Constructions

I've been so busy with web material that only one chapter of David has been written; I hope to get back to it next week.

And we've celebrated two birthdays - a daughter of 33 and a "surrogate granddaughter(parents' own term) of 1. This was all done very thoroughly, with another trip to London involving furniture moving and visits to the dump in between.

Half term was delightfully full of visitors, writer friends, and long chats about books and writers and writing. More Nordic walking (I have my own poles now)and Italian literature. And I started a new short course on The virtù of six Renaissance masters.

We began with a big hero of mine, Filippo Brunelleschi, whose dome or cupola for the cathedral in Florence is above. I have loved this building, especially the dome, for 45 years. Ghiberti this week.

We saw Midsummer Night's Dream at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol - one of our favourite places for seeing Shakespeare. It was so good, with a really funny Wall. I read Snobs, by Julian Fellowes, with pleasure and great relief that I don't live in that world - or want to. Am now devouring Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scriptures - such a good book!Also read a short story by Beppe Fenoglio called Golia (Goliath) about a German soldiers captured by partisans.

And I've heard Suk's Asrael Symphony twice: am listening to it now. What a find!

Arts and Crafts

I have now finished chapter 23 of a 21 Chapter novel! Another chapter and epilogue should do it. The dining room is festooned with pictures of galleons, galleys, galliots and galleasses.

But I took a break to come away to the Lake District for Easter, where I haven't cooked a meal, apart from soup, for four days. We provided the ingredients and two brothers of the younger generation, plus Rhiannon and her partner, have basically cooked fabulous food every day.

We have eaten far too much and drunk a lot of wine and played silly games and had good conversations. It has been a really good house party in a wonderful house, owned by a friend who is away.

And the sun has shone really hotly. We haven't done the walks we planned but we did visit a glorious Arts and Crafts house this afternoon, by Baillie Scott and were the only people there. I so wanted to live in that hall with the peacock frieze!

I saw Antony and Cleopatra at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol and it was great, as good as their Julius Caesar.The current company is really strong.

I also saw a really good episode of ER and two of Lewis. I had to watch the first one on i-Player, which can be terrible on a Mac! But I've seen three episodes now and though I love the corny old things it has such screamingly obvious plot anomalies and discontinuity points, I'm thinking of offering myself as script editor!

I've started to read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Reserving judgment, except to say it's very readable.