Friday, February 26, 2010

Re-reading, lightbulb moments and a good evening.

1. I need something funny and comforting and familiar to read on the train. Thank you, Mr Bryson.

2. I go to a class at the School of Life -- How to Stay Calm. The teacher, novelist Naomi Alderman, says that people either come to this class because they have a problem with anxiety (that's me) or with anger (mostly men, she says). I find myself talking to a man who says that social anxiety vanishes once you realise that everyone else is far too worried about themselves to notice you. I tell him how when I first understood that aged 18, it was like a burden being lifted from my shoulders. Then we tell someone else about it.

3. A Japanese man and woman are waiting for the tube. They are flushed, and limp with laughter. It makes me smile to see such open happiness.

Bud vase, tomato and the poem I needed to hear.

1. Among the faded cut daffodils that I'm putting on the compost heap there is one that will do for another day in a bud vase. 2. For th...