Creative Accounting #612

Of Mice and Men (1937) = Frankenstein (1931) + Westward Ho (1935)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Chicken soup (at Harry Morgan, established 1947)

Saturday lunch with Big Son

Ralph Steadman's drawings in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - which I finished today

The Shelf of Honour

Ulysses - James Joyce
Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens
Kalooki Nights - Howard Jacobson
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Wanderers - Richard Price
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Finishing Justin Cartwright's The Song Before It Is Sung on our new sofa

Walking down to the library and picking up a couple of books for each of the enfants terribles

Being bought a slice of cake

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Justin Cartwright's latest novel on the tube - The Song Before It Is Sung

Listening to Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo's Radio 5 movie review podcast in the gym (Christmas review of 2007)

Playing Shrek game with the enfants terribles

The Art of London - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

A talk by gifted and original photographer/artist Emily Allchurch at Channel4, followed by a lovely chance encounter with her later at Frost & Reed gallery in St James's where her current exhibition Urban Chiaroscuro is hanging. She's clearly a great lover of London.

An autumnal afternoon walk through St James's Park with artist Laura Williams, creator of Aluna, the lunar clock - a hugely ambitious public artwork destined to appear on the north bank of the Thames opposite the Millennium Dome at the site of the East India docks. Another lover of London.

Watching the Marx Bros in Duck Soup with the Enfants Terribles - D schticking himself - especially the mirror scene

Bonus pleasures:
Finding out, out of the blue, that Big Art Mob has been shortlisted for a BIMA Award in the Art & Culture category

A splurge at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly including Peter Ackroyd's new book about the Thames, Robert Harris' new thriller, the first Biggles book for N, Michael Ondaatje's new novel for U, and a John Updike for book group

yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Witnessing Chris Cawte (as Jimmy Page) play an amazing guitar solo, using a cello bow to create weird&wonderful sounds, in Led Zeppelin's Dazed & Confused. Letz Zep played the Underworld in Camden Town - the best Led Zep tribute band in the whole wide world.

Reading Revolutionary Road after resting it for four years

Being filmed by the BBC for a factual tv conference in New York - thank God for post-production, hopefully bits of it made some sense...

A Numbers Game - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Testing Human Footprint interactive - life in numbers



Finishing a good novel - Restless by William Boyd - partly by the Home Office building whose coloured glass features come into their own in bright sunshine



Watching Jazz Dispute on Germ

The Old Country - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Setting foot back on the Emerald Isle after more than a year - seeing my niece Orla



Starting a new book - William Boyd's new novel Restless



Playing drawing games with N on the plane - he created a terminator of Man Utd supporters