Winter duck

It's been a really pleasant day. We awoke to blue skies - quite different to yesterday. Yes, it was chilly when we walked up to the weir, but nothing too harsh. The wind has dropped.

For the second week in a row, I've spent Sunday afternoon on my chair completely absorbed by reading a book. This time it was The Salt Path. My copy of the lovely hardback arrived this week, and it's already been passed to Mr A. And he in turn is clearly going to be quite taken by the book, just as I was. This short video, made by Penguin, gives something of a flavour of the book, although Raynor Winn comes across as quite nervous. I hope she comes to the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2019. I'll be there if she is.

What I have noticed in most of the reviews, and in the Penguin video, is that it downplays the homelessness and struggle part of the book. But that is an essential part of it, and should not be sanitised for middle England, as it is in the Daily Mail review that I glanced through. On the contrary, we all need to think hard about what happens when all of our normal support structures disappear from underneath us and we are left with nothing, or almost nothing. It is through this that real strength emerges, and that's what I was left with at the end of the book. A remarkable author, a remarkable story, and clearly also a remarkable husband - although he only appears indirectly through her presentation.