Hooray! The postman has been with parcels from those lovely people at Persephone:

And inside are these:

With their lovely bookmarks:

I am very excited about these, but a little sad because for the past six years my Younger Daughter lived in London so I was able to treat myself to spring and autumn trips to the shop while I was staying with her. Now she has moved to Newcastle (which is much further away, but she is looking out for bookshops for me) and I have been  forced to order online. Obviously, the books are the same, wherever I buy them, but I miss my Books, Cake and Walking Days. I used to pop in to the Wellcome Collection to browse the exhibitions and fortify myself with tea and cake, then walk up through Bloomsbury and the garden squares, past Great Ormond Street Hospital to Persephone. Then I usually managed to squeeze in a couple of second-hand book shops before ending the day with more tea and cake (for recuperation purposes), generally at the cafe in Foyles in Charing Cross Road.

So now I’m going to make myself a proper pot of tea (with loose tea), dip into the tin of ginger biscuits, and settle down to read, though I’m not sure where to start… !