Gwyneth's personal blog

Friday 27th November, chill air in the morning after another night of rain and wind.

Is the flood weather over? Something feels different this morning. Yesterday I went down to my local branch of A Certain Very Big Building Society, to rearrange my small savings, a nice man at the counter having pointed out to me that I was getting no interest at all on any of it. Oh, right, I heard about that, I muttered, feeling caught out. I don't expect my assets to be fed turtle soup with a golden spoon (Dickens ref, can you name the novel?) but I do draw the line at putting my money out to hire for no wages whatever, that's cruel. So, anyway, I met my personal banking assistant, who suggested I try her best product, where you put your money down the saltmines for a six year stretch, and at the end it gets paid 12% guaranteed, but you could earn a lot more, as this fund is linked to major stock markets! Eerm, says I, doesn't that make rather less than 3% a year, and can't I get 3% guaranteed on a shorter term? Personal banking assistant a little taken aback, customers not supposed to be able to count. Well, yes, but you could make a lot more. Sorry, says I, diffidently, but the trouble is, I'm not one of the people who thinks the recession is over...At which, bless her, my personal banking assistant burst out laughing. "Oh God, no!" she cried. "Of course is isn't! Nothing like!"

Since you ask, I mainly ended up going for that new over-fifties deal, and that's me sorted again until the latest suite of "savings" accounts go dead. But dear reader (and if you are reading this, I bet you don't), should you have anything substantial to put aside right now take my advice, which is the advice of Bill Bonner over at The Daily Reckoning. Keep doing this until I tell you it's safe to adopt a different strategy. (Er, better if you don't let on to your neighbours, or the folk in the pub)

1Buy Gold.
2 Keep it in a sock under the mattress.

Thursday 26th November, clear skies right now, after rain and wind.

We saw Jane Campion's Bright Star at the Dukes's, it's such a beautiful picture. Campion is a Chardin of film-makers (that's Jean-Batiste-Simeon Chardin's market girl making a guest appearence in the thumbnail, click through for the Paris WebMuseum). She recreates domestic details with such passionate, faithful intensity that every soundscape, every scene, brims with the stillness of great art, that makes you look and look, listen and listen. I liked Bright Star a lot more than I liked The Piano, which I admired with reservations years ago. I could see that the story of John Keats and Fanny Bawne was a gift to her style, period, poignant, contained and so well-documented too, and I wonder slightly if she'll ever pull off her Chardin trick in a contemporary setting. Now that would be something. But it was inspired to place the point of view in the heart of Fanny's loving family, looking outward: a subtly different trick from just making Fanny, this confident, grounded, innocent young girl, the viewpoint character. And the principals were great, and so were Fanny's family, and the jealous bounder Brown. And I loved the way Campion conveyed the cruelty of the young lovers' fate through coldness, physical cold: the saturating rain, the chill, saturated colours of spring flowers, the bitter weather of those years around the Year Without A Summer. Keats was always talking about being cold, and telling Fanny she better wrap up warmly, in his letters.

Why revert to a movie I saw weeks ago? Well, partly my blog was still missing back then, and partly I saw a review in Grazia yesterday, (high-priced classy type women's glossy), and Bright Star only got a measly three stars. Not exciting enough. The reviewer "couldn't believe" in the passion between the principals. Tuh, thinks I. Some people wouldn't know true love, young love, if it jumped up and bit them. And it's not because that lovely, touching phenomenon has vanished from the modern world, either. Far from it (young love endures, the poor nightingales have proved ephemeral). Reviewer probably doesn't know any teenagers, that's all. . . Anyway, then I started thinking about stars, because I remembered the posters and I knew that stacks of eminent movie reviewers had absolutely adored Bright Star, thought it was wonderful. A whole page of four stars, full house of all the best venues.

