Reading chair

    This is where I did my reading yesterday, in a 'fishing garden' by a Hampshire chalk stream,

and it's hard to think of a lovelier or more peaceful spot.

    I saw deer, heard the cuckoo, and sat in perfect stillness in that meadow full of wild flowers alive with butterflies, bees and damselflies.

    I did read! I got far on with the quite excellent J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, which was relevant reading, in fact, as on Sunday I'd been in Oxford where Tolkien spent so much of his life.

    A highlight of that bit of my brief trip was meeting Simon for tea at the Ashmolean. It's always a great pleasure to see Simon, and we had a good old bookish chat over some very welcome refreshments before I had to be on my way again, but I had a minute to pop into Blackwells on my walk back through town and - with Tolkien in mind, as I'd just started the biography - noticed this book which has now gone on my wish list.

    If I had another day or two in that chair by the river, think of the reading I'd do ...