Grey water and kids fun

We've just fitted a grey water pump to syphon off out bath/shower water and recycle it for the garden. It's proving a great way to encourage our eldest child to wash!

The Lives of Others

Thanks to my colleague, Sabine, for lending me her copy of the beautiful The Lives of Others, a treatment of how the life of one person can be changed for the best, by witnessing the lives of others - even as a spy (wiki here).

Rather disturbingly the lead actor who plays the Stasi spy looks rather like my bishop...

A love of stones

Just finished Tobias Hill's enchanting historical thriller, The Love of Stones. Perhaps a little slow to start, but I was soon sucked in by the remarkable details of the jem business and the unfolding story of the addiction to the relentless pursuit of an acquisitive goal.

Curiously a key turning point in the novel picks up the epic of Gilgamesh, quoting a very moving passage about the loneliness of Gilgamesh's journey (through death?) in search of immorality. I'll post it some time....