Birthday Photos

I've posted some photos from my birthday party on Flickr. Hit the Flickr link to see them.

In other news, I was unexpectedly bedridden yesterday with some sort of stomach bug. I couldn't even keep water down so spent the day sucking ice cubes and watching the X Files and Firefly in a bid to distract my mind from my churning stomach and stinking headache. Round about 10pm I started to feel better so managed to read a bit of "Bleak House" - the chapter where Krook spontaneously combusts.

The night was broken into stages were I woke up gasping for water but had to restrain myself attaching my mouth to the faucet, so sucked on more ice cubes. This morning I've had two glasses of water and two cups of soba tea and am feeling no ill effects. I have a Japanese lesson this afternoon so I'm hoping to keep it together. I had also planned to take Joe for birthday Ben and Jerries before helping him get a bike.

I've been having bizarre food cravings the whole time I've been sick - mochi, salmon and cucumber sandwiches, veggie toad in the hole with caramelised onion gravy. But I'm going to eat dry toast instead. I had planned to make Malaysian quail egg sambal tonight, but will save it for later in the week.

I also have a trip to Osaka for a meeting on Wednesday. Three hours on the bus, one hour on the shinkansen and another hour of faffing about and getting lost.

More later.

Bikes, Books and Blogs

My former colleague, Ev, from my bookselling days, contacted me a few days ago to request some pictures of my bike and to ask about cycling in Japan. Now, I knew Ev was into cycling from perusing his Myspace site, though I no idea just how much. Enough that he has a blog dedicated to his cycling adventures. You can check out Ev's cycling blog by clicking here. I particularly like the header "Ride like the wind, be home for tea" and that his tag cloud includes such things as "A36", "Black Dog" and "Dead Maid's Junction".

( Anyway, some words on cycling in Japan. )

You can check out pictures of my bike at my Flickr page.

In other blogging and bookselling news I received a birthday card today from Tim, Philippa and Sam in York. For those of you who don't know them, they own The Little Apple Bookshop on High Petergate, where I worked for a year or two during and after my degree. Philippa contacted me a short while ago to point out that The Little Apple is the "Bookshop in Residence" at the Arvon Friends website. This is particularly cool as I went on a few writing courses at the Ted Hughes Arvon centre in Lumb Bank and always had a rewarding and productive time there, working with writers and poets such as Helen Dunmore, Roselle Angwin and Mario Petrucci. I would go more often but they are quite pricey... and now on the other side of the world. Anyway, so take a look at the blog as Philippa has some very interesting stuff to say about life as an independent bookseller - something increasingly more rare and precious as the monsters that are Wa*kerstones (Ev's word - and apologies to friends who work for them) and Amazon grow ever more fat.

Further to my earlier post I'm feeling a lot better and had a good Japanese lesson. I freaked out the cashier in Tsutaya this morning by rambling at her about having the wrong change, only to find she'd given it to me moments earlier...

To finish, here's a picture of Joe. I took him to get his bike and then bought him birthday Baskin Robbins ('coz today is his birthday).


Triple Chocolate and Rocky Road with chocolate sauce and a glace cherry.