linley duly arrived on Thursday evening. Having fed her tea, I took her on a brief tour of the village and then she coped admirably with my parents. We spent Friday wandering round Cambridge, prudently disguising her as my sister so we wouldn't have to pay to go into the colleges. We saw lots and lots of colleges, as is usually the outcome of doing tourism in Cambridge. We finished up in the Botanic Gardens, which started out well but then we got trapped in a greenhouse by a truly impressive thunderstorm.

We put linley on a bus Saturday morning, then to synagogue where Ed Kessler managed to connect the Torah reading to both Harry Potter and the cricket match. I went straight from shul to Birmingham to see loreid and kathrid. The weather was truly miserable all weekend, but even so I could appreciate that the Bullring is rather more funky than most shopping centres.

Talking to loreid is definitely among my favourite ways to spend time. As well as conversation there was plenty of tea and good food (the mother of one of the kids at loreid's school made a curry for us, because she was afraid that loreid wouldn't get it right just following the recipe!), and on Sunday, a wychwood too.

Since going to Birmingham involves rather more sitting on trains than seems strictly necessary, given the distance, I finished a couple of books, so have reviews of:
Anthony Burgess: Earthly Powers and
Norman Lebrecht: A song of names.

In random LJ-wibbling news, taimatsu has provided me with a new journal subtitle. Also, having friended linley, I now have exactly 100 human friends. I have about that many people reading me too; the actual number isn't easy to determine because there are a few borderline cases.