We have three now (along with a folding one) and took them all out this morning to prove that, true to its name, Enniskillen really is an island.

Aidan (11) took our first one, a simple sit-out from Lidl.

It’s a bit slow, but stable and movable, and got us started, so we’re all quite grateful, though we don’t suppose it’ll last much beyond this summer.

Rory (14) was on the Coleman we got from Amazon, described as a “Sport Kayak”.

It’s very comfortable, like a large armchair, and in my experience about as swift and manoeuvrable (the “sport” in the name referring to what you might watch on television while sitting in it) but Rory seems able to tame the beast, disappearing out of sight within minutes.

Being considerate and unselfish boys, kind to their old mother, they let me go in the new one, the Sevylor Pointer K1, which has only just arrived in the UK and is, as far as this complete novice is concerned, totally brilliant.

And M. took all three down to the lake for us on the Burley flat bed trailer

which was also on its maiden voyage and brings back happy memories of tucking Rory and Aidan, eleven years ago, into their D’Lite for the trip across the fields to nursery. We’ve still, after five moves through four countries) got the old wheels – oddly reassuring to see that they are still the same..

Went out with the boys yesterday for my first turn on (I think that’s the appropriate prepostion) the inflatable kayak. I’m sure it’s a mere rubber duck in comparison to Louise’s proper one, but it was brilliant fun, steering through the swans on the lough. We’re getting another inflatable and a folding one, so three of us can go out at the same time … watch this space.

Meanwhile Martin’s put up lots more nice red shelves in the business unit, so I can get lots of books out of the boxes they’ve been in since we moved here two years ago. Nearly all my Italian books are on the new website now, and I’m coming across lots of exciting second-hand English ones that I’d forgotten we had.

As though I hadn’t enough to read, I’ve just finished Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land (from the library). It was still very good, and oddly comfortable to be back in Frank Bascombe’s mind, but could probably have done with a more ferocious editor. But then, that’s probably true of most of us, not least online…

With Aidan and Robbie.

RISE heart ; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise

Without delayes,

Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise

With him mayst rise :

That, as his death calcined thee to dust,

His life may make thee gold, and much more just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part

With all thy art.

The crosse taught all wood to resound his name

Who bore the same.

His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key

Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song

Pleasant and long :

Or since all music is but three parts vied,

And multiplied ;

O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,

And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way ;

I got me boughs off many a tree :

But thou wast up by break of day,

And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

George Herbert

(Nothing more to say)

I’m reading Evelyn Underhill’s Letters at the moment, having come to her very late. I’ve been vaguely aware of her for years, of course, though not, until recently, quite sure even whether she was a She- or a He-Evelyn (as Waugh and his first wife were known). I bought this book principally because it was edited and introduced by Charles Williams, who has been an enthusiasm of mine since I was a teenager, but am now immersed in it in its own right. She was so wise and holy, but at the same time quite irreverently (about things it is permitted to be irreverent towards) funny. Writing to her fiance from, I think Siena, on the subject of crass tourists she wonders why the pictures don’t leap out of their frames to administer a swift kick…

It’s the same size as my spiral bound notebook, it’s wonderfully white, it makes nice friendly noises and the keys click satisfyingly as I type. Just a few hours, and I’m already an Apple addict…

Yesterday was my birthday, and pretty hectic, in the middle of Fairtrade Fortnight, with a stall at the Presybyterian church (a fair trade church – wow!) in the morning, and people calling into the shop for Traidcraft supplies in the afternoon, so I didn’t open my cards & stuff until the evening. I’d mused about a Macbook but thought it would be too extravagant, so I wasn’t expecting more than chocolates and maybe a Neil Young CD. I realize now that I was actually at home when Fabian, our friendly local Parcelforce man brought the wonderful machine but I’d convinced myself it was MJ’s new Perl book in a vastly oversized Amazon box and forgotten all about it, so it really was a complete surprise.

The only thing it won’t do is play the Scrabble disc that came with today’s paper, so I’ll switch back to the dark side for that… May the force be with you.

Thanks, Alice! Robbie’s just done his diary for the day (www.terrierdiary.com) so it’s time for mine now.

I’ve spent the afternoon designing a flyer for Fairtrade Fortnight and Rory took about half a minute to look at it and tell me what I wanted to do. It’s a great thing to have a son with an eye for these things.

