It's Downton Abbey time again. Most people look forward to a particular season of sport, or even the beginning of the new television season in early fall. Some even have great anticipation of summer to hang out at the beach or winter's snow to enjoy skiing or snowboarding. Not me. I look forward to Downton Abbey season on PBS. It starts the first week of January and runs for seven weeks. Around October I begin to silently count the weeks until Downton.
I'm from a small town in central Alabama but I've always been an unapologetic anglophile. My favorite authors are all British: Jane Austen, Charles Dickins, C. S. Lewis, A. A. Milne and Charlotte Bronte; I'm still wild about Laura Ashley clothing and I hope to drive a Mini Cooper someday.
My dream house has a full library with bookshelves to the ceiling, a menagerie of leather backed, vintage books with a five foot tall wood burning fireplace and floral covered high backed chairs completed with ivy growing on the outside of this Beatrix Potter looking cottage.
I even watch the BBC version of Top Gear even though I'm just not that into automobile performance.
Perhaps it's about the perfection of the English language or maybe it's how they over use adverbs, for example: "It's inadvertently something I would like to do, most passionately."
I believe it started as a child when I read my first Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice. It's the witty, dry humor you must listen to intently before you get the joke or either it's the true meaning behind the multitude of complex words and phrases like 'felicity,' 'glad tidings' and 'I am all astonishment.'
My point is…there are still people like me out there in the world who like to be challenged when it comes to history, language and beauty. There are those of us who consider the stodgy "stiff upper lip" to still have some sort of meaning and perhaps not every emotion we have must be celebrated and shared, although sometimes the emotional response of 'I feel, therefore the world must know,' comes out without warning. I am somewhat of an artist.
Because I come from the deep south and am a country girl who says "hey y'all," it still surprises me about my interest in all things British. I don't think they drink sweet tea, and I know a serving of grits may not be on the pub menu, but I enjoy shepherd's pie and drink Earl Grey tea. But just maybe it's the red hair and freckles.
Until tomorrow then.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: I'm all astonishment, It's Downton Abbey time