A Winters Tale

Outside it is beautifully sunny but extremely cold. The temperature tips it in favour of staying indoors to recover from a pleasant but long night duty - with another ahead. For the night past I had to make no traffic management decisions; the night ahead could be different.

I am intoxicated by the smell of the free car air freshener which came with my new MCR album. There is a sort of new furniture/new car thing going on or perhaps it is just the smell of Gerard Way's leather trousers. My nose is captivated. I am less entranced so far with the album, 'Danger Days; The Trues Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys'. It is a concept album which is easy to understand on Wikipedia and a bit less easy to follow on a first listen but I believe it will grow on me. How could a group follow the masterly 'Black Parade'? Waiting in the wings are, belatedly, 'Plastic Beach' by Gorillaz and, eclectically, 'Dreams', the new album of covers from Neil Diamond. Sometimes, I wish my journey to work were longer but only by, say, one or two tracks.

From that insight into my car CD changer, I take you to my bookshelf and indeed my downstairs toilet. In the latter I am finishing 'The Secret Speech' by Tom Rob Smith. It is the sequel to the remarkable debut  'Child 44' and I can tell you all you need to know by saying I am looking forward to a third offering. Equally excellent but entirely different is Michael Crichton's 'Pirate Latitudes'. Discovered and published after his premature death it is a fast paced tale which defines the epithet 'page turner'. The extraordinary thing about Crichton's books was or is that they are all so different to the extent that there is no genre. Whilst the quality and style remain the same the subject matter is enormously varied. I have read many of his books and never been disappointed.

We need something to drag us psychologically from the descent into winter and Greg, with daily pain from his head, needs it more than I. We have booked a June cruise on an itinerary which has become increasingly attractive to us. Sailing from and to Southampton is appealing in itself as we confirmed earlier this year. A compact but interesting Norwegian itinerary (Stavanger, Flåm, Olden, Bergen) should be ideal. I am looking forward to it very much. In fact I am looking forward to 2011 and, beyond that, 19 November 2014.