Celebrate When I was still living in Hackney with Nick Sowicz I bought a case of 1996 Penfold’s Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz, which Nick recommended I hold on to. Until about now, that is.
Although today was a Bank Holiday, I was working what I hope is the last of a series of long days on a major refactoring of our pension claims application, and Miki was at her newspaper on the weekly deadline.
A barbecued dinner by candlelight was welcome when she returned home, and she said so. When I opened the Penfold’s, she said she was “honoured”. When I stored the wine I had of course envisaged drinking it on some special occasion. I had not then met Miki. Nor had I envisaged any better occasion than having dinner with her in our garden.
Celebrate. Often.
The moon’s a balloon To Shipston-on-Stour yesterday to spend an hour in a balloon flying over the Cotswolds in the last light of the day. In the basket with me were my sister Caroline and my mother, whose 75th birthday present this was. Pictures at Flickr.
Why die none for love now? Uh. Lucia Berlin’s complaint is not new. Here is John Donne
Because women have become easier? Or because these later times have provided mankind of more new means for the destroying themselves and one another: pox, gunpowder, young marriages, and controversies in religion? Or is there in truth no precedent or example of it? Or perchance some do die, but are therefore not worthy the remembering or speaking of. (Paradoxes & Problems)
Captain Swing After 8pm and I should have had a nap after starting at 4.45am and working 12 hours straight with more to do tonight. 
But an hour loafing in the garden hammock with the LRB is the kind of gratification that is not to be deferred.
And here is August Kleinzahler’s friend Lucia Berlin writing to him in her mid-60s:
Seems to me the kids are just too darn healthy nowadays… get the same pleasure from flossing their teeth, jogging five miles or fucking and a shower. I mean, doesn’t anybody muffle sobs in pillows anymore? Get dizzy with desire in phone booths?
Friday we have visitors: the Perseids. We're meeting friends for dinner and drinks before planting our backs to the planet at Parliament Hill. Should be fireworks.
Summer in Oxford Candace Partridge has posted pictures from the XML Summer School at her weblog, including a pic of me punting.