I’m not sure, now I’m thinking of it, how or why one sleeps like a top, but it doesn’t really matter. I can look it up. Anyway, I did. I dozed off several times during the ballet last night – it was a live streaming from the Royal Opera House, I didn’t visibly (to the dancers, anyway) fall asleep – and then came home and slept again. Now, it’s Wink’s turn. Our friend Lawrie, whose golden wedding party we went to last September, is coming to stay for a couple of nights. His daughter was due to come, early this afternoon, to care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s and can’t be left, but she was delayed, so he left late and was massively delayed on the M25, poor man. Now 10pm and he hasn’t arrived yet. Wink is catching a few zzzs until he arrives and I’ve come through here to blog.

Otherwise, it’s been quiet at the Zedery. I biked in to buy Wink’s birthday card and then went to the library. I tend to choose randomly, because I’m not paying for it, so might as well hope for a joyous surprise. I’ve a book about appealing places to visit in Britain, a Hunger Games book, a Paul Auster (I thought I’d read all of his, but not ‘Invisible’), ‘Confessions of a Bookseller,’ which is by a chap with a second-hand bookshop, a Lindsay Davis, Roman detective story – I kept up with all of hers for years but have let fiction slide -, a factual book about ancient Rome, another detective story, by Anthony Horowitz and ‘How to Live Like Your Cat,’ translated from French and I guess it’s lightly self-help-ish, but I’ll find out. I can dip in and out of any of them, which is what my frazzled brain wants at present. I’m also part way through reading ‘A Carpet Ride to Khiva’ by the fabulous (I spent a few hours in his company, trust me) Chris Aslan Alexander and an Elly Griffiths (clearly, I like detective stories). I used to read serious stuff and now, mostly, I don’t. I like books to be well written, but I don’t necessarily want to think too much. Maybe that’ll change again, but I’m quite old, so maybe not.

In the meantime, it’s now quarter past ten, so I do hope that Lawrie arrives soon. He’s got a family funeral to go to tomorrow and he hasn’t had any dinner. We’d expected a nice chatty evening together, so it’s a pity.