i travel by train down to worthing to meet my old friends tez and jean, it seemssrange seeing them in 3d as we usually speak via skype messenger. it's a short but very nice few days, the weather seems to confine us to indoors but we have a couple of excursions, some great food and late night chats. my strange sleepy maliase seems t overwhelm me and i find myself having seistas and retiring early. tez says it's due to the fact i am at rest, my body is easing into holiday mode but i think it may be something else, some sort of weirdness. however i enjoy my sleep and it's the best ret i have had in months. it's hard to leave them, but i return to london. the train journey sees me staring out the window at south london, as we roll passed battersea powerstation and all the horrible buildings, the strange homes and streets and the city seems part victorian, part 70's and mostly brutal. dark grey clouds and sleet don't help.

the next day i take a trip into london, wander around soho my old huants and carnaby street where i worked as a kid, down into covent gardens, i find a bagel shop and get a really good one. in foyles i pick up a few books, i avoid the esoteric bookshops as i have no cash. the city is heaving with people, and in a shop i meet an interesting italian lady, she's really nice and we strike up a conversation about olive oil, and i tell her about my love for italy. on the way home i notice all these young girls and women, dressed up to the nines, all looking glamourous and a woman with pink fingerpolish explains me someone called harry styles is in town, hence the girls. i have no idea who he is but london looks quite the spot with all these girls out and about.

i made the mistake of buying another caitlin starling book and once again what started as a great novel became a bad one 2/3rds through. it's a shame as i would like to find a few female writers i like but it's just not happening. the novel has a great premise and begins in a monstic castle under seige, and they are running out of food. the three charachters are very interesting, all female. one a waif whom sctraches together a life in the carverns discoveres a mysterious precence under the foundations which offers her a terrible bargin. the other is knight, a warrior who devotes herself to her king until he is supplanted by the arrival of the saints. these saints bring what appears like salvation but it is also a debuched fall into savagery and illusion. and the last charachjeter is a witch who has managed to use her powers to create water fit for drinking but cannot quite work out how to create food. 
while the monastry seems to decend into madness and horror the three women challenge the arrival of the saints and expose their true nature. it's a great story but the last bits seem to just fail in the same way as her previous novel, 'the luminous dead' did.