what, we never talked about Merlin before?

Well, children, Ms B has nothing to report. How's that! Back at work five days a week - finally - and a slight culture shock is kicking in. The enervating effect of actually having to do things during the day; the effort of sitting upright all the time! And intellectual life (not that I had any while I was sick, mind; I was a mushroom) shrinks to the time it takes to cross Zones 1 & 2 on the diagonal, though to be fair that can take a pretty long time. In the evenings I just want to sleep. Yesterday I met, as some of you may have read on Francis Sedgemore's blog, and had a pizza with the redoubtable blogger known uncompromisingly as Jura Watchmaker, and even under those piquant circumstances I was thinking of sheep and stiles by 10pm. Pathetic.

However, all is not lost! My lovely books did arrive; yesterday morning I had the happy errand of going to the post office to pick the last one up. So my intellectual life for the past two days - all half an hour of it, not counting wittering on about movies for a little bit - has been largely conducted in a hybrid Medieval French.

Now that is refreshing. The book is a 13th-century Arthurian Romance in a mixture of Frankish and Picard, about a cross-dressing girl called Silence who becomes a knight in order to secure an inheritance. Nature and Nurture take human form to taunt and interrogate her about her life choices, and the day is eventually saved (or is it?) by, of course, Merlin. In a case like this there can be no happy ending.

Merlin is a very powerful character, bastardised of course by the mountebank Tolkein, alas. I hope this poem will make good use of him - it looks intensely interesting. I'd have rather someone like Elaine could have been used (whispered as an aside in case there is anybody out there who remembers the story of Arthur, the Matter of Britain)... Elaine was a woman, of course; had shape-shifting powers when it counted; and was the mother of Galahad, which just goes to show. She used her powers only for good.

The misogyny of the Middle Ages was quite remarkable. In many ways women were much better off then than in later centuries; they could own property, and there were rich and powerful widows (though I'm not so sure, that early on, actually); several books extant from the Middle Ages are by women - the book of Margery Kempe, for example. But she was English and later too. No, the real problem women had through the whole medieval period was Eve. TOn her sole account, they - or we - were considered vessels of pure evil, tempted, tempting, and pretty much responsible for everything bad. All the best success stories from the period involve either disguising oneself as a man, or becoming a mighty abbess. (I've always fancied the latter, but I suspect it attracted the equivalent of City types, or high-powered lawyers, today. More likely I'd have been the strange one in the corner making eyes at the monk who came to prune the orchard.)

So the question of Nature and Nurture is critical. There is an argument, for instance, that Eve was good by nature, and that the snake scenario was circumstantial after all. (I love sophistry.)

Anyway, my new book is rollicking stuff, and the language is beautiful - even not speaking the language you can see it's earthy stuff, and beautiful, and it's just really good poetry. The prologue made me laugh out loud about four times, on the bus, but I'm too tired to type it in.

Here's a sample. Try reading it aloud to yourself, even though you don't know the right pronunciations. It's amazing how some of them come to present themselves to you as you follow the poetry's sounds.

Ahi, fait Noureture. Ahi ! white pace whAlas! said Nurture, Alas!)
Com cil sont malement trahiwhite pace how badly deceived are those)
Ki noriscent la gent a fairewhite pace wwho consition a person to do
Cho que lor nature est contraire. white what is contrary to his nature.
Quanque jo noris et labor white pace wWhatever I nurture and work for
Me tolt Nature a un sol jor. white pace Nature takes from me in one day.
Tant a esté noris en bos white pace whiMerlin was nurtured in white pace white spac white pace white spac the woods for so long
Bien deüst metre ariere doswhite pace well would he put behind him
Nature d’ome, si voloit white pace whithuman nature, if he wanted
Herbes user, si com soloit. white pace to eat herbs, as he was used to...

The title is Le Roman de Silence, and the author is someone called Heldris de Cornualle, I believe of inconclusive gender.

And that's your lot for today. Sleeeeep...