So why not five stars in all those little rows, to match the adjectives? Does Jane Campion just automatically get a star knocked off for being female? Surely not. Well, obviously you will tell me that there are five star movies the way there are Oscar movies, and it isn't exactly to do with quality, it's to do with star quality (to coin a phrase). It's the subject matter, the gravitas (as Movie people understand gravitas). Okay, so here's A Serious Man, the Coen brothers. A period piece, a chamber piece, a contained little drama by a duo renowned for being obsessive about their art. Five starred all over the place. What's the difference? As far as I can make out (and I'm not going to see the movie. I admired Blood Simple very much when it came out, still admire it now. I like Fargo and I liked that crazy one about the scriptwriter too. But Burn After Reading finished me. Super-rich Hollywood luvvies playing their deeply unattractive real selves and thinking they are funny. Go away) Anyway, as I was saying, far as I can work out, judging by the reviews, A Serious Man gets five stars because it bullies people. It bullies the audience into believing they have to laugh at some poor shmuck getting bullied up down and sideways, it beats them into submission and makes them do something unpleasant.

Is that the way contemporary taste works? The public and the mediafolk hand over their top admiration to playground bullies? When you look around you, you have to admit it's a point of view.

Monday 23rd November, grey, blustery and rainy, horribly mild

Calamitous floods in Cumbria, Catastrophic Fire Warnings in South Australia, and Copenhagen admits defeat before it is even born. How can these things possibly be connected? Not at all, according to the people who script our news coverage. I read in the Independent that the Cumbrian floods "cannot be directly related to Climate Change", and fair enough, if it was an isolated weird weather event. If there wasn't all this other weird stuff, if the Arctic wasn't melting, if there weren't all these other frightening indicators. We could just sit back and enjoy the spectacle, as long as we weren't facing ruin and loss our sweet selves. But the mediafolk and the politicians have never heard of Bayes' Theorem, so they continue, defiantly, to look on the weather as a tossed coin.

Funny how the only people who seem to take the need for drastic action seriously are in Africa (and the aid organisations of course). Oh, and China, I suppose, but China's historical record on Big Interventions is not encouraging. Their efforts in that line have tended more towards making dents in their population that would frighten any other massive superpower.

Meanwhile, in my own sweet little life I'm happy because I beat the City In The Sky at last; because I've managed to put a couple of obstinate things to bed, and because I've had an invitation I like the look of for next July. Unhappy because we have fleas in the house again, despite Frontline Combi (which as pet owners will know, is the latest weapon in the endless battle). It's Ginger, not Milo. She goes somewhere and comes back hopping, and I get bitten. This is the problem with warm winters, warm worlds generally. Parasites flourish. If the warmth comes suddenly the parasites are swift to take advantage, the host species, not so opportunist in design, cannot riposte at the same speed, and they suffer badly.

Wearing Brocades In The Darkness Of Night #n. When I started my first blog, years ago, my first heading was that Genji quote. Nobody knows about this, I said (aside from Peter and Gabriel). I'm not going to publicise, even if I knew now. I'm just going to leave this occasional diary in an unlocked drawer, and if anyone reads it, I may never know. & here I am again, because that "Coming Soon" page at the old address is apparently immoveable, unchangeable. Never mind, I'll carry on. Now and then.

Must now go and cook, and listen to The Rite Of Spring. I'm currently finding out about Stravinsky, for Gabriel's sake, my attitude hampered by the fact that when I was a child ballet was part of the furniture of cultural life, Petruschka and The Firebird were things I was supposed to admire and didn't know why, not revolutionary or weird, good heavens kno. And, plus, The Rite Of Spring to me means dinosaurs. Always and irrevocably, dinosaurs.

Wednesday 11th November, cool and rainy.

The blog is back, with salvaged entries back to July. No redirects yet so this is a rather secret blog. Never mind, it's nice to have my little soapbox window open again. Lest we forget? Well, I do not wear a poppy, I did respect the 2 mins silence, in the pub on Sunday, before the Chelsea: MU match (ah well, win some lose some); as did all the assembled. I do not take kindly to being advised that I "ought to" support the war in Afghanistan, though I suppose it makes sense to those who understand, and revere the UK fallen for dying in defence of our planet destroying addictions. No Blood For Oil still seems a good plan to me. You haven't heard this story? Go on, try typing Afghanistan pipeline into a well-known search engine yourself, and pick a hit or few. You'll find allies I'd rather not have, but that's always the way. Any cause has its parasites. Click through the poppy for my source for the image.

