A gift of much Austen

Horrible dream; most of it unmemorable, one scene where a man's leg was broken so vividly, I thought, 'this is what the voice meant about the accident.' How he groaned! Poor guy. So glad it wasn't real. Time for my astral body to get a grip and pack it in; real life is stranger than the dreamlands right now.

Away from that, away.

Cousin's going through chemo. She's an Austenite or rather a Regency-tending Anglophile so in order to get her over it, I've got her 4 DVDs with dubbed or subtitled options in Spanish. She's fluent in English but I wanted her to have really easy, non brain-bending possibilities.

The first is of course, P&P with Firth and Ehle. She must have seen it a dozen times, I know I have. It remains Champion.

Next is the Garai/Lee Miller/Gambon Emma, which is not only light enough but has lots of English prettiness, including dances of the period, plus cracking performances. There are other Emmas of course, but I cannot subject a sick woman to Ewan MacGregor's wig or the various bum flashes of the De Wilde version. If Bill Nighy can't save a film, it's probably beyond saving.

Then the 2007 version of Persuasion. I don't know if my cousin ever got to Bath; if not, this must surely do the trick for her, especially combined with trips to Lyme Regis and mighty English heroes too manly for umbrellas in ten-foot wave tempests. Persuasion caused me some consternation cos its definitive version is the 90s one with Ciaran Hinds. He's a man I love to watch, though I can never work out whether he is ageing handsome or a benign potato-fish. But the 2007 one is quite good and very cute (who doesn't love a bit of 'No, he's not over it, yes he's still furious?') and when you're sick, pretty and passionate beats accurate every time.

And finally, Mansfield Park, the crazy one with almost jack to do with the book. It's at least entertaining, if not a version for purists and periodistas. The definitive adaption is a bit too chin heavy, while the Billie Piper one is just Rose Tyler plonked out of the tardis into 1812, all eyebrows and gnashers. Never mind Edmund and Henry, she'd have terrified Wellington right off the field.

I have left myself more to send my cousin if she isn't heartily sick of Austen romance after all these, and at least I haven't subjected her to Thompson's Sense and Sensibility. I will keep that as a threat in case she gets maudlin.

Time to go to the post office I guess.