Bleau

We were supposed to be going up to London for a dinner with the great and good tonight, but the plague/man-flu/cold continues, so we gracefully withdrew -- distributing our germs to the great and good seemed unfair. Luckily, we had no such compunction about spreading them to the less fortunate (in so many ways) inhabitants of Southampton, so took a brief shopping trip there instead. I had a 20-pound Borders gift voucher clutched in my hot little hands, but was slightly flummoxed by the lack of books on offer. Lots of Halloween candy and Twilight tie-ins and packs of cards with your horoscope on, but not so much in the fiction section. Or, more specifically, no Persephones. And at the moment, that's what I want to buy: beautifully designed books by unknown women writers of the 1930s and 1940s. But they were not to be found in this "book" store. Of course, PJ spotted something he wanted and I grabbed a book en route to the checkout in order to not feel left out -- which is why I now own a 500-page hardback biography of Beau Brummell, the ultimate dandy. Right. Not random at all.