he's reading Balzac, knocking back Prozac

Am now safely ensconced in Buckland House for a week's holiday for, gosh, the fifth time now- a week of hanging out in a big country house with 20 others eating, drinking, playing games and occasionally venturing out into the outside world, although i'm not too motivated to do much beyond taking it easy this time round.

Last week was pretty hectic, I took my houseguest to Food Not Bombs on Monday night and out to the old-school horror of 286 Tuesday night. I had Wednesday afternoon off to take my parents to the National (both their birthday presents) to see The Doctor's Dilemma, which was funnier than I was expecting and pretty timeless in its satire; we ate out afterwards and it was all predictably pleasant.

After saying goodbye to R Thursday morning, N came over Thursday night and then the next day I packed and headed down to Devon, standing most of the way on the train with

themadone.

We were pretty active on our first proper day here, walking to Sheepwash to enjoy the village fete, which had all of the delights that you might imagine. Yesterday was mostly taken up cooking dinner for everyone (note to self: agas take *ages* to cook things,) whereas today had much more of the indolence that I signed up for, although I did venture outdoors to play croquet and win a game of poker.