Saul Bellow and ME

This is what I am currently reading.  It’s taken me years to get to Saul Bellow – shameful for a Martin Amis fan.    I always feel guilty for reading during the day, even though my ME prevents me from leading a very physical life.  I subscribe to the method of dealing with ME’s vagaries by doing everything at full tilt until I am wiped out for three days or maybe a week.  I have always been like this – no ‘rest periods’ or sleeping in the day.  I’ve never met a laid-back, inactive person who has developed ME.  I think if I had been more inclined to rest up when I first got ill I might be a lot better now, but that’s academic.  But I can only bring myself to read when I’ve done everything else I might possibly have to do – even when I was doing my degree, and even now when I’m considering a Masters.  The impeccable husband says ‘read, read, what are you waiting for?’ but I have to hoover/dust/bathe the dog/cook, even if I’m on my knees.   How much time do others devote to reading?

Boyz ‘n the Wood

Two of these are mine. Actually, the third one is mine too, really. I suspect the appearance of this photo in public could destroy a certain amount of credibility in some quarters.  I just won’t have to let him find out…

This Year’s Garden

I used to have a picture book garden, with church bells,  seas of flowers,  dells suitable for summer gin-drinking and a garden swing you could see the sea from if your tummy could take the oomph.  I traded it all for being happy instead, and now I live in a house in town which shows every one of its 130 years.  Not quite what Howard Jacobson calls a ’sunshine semi’, it’s a  three-storey Victorian ‘villa’ as they were known back then. The back garden is fenced off (don’t ask) and I have a growing number of pots at the front which are slowly encroaching on the steps and soon we won’t be able to get in.  Here are some of them.  It’s been a good year for the roses, and the lobelia and the geraniums and especially, the fuchsias.