Interlude

I have horrible lurgy and my exams results are still AWOL. However, my day improved from the moment I actually got out of bed and went into town and had a brief holiday of an evening, in the way that such things do happen without warning. The sun came out today, for one thing, in a minimal, muted blue way, and shimgray and I were wandering around Jericho, pausing for coffee and books (and plotting a screwball comedy novel I could write while we also bought food and many boxes of pink tea). Jericho looks very lovely in that sort of light, and the bookshops were worthy of visiting. The £2 bookshop, which glories in the name of The Last Bookshop, was still open at six o'clock and thronged with people, all who had come in out of the cold with the aura of those who had come across the promised land. The proprietor was a behatted bemused American, who sold us four books and found us unexpectedly interesting. ("Are you together? Good, you have chemistry!") This was followed by another bookshop, apparently so new it still had the smell of paint inside, and this one rejoiced in the name of Albion Beatnik. I am a sucker for anything with "beatnik" in the title. We went inside. There were more books. There was another amused proprietor, this one surrounded by bits of paper. I have said this before, but the art of the independent bookshop is a noble and subtle one. It was good.

(Speaking of books, I signed up for LibraryThing in 2005 and didn't use it very much. Just this week I catalogued all the books I have in Oxford, which I had in my head as about thirty or forty, not very many. Apparently "not very many" is a hundred and sixty-something. Oh dear. I find this a little horrifying.)

It has been a nice week, generally speaking. hathy_col was here over the weekend, which is worth noting as we have not been in the same place at the same time for faaaaar too long (over Christmas, I went from Liverpool to Edinburgh the same day as she made the same journey in reverse) and she was here long enough for us to at least try to catch up, which mostly involved us being Very Happy about the new Star Trek film (we are both decided that unless the new guy talks! like! this! a! la! William! Shatner! the franchise is doomed) and deciding at one point that there is a necessary connection between people called Vladimir and the scuppering of Britain's chances in the Eurovision Song Contest. (Well, if it weren't for Lenin, there wouldn't be an Eastern bloc; when they show the contest on television in Ukraine, it's on split-screen with Putin holding a sign saying "Vote For Us" in one hand with his other hand poised over a reeeeeeally big gas tap; we're still working on Vlad the Impaler.) We stayed up, we giggled, we slept in, giggled some more, and eventually bought me a birthday cake whilst discussing which films we would show Plato if we brought him forwards in time. (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure; Mamma Mia.)

In the evening, people came to the pub and were great in my general vicinity, and gave me many many many books, and we finished up in G&Ds and ate ice-cream and people continued to be generally great. They gave me books and fairy lights and more books. It made me very happy.

Now, I am reading fic (Without Song, Merlin, by foreverdirt, very very lovely) and intermittently watching Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian sitcom emily_shore pointed out, which is a silly slight comedy about a small immigrant community in a small Canadian town, and is lovely and charming. (And makes me laugh in how right it gets the immigrant tropes.) I guess today and the last couple of days have been a holiday, and I'm going home for a few days this week, which are also a holiday, and after that I am hideously, heinously busy until, well, I'd like to say April but should probably say June. At any rate, I don't seem to have any free weekends until Easter. Which is not bad - I like doing things - but may mean I am somewhat quiet for a bit. We shall see.

Thanks again, guys, for making it a lovely birthday. It was much appreciated.

edited to add It's Republic Day! I entirely forgot. A very happy Republic Day to all.