Here Comes the Sun....

Little darlin'...it's been a long cold lonely winter.

Little darlin'... it seems like years since it's been here.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGKPHFrHVVY]

Today felt like the right day to get back to my blog. My last post was in December and I've been carried through the last few months on the backs of those who love me. 

Some of the things that I look forward to, cultural events, travel, singing, have been whizzing by me and I've only been able to partially engage. These past two weeks I have struggled with a very bad cold that started in my chest, and is ending there. My allergies have compounded the problem, but I feel like I'm coming out on top.

I am feeling the need to write more, to find creative ways to express myself, both publicly and privately. I have signed up for a webinar that introduces LifeJournal software to see if that might be a platform that I could use for my personal writing. I need to pick up knitting needles, or an embroidery needle, or set up a sewing space to get back to a quilt I've started. My plan is to claim a basement bedroom that is normally used for guests as a place where I can leave my work out for short periods of time.

We have some interesting things on the cultural calendar this month, and I hope to use this space to blog about them.

We're seeing the play High starring Kathleen Turner at the Royal Alex next week. We've also got tickets for the TSO's performance of Holst's The Planets for which Michael will be joining us. His school music program does their May Lyrics concert that week as well. The following week we have another Books on Film event at TIFF featuring Graham Greene's novel The Third Man and 1949 film starring Orson Welles.

My reading life has suffered somewhat recently, but I recently finished Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. My review over at Goodreads read:

I love Hollinghurst's prose, and would have given this five stars. But I can only take so many pages of coke-fuelled gay sex and this novel went over my limit. 

That aside, it captures the times so aptly: the British class structure; and the world of rich young men (and their hangers on) who want to DO something, like publish a glossy art magazine; the intersection of race and wealth; and what sexual sins are forgivable.

I also had a quick re-read of the Keep Toronto Reading pick Girls Fall Down prior to Sunday's book club gathering. I'm currently at work on The Vault by Ruth Rendell. Next up will be Peter Robinson's latest(?) called Before the Poison, a stand-alone mystery, not part of the Inspector Banks series.

Enough for today but I'll be back soon. May is looking up!