So, I am now sitting here nice and warm, cold and wet and horrid outside, mulling over my happiness and good fortune and getting that lovely warm glow and feeling in one's tummy when you know something exciting and wonderful has happened. It also happens to be my birthday which I had more or less forgotten about, originally I was to be in London today with James and Helen for lunch and was to be the final visit before the baby arrived and then of course everything went haywire! My birthday celebrations will, therefore, be writing this post, getting into a warm bath when done, using some luxury bath oil which was a present, lighting my Jo Malone candle (a Christmas present 18 months ago and still going strong as I am very miserly with it), and probably taking a book in with me and will stay there for about an hour.
As I don't feel I have eaten properly at all this week, food grabbed on the run, I am roasting a chicken with leeks and peppers and a friend dropped by with a blackberry and apple crumble that she had made for me, so that will be later on and looking forward to it. Simple pleasures are the best.
When I returned on Friday I could not get my front door open easily as my hallway was full of padded envelopes and within ten minutes my kind neighbours knocked on the door to give me parcels they had taken in for me while away, and inside more books. I came back to find fourteen books waiting for me which was wonderful. Now I have to get down to reading them. Thought you might like to see a pic of recently received and here it is.
Simon, of Stuck in a Book fame, has undertaken to only purchase two books a month this year just to see if he can do it, and in the interests of solidarity and also watching my now reduced income, I decided to see if I could do the same. Easy you say, look at all the free books you receive and, yes, you are right, but there are still books you want to purchase and this month I have bought my two. One of themm, A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 33 great writers on why we read Jane Austen, has been purchased because Simon wrote about it on his blog, so if you read this Simon you are entirely to blame...
And the other is an E F Benson title. I find this author incredibly interesting because of his variety and range of writing and subject matter and am pleased to find that many of his titles are being published by print on demand companies. Not the most elegant or beautiful of books, but I am not complaining. Very much looking forward to reading both of these.
Right so off to my bath, then the last two episodes of 24 Series 3, I am rewatching them all again in order (yes I know...sad) and we have reached the stage where one vial of a virus which will kill off Los Angeles is to be tracked down and the carrier has managed to evade Jack Bauer and CTU, escaped from the subway and is heading for another location in order to unleash this deadly disease upon the unsuspecting denizens of downtown LA. Will Jack get there in time? Well, what a silly question.....
Back tomorrow all and, once again, thank you so much for all the simply wonderful messages you have left for me both on and off blog. I cannot tell you how much they mean to me so you will just have to guess.
Au reservoir.
