‘A good traveller has no fixed plans,’ the Chinese philosopher Laozi once suggested, ‘and is not intent on arriving.’ While I don’t know exactly how bad the traffic was in ancient China, I reckon Laozi would feel right at home if visiting Britain today.
‘All must have prizes,’ the Dodo declared in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But this will no longer be the case for many writers, with the news this week that after 50 years, the Costa Book Prize is no more.
‘Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable…think about these things.’
NEXT week sees the culmination of this year’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations to mark seventy years of the Queen on the throne.
Boris Johnson, it is fair to say, likes a bit of cheese. Last year, when he talked about how he managed to lose fourteen pounds in weight, he cited giving up ‘late night cheese’ as one of the causes.
Many thanks to the various readers who got in touch over last week’s column on coming down with Covid. Particular thanks to those readers who were kind enough to send me good wishes and wish me a speedy recovery. A fraction less thanks to those who were slightly more dismissive, equating Coronavirus with the common cold or having a stubbed toe.
On Monday morning I woke up with a sore throat. I had been to a dinner party the day before, where I may have enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine, but this felt didn’t feel like a hangover. As the day went on, I started to have a bit of a headache and felt achy in my body more generally. I took a Covid test, which was negative.
It might not seem immediately obvious as a setting for death and murder, but the Cathedral Close in Salisbury has enjoyed a long history of crime authors using it as a backdrop for their stories.
And so to court, where the judiciary has this week been spending time on one of the bigger legal questions of the day: the definition of cakes and biscuits.
The BBC design show Interior Design Masters has long been a favourite in my family, so when a recent show in the current series was set in Salisbury, my daughters and I had a double reason to watch.
