Can't beat the real thing

Now streaming the BBC Radio 1 Chart Show, which has rendered me a bit nostalgic for the England days, even in its poorness. Now reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, which is brilliant reading. It's interesting what a great companion to Grace Paley's stories Jacobs's book makes. Born out of the same place and time, I suppose. I like the patterns that develop out of the books we just happen to read around the same time, and unlikely links that are forged. Now obsessed with salad, on account of summer sun. I bought The No Cook Cookbook for a fiver at Bindigo, and can't wait to jump into the oven-free life. Tonight I am going to see Booky Makes Her Mark at the Sprockets Film Fest for Children, based on the Booky books (everyone's favourite Canadian depression-era plucky heroine) which I loved as a petit fille.

(Oh my god! Thank goodness for my access to Radio 1 and its Europo(o)piness. How else would I know that someone has remixed a version of "The First Time" from the 1980s Coke commercial to eurobeats? They don't play this stuff on the CBC. [UPDATE: View the video for the original "The First Time" here sans eurobeats of course, but the video is so bad it's awful. Like all great 80s videos, features people inside photographs coming to life. A delight])

Friday night, me husband and me got right dressed up and hit The Library Bar at The Royal York. It was suitably bookish and we drank our martinis and had an absolutely wonderful time getting drunk, and picked up a hot dog for the road. Brilliant.