August Books

A Question of Courage - Marjorie Darke
The Lower Fourth Excels Itself - Nancy Breary
Juniors Will Be Juniors - Nancy Breary
Mainly About the Fourth - Nancy Breary
The Spell - Alan Hollinghurst
Summer's Day - Mary Bell
London Pride - Joanna Cannan
Clothes-Pegs - Susan Scarlett
Murder While You Work - Susan Scarlett
At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
Persepolis - Marianne Satrapi
Black Hearts in Battersea - Joan Aiken
Love Poems - Brian Patten
The Ice Cream Army - Jessica Gregson
Sex and the British - Paul Ferris
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell
Ken & Em: The Biograpy of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson - Ian Shuttleworth
The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell
That Was Satire That Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s - Humphrey Carpenter

( August Books. )

Edinburgh between the shows

I was having a really promising precursor to sex dream in which a woman gave me her "journal of erotic situations" to read, and then introduced me to her beautiful housemate, WHOM I THEN STARTED TALKING TO ABOUT MY PHD, so that instead of waking up all nice and tingly I woke up in a really bad mood at all the work I have to do.

Since cutting my hair I have realised that something I do when I am disconcerted by unexpected niceness (I am nearly always disconcerted by unexpected niceness) is tuck my hair behind my ears. This now looks even sillier, especially when the niceness is someone saying "I like your hair".

Day 1: socks complimented by elderly woman on the way to the train station.
Day 2: socks complimented by my friend's boyfriend, and Tiffany Stevenson
Day 3: socks complimented by a man through a car window at a traffic light (he seemed sincere enough) and Bridget Christie

(I should point out that this is a range of socks, not the same pair, and the reason for no sock-related compliments on day 4 is that I was wearing boring black socks, not that the smell finally started to overpower people.)