Instead of catching up on correspondence

Yesterday, Notting Hill at lunchtime, smell of charred paper in the air. Several drinks and out onto the street, it's now almost acrid. Whenever I smell this kind of smoke, wherever I am, I wonder if it's my own books that are burning.

In Hatchard's a woman with her hair fashioned into a brittle auburn helmet approaches me with a book and asks: 'Would this be suitable for my daughter?'. She must think I work there. That's okay. Were we in Waterstone's I'd be offended.

After seeing the operetta at the ENO the other day (stylish but occasionally cumbersome and overdone), rereading Candide - I recognise the tone from when I first encountered it at thirteen.

On Piccadilly, amplified noise of birdsong emanating from Fortnum's. From a distance it works as a decoy, reflected off the buildings. Closer to, screechy, aurally gaudy.

In Green Park a man in late middle age and a suit walking with a young woman who did not quite seem to be his daughter. They were walking slowly, something about them suggested that each were thinking, separately but about the same thing. Then he said: "The tragedy of it was that he loved an unconventional woman in a conventional manner."