Elementary

It's lovely when a school visit goes well. My trip to the Abbey School in Reading (girls' independent) was one such. It was a day early for World Book Day and everything went as it should, from the moment I saw the parking sign saying "Reserved for Mary Hoffman" till I left, bearing chocolates, flowers and wine. Even the PowerPoint worked! And the IT guy stayed through all three sessions, just to be helpful.

Only about a handful of the hundreds of school visits I've done in my life have been like that. If there were more, I'd be more willing to do them.

I took delivery of my four mosaic prints by Robert Field this week. Bob was organising an exhibition in Cirencester and came over for dinner with a friend.

We're not sure quite where to hang them yet but it must be somewhere good. They are quite stunning. We couldn't make it to the private view of this new exhibition but we'll have till May.

The details of the Mexican wedding we've been invited to in October just came. It sounds very exciting - in Tampico.

But now I realise that I'm leaving for the Bologna book fair a fortnight today and the weekend in between is the SAS conference in Coventry. But the book is going much better.

We went to see Julius Caesar in Bristol yesterday. It was very good and so much better than the one we saw at the RSC in Stratford two years ago or so. And it made me feel that it was a much better play than I had given it credit for.

We've seen the first segment of the film of The Garden of the Finzi-Contini in Italian class. I've seen it before but was struck by how strong the adaptation was. Bassani hated it and there are some bits towards the end where I'd agree with him. But I did enjoy it.

I'm now reading Peter Ackroyd's biography of Shakespeare and loving it.