Living in Cloud Cuckoo Land

All my pictures of Ann seem to show her over a table with a glass of wine. In fairness, hers of me show a similar theme, but I prefer to see pictures of Ann in the blog. I don't consider myself a good sight these days. Tomorrow, we are hoping to get to Coventry where we've been invited to stay with my brother Richard and Chris, then on to stay with Ben and Kaz at their holiday cottage in Wales, so we went to Waitrose for some last-minute shopping to take. At least, Ann did some shopping while I walked the dogs in the great park at Sudbury. We then agreed to stop for a drink and a bight to eat on the way home, while I am still working and we can afford to eat. So we enjoyed a meal and a bottle of wine at the luxurious Swan Inn in Long Melford.  Also, if the forecast for this storm is correct, with its red warning over SE England and Wales, we may not even get away. They are forecasting winds of up to 100 mph, and the worst storm to hit Britain for decades. Nevertheless, unless the A14 is washed away or blocked by a string of overturned lorries, I am hopeful we will get through if we time it for after the eye of the storm has passed.

I have just finished a book called Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It is without doubt one of the most unusual books I have read, switching constantly and rapidly not just from century to century, but also between characters and places even launching into a SciFi future following a climate apocalypse in Earth. I think the true protagonist is the book of the same name written by the Greek Diogenes. Indeed, it isn't even the story of a physical book, but rather the story within the book, both how it survived floods, wars and fires, yet still lives on through a last remaining tattered partial copy recently unearthed in the Vatican library. Yet somehow the double story of Cloud Cuckoo Land, both by Diogenes and by Doerr, represents our own lives in many ways, and cries out to preserve the lives we have rather than chasing chimeric illusions. Even at 600 pages, I could not put it down till I had finished and I recommend this book for anyone looking for a thoughtful read and a gripping tale.