That time we hung out with Miss Marple

I’ve always loved Agatha Christie.  My family and I inherited a room full of books when we moved into a house. We knew the previous owners and they always said that they would come back and collect the books… and they never did.  The house belonged to their mother who was an avid Agatha Christie fan.  We have a LOT of them.  And so, as a bored young thing, I would read them too.  I never quite “got” Miss Marple though.  I read her introduction in a set of short stories and she wasn’t someone that I wanted to spend time with.  She was a fussy old maid and yeah, she solved crimes but that wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

It wasn’t until late last year that I decided to give Miss Marple another go.  I started reading some more of the books that involved her and realised one huge thing.  Miss Marple didn’t come out of Agatha Christie’s brain as a fully formed character.  It seems like Agatha Christie was still deciding what she wanted Marple to be like.  Nor is the character particularly consistent.  Miss Marple starts off as a prim shrewish spinster lady, and in some books she is really genuinely eccentric and ‘fluffy’ as she is often described.  But other times she is so shrewd and wonderful and only pretends to be eccentric when she needs to fool people into telling her secrets.  And it is this version of Marple that I fell head over heels in love with.

It is also the type of Miss Marple that is the current version on television so I am rather spoiled.  It was also the version that I happened to see in live theatre when “A Murder Is Announced” made its way to my home town.  I had originally brought tickets for my mum and I to go and see it but mum had planned to go to NZ during that time, so I offered the spare ticket to someone else.

Hey Danielle!!  Who else would I rather spend a few hours with watching a Miss Marple play than the friend who I spend an awful lot of time obsessing over BBC dramas with?!  (And she lets me steal her instagram pics for me to use on my blog)

We dressed up even thought it was a matinee, hung out a bit beforehand and went for dinner afterwards.  It was so much fun.  I know I say this every time I go into the city and see a show but I really REALLY need to do that more often.