I don't know. I don't know what to read. I made a rare visit to the library recently and came out with McEwan's Amsterdam and A.P. McCoy's Autobiography.The first is not McEwan's best but it was of its time and perfectly okay. The problem with sports memoirs is, of course, the ghost writer trying to sound like his subject but although a life of constantly riding winners is a bit repetitive, one can appreciate McCoy's story of being perennial champion by being a driven man impervious to pain and injury.
But with now a few days off, I will shortly need more books to read in between watching the cash roll in from Gloucestershire and so I spent a long time on Amazon looking for ideas. What were all those books I really ought to have read. How many of them are still high enough priority to give them the time of day. Balzac was selected and then passed over, then one of the biographies of Francis Walsingham that I thought about a few years ago. Richard Bradford, having done books on Larkin and Amis pere et fils has since filled in with one on Larkin and Kingsley Amis's relationship. And I thought I was recycling old material on here.I came away with a book by a professional gambler and Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum. And so we will see. Paul Muldoon and Glyn Maxwell have books due soon and so we won't run out of ideas completely but I am starting to get a feeling of what it is like being a pointless celebrity.
I have some photos taken to update the website but I haven't written a poem for some months and don't have enough yet to make up a new booklet. The website hasn't reviewed a new book for a while and, although it is supposed to be about books and poetry, I don't have any new music to review and I won't return to horse racing journalism until October.
And so I have photos taken of me to put on the internet. And that, it seems, is what I do these days. It is a bit weird but at least I know what it's like being Victoria Beckham. Except I look more cheerful about it.
