I am currently sharing a chair I lugged across Paris last time with a Bannane Chocolat and a copy of Much Ado About nothing, and breezes through the cherry blossoms play about my calloused feet in their two quid flip flops. A little tired, but quite content, I find myself with little to do but reflect across the past week in the mirror of this blog.

On Saturday we had our first read-through of Much Ado in the apartment upstairs. The plan is that we can have it ready by the end of this month for performance outside the shop, hence my current panic over line learning. I have been cast as Claudio, who is tricked into believing his fiancé has been unfaithful to him and publicly humiliates her only to discover later that he has been tricked by the evil Don John. The more I read through the script the more things I find I must learn: as the bard might say, “words, words, WORDS!” That evening we polished off much wine and cheese before eventually moving on to a sangria bar. The next morning was quite blissful – Radio 4 for breakfast.

In fact my mornings usually have this as a pattern: get up, shave and shower, coffee, Radio 4, open shop, procrastinate. I have been reading a couple of books (one of them an engaging enough murder which I shall divert myself after writing this post) also reading Alice in Wonderland as the tumbleweed bedtime story. The other tumblweeds are an entertaining bunch, and on top of the play, bedtime story and personal reading we also take it in turns to read out sections of Moby Dick each day, usually with the extraordinary Karolina previously mentioned in this blog. It is quite the literary life.

What else have I done? Well, there’s been the tea party (enjoyed catching up with Panmellis) Garry Lucas was back for another gig on Monday; in fact this week is busy for shop events, we had a reading on Wednesday and we have another on later today. And last night, at last, we had a proper big tumblefeed in the form of veggie mousaka and a large quantity of the vino nee-naw-nee-naw.

Shakespeare and Company continues, stronger, stranger and more spectacular than ever, and I can safely claim to have completely resettled into my favourite style of life.