Coincidentally, in the last entry before service was interupted, we were walking through Patching Woods, looking for chestnuts far too soon, and finding blackberries. Saturday 7th, for the first time since, we escaped for a walk in the country again. Herstmonceux this time, where the castle is, and the Science Centre with its observatory domes still rising like pallid eaudenil giant funghi above the treetops. The castle is a conference centre these days (what else?), but the woods and quiet fields are still open to the public, & here, just by the great mis-shapen beech in the photo, we found a treasure of sweet chestnuts and picked up a kilo of the plumpest, pricking our fingers and yelping as we foraged among the damp bright leaves. Whereupon we started looking out for fungi too, and made a splendid collection, from the wood margin and later from damp green pasture. The edible count went: Macrolepiota rhacodes, a parasol mushroom variant; a good handful of Fairy Rings (Marasimus oreades); two fine young Shaggy Manes (Coprinus comatus) and a heap of good old field mushrooms.



Pasta al funghi with garlic for our dinner, mushrooms and eggs for breakfast, and plenty left for Sunday supper. The fascination of foraging for food grows on us, year by year (I turned Peter on to this game, ha, I remember there was a time he wouldn't touch a puffball for fear of curling up like a hoop, vomiting blood and dying of kidney damage. Now there's no stopping him). Probably a sign of a worn out brain, more interested in dinner than anything intellectual. Sad, really. A girl that knew all Dante once (slight exaggeration) lives to revel in this exciting thought: Hey, now I can make that terrific Elizabeth David chestnut and chocolate cake for Christmas.

Reading: Band Of Gypsys, because I've finally got round to tackling the online edit. It'll be a lot more different than the first three second editions: this book suffered badly in the making, and I'll explain why later. And still La Peste, which is truly wonderful. A well deserved Nobel, that one (if Nobels can ever be well-deserved, being so daft and annoying sometimes as to tarnish the good ones)

Missing: Harper's Island! What a loss. Following: Fast Forward, though I don't really like it, it is too stupid (& not following Defying Gravity, which literally, so to speak, took stupidity to new levels); but still not out of the City in the Sky, and still not started 3rd season of The Wire.

It's been colder, today and yesterday, which is a welcome respite, but nothing yet like the respite of last year, snow and ice on Bowfell at the end of October, how great that was. And it's the eleventh month of my forever war, and I don't think I'll be home for Christmas.

Thursday 1st October, grey skies, silver-gilt sunlight breaking through.

Today it's grey, and I'm praying for rain, but Sunday 27th that bitter drying wind had dropped at last, and we had a perfect "Indian Summer" day down here, sky over the downs the clear deep blue that only comes in September. We went out to Patching woods to see if the sweet chestnuts were ripe. They weren't, but we went hunting and gathering anyway. Big cluster of Oyster Caps plucked from a fallen beech (actually L. pulmeria, but the whole species is good edible funghi: and we ate them & they were tasty), a pound of sloes from just a couple of little trees on the headland path, where we ate our egg sandwiches looking down on Little Burpham farmstead, the swathes of ochre stripped fields and the great woods of West Sussex & Hampshire stretching away into the far distance, into blue furrows seeming regular as ploughed land. Blackberries on every hedge and bank, glowing hips and haws. We don't gather blackberries, because in fact, as I've proved long ago, I'm none too good at jam-making and nobody wants to eat it, but its good to have had mouths and fingers purpled with juice, (even if I never got sand between my toes) for once in a dour summer. Why Indian? I don't know.

Sat pricking sloes for gin later, it isn't as bad a job as I remembered. Only took half an hour.

Reading: the dregs of Proust. Time Regained fading out, sadly unrevised & sometimes I get irritated at the way he's everlasting talking about "love" when he really means "desire", as any fool can see. Just started La Peste as my breakfast book. Watching: the irisistible Harper's Island! Currently my money is on the chainsaw wielding Masked Gardener; and Chloe is my favourite shreddie in waiting. I know you're not supposed to get attached to them, but she's so cute. Also the latest US fantasy thriller, Flash-forward, but I think I may not take to it.

