The wind fought its way in today, through windows sealed shut. I made a banana cake and put it on a cake stand. Then Dan came by for tea. He was telling us about Cornwall. There are pirates!, or there were, anyway; and pasties; and plays at the theatre in the hill. We’re going to take a train out there, next autumn, maybe, and it seems like a while away, but look, it’s mid-January already, and we weren’t even trying. Pirates, and pasties, and champagne on a picnic blanket. And the train goes by the sea. It’s worth waiting for.



There are places to go, and I tell you something else: there is a merry-go-round in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris that presents a curious menagerie. None of those painted horses with their wild, glittering manes; here an antelope, a dodo, a triceratops, a corps of giraffes and a smiling, sad-eyed panda go round and round and round. The lights were on, Christmas Day, and a tinny fairground music floated out from behind bare trees.