Sunday, February 15/2026

 Wake up this morning and can’t hear either raindrops on the terrace tiles or the near gale force to be reckoned with winds that seem to have been making themselves felt for days now. Cloudless blue sky (no photoshopping just classic Mediterranean blue) and morning coffee on the terrace tiles. Enjoy the palm tree next door but quite happy not to be responsible for one. They get very shaggy and are soon tall enough that a fireman’s ladder wouldn’t reach to do the haircut. Helicopter?

Have finished John Simpson’s Unreliable Sources as our current read aloud book so now move back a century to our next pick, Pushkin’s Button by Serena Vitale.  Had remembered far too little about the famous poet, although J points out that we did see a statue dedicated to him in Russia at Ekaterinburg.

Must have known at some point that he died following a duel. A duel which is the subject of the book. It’s surprisingly well written and compelling. As the Times Reviewer says ‘Vitale has created a new literary form somewhere between biography and detective story…the work of an artist and a scholar’.