Things for you aspiring or professional writers to check out, a new enterprise by Kelley Estridge and Nicola Griffith called Sterling Editing, offering manuscript assessment and a whole lot more. And, if you don't already know it ralan.com a fun and useful webresource powered by Ralan Conley, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Fantasticon.

Monday 28th September, mid-morning, cool and still, unbroken grey haze


Golden Age pictures in the Glypotek. These pictures were one of the reasons I wanted to go to the Copenhagen con (there's always an ulterior motive, I'm afraid). The ones I like are usually very small, very rural; almost always very quiet, very still. The subject is the least important thing, portrait of a roadside peddler, portrait of a cow or a horse, given the same respect. I was sorry not to see more Hammershoi, but very interested to learn more about the women painters of his period, in the Hirschsprung

Of course I also paid my respects to Kierkegaard. & here, in rough form, is the Either/Or presentation posted online:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/EitherOr.htm

Greetings to old friends and new, not forgetting Charles, Feorag and Fluffy, Many thanks for your hospitality and conversation to Lea, Jesper, Flemming, HH Loyche, Michael Kamp & to all.

Friday 25th September, warm and clear.

Spider weather has settled in, apparently not likely to break for us before 2nd week in October.

Here's Avaaz report on Monday's Climate Change Wake Up!

Watch the video, then scroll down for the other one where a Parliament Square flashmobber gets Gordon Brown on the phone.



No one can predict what will happen in any detail. It isn't predictable. But we can be sure of sort of general things, like Africa fries and Bangladesh drowns, oh, and pity about Australia

The masses, the rich poor, with their ruinous "cheap" foreign holidays and "cheap" industrial farmed meat diet, are only doing what they're told. This will be their excuse should there ever be an accounting, some time when the world has decided their behaviour was wicked (cf rank and file of Hitler's Germany). And how different are their choices from the choices of the important people (I don't mean celebs!)? The rich-rich, well, the rich we have always with us, as dogs have fleas, one could do with fewer, but no use blaming Posh. I blame the people who know better. The ones who will say, Climate Change isn't really happening; or it's greatly exaggerated; or it's not man made; or Big Tech will fix it, so bleeding heart emission cuts are pointless. . . when all the while you can see in the back of their eyes that they know perfectly well what's real, only they have also spotted that they most likely they will not be affected. Africa fries, Bangladesh drowns, a few hordes of displaced persons have to be driven from the gates. Where's the harm? We have a global population problem don't we? So I'm going to carry on regardless.

Sadly I don't think giving Gordon Brown a much-desired video opportunity on the Avaaz site is the answer. Are you going to cancel the third runway, PM? No? Not even vaguely think about it (cf the fourth Trident)? Then what the devil is the use of making speeches, and why are we even paying the fares for your trip to Copenhagen? I just can't see him turning.

Maybe he'll develop a crush on Hu Jintao.

Friday 18th September, unbroken grey skies; cool, still air

Unable to be a professional writer in my own mode at the moment, due to pressing concerns in the soap-opera of my life, suddenly I behave like a real writer with a newspaper column about it, for the first time in my career. Friday morning, do a small amount of housework. Pick flowers. Dawdle around the garden, rubbing the seed-paper off honesty pennies and colliding with spiderwebs. Think about a short story, waste time on a blog post. It's the creative mind, we hate to be driven, hate to be pinned to a desk. (Like hell). Must get on with a scrap of proof-reading the index for that book of essays. . . I see that When It Changed, ed Geoff Ryman now has a launch booked for 24th October in Manchester. Is that anthology finally out of the woods? Hope they make it.

