:: nearly ready

I'm getting organised, gradually. Today I even wrote a shopping list. And a time has been set for Bertie's departure -- 11am on Monday. I'll pack his bags on Sunday. He has a lot of luggage -- a huge quantity of food, for a start, plus treat biscuits, towels, his duvet and sheepskin, some toys, a spare lead, a cheque for the vet in case he hurts himself, some videos, his Playstation ...

I went to the library today and got out some "light reading" -- The Wind Singer by William Nicholson, One for My Baby by Tony Parsons and something else ... a science fiction novel I think, I can't remember now. I ordered a couple of other books too, while I was there: My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell and Unless by Carol Shields. They don't have a marvellous selection at the local library, but if they have the book you want at another branch you can order it and they'll send it out.

I still have a stack of books to read at home. At the moment I'm enjoying The Snow Geese by William Fiennes. It's a wonderful yarn -- he follows the geese migrating from the south of the US right up to the north of Canada. He's excellent at drawing pen-portraits of all the people he meets along the way. And I've also started True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, and The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Oh, and Fifty in Fifty, a book of science fiction short stories I already had out of the library.

Piled up on the shelf, unread, are a bunch of books I got at the last review book sale here at work -- too many to mention. A novel, a couple of travel books, some philosophy, some popular science. The Snow Geese is one of them.

Time to do some work.