I need a new computer

If I had a new computer at home, then I might actually do this more often. It's been a long time, what with one thing and another, and then I couldn't remember my password. Of course, saying I need a new computer is just another way of putting off doing things, and sitting in front of the screen all day for work doesn't really endear doing the same thing in the evening to me. But I'd like to.

And reading over the measly posts I've done, I'm going to revisit the idea of things that have given me pleasure over the last few days.

1. Getting up slightly earlier than usual, putting on some new CDs of French chansons and exercising to them. Which is mad, but fun. Most of them are pretty rhythmic and jolly and in the morning that's about all I can take.

2. Baileys. I've become tragically addicted to it again after about 20 years and it is just an alcoholic milkshake. But a nice one. It reminds me of college days, how sad, but that's the last time I regularly drank it. A fattening and bad habit to indulge in, but tough.

3. Going to a surreal performance at Wilton's Music Hall of Elizabethan miserabilism in the form of John Dowland songs, sung by a really good counter-tenor in a 'multi-media' presentation, by which they mean projections and the like. Actually it was very interesting - the layering of the Tudor songs, in a rotting Victorian building, with a 21st century setting (an office cubicle, in a suit, against back projections of a failed office affair). Bizarre but it worked. And the songs were oddly relaxing, despite their generally downbeat nature - lots of woe and dwelling in darkness and letting him die. Yes, well. Wilton's is a great setting for some really off-the-wall stuff.

4. Weirdly, given I mentioned something similar in my previous post, the odd throwing together of scrambled eggs with pesto and feta. I know - but pretty nice. I must be drawn to these posts after particularly stressful weeks in which I'm not able to do proper cooking. On the other hand, I did make a rather nice veg soup, which was pretty good considering it was thrown together at 7am on a Tuesday. The rest of the week was really downhil from here.

5. The book I'm reading, called 'Ring of Conspirators' by Miranda Seymour, about Henry James and his circle of friends, literary and otherwise, which is just a big gossip-fest but very well written and intriguing about Conrad, Stephen Crane, Ford Maddox Ford etc. And that several of them lived in villages where we lived sort of gives it another resonance. Specialist interest, obviously.