Christmas

Christmas has been and gone, but we shouldn't let it pass entirely without mention. Apart from the tedious business of completing The Essay (so nearly done I can now smell it, yuk), the festivities were remarkably culture-free. Quite a treat, all things considered.

Father Christmas came and had untold treats in his sack, not least of which is the delightful Persephone notebook (which one has to concede is something of a total swizz really - at £10 it costs the same as a normal Persephone book, ie one with a story in, yet is filled with nothing but 192 blank pages. The marketing department must have rubbed their hands with glee at that idea). However, it provides the perfect canvas for me to create my mind-bogglingly brilliant Persephone-related thesis (I haven't worked out the finer points yet but it will happen), and present it to the fabled publishers themselves for them to, erm, not do anything with as that's not their kind of thing. Still, it doesn't hurt to dream.

Other literary treats (although that's something of a misnomer as the Persephone notebook has no words in it and is therefore surely the opposite of literary) included Benjamin Hoff's "The Tao Of Pooh", Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up And Start Again" (basically a big fat ode to Scritti Politti), David Hasselhoff's memoirs (genius, have I mentioned recently that I met him last summer and he kissed me, swoon?), and the unbelievably fantastic "Smash Hits" book, which genuinely must be the best book ever written about '80s pop. I honestly don't know how I coped without it.

Still, it's January 2nd and it's time to move on. I've left modernism behind (for now), and am now embedded in Martin Amis' "Money" for term two, which kicks off next Tuesday. After the debauchery of the festivities, a tale of a foul-mouthed, drunken, coke-addled sleaze who exists on fast food is, erm, just what the doctor ordered.