still tiling

Our tiler was back today and so we got on with - er - the tiling. No real point in putting up any pictures until it's looking a bit more finished. Right now it's just messy.

I finished both Edgar Wallace and volume 2 of Proust (I wonder how many other people can make that claim?). Bulboro was in the end a bit of a disappointment, though I quite liked the fulsome praise for Mr Harmsworth (Wallace's employer at the time). The book remains something of a puzzle. As far as I have been able to find out it was first published in 1918. But all the internal evidence suggests it was written at some time between maybe 1910 and 1914 - a precarious Liberal government where the loss of a single seat in a by-election could cause the fall of the government. And where the by-election in an industrial town, shortly after a strike by mill workers that is immediately followed by closure of the mill (and the loss of 3000 jobs), is fought solely between the Tories and the "radicals", ie the Liberals who are then in power.

Proust is less of a disappointment - well, you might say it is almost a pleasure. Though I am worried about the nice young man who is telling the story. He seems rather too much attached to his mother, he can't sleep at night without a goodnight kiss from her and goes to any lengths to get one, he has a keen interest in the details of women's clothing, and is said to be "much too good-looking for a boy". I am anxious about what he might grow up to be.

Rain is forecast. There has been virtually none - barring the odd short thunderstorm - since June. But it hasn't arrived yet.