How powerfully the charm of young eyes, young voices, young lives censors me. Last week at that sci-fi event, thing, in the Old Operating Theatre (The Butcher's Shop), I couldn't bring myself to say one pessimistic word, I only tried to bring the topic down to earth, a little bit. We don't need a Kurzweil type "Singularity". Future humans don't need a different place to keep their expanding consciousnesses, the human brain is incredibly malleable, takes to add-ons like a duck to water, we learned to read and write without Ascending like that bad Mayor in Buffy, didn't we? (And by the way, if you want to dream about going to heaven and becoming an immortal superbeing, there's already an app for that). What future humans need is improved feet, improved gut flora; teeth that aren't vulnerable to caries. Plus consensus-tending welfare state government, to make the population vaccination programmes for it all workable.

I think my neighbour (Ian Watson) might have been feeling the same in his own way. I know he started a thread that would have injected a note of darker realism at one point, and stopped himself. You don't have our historical perspective, kids. Don't look at the scary portents, accept your world as normal, the way children do. There's always something, we'll scrape by, off you go and do your best. There comes a point where you'd rather shut up than keep hearingy yourself sound like a dyspeptic H.G.Wells (remember what he wanted on his gravestone? I told you so, you damned fools). Save me from grumpy old arrogance.

And last Saturday, a long day out from Findon to Washington and back, putting the summer (this uncomfortable, arid, grey, blustery summer) to bed. It's become a bit of a trudge, this particular walk, thoroughfares of chalky track, the only beauty is the wide view of sea and downs and coastal plain. Maybe it always was, even three (five?) thousand years ago, when Cissbury first stood up, a towering monster mass of gleaming white chalk, dominating the countryside like a Norman cathedral, and no doubt with exactly the same political intent. An apple on Chanctonbury, very tasty, Early Red Windsor, the housemartins swarming like the bees, getting ready to leave; a grove of cedars like a chapel, in the woods under the scarp slope. Sky-gazing yoga in the hedgerow, watching clouds.The picture (not v good) is of an enclosure of bee hives at Findon, fascinating to see them swarm in the air, crossing and recrossing, creeping in and out in little crowds of furry backs and shiny wings. Oh, God, the bees. If you haven't done so, please sign this.
http://www.soilassociation.org/Takeaction/Savethehoneybee/tabid/434/Default.aspx It's worth it, the French banned the stuff and it's working.

Enough of this frivolity.
Fixed the spam filters by the way.

9th September, clear and fine, promising to be a warm day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8243922.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8244065.stm

Actually, the plotters never got near an airport, but that's not going to protect you from the way you get treated in the security queue. There's ancient experimental evidence about what happens to people given work of this kind, instructions of this kind. If you are reading this you've got to have heard of the Milligram Experiment. Think about it.

So if it's so dangerous to be in the air, and so unpleasant to get there, don't fly. Have some self respect. Protect the security staff from becoming brutalised, protect your country's future from a brutalised internal control culture Is your journey really necessary? If not, DON'T FLY.

Tuesday 8th September, cool, sun and pale streams of cloud.

Unshouldering my bag to put on my rain jacket in Brighton station car park last Wednesday, I saw a very small Totoro, standing at the foot of the taxi rank post. Was I right to take him home? What if he was waiting for a bus? Peter says don't worry, that's how he gets around. Anyway, he didn't have an umbrella & I didn't have one to spare.

He stands in for photos of Copenhagen not yet uploaded. The gloomy family grave of Soren Kirkegaard (in English that's Grim Graveyard, isn't that nice to know), in the gloomy, rainy, tree-filled cemetery in the inner city; infested with red squirrels. The Little Mermaid, very little (tho' somewhat larger than Totoro). The North Sea. No pictures from the National Museum's stunning Ancient Denmark exhibit, I think they were allowed but snapshots not appropriate. Stunning exposition of the Sun worshipping culture we know, further south, mainly through incommunicative vast traces like Stonehenge and Carnac. Bog graves, the Egvet girl, in rich-coloured stylish cut clothes one could wear today and feel pleased (supposing one was young, and had good legs). I suppose they had underwear with those short cord skirts? Or maybe they were just hardy.

