domestic incident

We are in France. The temperature is an unremitting -10C. Everything outside is beautiful - glittering with frost. Inside, a curtain has been improvised to hang over the front door and insulate the house further.

We don't put a foot outside. It is just too cold. No contact with the outside world until two unexpected visitors appear: two magnificent pheasants, feathers plumped up for warmth. But there's trouble in store. Domestic strife in evidence. He makes constant and aggressive little runs in her direction. She scurries off to one side. He renews his attacks, she raises her eyes to heaven, lifts off briefly, comes down again, only to be pursued again shortly after. It is too early for courtship rituals, I would have thought. This is definitely a case of marital disagreement. What has she done? Has she laid an egg of dubious provenance? Has she gone off gallivanting on her own? I shall never know.

Back to an orgy of reading:The funny and heartfelt Man Booker winner The White Tiger, a second reading of Malamud's memorable The Fixer. Anti-semitism of the first order in Tsarist Russia. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - a riveting reconstruction of a Victorian murder. Also Singing the Song, dispassionate and unsentimental account by Elizabeth Bryan, my erstwhile co-president of the Twins and Multiple Births Association of her losing fight with a defective, cancer inducing genetic defect. Moving.

Here we listen to the radio. And I have conclusively realised that radio is actually aimed at intelligent people unlike TV.