After days spent either cowering indoors against the rain or driving fruitlessly around the west-country in search of our new home, today we ventured out on foot. The unusual sight of calm blue skies tempted us to exercise so we walked the four miles to town and back, ostensibly to buy Clare some vitamin-A tablets and pop into the library.
We should buy shares in Holland & Barrett. I think we all know H&B sell nothing but new-age self-indulgence, yet somehow it is irresistible. Clare got her vitamins and I bought bottles of "triple strength omega-3 fish oil, 950 mg of active EPA/DHA per capsule". This on the strength of The Economist recommendation here.
At the library I took out a Paul Auster book (Travels in the Scriptorium) as well as something by A. S. Byatt. I saw the review of Auster's Invisible on Newsnight Review yesterday evening and decided to order a copy from Amazon: as I've read no Auster before I thought I'd do a little preliminary reading although I now see that the Amazon reviews of my new library book only amount to an overall two-and-a-half stars.
[Postscript at 8.30 pm: it took only a couple of hours to finish the 129 or so pages of Travels in the Scriptorium. It's a curious piece of metafiction, supremely referential to the author's prior work so impossible for me to adequately assess.]
We finished up in the BlueOnion, a local and superior version of Starbucks which served an excellent hot chocolate for Clare and green tea for me. Nice to be in a place where the staff enthuse about their work and the tables and floor are spotless. Another business to invest in if only they were publicly quoted.
