What she said

My response to what people have been responding to:

To do
Go to the park at lunchtime to catch some rays
Get an anniversary card for parents-in-laws
Do some work
Finish revisions on my 'great story' on way home
Watch a bit of tennis in between looking after bubba and missa.

If I were a billionaire
I'd not work. Get some land and maybe chickens for eggs. Perhaps a holiday home in Spain or the southwest. Maybe I could move next door to Aliya in Salisbury. We can swap veggiebox goods.

Snacks
Chocolate, cake and did I mention chocolate. But high quality chocolate. Green & Blacks, Vahlrona, etc. (Tried the new Seeds of Change stuff but it tastes too much like cooking chocolate.). Oh, and chocolate cake.

3 bad habits
Eating too much chocolate. Eating too much cake. Eating too much chocolate cake.

Five books
The Last Exile, by EV Seymour. One of those free books given out for publicity (see, it works) that you can't give to charity shops as they're not for resale. I won't lend it to any friends as didn't like much (but remember, Ms Seymour, all publicity is good publicity...)

Burning Bright, Tracy Chevalier. A quirky book much more pleasant than you're expecting when you begin reading it, about a family from Dorset that move to London and work as button- and chair-makers for the circus. It's also about William Blake. Chevalier wrote Girl With A Pearl Earring

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Okay, so it's very surreal and has some interesting concepts, but is my least favourite of the Murakami books I've read. Not sure if the completely forced rendering of the scientist's speech impediment was the fault of Murakami or the translator, though I'm guessing the latter.

The Pregnancy Bible, by a load of doctor types. Surely no explanation needed.

And I've just started Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by Linda Lear.

Five jobs
Copy-shop assistant; Dog trainer; cat re-homer; Magazine production manager and unsuccessful writer

Five places

• Whitechapel, East London, home to Jack the Ripper and the Krays. Very salubrious.
• South Ockenden, Essex. Not much happens here
• Calpe, a coastal town in Alicante and the setting of the story Aliya and I are having published in Subtle Edens
• Selhurst, a charming London suburb within spitting distance of Croydon (note: there is sarcasm inherent in this statement)
• Somewhere very close to Gatwick airport and one of the best towns in the country if you are looking for a charity shop, a sub-standard barbers or an estate agent. Fortunately I'm not under the flight-path