Rodin's Garden and other trips out

First - thanks to Bret M. Herholz for letting me reproduce this lovely drawing of his. It went up on his fab blog yesterday - a Goreylike illustration in anticipation of 'Hornets' Nest.' I've said, I'd love to see him do some glimpses of Brenda and Effie's world in this style. His blog is well worth a look.

Speaking of Hornets' Nest, the BBC have created a mini-site to promote this five part Doctor Who audio series I've been involved in. It's at bbcshop.com/hornetsnest.

We've had a quiet week back home after our week in Paris. J. was taking hundreds of pictures and I was reading and we walked miles as usual - popping into places like the Pompidou to see the Kandinsky exhibition and visiting the Rodin museum for the first time. The latter was a wonderful oasis on the hottest afternoon of the year, with leaves already falling and the sun lighting up the marble till it was see-through. We ate outside nearly every night in a series of fancy restaurants and we sat in the Jardin de Luxembourg and read and drank coffee. That's one of my favourite places in the world - it's dead peaceful under those plane trees, even when the park is heaving with Parisians and visitors. All week I was reading Murakami's 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' and I was completely absorbed by it. It's sat waiting for me for years, this book. I don't know why I never got round to it till now. It really feels like descending into the impossibly deep, perplexing well that the main character gets into. He sits at the bottom to try and figure out where he's up to in this surreal mystery story involving missing wives and cats, cursed houses and people getting skinned.

I found it a very disturbing novel in lots of ways - but also one of those books with a unique atmosphere that you want to stick with. I was carrying it with me wherever I went. Reading the final chapters on the moving walkway as I mooched through Charles de Gaulle airport on the way home.

I love the spooky, implacable logic of Murakami's writing. He makes the weirdness of it all seem so inevitable and right. I like the calmness of it all.

Right now I'm reading Sheila Hancock's book about John Thaw and loving her writing - crisp and tart and heartfelt. And I'm eager for the new Anne Tyler... and hoping to get some writing of my own done this week...