Thank You

Very many thanks to all of you who came up with cake-making tips. I've printed off your comments- which run to five pages of foolscap- and Ailz will take them into the next conference with Ruth.

Ripeness Is All

Ingmar Bergman has died. It's in the category of breaking news so I don't know how and where, but he was a very old man who never left his island so I imagine death came pretty much as he would have wanted it to.

One can't be sad. He lived an extraordinary life and had rounded off his life's work. In an interview he gave a year or two back he was saying how he looked forward to seeing his wife again.

He directed his first great movie (we might argue which of several contenders deserves the title) over 50 years ago and the last (Saraband) as recently as 2004. 

He was one of the greatest artists of our times. I think he stands for our times the way Shakespeare, Goethe, Dickens stand for theirs. He had integrity. He had honesty. He was like no-one else.