No nearer to finding a venue for the United Nations Day celebrations ad I have now decided not to worry as Toni is hors de combat with a streaming cold and looking very sorry for himself!
I did not have a good day myself, but I put this down to a hysterical reaction after visiting Toni’s nephews yesterday. I am so used to picking up some childhood disease from those two that I am half way to infirmity by the time they have reached out their tiny sticky hands towards me in greeting!
I sincerely hope that my downward dip was only a psychosomatic response because illness would be inappropriate this week: there is too much to do and too many people to see!
Today the appalling driving that I have to endure on my way to school was accompanied by the best bits of Cosi fan tutte – and there are plenty more discs where that came from. Great music should take me through to the Christmas holidays – at least as far as they journey to school is concerned. We have now used up all our holidays between now and December so the weeks stretch out ahead in unrelieved horror!
The examination season is convulsing the school and the only problem for me is that the marking does not appear at the best time for me. It will get done I suppose, even in a drunken stupor!
I have been loaned ‘The Uncommon Reader’ by Alan Bennett. This slim volume has recommendations from ‘Country Life’, ‘The Daily Mail’, and ‘The Mail on Sunday’ and ‘The Spectator’ - a truly off-putting selection of papers! If it wasn’t for the recommendation from ‘The Observer’ on the front cover, I think I might have had to reject it sight unseen. If I had done that I would have missed a masterly piece of self indulgence which reads itself. It takes as its subject matter the Queen happening upon a mobile library in the servants’ area of Buckingham Palace and becoming hooked on books!
The opening page sets the scene (and the tone) as the French President is being led into a state banquet in Windsor ‘”Now that I have you to myself,” said the Queen smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, “I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.”’ If only! This is a gentle tale of what appears to be suspiciously like idolatry, but written in Bennett’s beguiling style, which can resist! I certainly didn’t – and I have to give it back tomorrow.
The screen on my electronic book has broken and I need a replacement. Well, that is not strictly true. The screen is faulty in the top right corner, but this doesn’t mean that the whole unit is useless.
I have been looking at new electronic books but the market in Spain is a little confusing to say the least. I realize now that living in Britain meant that we had the all-important gadgets before the rest of Europe. Here in Spain things are a little behind hand. I am still trying to find out if the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader is available in this country and if it is the best model available.
Any help out there to get me to decide on a new machine would be appreciated.
I did not have a good day myself, but I put this down to a hysterical reaction after visiting Toni’s nephews yesterday. I am so used to picking up some childhood disease from those two that I am half way to infirmity by the time they have reached out their tiny sticky hands towards me in greeting!
I sincerely hope that my downward dip was only a psychosomatic response because illness would be inappropriate this week: there is too much to do and too many people to see!
Today the appalling driving that I have to endure on my way to school was accompanied by the best bits of Cosi fan tutte – and there are plenty more discs where that came from. Great music should take me through to the Christmas holidays – at least as far as they journey to school is concerned. We have now used up all our holidays between now and December so the weeks stretch out ahead in unrelieved horror!
The examination season is convulsing the school and the only problem for me is that the marking does not appear at the best time for me. It will get done I suppose, even in a drunken stupor!
I have been loaned ‘The Uncommon Reader’ by Alan Bennett. This slim volume has recommendations from ‘Country Life’, ‘The Daily Mail’, and ‘The Mail on Sunday’ and ‘The Spectator’ - a truly off-putting selection of papers! If it wasn’t for the recommendation from ‘The Observer’ on the front cover, I think I might have had to reject it sight unseen. If I had done that I would have missed a masterly piece of self indulgence which reads itself. It takes as its subject matter the Queen happening upon a mobile library in the servants’ area of Buckingham Palace and becoming hooked on books!
The opening page sets the scene (and the tone) as the French President is being led into a state banquet in Windsor ‘”Now that I have you to myself,” said the Queen smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, “I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.”’ If only! This is a gentle tale of what appears to be suspiciously like idolatry, but written in Bennett’s beguiling style, which can resist! I certainly didn’t – and I have to give it back tomorrow.
The screen on my electronic book has broken and I need a replacement. Well, that is not strictly true. The screen is faulty in the top right corner, but this doesn’t mean that the whole unit is useless.
I have been looking at new electronic books but the market in Spain is a little confusing to say the least. I realize now that living in Britain meant that we had the all-important gadgets before the rest of Europe. Here in Spain things are a little behind hand. I am still trying to find out if the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader is available in this country and if it is the best model available.
Any help out there to get me to decide on a new machine would be appreciated.
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