After finishing the newspaper I tried to watch a movie, but I couldn’t concentrate. I turned off the movie and picked up the book off the top my pile of newly acquired second hand paperbacks and decided to try to read ‘A History of the English Church and People’ by Bede. Note the word try. The book was completed in 731. That’s not a typo…it was written centuries before William the Conqueror arived to savage England. It may not be boring, but it’s not sold as a page turner! I made it to the end of the first page. Bede, begins by telling the reader about Britain. Where it is, how large it is and what sort of animals can be found here etc. I was starting to fall asleep until I read, “There are also many varieties of shell-fish, such as mussels, in which are often found excellent pearls of several colours, red, purple, violet, and green, but mainly white.” (Have you ever heard of green or violet pearls? I haven’t. I made a mental note to look it up and continued…) “Whelks are abundant, and a beautiful scarlet dye is extracted from them which remains unfaded by sunshine or rain; indeed, the older the cloth, the more beautiful the colour.” Wondering what a whelk was, I looked it up in my encyclopaedia… [Read more…] about Everything comes back to the Regency…even whelks…
