Look out we’ve got a reader here.

Having recently had the opportunity to read again by having a few days work, which involved travelling on public transport - alone, ye gads, I was intrigued to hear about World Book Night on March 5th, 2011. A million books are to be be given away. To sign up, go to the link worldbooknight.org and chose from one of 25 titles. If you are chosen, after selecting a title you would like to give away with your reasons, you will be given 40 copies to pass on.

The list is here:

Half of a Yellow Sun	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Harper Perennial
Case Histories	Kate Atkinson	Black Swan
The Blind Assassin	Margaret Atwood	Virago
A Life Like Other People’s	Alan Bennett	Profile
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold	John le Carré	Penguin
Killing Floor	Lee Child	Bantam
The World’s Wife	Carol Ann Duffy	Picador
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Mark Haddon	Vintage
New Selected Poems	Seamus Heaney	Faber
Rachel’s Holiday	Marian Keyes	Penguin
The Reluctant Fundamentalist	Mohsin Hahmed	Penguin
Agent Zigzag	Ben Macintyre	Bloomsbury
Love in the Time of Cholera	Gabriel García Márquez	Penguin
Life of Pi	Yann Martel	Canongate
Stuart	Alexander Masters	Fourth Estate
A Fine Balance	Rohinton Mistry	Faber
Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell	Sceptre
Beloved	Toni Morrison	Vintage
One Day	David Nicholls	Hodder
Northern Lights	Philip Pullman	Scholastic
All Quiet on the Western Front	Erich Maria Remarque	Vintage
Dissolution	C.J. Sansom	Pan
Toast	Nigel Slater	Fourth Estate
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	Muriel Spark	Penguin
Fingersmith	Sarah Waters	Virago

I like these...

Image: notonthehighstreet.com

I saw these in a shop window and found them online at: notonthehighhstreet.com.

On a much needed sojourn into town recently I also saw some Christmas themed ones in Selfridges. I am thinking of LOVE in the hallway.

1. At what time of your life were you happiest and why?

I want to share, I really do, but I am not ready, so I give you this, which is kind of sharing, only very very old.

1976 Which was sunny.

If you ask an english person old enough to remember 1976 they will tell you it was sunny.

In 1976 I was in love with the boy who delivered Wednesdays evening edition of the local paper, he was a Mod called Mark. Mark was dark and terribly good looking in a chiseled way just like his scooter - a boner (ha, a boner! for those of you not au fait with the Jam or two tone revival a boner is a scooter that has been stripped down to it’s basic form in the vain hope that it will go faster). I would climb uncerimoniously half way up the outer limits of our house to a ledge the width of a laptop computer and lounge seductively in my navy and lemon yellow nylon bikini (sic). I’d eagerly awaiting his arrival under the heat of the sun, turning this way and that, should my left leg go here, perhaps my ankle would be more attractive this way. I was 10 just about to go to secondary school and my mum’s house was at the top of a dead end hill, I could see him coming. I was also shy, so shy, as soon as I did see him 5 doors away I’d run inside. I’m sure he never had any idea of my existence. But I remember the prickly heat of th sun on my back, the smell of the melting asphalt on the ledge. A soaring intense feeling of freedom, unexplainable now. Youth I guess. Being in control, seeing the object of my desire approaching and being able to turn away to return to my childhood sanctum of books and pets and mummys calling one to dinner whilst the wolf of desire pattered down the drive outside and popped a paper through the letterbox.

For this little outburst I would like to thank ; http://theharridan.wordpress.com/ who is lovely and whom also put me onto ; http://52seductions.wordpress.com/2010/02/

French Enamel

Gate - Somewhere in North London

I have always really like blue French enamel door numbers and have recently noticed a high proportion of houses around here already have them. So it’s true, Erbie is destined to grow up a middle class mummies boy, could be worse I suppose.

If you too would like to have an authentic blue French enamel door number without traversing the Channel I found some here at Willow and Stone.

£18.50

£8 per number

Mean reds

People around me are having a terrible time, ranging from bad backs, divorce, murder, threatening neighbours, losing family homes to alcoholism - and that’s just my close friends. The GR has more or less been having a breakdown, my colitis is in major flare-up mode. We all got to be a year older, Erbie is now 2. We still haven’t sorted out the situation with Belle Mere. I attempted to book us all a holiday to get away from it all, which was a disaster, a journey of epic proportions for 2 days of sun and one on the beach. The GR blamed me the whole way through and now we are less well off because of it. We are not rekindling our relationship or skipping hand-in-hand through the woods as was the ideal. I miss the West End, I walked to Regent’s Park the other day and on reaching it’s outskirts my heart lifted and I felt I’d come home.

On a positive note the flat is lovely...