So, here we are again: the feeding chair, the white noise machine, the claw hands emerging from under the baby. It’s been a week of grabbed naps and sniffles and calling in favours and vague claustrophobia and less-vague overwhelm. I have Covid. The baby is teething, or something like it. It feels surreal that this time last week I was hosting a writing retreat in Umbria but then perhaps it should: A Haven for Stories, now in its second year, holds a certain dreaminess. For a week we bring people together from Canada and California and Catford, and we tell and write and work on stories. It’s been a life-changing thing (and you can read more about it here).

For much of the week I am in one-on-one tutorials, on a balcony looking out at the hills. I feed back on people’s work and we talk about what’s holding them up, what’s holding them back, what’s holding them together. I’ll usually end up recommending a book or two. This year I kept track of them, because it seemed like a fairly solid reading list. And in this - a week when Good Things have come in the form of kind phone calls and taking the baby out and bonus hours of sleep - it’s nice to think about books, instead...