The day off, trying the food and The Claude Glass.

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1. Nick comes home and says he's taking next Monday off.

2. We have dinner at the place where we will be getting married: it's a chance to try the food and choose the wine.

3. I come to the end of Tom Bullough's beautiful book The Claude Glass. It's the acutely observed story of boys growing up in rural Wales. Andrew, the monsterously neglected son of a native farmer lives among the sheepdogs, and views the world through an optical toy he discovers in the ruined farmhouse. Through the intervention of a neighbouring family of sheepfarming hippies, he discovers a world outside the mud and darkness and stink of his own home.

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