Hushaway Mountain

I woke up with a start and ended up with a finish. Where is your head Kathryn? Oh, there it is, right on the end of your neck where you left it last night.

Am I the last person in the world to read the book Iris by John Bayley? What a tremendous novel! I am totally in awe of how somebody can have written something so utterly beautiful and moving while his extraordinary wife slipped into the grim grip of Alzheimer’s. I saw the film with the lovely Kate Winslet and Dame Judy playing the part of Iris Murdoch ages ago - and loved it, but it isn’t a patch on the experience of reading this incredible book.

So yeah, Sunday. I missed the flea market! Just as well I didn’t need any fleas. I wrote for an hour and a half and then skipped across the way to L’Enfance de Lard (have you noticed how I have discovered italics?)for a party with a difference. The difference was the place was crawling with more children than can be found at one of Michael Jackson’s sleepovers. The champagne helped me cope with the difficult early stages, and before long we were sitting around a gorgeously decorated table like some huge extended family feasting on victuals beyond description. My pidgin French got me nowhere, but I was never wanting for a glass of the stuff that makes you go ‘Oooh!’ Yes, we’re talking champagne sweetie, and it was arriving by the bucketload.

I finally got back to the house that I call home at seven in the evening, and I am about to embark on chapter five of my masterwork…but I have an unnatural and uncanny feeling deep in my waters that the doorbell may ring at any moment. I’ll let you know what happened next tomorrow. And so it goes…