Anyway, Gabriel's birthday over, term has begun. Save The Green Planet, unexpectedly good bonkers Korean sci-fi, need I tell you many scenes of gruesome bizarre torture? Broken Embraces, hugely enjoyable melodrama, possibly a bit shallow; and on Sunday night the first episode of an airhead US version of Agatha Christie's 10 little n*****s. Self-obsessed wedding party guests on an island, very poor at finding corpses. Jupiter still in the sky, provokingly big, expansive, and jovial and pleased with self (roll on January 2010 when this transit ends: I can't think it's good for us), but for me the season has changed: now back to work, taking Totoro as my totem. Ancient, hidden, wise and childish. I like the sound of that.

Forgot: Comments closed, as I need to fix my spam filters. Something's gone wrong with them.

Wednesday 26th August, cool; cloud and strong breeze.

Not that I suppose the lads in pants are really being exploited...

Far as I can tell, they're happy in their work & they don't look any sillier that Iggy Pop, for one.

I just think it would be funny if they were anti-pubbed.

Darn it, I see that Spirit on Not-the-Booker seems to have peaked at around 7votes. Typical of my lack of organisation. If I'd just taken the trouble to stuff a few envelopes, knock on a few doors, offer taxi rides to the polling station, I bet you anything I could have pushed that into double figures, and THEN wouldn't I have been proud. Ah well, I'm not that person, such is life.

West Sussex in the photo, blue and gold and tarnished late summer green, and that's the end of another August. New year, by our reckoning, always begins in September, which is when I'll be back here.

Friday August 21st. Breezy, cooler, blue & white sky. Brief heavy shower early this morning.

Every time I quick-march out of the exit from the Tube platform at Euston there they are. A group of young men, in their D&G underpants, lifesize, staring at me with diffident, imploring gaze:

Look at my pants

Please look at the lovely front of my pants!

Please look at my pants!

The fact that they seem to be gathered beside a swimming pool, about to swim in their knickers?, gives them a sad, nervous, underprivileged look. Can't they afford swimwear; or was it a spur-of-the moment idea and now they're scared the attendants might shout at them? Of course I look, but I never pause, I just zoom by on my swift, honed and minimised path to the escalators (the up ones work); thinking to myself, what fun if I came by here one morning and found them anti-pub spray-paint daubed with the message THIS DEGRADES MEN!

Nah. Not going to happen.

Nobody's going to anti-pub with those trigger-happy Mets of ours around. Which reminds me, I'm so glad that our police (chastened by the inquiry into G20) will in future adopt a "no surprises" policing policy for demonstrations. If they're going to be brutal, they'll announce it in advance, so anyone with any sense will stay at home.

The tomatoes? (Click through for anything you ever wanted to know). Oh yes, it's tomato time. Tomato soup, fresh tomato soup with herbs and cream. The scent, when you poke your head into our tiny vine-filled greenhouse; warm tomato off the vine, dripping juice. Best year since the legendary 1976, and at last we did something right. Also, been watching movies:

Battle of Algiers. Excellent, thoughtful, seminal & a piece of modern history that has been fantastically influential, shall we say, on the real world too. Terrific score. The ending more bitterly ironic than Pontecorvo could have guessed, because every old woman who remembers how she fought so savagely long ago for the liberty of her country, for the dignity of Islam. . . must now be kicking herself. And plenty of men too.

Day of the Jackal Also about Algeria & OAS, mass market treatment. Stands up to the associaton.

Mesrine Doesn't! It's probably a bit unfair that I watched this soon after those two, but really! Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously. I have no interest in this brutal self-pitying idiot. Go away and get some irony.

Sin Nombre Loved it. Can't believe its his first feature. Okay, Fukunaga clearly a little seduced by his gangster pals, but this is the tragedy of youth without hope in pure moving pictures, without the stylish speeches of a novel or a theatrical drama: Flores and Paulina Gaitan both excellent, understated performances, a beautiful, tragic thing.

Laura recorded from daytime tv. Load of tosh. Classic Noir often is not what it's cracked up to be.

Warm day, lot of cloud, no rain, growing cooler towards evening (same as for ages now)

Well, well. It's not often I get a chance to say this, in fact I can't remember if I ever have. Voted awards are not for me, and I know it, and humbly accept my fate. But here goes: Spirit, Not the Booker If you're reading this, and you liked the book, you could vote for me!

Why the Albert Hall? No particular reason, except we went Promenading last week, with the two Gabriels, after a nice picnic in the park by the Memorial. I liked the Mozart best.

Now, back to pasting together my Utopian Politics Powerpoint for Copenhagen. A brilliant idea, I think. If nothing works, I can blame the technology. Not often I give myself a chance to do that, either

Friday 31st July, sunny and clear, about 28 degrees. Lovely weather for cricket, a bit malicious of the weather gods to lay it on for Brighton, given that they are apparently planning to drown Pride tomorrow.

Marcel walking in Paris, a summer evening in wartime, the sky still a sea of turquoise:

"But if one looked for long at the sky, this lazy, too beautiful sky which did not condescend to change its timetable and above the city where the lamps had been lit, indolently prolonged its lingering day in these blueish tones, one was siezed with giddiness: it was no longer a flat sea but a vertically stepped series of blue glaciers. And the tower of the Trocadero, which seemed so near the turquoise steps, must, one realised be infinitely remote from them. . ."

Immediately, I long to be somewhere where I can see the immensity of those "glaciers": but you probably need to be in a city, and you must be on a hilltop. Here in West Sussex on a summer afternoon, there's no trick of the light or angle to break the illusion. The height of blue sky, with all its ranked clouds, seems to match exactly the space of meadow and woodland below the horizon. The Arun harbours yellow waterlilies, the Wey and Arun canal, a project of restoration that's fallen on hard times, hides between drifts of purple loosestrife. We'd been drenched in The Mens, hiding under a tree in the shadowy beech and holly woodland, we were hoping to find lunch of some kind in Wisborough Green. In the church of St Peter ad Vincula, extraordinary little treasure, we were waylaid by an agreeable church warden or similar, who may have turned up to make sure we weren't nicking anything but stayed to tell us all about it, the tour guide experience. Saxon foundation, Norman structure, fourteenth century wall-paintings, fifteenth century side aisles, the tower had to be built inside the body of the church because otherwise it might have fallen off the knoll, and into the river which used to flow just below us in those days. The Huguenots came and made glass hereabouts, bits get dug up in gardens, there's a tiny window pieced together from scraps of blueish, very thin, mediaeval glass. . . Thank God, says I, as we finally left, all of that lot wasn't in French. Almost drenched again, we made it to the Three Crowns, a very nice location on the 272, on one of the prettiest and most touristique roads in the South of England. Startlingly good food, if you are passing on your way to historic Winchester.

Butterflies. The oaks along the field margins. A long halt for sky-gazing yoga by the old canal, listening to a water wheel. And back in the Mens, one lone Parasol mushroom, which I stubbornly carried home, because Parasols are so tasty. It should be a great summer for funghi, the rain has to be good for something, but we saw nothing else edible, except for a couple of elderly horse mushrooms I decided to leave to the invertebrates.

The photo is by Simon Carey, and if you link through his name you can find out how to buy it.

Thanks to Mark Irons, for the nice letter you sent to Aoxomoxoa.

Cool grey evening, no sign of the threatened rain.

Midnight Lamp online, third episode of Bold As Love, has now been added to the right page of the bold as love site, and here it is:http://www.boldaslove.co.uk/


Tell you the truth, I never thought of this project as circumventing the Google Settlement (they've digitised "Life", for some reason, but I don't think any other of my titles). It's just something I've always wanted to do. In time, all my novels will be provided in this form, or whatever replaces this form*, and they're yours to keep, I won't have any power to wipe your copy from your reader, or nefariously meddle with the content as a form of attack-art. (Though it's an idea). *Yes, even Escape Plans.

Ann Halam, hm. That's a lot of books. . .

The only thing that slows me down is the remastering, but it'd be a shame not to. Esp in the case of episode 4 of Bold As Love, the next in line for the treatment.