Having flown back to London overnight I was aiming to get home by about 2pm UK time yesterday so I could follow my usual routine. It’s the one that I’ve found works best for getting back in synch with UK time zone after a trip to US.
It’s pretty simple – get home, have my first cup of properly made tea (memo to my American readers: you absolutely cannot make tea correctly unless the water is boiling) and a piece of toast. Then head for a nap of 1.5 hours. It’s agony getting up at that point when your body is screaming for more sleep but I’ve learned that if I go longer than that, I don’t sleep that night.
Sadly those plans all got thrown into total disarray because someone decided Saturday afternoon was a good time to send an enormous transponder on a trip down the M4, taking up two lanes of the motorway and reducing traffic to 20 miles an hour. Actually 20mph would have been welcome. So the journey home that should have taken 3 hours at most, took 5 hours. By the time I got home it was too late to sleep. Consequence was that 3am today saw me tossing and turning and then 4am I was wide awake.
The only positive thing was that I got to finish Troubles; J G Farrell’s novel set in Ireland in 1919 which was a critical time in the issue of home rule and to read a little more of The Forsaken Inn, a deliciously over-the-top novella by Anna Katharine Green, one of the first writers of detective fiction in America. It’s a mystery story involving a newly-married couple who stay at an inn. She’s not as radiant as you’d expect a bride to be and he seems to be more concerned about a rather large box than he is about his wife. Many years later a body is found in a secret passage at the inn… It’s not the kind of book I normally read and I wouldn’t have started it but for the fact it’s referenced on the Coursera historical fiction course and it sounded fun.
The other fun activity this week involved making a selection of books for the next round of the Classics Club Spin. I did the first of these earlier in the year and then somehow missed the next two so am determined not to let round 4 pass me by especially since I have a feeling I am falling a little behind on this challenge. We’re supposed to choose 20 books from our Classics Club challenge list , five of which have to be ones that we really would love to read and five we are nervous about. I had a really tough time choosing because there are not that many on my list I am nervous about – they wouldn’t be on my list otherwise. Only Robinson Crusoe fits the bill just because I have a feeling it will be written in a somewhat longwinded style.
Anyway, Monday will be the day when we find out which book we need to read by January. Maybe by then I’ll have stopped yawning…