Transitioning

It rained most of yesterday. Halfway through the trip we stopped in Solihull for lunch and to lay in some groceries. There's a very big Tesco there, just off the motorway. The M6 was congested, as it so often is, between junctions 15 and 18.

When we arrived the temperature in Oldham was 5 degrees lower than the temperature in West Kent.

Sam's kids were bouncing around last night. It sounded like party games. That's one thing you don't hear at my mother's- children's voices.

What you do hear is birdsong- and the continuous drone of traffic from the A21 and the Maidstone Rd. I'm sitting here in our back room, the neighbours aren't up yet and it's remarkably quiet.

Prospero

Prospero isn't particularly likable. He's a cross old man who shouts and threatens. Also he has a god complex. The drama is a drama of old age-  the story of an old man trying to leave all fair before he pops his clogs. I can't think why anyone thinks it's a suitable text for the young to study (I did it for O level.) You have to be preternaturally wise or well into middle-age to give sympathetic ear to a person who proposes to make "every third thought... my grave."

Life goes on and Prospero's attempts to leave everything tidy behind him are only partly successful. It's good news for Ariel I suppose, Ferdinand and Miranda have their fairytale ending, Caliban is back where he started only with an education, Alonso is sorry (like Nick Clegg) and Sebastian and Antonio have eaten up their forgiveness and are back to being heartlessly witty. The book goes into the sea and you wonder what the point of all that art and learning ever was. It lost a man his throne and got it him back again but, then, he never really wanted it in the first place. Prospero asks himself the same question. Or even has the answer. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." The most you can hope for is that the dream may be a little instructive and amusing.

Case Histories: Kate Atkinson

Case Histories is the first Jackson Brodie. I could have done with reading it before the one with the dog. There he seemed tacked onto a story that didn't need him; here he fits. This is genre fiction, but with real heartache. You care about the dead people and the ones they leave behind. What I admire most about Atkinson is her determination to make sense of the matter of modern Britain. She's someone who likes to bang worlds together until they fit.