Where to begin?

As I write this I'm sitting in my favourite spot in Caffe Nero with my usual order of diet coke and tuna melt panini. You might be forgiven for thinking I'm taking it easy, with time on my hands. It's an easy mistake to make, I know. Instead, I'm having ONE OF THOSE DAYS. You know the type - those days where no sooner do you start one thing than you remember all the other things you should be doing. I have to remind myself that it's okay to sit here, since writing a blog post is on my list. I've been rather lax of late on the blogging front, but I rather like sitting in a cafe with my notebook, pretending to be one of those writerly types.

So let me tell you about all the things I could and should be doing. At the moment I'm dipping my toe in Shakespeare rather than the full immersion I'd hoped for at the start of the course. My study calendar tells me I should be reading Hamlet - or was that last week? My head's still buzzing from a dynamic youth production at the local Dukes theatre a couple of weeks ago. I have an assignment on Twelfth Night due in a couple of weeks, but I'd rather be reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. What's more, there's a Tobacco Factory production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Dukes this week. Twelfth Night is clearly going to have to wait.

On the novel front, this month's book group choice is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I've read it a couple of times before, the first being the more disconcerting since I could relate to Esther Greenwood's disturbed state of mind rather more than is healthy. I'm hosting book group this time so it's unlikely I'll be able to wriggle out of reading it again, even allowing for extra coffee making and other hostess duties. Hmmph! Reading's not supposed to be a chore.

I made the mistake of opening one of my birthday gifts, Elizabeth Taylor's Complete Short Stories. I only read the first few pages of 'Hester Lilly' and now I don't want to stop. Taylor's such a subtle and skillful writer that there's so much lies beneath the words on the page. It's a rather long short story so clearly The Bell Jar is going to have to wait too.

All these literary distractions wouldn't be so bad, but with the pace stepping up at work and the cricket season beginning, real life is really getting in the way.

But hey, better to have too much to do than too little.

And at least I can now cross one thing off my list.