1. I feel properly back in Cambridge now, because I went to a feast last night. They're a little hard work when they're the long ones with a sorbet after the fish and it's very difficult not to drink -- just a few sips of each wine gets you tipsy. But this is really a very spoilt thing to complain about! I was glad to sit next to a rather aged friend with whom I wanted to catch up, but unhappily what I discovered is that his mind is wandering somewhat. Although it's not impossible that I was just failing to keep up with his trains of thought, which have always been unusual.
2. I read quite fast, possibly because of the way my mother taught me to read when I was little, I don't know. I think I do absorb what's there, just quickly, and it makes reading an expensive hobby. I am experimenting with audiobooks at present, though only of books I've already read. At audible.co.uk you can download them much more cheaply if you subscribe than if you buy them individually, and I have just finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was over thirty-four hours unabridged. Only some books could take this, and unfortunately most of the ones that spring to mind aren't available: Allan Garganus, Oldest Living Confederate's Widow Tells All; Pynchon, Mason and Dixon; Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series. But I have also now listened to a fantastic unabridged Moonstone, with a different narrator for each section -- Patrick Tull is Gabriel Betteredge -- and I also listened to the whole of the BBC's dramatised Barchester Chronicles. I think they would have been better served by an unabridged reading, because the BBC version was overly dependent on soliloquies. Next is a reading of the first Aubrey and Maturin book.
3. I don't think I have previously posted this excellent Pet Shop Boys video:
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