The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.
P. D. JamesA picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.
P. D. JamesWork did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
P. D. JamesChildhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.
P. D. James