Swimming with Sharks

Oops, looks like I fell off the internet again.

I read >Sea Change by Robert Goddard the other week. This was a great read about dastardly political skulduggery and derring-do in eighteenth century England and parts of Europe.

Goddard tells a really complicated story about what happened to the secret account books of the South Sea Company, which collapsed disastrously embroiling most the great and good of the time in a bribery scandal. Many different people are on the trail of the book with murder in their hearts. Through it all, a hapless impecunious mapmaker struggles to keep his head and get the girl.

This was an utter delight: the sort of book I wish Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle had been. There's a dizzying cast of lords, earls and other titled bods but a helpful glossary at the back helps the reader keep track. Goddard clearly knows his stuff but doesn't beat you about the head with everything he's found out.

One of the more dangerous people chasing the book hither and yon worked for a parliamentary committee of inquiry. He was sent overseas armed (with arms and with powers of arrest) and able to demand full assistance from the diplomatic service. Let's hope Mrs Bishop desn't get ideas for using powers like that in her next committee inquiry.

Assuming she gets another inquiry after the election...

Speaking of which, both local candidates for the major parties were at our local fair in baby-kissing moods yesterday. Beloved and I looked at each other in horror and hurried Winnie home.

Blog Entry 220: in which Mary tries vainly to say something new about motherhood

Winnie is five months old today.

So I've had five months of casual clothes, not wearing a watch and and struggling to do the most basic administrative tasks between baby sleep times.

If anything, my gorgeous girl looks more like this picture of Winston Churchill than when she was born - except for the bow tie. She's one of those babies whose impossibly round cheeks complete strangers feel compelled to pinch. Most of the time she finds this hilarious. The rest of the time, she's a screaming horror.

When's she's awake, her two settings are delight and despair. The tiniest thing (or nothing visible to the adult eye) makes her swap between the two. I spend half the day singing, shaking jingling things and waving toys at her to keep her smiling.

I'm still a bit surprised by how interested I am in her. It's like my genetic programming kicked in when she arrived and a switch in my brain turned me clucky. I lie awake and worry about the world she'll live in. I want to buy her endless toys and clothes but haven't bought anything for myself for six months. I devour news stories about babies and children and utter silent prayers of thanks to unknown powers that we've avoided major problems so far.

This means that I'm not reading very much at the moment. Even stranger, I feel no burning urge to be snarky about books I haven't enjoyed that much (Irvine Welsh, I'm talking about Glue here. What a waste of ink!) or to tell people that I agree with the Booker judges about The Inheritance of Loss and other judges about Mr Pip (Yes, very good. More please). I just sort of want to let things flow for a bit.

It's a beautiful day. I'm going to take Winnie for a walk and if there's time to read a book, I'll enojy it if I can.