Happy birthday dear ArcLight

We celebrated ArcLight's significant birthday at our book group meeting tonight. LauraMuir's birthday is almost upon us too, so we sang her name too when our host Melissa brought the birthday cake to the table. The cake (blipped with the birthday girl) is the result of my baking exploits yesterday. I iced it this afternoon, then carried it by foot and tram to Melissa's house this evening.

Our book this month was The fair botanists by Sara Sheridan. The others liked it a lot more than I did. I found the writing very 'flat' and far too expositional for my liking. I was also irritated by a few grammatical lapses in the text, and doubted some of the historical allusions in the narrative. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a television adaptation of the story. This might appeal to me more, so long as there is tight editing of the dialogue. I would appoint Sally Wainwright to do the job.

Earlier in the day I continued work on the project proposal to secure funding for some academic research related to the war diaries of Lorna Lloyd (and my once secret recreational project). The bid is now with Bruce so that he can draft his sections of the application form. I also planned the next tranche of assessment work related to my external role, and read and reviewed one of the papers on my long reading list.

We have a full house tonight with Mummy hazelh still here and in the spare bedroom, and LauraMuir overnight on the sofabed in the study. If I can't sleep tonight, I'll have to defect to one of the sofas in the sitting room...

Exercise today: small amount of walking (5,140 steps).