Books, sweet, sweet books

The five day book drought's over. Emma presented me with a sports book that even Ewarwoowar won't have read - Michéal O'Muircheartaigh's bilingual memoir of Ireland and being GAA's most famous commentator.

Also, I called into The Works today and accidentally bought five of the six special Bill Amberg designed Penguin Classics special editions, in soft loose leather with a box (The Great Gatsby, A Room With A View, Brideshead Revisited, The Big Sleep and A Picture of Dorian Gray). They're absolutely beautiful and a snip at £6.99 instead of £50. I just need Breakfast at Tiffany's to complete the decadent set.

Toodle-pip, old beans

Right, that's it. I'm off to do some more ironing because that's the kind of glamorous life I lead when not teaching. Tomorrow I'm off to Oxford to look intellectual, though I've drawn the line at goatee, teddy bear, bowtie and tweeds. I like tweed though.

Iran is still in ferment. I can't help thinking that overt support from other governments for Moussavi is a terrible idea. If Ahmedinejad retains power, he'll be angry as well as nuked-up. If Moussavi wins, he'll have to prove he's not pro-American if he's to have any chance of governing successfully (this is the Kennedy/Clinton/Blair/Brown strategy: be more rightwing than rightwing parties so that they can't accuse you of being weak on communism/defence/paedos or whatever.

See you on Friday.

A new pleasure

What could be finer than sitting in my office, eating pheasant and champagne paté with a spoon? Shame it isn't a wood-panelled, book-lined study overlooking a river and a quad, but still. 'I always take a glass of champagne at eleven'.

Oops, I Did It Again

Oops. I went out to buy a birthday card and accidentally bought 4 more books: Ackroyd's retelling of The Canterbury Tales, Mark Steel's What's Going On?, Mark Radcliffe's Thank You For The Days (I interviewed him once - what an incredibly decent, kind man) and Madresfield: The Real Brideshead, because I know the area and quite like some of Waugh's work.

Meanwhile, while I buy books and write essays on blended learning, my heart's in London, where comrades are expending their energy in ineffectual but fun ways.

Waugh … huh … what is it good for?

How I love puns. Surprisingly, the answer isn't 'absolutely nothing'. I read Brideshead Revisited again recently and realised how unlike the revolting, Tory, snobbish, arrogant ITV drama the book is. I'm a cradle Catholic, violently socialist malcontent (and if your kids don't pass their A-levels, I'll be brainwas sorry teaching them), yet Brideshead does evoke not just the fading of a class but satirises a class desperately searching for meaning. Remember - the Marchmains have only been Catholic for one generation, and none too successfully. There's little joy in their faith. 

I went to Evensong at Worcester Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, and felt like nothing but a tourist. As Cordelia says (that name is following me about at the moment), to the faithless a church is simply 'an oddly-decorated room'. The question is whether the experience is spiritually worthless.