A Perfect Day.

The new Phil Rickman: 'The Secrets of Pain' arrived Friday, earlier than predicted when I preordered it from Amazon. Bit of a blow to the local economy but nevertheless VERY welcome. I read from the time I awoke this morning until now (1pm) and finished it. For me his books are the perfect blend of Mysticism, the mundanely mysterious and the more frighteningly inexplicaple, folk tales, legends - and crime. He slaloms through the conflicts of the quiet crumbling of the Church in the face of rationalism and cynicism whilst, through Merrily Watson and her Pagan daughter Jane, he touches on the deeper roots of the Sacred and the ineffable, which have very little to do with organised religion. Corruption in the Church and in local politics, the desecration of the countryside and the depredations of the money-makers who see the fields, forests, hills and villages of Herefordshire as a commodity, thinking nothing of destroying the archaeological presences that remain of our heritage, all this is witnessed and mourned by a few enjoyably human characters who by now have become almost as real to me as my own family.