mostly david ephgrave

I’ve been devouring John Grisham’s debut novel 'A Time To Kill' for the past week, which is the first time I’ve sped through a good book in ages. While I’ve always been an avid reader (or a David one) I sometimes get out of the habit, according to my mood. It doesn’t help that I’ve gone through a spate of writing my blog immediately before bed, which I'd prefer not to do, partly because it cuts into time when I might be reading or - Shock! Horror! - sleeping. I can’t get a handle on people who don’t read at all, when it’s about the cheapest and most effective form of escapism you can get. I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction, but find the latter the more relaxing of the two. I’ll often alternate between them - I last read Robert Webb’s ‘How Not to Be a Boy’, which I really liked - but do love a good novel; I’m particularly fond of thrillers: Robert Harris is always a good call. This is the fourth Grisham book I’ve happened upon, having ...

The other day, as I was working in my office, I could hear a woman outside the window discussing “…that film where Tom Hanks has AIDS, called Twelve Monkeys”. I was tempted to shout out to correct her. Would that have been bad cricket? It wasn’t my place to step in. I wasn’t party to the conversation. Not directly, anyway. It would have made her jump to hear a voice from on high, correcting her filmic mistake. She might have thought I was some kind of God with a penchant for movie trivia. I enjoyed the offensive undercurrent. Did she think that monkeys gave people AIDS? If so, she could do with a little reeducation. Perhaps she thought that Hanks contracted Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome after a dozen-monkey gangbang. I found myself in a similar situation last night, whilst on the train back from London (not a gangbang). The people in front had been to see Jeeves and Wooster in the West End – and kept mentioning that Mark Webb was in it. N...