One Bloody Thing After Another

The end of the week is fast approaching. A good thing for many reasons. It's been the kind of week that leaves you feeling as though life is just what it says for the title of this post and we play Portsmouth on Sunday - with luck we will sell a bundle more of the Fulham Review dahn the public 'ouses 'side the banks of Old Father...

I was thinking of ways to describe living in London next door to a couple of squatters who think it's a good idea to have band practice at 4am thus waking you, yr wife and small child up after their dogs growled at yer wife in the garden last night when she was trying to take the washing in AND Radio 4 want to record you for a discussion program about POD AND I have a bookshop to run - a seething cauldron of conflicting desires was the phrase that popped into my head as I FINALLY drifted off to sleep...But seething cauldron is SO cliched...

Then I wake up and it's a beautiful day, the kind of crisp and sunny autumn morning that makes you LOVE being alive.

And then there's a flash of colour as a blue tit seems to fall out of a tree, swerve to a perfect landing on the pavement in front of you as yr walking super-fast through the wilderness of back streets behind Elephant & Castle. Everything stops for a heartbeat. We look each other in the eye. Then the tiny reminder of all things bright and beautiful is off into the bushes.

And then there was Wednesday and Dr Rick's Amazing Map for Tree Of Smoke.

This work of art needs to be seen to be believed. It made my day on Wednesday and was a vivid illustration of the joys to be found in a shared love/obsession with books...