I am going to turn the light off at any minute so please forgive a short entry.

I am sitting in my divinely sophisticated bed in our divinely magnificent hotel and I have got the most shocking indigestion.

This entirely serves me right because of having eaten so many wonderful things today, after almost a year of eating a plainly uncomplicated diet consisting mostly of things that are good for me.

None of today’s food has been good for me, most especially the buckets of wine.

We had an enormous communal breakfast, and I should have just had eggs and bread, but you can’t possibly do that when there are French cheeses and bacon and salmon on offer, so I didn’t. Also I had several double espresso coffees with which to wash it all down before we staggered out to the Christmas markets.

We did not purchase anything on the Christmas markets, we have done lots of Christmas marketing lately, and it was nice just to amble around looking and imagining how our house might be if it contained Nepalese wall hangings and beeswax candles and skull-shaped goblets and oversized pepper pots, which it doesn’t, and still won’t, beautiful and enticing as they were.

We barely even glanced at the fudge and the honey and walnut pastries. There is only so much eating you can do in a single morning.

In the end we finished up in Waterstones, where I purchased Judi Dench’s book about Shakespeare, which I have been secretly coveting for some time, and where Mark sat patiently in a window seat for almost an hour whilst I wandered about trying to find books that might fill the gap that will be left when I finish my current bedtime read, which is still the JK Rowling book about Cormoran Strike, because I am trying hard to read it as slowly as I possibly can in order to forestall that terrible moment.

With any luck by the time I get to the last chapters she will have written the next one.

I have read lots of other books in between, but they are in the taxi and don’t count.

I did not find anything so if anybody has a gripping, easy-to-read recommendation, do let me know.

After that it turned out that advancing age had caught up with us, and we went back to the hotel for a little snooze.

It seemed that we had barely turned off the light before it was time to get up for dinner, and we had to dash around hastily at the last minute.

We had to do a hasty dash through the rain to get to the Greek restaurant for dinner, it is not easy to navigate when there are fourteen of you all with ideas of their own. I had prawns cooked in garlic and cream and cheese, which might explain the indigestion, followed by some very sticky confectionery covered in ice cream and honey.

It is no good, I have tried my best but I am going to have to go. I have had a very lovely day in the very best of company, but my eyes will not stay open and the indigestion is strongly encouraging me to give up and lie down.

You will just have to imagine the rest, I am very sorry.

Imagine several bottles of wine, lots of interesting stories and indigestion and you will be able to fill in the gaps rather well, I should think.

Until tomorrow.

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