Domestic anomie

I haven't added anything for eight months but in my absence the number of visits to this blog has risen slowly to 114,000.

This time two years ago, I was probably somewhere in the Spice Islands eating fish. Now I am in a poorly-paid and incredibly frustrating job and living in a noisy flat. In the last 15 months I have been to Cordoba and Toulouse, and that's it, and haven't dived or sailed once. Far too many of my leisure hours are spent on the PS3. And Notts lost to Yorkshire this week. So I cannot really say that life has improved. It's time to travel; but like a teacher I have lots of holiday and little money. So - to Bulgaria next week.

Anyway, it really is time that I ended this blog; it's taken me nearly two years to write about the trip to Papua, which will be the last post.

Meanwhile while I'm preparing that, here is another list of books read or reread, following on from the last one:

The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather
The Ruby in Her Navel, Barry Unsworth
Gli Arancini di Montalbano, Andrea Camilleri
The Anglo-Saxons, Geoffrey Hindley
The Red Hourglass, Gordon Grice
Mort à la Fenice, Donna Leon
The Mask of Dimitrios, Eric Ambler
Les Chiots, Mario Vargas Llosa
Millennium, Tom Holland
Magnus, George Mackay Brown
The Curse of the Pogo Stick, Colin Cotterill
Excursion to Tindari, Andrea Camilleri
Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Roger II of Sicily, Hubert Houben
The King Must Die, Mary Renault
The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
The Snake Stone, Jason Goodwin
The Pale Horseman, Bernard Cornwell
Flat Earth News, Nick Davies
The Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell
Sword Song, Bernard Cornwell
The Triumphs of Caesar, Stephen Saylor
The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell
The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin
The Bull from the Sea, Mary Renault
The Day of the Owl, Leonardo Sciascia
Westminster Abbey, Richard Jenkyns
Jingo, Terry Pratchett
The Fatal Eggs, Mikhail Bulgakov
Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger
The Perfect Heresy, Stephen O’Shea
Bad Laws, Philip Johnston
The Discovery of France, Graham Robb
The Dream of Rome, Boris Johnson
How to Label a Goat, Ross Clark
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler
The Merry Misogynist, Colin Cotterill
How to be a Minister, Gerald Kaufman
The Winner’s Curse, Richard Thaler
Storm, Vince Cable
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, Ian Mortimer
The Code of the Woosters, PG Wodehouse
Archangel, Robert Harris
The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, Stieg Larsson
Rain Fall, Barry Eisler
Hard Rain, Barry Eisler
Rain Storm, Barry Eisler
Killing Rain, Barry Eisler
The Last Assassin, Barry Eisler
Requiem for an Assassin, Barry Eisler
Cockroach, Marian Copeland
Ancient Rome, Simon Baker
The Atlas of the Crusades, J C Riley Smith

Of these I probably most enjoyed The Red Hourglass and The Day of the Owl.