The Pearl of Beaches and Wilco. Mudge to Come

The sign says: Roy Lamb the Sand Man and I know we're almost there. In years to come I will remember it as the sign on the way to good times. PJ says: my middle name was excess. I've arrived. Have a glass of champagne and contemplate the sea. In the morning we've met the object of affection and sat in the park appreciating good chutney.

I've read short good books. The Girls of Slender Means: good and slight and savage. Amsterdam. LT says I remind her of the dead woman in Amsterdam who somehow puts herself together out of the chaos each day and I'm flattered. Apparently, in L.A. they talk about being present and I understand how hard it can be.

Roy Lamb the Sand Man. The bikini tree on the way to Singleton. These things that mark our inept life. Even if time is a flicker of light and we all have to die alone.

I talk about my boring day and then realise that in the past seventy-two hours I have:
- been with some of my best friends at Pearl Beach stepping from the deck onto the sand
- sat in on a rehearsal of The Year of Magical Thinking that prompted me to cry and resolve to call my mother more often
- witnessed Sylvie Guillem chastising Akram Khan from the third row. Later Rob tells me that he feels privileged to have lived in a time that allowed him to witness Sylvie. I feel such a brat.
- loved Wilco at the Enmore and been so moved to think that what paltry estate I might have at the end of my life should be left to them. The Enmore, not Wilco.

And then bookclub. How to discuss super contemporary alienation when we know that community is what we aim for. Community is what we aim for, yes?

It starts with a beginning.

McEwen says: "It began with a sentence where I say they were young, educated and sexually innocent and they lived in a time when it was difficult to talk about sexual problems, and I thought well, who are they? When was this time? I just doodled my way into a first sentence, and by writing the first half of the first chapter, I unfolded ahead of me, like a carpet unrolling a short novel." A first sentence, and then I wondered who they were. Doesn't everyone wonder constantly who these people are around us?

Auster concurs. He doesn't know where they're going. Mr Bones? He seems to live with a neurotic hypochondriac. Perhaps that explains dog as protagonist.

On Tuesday for once in Shakespeare I knew. Knew that Egeus was meant to be Indian, that this first scene, this hysteria about an arranged marriage sits well in an Indian context.

A text from Noonie says the moon is a particularly silvery kind of silver tonight but I don't see it, at least not low enough in the sky.

Later in the week we're trying The Ivy and I'm trying not to like it.

Ray says he wanted to do the presentation to his team in interpretive dance because earlier he'd been at the offices of Google when they were trying to talk about You Tube and the video didn't work. How we laughed and felt superior. How genuine it must feel to communicate via interpretive dance.

There's a man wanderig around The Ivy. He looks as if I could run into him in the bookies area at Newcastle Racecourse and I wonder if Justin Hemmes is that smart, to place, to employ someone so original. I decide not. I decide that I want to talk to this curiosity but the bridge and tunnel crowd seem to have him sewn up.

Either way you caught me whilst a lying. Two dinners of fine cheese.

Shakespeare and opera. Reconsidered this week.