company

Guess who has ventured into the basement to keep me company? Right here beside me, a bundle of stripey fur - el Gato Crabbo. You'd almost think she is fond of me, though of course that's nonsense. What a difference it makes to have this once-nasty beast, a warm living creature, bringing companionship and comfort.

Post-partum has hit - I've spent so much time and energy focussed on the manuscript, and now ... what? I have to think about other work, and life. Two weeks till I'm on the move again, and in the meantime, tons of editing and teaching and reading to be done. Not to mention getting out of here, somehow.

Thrilling to read the rave reviews of "War Horse," which has just opened here, and remember seeing it three years ago, in London, leaping to my feet at the end, weeping copiously. How marvellous that this profoundly moving show should travel the world and end up on my doorstep.

I keep swearing that I'll give up the "New Yorker," which just keeps coming, piling up, sometimes seeming more like a job than a pleasure. But then today, here's the new one, a great cover by Roz Chast, inside a new story by Alice Munro, some laugh out loud cartoons, articles on Davos, altruism, a weapons trafficker, the Bible, plus reviews and poems ... packed with treasure. So I'll just have to keep suffering through it, just as I suffer down here in my hidey-hole. Somehow I'll get through.