Today's picture is by the immensely talented Serena, over at deviantart.com: http://fairytaleprincess.deviantart.com/

Some fabulous comments over the last few days - I'm intrigued by the anonymous Commenter(s?). Virginia Woolf has often been credited with the quote: "For most of history, anonymous was a woman." Whether this is true or not remains a mystery, but don't worry - Enola Holmes and Nancy Drew have teamed up and are on the case. Stay tuned/answers on a postcard (or comments form) for the identity (identities?) of our own anonymous Anonymous.

It's been an undramatic but hugely enjoyable day at Cheverton Heights. Although nothing particularly exciting has happened (yet - my sister is visiting this evening), I've had a great official Saturday off, which has not happened in months.

The Heights are not immaculate, but do now resemble a place where someone lives, rather than lives out of, and it feels more homely here once more as a result, some of the magic has come back.

G and I stopped for coffee and a slice of pizza at a cafe in Palmerston Road this afternoon and shared a table with an already tea-sipping customer as the place was overflowing. Our brief chat with the lovely lady reminded me how common table-sharing is in the States and how infrequently by comparison it happens here. There is a definite difference in interpersonal boundaries that I found highly noticeable and initially disarming in the States.

I liked our brief chat with the anonymous tea-sipper: she was learning Italian, her mother is an Italian and she seemed to chide herself for not having learnt her language before now. She commented on how she much preferred sharing a table, that it allowed the same level of privacy as sitting alone (for most of the time we had shared the table, she had been studying her Italian text) yet allowed the comfort of company. I liked that, and I liked her the more for saying it. I think a lot of people wouldn't have.

Anyhoo, my sister is due any second, so I'll end this entry with a poem by Jane Yolen:

Fat is Not a Fairy Tale

I am thinking of a fairy tale,

Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

And I urge you again, whether you consider yourself to be a lover of poetry or no, to go and have a look at the 180 poems from the Library of Congress at: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Today's Beautiful Things

1. The evaporation of a bad mood, the transformation into someone marginally nicer

2. Asking why I'm so much harder on the people I love

3. Searching for the right questions

Quote of the Day
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Bertrand Russell

Song of the Day
Imogen Heap - Speeding Cars