Christmas Shopping

The special CiB meme ‘Xmas in books, accompanied by carefully chosen pictures’ is back!

Every December on the blog I feature Xmas scenes and Xmas books – I never seem to run out, but am still open to ideas and suggestions.

If you use Pinterest you can see some of the beautiful seasonal pictures on this page, and you can find (endless!) more Xmas books via the labels at the bottom of the page.

Today, a realistic picture of Xmas shopping in 1970s England


No Holly for Miss Quinn by Miss Read



published 1976



shopping No Holly



Lights were strung across the streets of Caxley, and entwined the lamp standards. Christmas trees jostled pyramids of oranges in the greengrocers’ shops. Turkeys hung in rows in the butchers’, presenting their pink plump breasts for inspection. Children flattened their noses against the windows of the toy shops, while exhausted mothers struggled with laden shopping baskets and wondered what they had forgotten.


shopping No HOlly 2


Queues formed at the Post Offices, buying stamps for stacks of Christmas cards, weighing parcels bedizened with Christmas stickers or simply inquiring, with some agitation, the last date for posting to New Zealand and getting the answer they had feared. Yet again, Aunt Flo in Wellington would receive a New Year’s card sent by air mail.


commentary: This is a charmer, in an unexpected way. I’m a big fan of Miss Read (and have featured several of her books on the blog), but had never read this one. I had a vision in my head that it would be about a lonely old lady who has no visitors at Christmas – this is the rather misleading cover:


shopping No HOlly 3


When I finally picked it up to read, I realized that Miss Quinn is a relatively young woman: a successful and independent businesswoman. She has planned her own quiet peaceful Christmas, which will involve re-decorating her sitting-room. But then – disaster strikes for her brother and sister-in-law, and she has to cancel her plans and take off for Norfolk, where she will take over the running of a busy vicarage household, with three young children, while their mother is treated in hospital.

What I loved about the book is that Miss Quinn takes over, and copes. Everyone is nice and good-hearted. She is somewhat shocked at the state of the vicarage, but she doesn’t swoosh in and change everything, she likes the children and they like her. In any modern book she would do a makeover of herself, the vicarage and the children – but there is nothing like that. She takes great pride in making a delicious supper of fish fingers, and quite right too. She learns that her sister-in-law is a more admirable person than she’d realized, and perhaps the up-rating is mutual. But she doesn’t go home wishing she lived in a family house, she just wants to go back to her decorating. There is a whisper of possible romance, but it is clear that Miss Quinn is happy with her life and her ways – and that it is her efficiency, her work skills, that enabled her to take over.

I found it delightful.

I was surprised to find that the Irish singer and musician Enya has a track called No Holly for Miss Quinn on her album Shepherd Moons – you can hear it here. And she wrote another piece of music based on a Miss Read book – Miss Clare Remembers.

The top picture is from 1966, but the Miss Read books always seemed to be set in some distant time – No Holly reads much more like the 60s than the 70s. It comes from the Tyne and Wear archives, who have some lovely pictures of shops all done up for Christmas.

The other picture (grim realism) shows the queue outside a post office in Plymouth at Xmas 1980, and was taken by Chris Hoare for geograph.org.uk.












Comments

  1. This does sound quite charming, Moira. And it sounds like a very good fit for the holiday season. One of the things I like best about your description is that Miss Quin is a strong and secure character. That's a very nice touch!

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    1. It is, and the book makes you realize how rare that is in fiction! Everyone has to have problems and secret insecurities, and of course that's good for plot and journeys - but for a change it was good to read about nice people...

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  2. This does sound like comfort reading of the highest order, Moira. And fish fingers are much underrated . . .

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    1. Exactly. Miss Read is, I suppose, rather looked down on, but she has a lot to offer. And a short seasonal story is a nice thing to have to hand each December.

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  3. Miss Read so many Christmas books! Just checked her bibliography. I've seen the name on books at library sales and always thought they were from the 50s and earlier. But she only started writing in 1955. Why am I always surprised by my ignorant assumptions about writers who I've never read? I guess it's the choice of her quaint pseudonym that conjures up old-fashioned books. Not at all the kind of thing I'd be interested in, but it was good to be enlightened about this writer. I've been taught a lesson about assuming - yet again!

    Charming nostalgic photos. I still love to go look at the holiday decorations in department store windows at Christmas time. It's fast approaching a lost art. I keep hearing the death knell for retail stores of all types. But that queue at the post office -- outside the building! I've never endured that anywhere I've lived. What a blessing to have automated stamp machines and online alternatives these days. Nothing I dread more than waiting in lines at the post office. I'd love to calculate how much of my life was wasted queueing at a post office. Cumulatively it probably adds up to a couple years!

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    1. Exactly - sociological detail is always so entertaining. And I saw in my newspaper this morning a picture of a queue round the block for a post office now: in those days it was because so many people were posting so many cards. But now it is because the offices and centres for mail are being closed down, and there seems to be some general inefficiency.

      She probably isn't your kind of writer, but she has her little corner in the world and brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. I can remember giggling with teenage friends that 'Miss' must be her first name, so I've been reading her a long time. In my view she avoids the sentimentality and tweeness of some apparently similar writers, and shows a very real picture of rural England in her day.

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  4. No Holly for Miss Quinn is one of my two perpetual Christmas reads, the other being Envious Casca. Thanks for the review.

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    1. Oh good for you! It will become one of mine from now on. And totally agree about Envious Casca - Heyer's finest hour.

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  5. This sounds very good, Moira. And I have never read Miss Read. I will have to look and see what is available.

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    1. I wonder are they available in America? They are lovely, and very British.

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    2. When I first commented, I checked this one out and other books by Miss Read. Yes, many of them are available here. But there is not a current edition of this one available at Amazon. Looks like I will have to buy from a reseller, which is fine. Although I may try earlier Fairacre books first, then get this one closer to Christmas next year. I will also check the book sale, although I never know which authors they will have.

      My husband has five Provincial Lady books (is that all of them?). So I may try them too.

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    3. Some would say the books are almost interchangeable! But they are certainly a lovely and convincing picture of a way of life now gone...
      Five Provincial Lady books is more than I knew existed, so well done him! Hope you enjoy.

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  6. This does sound like a delightful book, Moira. I liked both the story, as evident from your review, and the cover too. I also liked Miss Quinn's view of life, that being alone doesn't necessarily mean lonely.

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    1. Yes, good point Prashant, in her quite way Miss Read is showing that different ways of life can be equally desirable.

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    2. "No Holly for Miss Quin" - sorry, I can't help thinking of "No Orchids for Miss Blandish," not at all the same thing - was available on Open Library and I finished it up in one night. Dear Lord, keeping house back then was still a lot of manual labor, wasn't it?

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    3. Oh that's hilarious - could there BE more different books? Yes, it is always on the edge of being depressing how much they had to do. Thank goodness for dishwashers. (machine ones rather than people).

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    4. It's only just occurred to me - do you think Miss Read intended the Orchids comparison... ?

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  7. Probably not one for me thanks

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    1. Definitely not - but see comment above: No Orchids for Miss Blandish might be more up your street...

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    2. Funny enough, I have that one - tub 68!

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    3. Will be expecting a reivew in about 2022 then?

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