Llyfrau o Gymru

Yes, I've had two parcels of books from Wales today: the latest in Seren's wonderful 'new stories from the Mabinogion' series, Niall Griffiths' The Dreams of Max and Ronnie to add to the Gwyneth Lewis one which turned up last week. I also received 27 and 28 in the Library of Wales series, Margiad Evans's rural gothic Turf or Stone, and Hilda Vaughan's tale of ideologies clashing in the countryside, The Battle to the Weak, sensitively introduced by Fflur Dafydd.

I also got several very blunt e-mails from Amazon today - while I'm waiting for a new bank card, several orders have had payment refused, and they're very disappointed in me.

Talking of books…

After the most expensive week of my life, I planned to turn to thriftiness for a couple of months, until my bank account has been replenished.

Planned to. Failed to. I went to the bookshop for a standalone copy of Henry V (which they didn't have), and ended up buying - at full price - books on literature and history, Derrida, Lacan, literary theory and a second complete Shakespeare. Then, not looking like a man who had all he could read, I went online and bought the latest three Library of Wales books, Jack Jones's Black Parade, Alun Richards' polemical Dai Country and yet another edition in my collection of Glyn Jones's stunning, complex, ambiguous The Valley, The City, The Village.

This really must stop.

Validated!

Got an A for my observed teaching and reflection on my own teaching practice! My mentor sat in on my first 'sex in poetry' workshop, a lecture which tried to explain the credit crunch, and some one-to-one tutorials. Thanks for resisting the opportunity to trip me up and for laughing at my jokes, those of you who were there!

It's also a good day in other ways: I received Grizzly Bear's 'Veckatimest' and Sufjan Stevens' 'Illinois', and the latest in the Library of Wales series, Brenda Chamberlain's A Rope of Vines and Stuart Evans's The Caves of Alienation.