Round-up

I've been catching up with everything I've missed over the last few weeks and have discovered a wealth of information, and vegatables, in need of harvesting.

On Friday I went to Hampton Court which was very nice, and the weather held out as well which was great. And then spent the rest of the weekend was spent reading various things and pulling books off my shelves to bring back to Gloucestershire. I now have no room at all for any more books.... unless of course I put up another shelf... or shelves

First off came the rocket in the garden, and then the excitment of seeing the turnips shooting up through the soil, followed by Maud Newton's AL Kennedy story (plus link to an ALK interview), and finally the dates for things at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and the fringe - in particular ... yes you guessed it: AL Kennedy's events.

Ok excitment over. For a moment.

I've started reading Clare Morrall's new book Natural Flights of the Human Mind (hardback published in January and paperback coming out in June) an I'm rather liking it. The jacket has gone missing somewhere in the office so I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but after a paragraph I was intrigued so I took it home with me. Along with a(nother) book set in Brick Lane, called An Acre of Barren Ground by Jeremy Gavron, which is looking very promising and takes its title from The Tempest. I picked up a copy of Carrie Tiffany's Orange Prize nominated book Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living which I began yesterday. Its set on a train which goes around Australia encouraging farmers to change the way they farm using scientific methods and lots of chemicals on your soil: stuff like phosphate and weed killer (a sort of early form of Round-up I suppose) - these days the same thing would happen to encourage farmers to go organic so the contradiction between 1934 and 2006 is interesting - and is full of an underlying humour.

And there is a new literary magazine which you can pick up in various places in London called Pen Pusher which I've not yet seen but have heard is good.

Oh and my turnips are doing very well. Did I mention the turnips already?