Reading
I gave up on Soul Mountain. I don’t give up on many books, and I know it’s terrible, but I just didn’t care about our narrator – in the first, second or third person.
So I came, finally, to Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, which I have meant to read for years. The first half had me, I’m sure, reading with mouth agape, it’s just so gob-smackingly fine. Now it’s gone all silly and annoyingly postmodern. Surely it’ll come right.
But in the meantime I’ve got my grubby little hands on Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Wolf Hall. God, she’s good. If A Place of Greater Safety is one of the best historical novels ever written, this may well come close. Philippa Gregory, read it and weep – even better, read it and vow never to write that crappy Tudor trash ever again.
Next up, Antony Beevor on The Battle for Spain.

Listening
To the new Madonna greatest hits album, over and over, and it’s not even me playing it.

Eating
Broad beans, rocket and beetroot fresh from the garden.

Watching
Rain. At last.
Oh and Drew Barrymore movies.