Warm as forecast here but not exactly tanning weather - no sun. I'm inhibited from writing anything by the super-creative activites of friends and the total lack of creativity in my life. I made some nice sausage rolls yesterday though, and a successful semolina cake soaked in orange syrup at the weekend. Shame I can't hang them on the wall.

I've been reading a lot and sleeping ditto in an attempt to throw off a chesty cold. A customer lent me 'Beware of Pity' by Stephan Zweig and it has me gripped. The style, IMO is that of the great Russians, perhaps partly because of the era in which it is set, but also the style of writing which is more careful, rounded - mannered would be the word - longer and more flowing sentences than most modern writers risk anyway! The tale is that of a young man, a cavalryman, used to the muscular, often coarse masculine world of the military, who is suddenly faced with responsibiliy for the delicate feelings and passions of a crippled girl. Not at all my usual taste these days. Before that I read 'The Fifth Witness' by Michael Connolly which I found equally gripping, and before that 'Seizure' the sequel to 'Virals' by Kathy Reich in her new role as teen-book author.

I've also discovered the joys of iPlayer so I've been fulfilling my vital social role as media audience in that way. Then on Sunday we watched "Midnight in Paris" with our wine. I found it totally entrancing, one of old Woody's best. The storyboard may have been slight and the moral a bit obvious but the scenes of Paris were so beautifully shot... It's such a lovely city and he did it proud. A visual treat, funny, witty...

A friend also lent me Dennis Potter's 'Karaoke' and 'Cold Lazarus' which I've been looking for for ages. Karaoke could still hold it's own today but CL, which hit me hard at the time, has aged badly - because it is set 400 years in the future from the 80s when he wrote it and the producer's ideas of future technology mostly look laughably old fashioned! Still the idea of tapping into the memories existing in the cryogenically frozen head of a man (the writer who died at the end of Karaoke) and bringing them out onto a screen to be watched by a team of researchers, possibly to be sold as universal entertainment, is as horrendous as it ever was.