Out of bed comes good
The difference between virtual and physical failure.
It’s Tuesday, the day “G”-starting surnames are supposed to apply (along with “F,” “H,” “I,” and many other letters). I’ll try calling again later, maybe around dinner time. This is one of those experiences that feel like “the online world is not supposed to work like this,” like when I tried, and failed, to get the copy of E. M. Forster’s Maurice that I had borrowed from the Open Library online to my Kindle; then tried, and failed, to get it to my phone; that’s why I settled on reading Nicholas Nickleby, of which I have a dog-eared, physical copy. These things feel like time lost to nothing. If one attempts to cook something and burns it, or one attempts to dry one’s home-laundered clothing on the radiator and burns that too, at least one had the experience of food in one’s hand, clothing between one’s fingers. Thirty minutes spent attempting an online unemployment claim, followed by ten minutes attempting to do so by phone, feels like forty minutes of my life just sitting there: which it is. But hey, for just forty minutes, or several hours ultimately, of only just sitting there, I will get my full Sony Music salary for another 13 weeks.
Caroline is left waiting for Dwight.
Caroline Penvenen on Poldark last night was waiting for Dwight to come so they could elope. She was in the carriage, in the cold, with her little dog, and her cheeks were getting rosy it was cold. She’s got a fear of being abandoned—perhaps due to losing her parents or her father (which is why she stays with her uncle)—which makes her mistrustful of men, and even of Dwight, and of getting married. He doesn’t show, because he’s saving Ross Poldark from their smuggling boat being captured by the authorities (the informer has informed them, and the authorities are waiting in the dark at the cove on Ross’s property; Ross himself is on the ship, having traveled with it to France to see that guy who had accidentally killed his wife after Dwight slept with her; the guy has said he knew something about where a lode of copper was in the Wheal Grace mine; it turns out the lode that guy knew about is the quartz Ross has already discovered to be a disappointment) by lighting a bonfire on the hill. Of course all this happened at the last minute, he should have been off to see Caroline, and then he goes, one last time, to help the woman with the knee that always gets stuck the wrong way, and in doing so learns who the informer is, and tries to save Ross.
Dwight did the right thing. And Caroline, through nobody’s fault, is disappointed and goes off to London the next morning with her uncle, and leaves Dwight a note saying This is goodbye, and it’s for the best, because she knows he loves her, and also knows his reluctance to elope.
Ugh! So how much more will we have to wait for them to get married?
Good sometimes turns to bad, and out of bed comes good.