5 reasons that the last few days have been interesting.

Well it has in many ways been a fascinating few days. Here's why:

1: the weather has been very interesting today. At points it was gloriously sunny, the sort of Devon sunshine I know and love, but at other points it has been quite marvellously rainy and windy. Excellent fun.

2. I have been reading Walt Whitman's Song of Myself for next week's American Literature seminar...It is like nothing I have ever read before to be honest, a huge, sweeping, epic sort of poem which completey involves you, although something about his unstinting belief in his own immutable abilities elicits more sympathy than anything else somehow...

3. Tim's birthday was very interesting, because his parents gave him a potato masher. His mum did, however, make a quite brilliant cake.

4. We are on the verge of recording The Importance of Being Ernest, we're having a run-through tommorrow and the actual recording will, all being well, take place on Saturday afternoon. Then begins the long process of production - enter: Tim!

5. I co-presented Tim's radio show yesterday, and, in the process learnt some interesting things about music. I learnt how to pronounce the names of some hip hop man (who I believe won a Brit last night, but I don't really know), and I learnt that nodding in order to signal agreement with Tim is not an effective thing to do on the radio, since, even in this, the digital age, no-one can see you.

I have no doubt that I have learnt more, but that is all that immediately springs to mind.

In the attached photo, Tim is blowing out the candles of his cake. His face accurately portrays the concentration that this sort of activity requires.