Cheval 5

Caroline and I both order books from Amazon from time to time - painful (to local bookshops) this is to admit - but they invariably come addressed to one or other of us. So, who could be sending us a book addressed to "Caroline and Martin"? This I wondered when the postman came today.

Well, the answer is, our clever daughter Agnes, two of whose poems are published in Cheval 5, edited by Alan Perry - " a selection of the writing submitted by talented young entrants [there were 51] to this year's Terry Hetherington Award..."

Sounds Good

Independent record shops are, I guess, as rare these days as independent bookshops. We are lucky to have a good one, in Henrietta Street, just off Cheltenham's lower High Street. As with all such shops, you go there as much for the advice and a chat as anything else: it's a totally different experience from shopping via Amazon.

And yet Sounds Good does 20% of its business by mail order, some with people who have never been to the shop. "Was it full during the LitFest?" I asked. "No, but we had a busy morning last Saturday - with people coming to Cheltenham for the Races." That surprised me somewhat!

I have to admit I don't very often shop there, pleasant though the experience is. What with Radio 3 and Listen Again, I don't often buy music; and I have a couple of shelves full of rarely-played CDs. Yesterday, however, I was looking for (and found) a classical ballet DVD for our granddaughter Ida, whose 4th birthday it is tomorrow: she's smitten.