Monday

Saturday 28th September 1811. Hot News, For Once! Even Twice!


Well it seems to be a given, when a bloke’s made his pile (or waited for his Pa to peg it), he’s ready to commit longterm and install some ‘lucky’ woman to like, run his crib and die having his babies. So today, when me and my sister Kitty rushed home utterly spent and muck-splattered, with some really hot goss for once, nobody cared. We were totally out-gossed by the family’s news that some minted single geezer’s moving into nearby Netherfield. This passes for a huge event in these tragically dull parts. My three oldest sisters aren’t even slightly excited that a regiment of SOLDIERS are coming to the ‘hood, for some like, R & R. And by soldiers, I mean of course, officers. Mmmm, those scarlet uniforms, so stylish, so flattering and sooo promising... phwooar! Give me a man with a long sword and tight pantaloons any day. Ooh, need a lie down in a darkened room... 

The Netherfield guy sounds waaayyy too old for me, so I was only half listening as I had to ‘accidentally’ rip Kitty’s petticoat with my heel, to get her away from the mirror so I could restore what’s left of my ‘do. Bonnet hair is no joke, each ringlet has to be redone a squillion times a day after the so-called ‘fresh country air’ has reeked its vengeance on my coiffure.

Oh. My. Life. If you can call it a life, stuck out here in the sticks where fashion is unknown, and the height of thrilldom is trudging miles through the mud to Meryton, to the shop. Yes, that’s right, the one and only shop. Until today, Kitty and I have had to live on this starvation diet month in and month out, tea at our Auntie’s and looking at the three hats in that shop, the same three hats for at least five years, swear down. No chance of us having the carriage of course, oh no, Pa says the farm needs the horses. I ask you! A farm! Eeeuuuwww. But that’s the countryside for you. I tell you, when you’re brushing the mud off your flounces of an evening, you can only pray it IS mud and nothing worse. ‘We are to kill a pig soon!’ is seriously what passes for a convo starter around here. Civilisation has not reached this neck of the woods. Between feverish excitement at killing pigs, hunting foxes, and shooting birds, it’s no wonder the local boys are basically maniacs with bloodlust in their inbred eyes. Thank god then, for today’s news! I mean about the officers, natch. Our Auntie Philips in Meryton is pretty cool considering the backwater she’s been washed up in, and it was from her we heard about the officers muscling in to the district (mmm, mind picture alert!) and the sudden improvement in our social lives from a load of balls, to, well, a load of Balls. Yay! And true to form, the old dear, she must be thirty if she’s a day, promised to invite them round to set things rolling. It’s only a girl’s patriotic duty to relieve their loneliness and I’m up for offering my all to my country in the form of those gorgeous boys, any day of the week!

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