Moment Of Respite

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Life at the moment is as it was when the children were small: lots to do and little spare time for anything much apart from work and chores.  Such time as there is for reading isn't to be wasted, and so I have stopped buying the Catholic Herald.  I'll miss Fr Tim's agony father column and Mary Kenny's pearls; and I will really miss Stuart Reid.  If the editor sacks Fr Rollheiser and promises never ever to publish another letter from Mr McIntyre, and decides to hire journalists to write stories instead of relying on the publicity managers of the same private Catholic secondary schools week after week after week, I might reconsider.  Until then, I'll stick to Catholic once a quarter from Papa Stronsay.  (And I've stopped wasting time reading the clever trolls' McIntyre-like blogs too.)

As ever, when time is short, my reading draws into an absolute core of books which will entertain, edify, teach, and transport me completely out of this world and into theirs: as it's winter, it's Dickens; if it had been summer, it would have probably have been Jane Austen.  In the picture, Esther Summerson is discovering Lady Dedlock, and this is where I got to last night, Bleak House having followed the Pickwick Papers and both preceding Hard Times which I imagine I'll start this week.

And the snowdrops are out, and there is a green sheen on the bark which wasn't there ten days ago.  Not spring, and not the beginning of spring; but a token to remind us that winter will have an end.
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