Superbly pointless

Today I have mainly been thinking about autobiography, not fiction, as I am trying to write my life story up to a certain point. But it's the fiction that is getting blipped today, as it's what seemed to make the best blip if I lay on the bed and looked out into the hall.

The books on the top shelf are Steve's, don't know much about them. The ones I relate to on the next shelves are Jane Gardam's duo, Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat (in fact there's a third, but I don't know what it is...) If you like reading about the lives of Old Colonials, you might like these; the life stories are told with such warmth and a wealth of tiny details. Also, I can see Natalie Goldberg's Banana Rose, which skilfully evokes another lost era; the hippy dippy sixties/seventies in New Mexico. Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles are here too: they've had a comeback after their serialisation on Radio 4 earlier this year. Has anyone read the final 'new' one, just published, and set in the (gasp!) 1950s, in the post war world? I am not going to rush to buy it in hardback, nor do I want the kindle version, so I shall probably get it as an audio file if it is narrated by Penelope Wilton, who read the series so satisfactorily on the radio. Some reviewers have panned it, but I'd like to make my own mind up.

And so I face the vinyl curtain: no, not shower time, but back-to-the-keyboard-for-writing-time. See you all in 2019, or whenever my homework is done. You may be able to read the titles if you view in Large.