Jane Actually

still hungry. With a smile, she decided to use her one still working credit card to get that sandwich.
    1 The actress portrayed Emma in a 1996 film
    2 A person unduly anxious about their health; a hypochondriac

Hampshire
Jane compounds her lie
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Jane, so glad you made it.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    Oh Albert, I am so sorry to have missed our last rendezvous!
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Amazing woman! I did not mean anything by my remark.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    Oh, come now. “So glad you made it.” Is there not an accusation, Albert?
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Very well, perhaps a little. I was disappointed you couldn’t join me for our usual conversation.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    I did send you an email.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Yes, thank you, but it hardly made up for missing your company.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    I am suitably chastened, sir. Am I forgiven?
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Once you tell me what made you miss our chat.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    I’ve started employment … a job. I have a job. That’s such an odd thing to say. I have a job.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Jane, that’s brilliant! And I know what you mean. As inane as my job is, it’s great to be working again. What is it?
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    It’s in the publishing industry. I’m editing a book.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Well with a name like yours I shouldn’t wonder you’d be good at it. Do you have to go to an office? And what company?
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    No, I can work from … well where ever I happen to be. And it’s Random House.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    In London?
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    No, I’m in New York City, which I am sure my status reflects … oh, no I guess I hadn’t updated that. Well, I am in America and I am staying with a friend—a living friend. So I suppose I have taken all your advice to heart.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    I did say you would enjoy visiting America.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    And I said I had visited America, and I haven’t said that I am enjoying myself.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    But you are, aren’t you?
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    Very well, Mr I Am So Clever. I am enjoying myself, despite my preference for a quiet life. It certainly helps that I can’t hear the traffic or smell … well I shan’t say what I am spared. But bagels, I wish I might smell those. And the lox, I wish I could taste that.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Well look at the shiksa now.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    What is a shiksa?
    BertieFromHants Says:
    LOL It’s a Gentile woman, a non Jew. Sorry, I’ve been in Florida quite some time and have successfully absorbed the culture.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    Oh, so you are making fun of me—again. But I suppose I am “going native.” It is the folly—or the talent—of the British to do so. But the longer I’ve existed and the more I’ve travelled, I find myself enjoying the mutability of mankind more and more. (JaneAusten3 is still typing.)
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    We started off with the same basic needs for food and shelter and yet we end up with the Anglican Church, Hindoos and Scientology. So many faiths, beliefs, customs, rules and accepted behaviours and all the … well I will not be so judgmental as to call them wrong, but …
    BertieFromHants Says:
    My word, Jane, you’ve grown philosophic from a simple jibe.
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    Yes, well travel has that effect on me. Restore me to the quiet and green of Hampshire and I shall promptly rusticate.
    BertieFromHants Says:
    Have you found yourself a small fish in a big pond?
    JaneAusten3 Says:
    How perceptive you are, although in fact I’ll have you know I am considered a person of some importance now, but yes, perhaps I do feel myself thrust into a world of business of which I know little. Enough self pity, however, tell me of your family, especially your little Alicia. How did she perform at the school fete?
    Albert talked of his granddaughter and great grandchildren and his great, great grandchildren with delight, and Jane envied him his relationship with his family. It had been relatively easy for him, a man not made famous, to be welcomed into his extended family. Jane had little contact with her family, although she had received warm wishes from Robert Knight, president of the Jane Austen Society and a descendant of her brother Edward.
    She had, of course, followed the lives of those relatives alive when she had died, and even the generation that followed, but drifted away from them as she had drifted away from England. And upon her return, she found a world too