AMUSEMENT ...

... and a clue to why I've been absent -- but first the amusement: this link will take you to an exchange of
comments at the Akhond of Swat on the subject of the Crossword Book Prize shortlist for this year. It became suddenly active this evening, and I think some of the points made there are worth reading.

The connection between the shortlist and my inactivity here is of course that I am about to leave for Bombay to attend the event -- time is running short and I have stacks of stuff to do and ... and ... *all the usual excuses*

Still: I DID manage to finish my picture book and am very pleased with it. Just as soon as I get clearance from my publishers, I plan to post a couple of thumbnails here.

And Ms Malcontent is lurking just around the next corner. She will return.

New Link NOTICE!

Just a quick post to shine a bright light on the new link in the right-hand column -- The Akhond of Swat has taken the place of Kitabkhana at this blog -- ring out the old, ring in the new, I say! -- even though the Akhond isn't new, has been around for a while and it's my own laziness that has kept this link unposted. But I've been missing the literary amusements once offered by Kitabkhana's enormously active and talented Babu -- and though I'm not certain, as I write this, the precise nature of the clan-lines that bind the Akhond to the Babu, what I DO know is that they are so alike as to be, for all practical porpoises, the same entity.

Much rejoicing and breaking of coconuts, then, as I declare this latest link open! *cheering, fireworks, fountains of sparkling wine, pods of leaping porpoises*