So it's quarter past ten at night and here I am sitting outside drinking pommeau and watching the western sky slide from pink into blue. There is a word, watchet, which describes the colour perfectly. We're in lower Normandy at a tiny place called the Haras de la Hêtraie, both words of which I had to look up - the stud-farm at the beech-grove, it ( Read more... )

Being a parent is a bit like being on drugs. Instead of salvia or speedballs it happens to be sleep deprivation and adrenaline, but the net result is the same, so although it's a constant stream of highs and lows I'm never quite sure, when I come to explain it to other people, whether it's not just a function of me being stoned out of my mind on ( Read more... )

Work needed someone to cover the Champions League final in Munich, and so naturally, as a non-German-speaker who hates football, I was chosen for the job. It was a long, grinding day yesterday - up at half-five for a flight and working till about three o'clock this morning.

I have never been to Bavaria before, and my impression of it from driving ( Read more... )

I finally forced my way through Durrell's Avignon Quintet. It is his centenary this year, something I only realised when I was halfway through. Considering the fact that I think Justine is one of the three or four greatest novels of the 20th century, this later collection of short novels was a massive disappointment. First of all, the writing is ( Read more... )

Having a baby is supposed to make you think about your own maturity. Many expectant parents of my acquaintance decided to put away childish things - they cut back on the drinking, cancelled their bimonthly order for a quarter of Moroccan, and started going to bed at nine thirty to examine the footnotes to What to Expect when You're Expecting. I was ( Read more... )

I am down in Provence with Hannah on what is apparently called, by certain subeditors and those who frequent certain prenatal messageboards, a babymoon. I was kind of worried that January would just be cold and wet down here, but actually, although we have to wrap up quite well, the skies are clear blue and the landscape is just as enticing as ever ( Read more... )

My favourites from this year's reading:

Driss Chraïbi, Une enquête au pays
I try, in an increasingly desultory fashion, to keep up with Moroccan literature just because I used to live there and people assume I Know Things about it. This one is pretty great, a kind of police procedural reimagined as a piece of political philosophy. No wait that makes ( Read more... )

I tried to take a break from LJ there, to concentrate on other writing. But all that happened was I started writing entries longhand in notebooks, which meant it took longer and now I can never find what I'm looking for when I go back over it.

Things have been busy in real life over here. Some people reading this will already know that I'm having a ( Read more... )

Lawrence Durrell, Livia
Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22
Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw, The Quantum Universe
Lawrence Durrell, Constance
Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian
Lawrence Durrell, Quinx
Jean-Claude Izzo, Total Khéops
Matt Ridley, Genome
Nicholson Baker, House of Holes
Lucian Randall, Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris ( Read more... )

A drive southeast of Tripoli is like a trip to a completely different country. The traffic thins out and the suburbs give way to scrubland. Everything is ochre under a hot blue sky. Rebel checkpoints end about half an hour south of the city; after that, who knows what could happen. The worst-case scenario is a fake checkpoint run by loyalist forces ( Read more... )