Home and away
Lovely to catch up with my friend in London. While I was there I managed also to read an extraordinary book, Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking", about the sudden death of her husband of forty years. I have never read anything so intelligent, so thoughtful and written with such clarity and coolness about death and grieving. Sounds as if it would be depressing but in fact it wasn't. Fabulous. It was the most flying of visits, getting to London on Monday afternoon and coming back late on Tuesday morning using the cheapest trains I could find. The tube strike was still on when I got up on Tuesday so I walked up from Waterloo, where my friend lives, to Euston station, taking my time, stopping once for a coffee and to read the paper, wandering, sauntering. This is my part of London: Waterloo bridge, Westminster, Fleet Street, Bloomsbury, all that area West of the City but not as far West as Oxford Street or the West End. I went to un...