Dear Readers, the lurgy that I picked up in Venice is the gift that just keeps giving, and I have spent most of the past few days prostrate, though without any celestial visitations. However, I do have a few thoughts to share with you.

I listened to a very interesting Radio Four programme about plug-in solar panels. These could be a real boon for anyone who can’t have the more typical solar panels, but there are a number of things to take into consideration, like the little question of whether your home electrical system can take electricity coming in as well as electricity going out. As you can see, I’m not a technical engineer but I did find this fascinating. You can listen to it here.

As a little light reading, I’ve started on this book:

In part I’m reading this because my friend Ann loved Tennyson, but I didn’t quite ‘get’ him, so I’m belatedly trying to work out what the attraction was. But what I’ve found  most interesting so far is the way that the whole idea of species becoming extinct was an existential crisis for people  living in the early 1800s; it had been taken for granted that God had created the world and that it was pretty much stable and static, so the thought that giant animals had roamed and the world and were clearly no longer here was terrifying. The author compares the shock that ensued with the thought of nuclear destruction or, more currently, through climate change: if the dinosaurs became extinct, what would happen to all the other animals walking the world, even humans? Things became even more complicated later with the theory of evolution. There are these moments in human history when all the old certainties crumble, and it’s interesting to see how artists react.

And although I’ve included this poem before, it seems like a good time to pop it in again.

The Land of Counterpane

Robert Louis Stevenson
1850 – 1894

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

And now I’m off to make a cup of tea and to recline elegantly on the sofa. I might even do a bit of Duolingo German.