Notes from Saturdays

  I finally made it to the library this Saturday: 5 titles to pick up. Every time I'm there at the "Requested for pick-up" aisle I can't help noticing the bold slips of paper screaming the names next to mine. Always the same faithful crowd, keeping up the literary statistics of the community. I picked up the books I thought were mine, surprised that there were 6. I thought maybe the app was slow. Then realised I had picked up the next name's by accident. Quick look at the cover awaiting Daisy J: " Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find - and Keep - Love".  I wondered how you came across this one, Daisy. Did it come up in a conversation, maybe a colleague was raving about it, one you had to respect, or impress? Maybe you wanted to talk about more than the summer heat and the left over lunch. I wondered if you had difficulty settling down. Or maybe getting over a recent break up?  Has love been slipping away?  Maybe he...

I simply cannot run without distraction. It’s so utterly boring and torturous that I have to listen to something interesting or else I won’t last more than 3k. That’s how I ended up listening to Edith Wharton’s “Mrs Manstey’s View” last weekend, thumping away on the treadmill.   It was a very curious coincident considering what was going on in my own life. The story is truly heartbreaking. Mrs Manstey has spent the last 17 years of her life in a 3rd floor room of a boarding house in New York. She’s an old widow with few visitors and is too frail to venture out anymore. So she spends her days sitting at her one window looking out to the neighbourhood. It’s not a striking view; small untidy gardens and occasional appearances of the house occupants and their servants at their windows. Mrs Manstey had never been an awfully sociable person and the window seemed to provide just enough entertainment. Until one day, the neighbouring boarding house owner decides to build an extension that w...