Wolf Hall is coming

One of my sorrows about going away is that I will miss, not just my grandson, but the first episodes of "Wolf Hall," the new BBC series based on the brilliant Booker-winning novels about Cromwell and Henry VIII, and starring my favourite actor on the planet, Mark Rylance. It starts on PBS in early April and my British friends say it's incredible. According to the Guardian today, this series has at last made Mark an international star. About time. He is such an odd duck in life, no question, and yet magnificent on stage and screen, magical, the most committed and brave actor I've ever seen.

My dear friend Richard is going to tape the first episodes for me. So - I guess I'll go after all.

Am fighting - of course - a cold! Met a friend at the Y who had a cold and I said, Keep away, I cannot get a cold. An hour later, I started to sneeze. Three hours later, I felt the bug moving in. But am taking French homeopathic medicine thanks to Monique, and much Vitamin C and zinc. Will NOT allow this to take root. Do not want to take a trans-Atlantic flight with the sniffles.

Monique had her francophone dinner last night - a marvel of conversation, as always. Jack has read Bill C51 and thinks it's perfectly fair and balanced, but then Jack is considerably to the right of the rest of us. We discussed why "Fifty Shades of Grey" has had such success, the state of Israel today (Jacqueline had just come back from a junket there), and many other things. Food, friendship, great talk - and I only drank 2 1/2 glasses of wine. Okay, big glasses, but still. I am discovering abstemiousness. At this late stage. Hope it doesn't last.

Last class at Ryerson tonight - goodbye, dear students, it was a wonderful term. And now, my time is mine. Once I cross these forty-seven things off my list and get onto that plane. Without a cold.