2014

So, 2014 - what happened? Time for a look back.
 After a quite amazingly wet winter and early spring, the weather turned rather glorious and the second wonderful Butterfly Summer in two years got under way, lasting even into November - but I've already reviewed that (rather prematurely, as it turned out).
 Reading highlights included Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, Stanley Elkin's The Magic Kingdom, discovering the short stories of A.E. Coppard, rereading Mercier and Camier and The Green Man, finally embarking on Barbara Pym (and finally reading The Master), and marvelling at John Gross's great Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (see here, here, etc).
 It was the year of my discovery of that Provencal nectar Henri Bardouin Pastis, and my annual outing to the kinema was rewarded with the wonderful Inside Llewyn Davis (the companion musical DVD is also a joy). I travelled around quite a lot, with visits to Ontario, Dieppe, Norfolk, Margate, Nice and (more than once) the Peak District all chronicled here - but, though I paid a few flying visits to galleries, I only took in one exhibition (this in the year of Veronese and the Matisse cutouts!). I didn't even get many walks. All this I expect to change after mid-2015, when I shall finally loose the surly bonds of NigeCorp and reclaim my life. I fancy next year's look back might be rather different...