The pasha

No swim today :( so I went for a walk to look for blips, not expecting to find anything special. But I always tell myself that if you don't leave the house you definitely won't find anything different. And wow! This is a first for me: the delightfully named two-tailed pasha (charaxes jasius). I can confidently say I've never seen one of these before. It was living up to its description, flying rapidly around and drawn to the over-ripe fruits around the fig tree. It spent ages posing for me on this branch. The upper side of the wings is quite plain, but the underside and body are beautiful.

WalkingMarj pointed me to a discussion between Philippe Sands and Masha Gessen at the virtual Edinburgh book festival, so I found it on Youtube. It was interesting, although I wished it had been a bit longer and that Sands hadn't interrupted Gessen when they were talking about the resistance (or not) of US institutions to autocracy, as they definitely had more to say. Then I browsed the festival site and found a discussion with Hilary Mantel, an unexpected delight. There are a couple more I'd like to listen to as well. 

I have to say there is a slight upside to a pandemic when it allows those of us living far from cultural centres to see talks of this quality. I see the Cheltenham literary festival is online too -- it was a regular date for us when we lived in the Cotswolds. There is nothing like this in France: there are literary festivals, but they are very, um, literary, that is to say deep philosophical discussions on obscure topics.

It's been a lovely day; the wind has dropped and it's a pleasant 24C. Now we're sitting on the sofa in our newly civilised office/living room with the window open, birds twittering outside, and a glass of wine to hand. Pizza ordered from the van at the door ... it's still wildly popular, so it's going to be a late dinner.