1. Yesterday was my birthday – I’m now 45, and wondering where the time went. Yes, I know, I’m not completely out to pasture yet, but this is still the oldest I’ve ever been and it takes a bit of getting used to. I think I’ve moved from ‘young in a good light’ to ‘officially middle-aged.’
2. I seem to be coming down with a cold, which is not great news for…
3. Tomorrow evening I’m going to the Penguin bloggers’ party for the first time, as Annabel’s plus one. I’ve been very excited about this, though I am less excited by the prospect of sniffing and sneezing my way through it.
4. My back is much better, thank you all you kind people who have asked me about it. My shoulder and arm are still troubled by my compressed nerve, which dates all the way back to the end of October last year. Oddly enough, I have two sisters-in-law who have been suffering from the same thing, and it seems to be taking all of us a while to recover, which is at least solidarity, even if I might wish instead for a speedy recovery for the three of us.
5. I’ve been reading 750-1,000 pages a week, though you wouldn’t know it from this blog. I’ll be able to tell you why in two weeks’ time, thank goodness, the restraint is killing me.
6. I only received four books for my birthday this year, but I was very pleased with them: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, Mr Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim, and Her Brilliant Career; Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel Cooke.
7. I am still loving tai chi class, but I am haunted by guilt. On about the second or third week, one of the other newbies complimented me on picking it up quickly and seeming very at ease with the exercises. It was a lovely compliment, and I did that dreadful fumbling thing, not expecting anyone to say anything so nice. I laughed it off as a good facade, which was completely the wrong thing to say. I should have said that years of ballet training as a child made this sort of thing easier for me, or I should just have said, thank you, how kind. The lady who was so nice to me never came back after that session and I feel like I chased her away. My social skills are really not what they were. This does not bode well for tomorrow night, either.
8. My son is job hunting in London and doing okay, given the circumstances. He’s been getting on well with the reading, though he says he can watch any kind of film at any time, but realises he has to have the ‘right’ book for his mood. He recently finished the Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and very much enjoyed it. Thank you for all your wonderful suggestions – I’m looking forward to seeing him branch out.
9. In my current reading, I’m splitting my time between the Tudor court, riven with potentially lethal intrigue, the story of a newly appointed psychiatrist on an emergency admission ward, and you would not believe the crazy things people do to themselves, and a juvenile detention center for kids with disabilities. I have to say that, even if things have been a little rocky lately, such reading reinforces my awareness that they are really NOT that bad!
