Fredrica grew up in country Australia speaking cant terms straight from the Regency period, which are now disappearing from use due to the invention of television. Her husband teases her on how easily she can still drop into the lingo if she meets an old timer, but as he once used the word "gammon" in polite conversation - a term only used by highwaymen in Georgette Heyer novels; she pays him no heed. Fredrica spent her summer holidays with her great aunt, a modern miss who learnt to drive a car, and conveyed her husband to the pub once a week when he became too old to get on a horse. Fred first read Pride and Prejudice at fifteen and thought it very entertaining. She next read it at thirty and thought it a work of genius.
