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Revision as of 14:27, 24 November 2013
, 14:27, 24 November 2013no edit summary
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I was going to say that Rebecca Winter ''is'' a well-known photographer, but that's not quite how Rebecca sees it. She had major success with ''Still Life With Breadcrumbs'' and became a household name - almost a feminist icon - but the success has faded into the past. People who think about it guess that she's well-off , if not wealthy but the truth is different. When we meet Rebecca she's woken in the middle of the night by what sounds very like a gunshot - but she's not in her New York apartment. She's a couple of hours drive away in a rented cottage. It's the finances, you see. If she lets her New York property and rents somewhere cheaper the difference allows her to pay her mother's nursing home fees, a contribution to her father's rent, some assistance to her son - and all the other obligations we accumulate as we get older.
And getting older is part of the circumstances if not the problem. Rebecca is sixty and divorced. One of the first things which she discovers about the countryside is that it's lonely - and that her computer and cell phone don't work at the cottage. She might not need a dark room with digital photography (although parts of the interior of the cottage are so dark that wouldn't be a problem) but she does need her laptop to work. The solution is breakfast at the local cafe. And that gunshot? Well it wasn't a gunshot and it brought her, via a raccoon and her roofspace to Jim Bates, who repairs tin roofs.
