Happy birthday, Shakespeare!

Well, City of Ships is "finished." That is to say I have a 84K+ word document which I have now finished checking. But there are a few scenes I want to add before sending it off.

I also wrote my essay on Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini - the difference between the book and the film. Most of the in-between has been spent celebrating my birthday and enjoying the sunshine.

I share it with Hitler, which irked me for many years. Why couldn't my mother have hung on a few days and let me be born the same day as Shakespeare? But then I wouldn't have been an Aries. And I am.(Actually I think that he was too. At least not a Taurus).

I've nearly finished reading the fascinating Peter Ackroyd Shakespeare book, which has had to languish while I read several novels by people I knew and a book I'm reviewing. And I also read The White Tiger.It was OK but not really so remarkable as to win the Booker.

And I had to laugh at the blurb, which said that Adiga was giving us a rare view of India's dark underbelly, or some such. Every single book set in India that I have read has shown me nothing but that underbelly! Rushdie, Desai, Mistry, Roy - when do they ever do anything else?

I would have seen the film, In the Loop, but couldn't face going into a dark cinema to listen to someone swearing like Alastair Campbell, while the sun was shining so temptingly outside.

I saw the last episode of Lewis and still didn't spot the scene I saw being filmed in St. Giles last year.