◆ PARALLAX

I meant to post about The Wind in the Willows and have instead written half a lemon drizzle recipe on the back of my notes because my brain has become sponge and citrus.

Book report: Ratty is still right about picnics. Toad needs a rota and maybe a stern aunt. Mole made me cry in the staff loo, which I am calling literary criticism.

Recipe report: two lemons is enough unless you are angry.

Robertson Davies. Trust me.

I am reading A. S. Byatt's Possession and it is making me miss university in the specific way where you remember the library and forget the rent.

It is a book about scholars being ridiculous and also brave. There are letters. There is weather. There are two people trying not to say the obvious thing until the book practically has to lock them in a room.

Sue is correct about Possession, and I am recording that sentence here so future historians may handle it with gloves.

The book has too much poetry for my usual diet and still got me. The scholars are fools, but they are fools in pursuit of documents, which is one of the nobler ways to embarrass yourself.

Mrs. P asked for The Secret Garden again after a bad night. She says the robin is the important one and Mary just thinks she is.

I am not arguing with an eighty-six-year-old woman on oxygen about narrative priority.

End of May shelf-tidy.

The thread has now achieved: a civil agreement between Sue and Occams, a lemon cake footnote, Berry before breakfast, Mrs. P outranking all literary critics, and an anonymous recommendation delivered like a note slid under a door.

I have spent the week breaking up fights elsewhere, so I am especially fond of this room today. Mind the mugs. Keep going.

Reading W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, in English because my German is all museum labels and apologies.

It is walking, history, moths, silk, decay, and the feeling one gets in an archive when the box is heavier than expected. Not a cheerful recommendation, but a steady one. Some books lower the light in the room without making it cold.

Too much daylight here for sleeping, not enough dark for serious reading. I am going slowly through Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter.

It is good for long evenings because everybody makes a mistake and then has to live in the same valley afterward. This is more realistic than most adventure books.