Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Hurrah! Hitmaps has started working. So now you can see how pitifully few people come here. And how many of them are search engine one-offs. Whereas the other tracker shows just how many of you there have been. And even tells me I have had a giddying, um, one visitor from Senegal. Celebration indeed. Unfortunately I missed what they were searching for. It's usually something completely unconnected arising from my infuriating habit of never staying on topic. So it will probably be something like (for this post) "Mitford problem India", "Jewish clicking prejudice" or "Czech Garfunkel in Senegal".

Speaking of topics, and cunning shoehorning a clumsy pun on topicality, if only I could think of a decent one: Hitmaps - why on the Europe view does it have links to maps to the UK and the Czech Republic, but not to any other country. The UK I could understand as the project is run by the OU, and is on an ac.uk address. But the former Czechoslovakian republic of the Czech Republic?

And what's wrong with me? Simon & Garfunkel and Belle & Sebastian both in the same day. I'll pop in frenzy of gentle melodicism. How long before I reach for the very best of Crowded House - an album I have managed to sleep through before now.

Having said that the current song is finger-clicking good (if I didn't already use that description for West Side Story).

Onto something else. I have finished the book I probably had not mentioned I had started: Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh. I hope it is not supposed to be one of his better books, as I was not all that sure about it. I think it probably is meant to be a savage ravaging of contemporary prejudices and assumptions [I really should have planned that line a bit better]. However in some parts it is hard to know whether everything is intended or not. But then the book was first published in 1932, and the copy I was reading predates the beginning of the Second World War. Which makes the advertisements for the "latest additions" books in the back fairly interesting. What Hitler Wants anyone? Maybe Germany - What Next?, Mussolini's Roman Empire, China Struggles for Unity¹ or The Jewish Problem then?

Anyway, not a very good book, although perhaps my initial confusion with the other Mischief book did not allow me to form an even opinion of it. So I have now moved onto another comedy of errors, which lampoons pride and prejudice (all I need now is to find a suitable Dickens title and I'll have the three piece suite). The new book? A Room with a View, EM Forster, which is proving better than A Passage to India (which I read whilst trying to work out if it was being funny or not). Best quote so far:
"It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth."

A much better book.

Anyhoo,
Shaking my confidence daily, since 2003.

1: Presumably noun, not Mitford. Up.