Update

1. I went to the christening of my god-daughter, who was so well-behaved that it may turn out that she sets me a good example rather than the other way round. It was a very nice day, with lots of old friends.

2. I stayed at my aunt's the night before. She wasn't there so I just flicked through the TV channels and rediscovered stuff like Dave's Ray Mears repeats. Wonderful Ray Mears! Thoughtfully living off ants' eggs and tracking deer in the highlands, etc. In Devon my parents only get four TV channels; using a Freeview box they only get the BBC ones, minus BBC Four. British TV is great.

3. I have decided that the Italian food situation and the British literature one are very similar. In Italy there is so much wonderful food from a long-standing native tradition. You don't really get foreign food, though (except that they seem to like Dutch cheeses). In England we have good food, but not so much as in Italy, and most of our cooking culture is imported. Italians are surprised when I say my mother makes lasagna, and that Genovese pesto is a British student staple. You might miss international food if you lived there for a long time, but for a few months you're not going to because the Italian food is so great -- prosciutto crudo! parmigiano reggiano! tortellini al ragu! (Oddly, I have found myself missing chicken soup.) Their literature is more like the British food situation; they read copiously in translation, and the vast majority of the books on sale there were written in other languages. They have a Daniel Pennac book that I can't get in English yet, for example, and I got the impression that Jeanette Winterson's Stone Gods even came out first there -- at least it was available before I was reading British media reviews. Whereas in Britain we have so much English-language literature available that we have a bit of a resistance to reading translated things. I can't quite let go of this even though there are so many foreign-language classics, especially Russian, and even though I've read some fantastic translated stuff recently, like Antal Szerb's books. I don't quite feel like I'm reading the real book -- it's almost like watching a TV adaptation, or listening to an abridged audiobook. I suppose it's necessary just to relax and trust the translator.

4. I forget to keep a record of what I've been reading. I certainly read Jane Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills, which was just the sort of intelligent bonkbuster you'd expect if you've read any of her other stuff. I read Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, which was very good, and the second Sister Pelagia book from Boris Akunin, which was excellent and very funny. I am currently being disappointed by Roger Deakin's Wildwood, which isn't much about woodland, but just a collection of essays describing things he has done which are vaguely connected to trees -- e.g. travelling in the Australian bush, where he might see the odd eucalyptus, etc. I read Russell Brand's Booky Wook -- he's quite funny, and ashamed but probably not as much as he should be. My grandma asked me to convey Alan Bennett's An Uncommon Reader to my aunt's house, so I read it on the way, and that was much better than I was expecting. Now I'm rereading Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which is great and very likeable.

5. Here's Ray Mears, from a long time back, with his old friend sphagnum moss: