Not my usual Saturday

Started off normal - up at 7.00. Cuppa, emails. Read the Guardian on Kindle: squish I could write like this Guardian piece on Eurovision. Tweaked my Grammar Frames database: long way to go with this.
Cooked a Chinese fish dish - delish (thanks Michelle in Guangzhou for the cookbook), then video Skyped Bernadette whilst eating. At least didn't have to lunch alone. Ambled off to the pool listening to BBC Book show podcasts. They always make me think of the attempts I make on fiction. I imagine myself answering such questions - as if! One author described herself as a burglar, another as a scavenger. Edmund White's book on Proust details how he plundered the lives of those around him. And so did Shakespeare's dispassionate biog of Bruce Chatwin. My current attempt is so full of scavenged bits that it might be considered objet trouves - yes, you're all there.

Bought goggles and went for a swim. 20 x 50. Haven't swum for a year methinks. Was doable, but will get better. The lining fell off the goggles about lap 8 and I had to dive to the bottom - no coral, no sharks - retrieved and reassembled them. It's only a matter of time before I lose them anyway.

Behind the pool there is a shopping centre I'd never visited. Heaps of shops but a rather modern old-fashioned down-market unsuper supermarket with many of the big names I see in Vankovka and Olympia. Found some sneaky little tracks up behind shopping park - what a monstrosity an areal view exposes it to be. Not sure the pic does it injustice. Then wended through a wee thicket and emerged into the parking lot in front of my very own gym. My target. Should the observant reader worry that I was going from pool to gym, be not afraid. I was simply seeking this perambulatory route. Bingo! Brno's impeccable public transport system whisked me home to the accompaniment of a Mozart Piano Concerto I recently bought from iTunes on my new iPod cos I lost my ancient one in China last month. Mozart is not my usual purchase, but the French ad with the dancers inspired me.

And now I've assembled this pointless post watching Eurovision. It's quite boring - especially the songs. Too torchy, deserve torching mostly. They let the singers down in many cases as they most of them are clearly talented. The Russian babuska dolls maybe not. And the Irish couple (pictured) were not as good as they should have been: their co-ord wasn't very. If they win, it'll be because of the fag-queer-poof vote. Turkey was enough of the wall to deserve the guernsey. Germany was camp enough. I bought myself a bottle of Rose to get me through the self-flagellation of watching this, but I'm so not in the mood for drinking these days.

Baku has so pushed the boat out for this event. All sorts of probs with human rights. Pity, cos it's kinda overwhelming.