe\u2019s only going to Oxford\u201d and could just as well go to an agricultural college. Hmm, not quite<\/em> the same thing, Nicola! <\/p>\n

Rowan also says Karen would be hopeless at running anything, just as she was hopeless at being Head Girl, which is news to Nicola. It\u2019s true that it can come as a revelation to children that their older relatives are not necessarily good at whatever they do. Mind you, what is a Head Girl meant<\/em> to do? At my schools (I went to a lot of them), school captains ran assemblies and occasionally represented the school at official functions, but what happens at boarding school? Are Head Girls meant to be some sort of assistant to the headmistress or an unpaid, untrained school counsellor? Rowan thinks Karen will \u201cend up a good conscientious Civil Servant. Or somebody\u2019s wife. She\u2019d make quite a good wife.\u201d Meanwhile, Nicola thinks Rowan or Ann would be good at running Trennels, but of course, they\u2019re still at school and \u201cRowan wanted to be a games mistress and Ann wanted to be a nurse.\u201d I like that the book presents girls as having actual career ambitions, even if we know that there are limitations to what they can do (Karen, for example, would have to resign from her Civil Service job if she got married).<\/p>\n

Then Peter says he\u2019d<\/em> like to learn to run the farm, except he acknowledges that he\u2019s too young at the moment. Besides, when he\u2019s eighteen he\u2019d have to go off to do National Service. He does think he could do it after National Service. This seems a good plan to me, given that Peter hasn\u2019t much interest in or aptitude for the Navy. Rowan points out that Giles will inherit the farm from their father, but as Giles is unlikely to \u201cchuck the Service to farm\u201d, then Peter could be his bailiff and Nicola his housekeeper. <\/p>\n

Anyway, Rowan and Nicola do the shopping in Colebridge, the nearest town, where Rowan picks up a pamphlet about the upcoming district show and Nicola buys The Boke of Falconerie, 1598<\/em> for sixpence from a market stall. Maybe it will provide some ammunition for her campaign to be allowed to keep Regina at school (or end up being immensely rare and valuable, thereby saving Trennels from foreclosure). Also, Nicola accidentally gets her hair cut very short (\u201cthe way you\u2019re all going on, anyone\u2019d think I\u2019d had it dyed and permed like a\u2013a teen-ager<\/em>\u201d) and Lawrie gets upset they are no longer identical so she shears off her own hair. Lawrie is being extremely childish in this chapter, even by Lawrie-standards.<\/p>\n

Finally, Peter has inherited a shot-gun from Jon. As this is Peter, I foresee disaster. The question is whether he will a) shoot himself in the foot, b) shoot someone else, hopefully in a non-lethal manner, or c) kill someone\u2019s beloved pet. Run, Fluff, hide!<\/p>\n

Next, Chapter Five: Jael is Entered and Peter Gate-crashes<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter Four: Colebridge Market This is my favourite sort of chapter, in which nothing very exciting happens (people do the weekly shopping and have haircuts) but we discover lots of interesting things about the characters. Firstly, we learn the children only have one living grandparent, Mrs Marlow\u2019s mother, who is glamorous and Parisian and gives … Continue reading \u2018Falconer\u2019s Lure\u2019, Part Three<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-5385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-antonia-forest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5388,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}