Meanwhile the launch (or maybe lurch) into Amazon has gone well, apart from half an hour this morning when Amazon’s UK site seemed to have disappeared, and the Italian language bookshop, which is my main thing at the moment, is growing nicely – should be up to five hundred different titles soon. I’ll be getting some fun, Sesame Street style Italian language song CDs from New York soon – might put them on my iPod to give the Enniskilleners a change from Bob Dylan, the Messiah, the Boss and the Black Parade…

An extra thirty-six hours a day or thereabouts would be good. Maybe some bright spark could set up a spare time offset scheme whereby people with nothing to do could pay other people to do what they’re busy doing anyway to make themselves (the first people) feel better about lying on the sofa watching Top Gear. Yes, it would be completely pointless – so of course quite different from the carbon ones…

At the moment I’m working my way through fourteen large boxes of new Italian books, mainly children’s ones, to go into www.crystalbard.com (our Italian language bookshop), onto Amazon, a few on eBay etc. I’m on the fifth box at the moment – lots of original Geronimo Stilton, Terry Pratchett, Babar etc. In the past I’ve unpacked all the boxes to check the books, packed them up again, unpacked them to list them in my accounts, packed them up again, unpacked them to photograph them … ad nauseam. This time I’m trying to do everything at once, which is probably more efficient, but doesn’t feel it. Luckily they’re all such gorgeous books that I can just about bear it and at least, being new, they don’t need the baby wipe treatment (only for glossy paperbacks, I should add, before anyone starts scrubbing away at their antiquarian vellum with a couple of Sticky Fingers).

At the same time I’m trying to get our tiny little fairtrade/book/toyshop ready for Fairtrade Fortnight, to turn it into a proper, mildly alternative bookshop (lots of New Internationalist stuff on its way), to get all the books I’ve bought since 2004 on to the new zingy database Mart’s written for me and to get as many as possible on to Amazon, which I’ve just starting using to sell, and is working out well so far and on to Crystal Bard Books (our new online shop, again thanks to Mart) – which reminds me that I need to update it before I go to bed tonight…I might even find time to end this sentence.

Oh, and I’m helping Robbie to pour out his shaggy little soul on www.terrierdiary.com and slowly writing a truncated history of Italian literature for www.crystalbard.com, some Italian book buying guides for eBay and … really and honestly, my next book.

I’ve also got seven enormous cartons full of the engraved wooden pen boxes I designed last year (mainly saints this time), samples of which I’m carrying around in bubble wrap waiting for enough sun to photograph them well. Actually it’s been much better over the past couple of days – I cycled halfway home without any gloves on today (normally I have three pairs and still have to wiggle my fingers like a manic harpsichord player as I meander along).

Well, there we are, another ten minutes gone. What I really hated about having a proper job was spending hours, definitely hours at the very least, there on a Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday…) morning then looking at the clock and finding that it was still only a quarter to ten. The opposite is absolutely fine – the most important stuff will get done, the rest mused about in the bath… which is where I’m off to, once I just get these books sorted out….

Went to see Sweeney Todd (the film) the other night – buckets of blood but lots of virtuous moral lessons. I don’t really understand the criteria used for film classifications (this is an 18 here, though I think a 16 in the Irish Republic, where The Passion of the Christ was a 15PG) – it seems to be more to do with a perception of bad taste than with any likelihood to corrupt or deprave.

My feeling is that, unless a film is obviously likely to have a seriously detrimental effect on a young person’s health, sanity or peace of mind, it should be up to parents to decide. And if the parents aren’t interested enough to know what their kids are going to see at the cinema, surrounded by other people and constant reminders that this isn’t real life, they are hardly likely to know either what they are watching in their own, or their friends’ bedrooms… As Charles Williams wrote, in quite a different context, it’s the old triumph of the weaker brethren. I hardly think, in any case, that watching Sweeney Todd would inspire legions of teenagers to go around slitting their neighbours’ throats and making meat pies from the corpses, although it might improve the interest in Home Economics. Perhaps Jamie Oliver should think about it.

Interestingly, a few people walked out of the film in obvious disgust, though not at at of the throat-slitting parts, but during the very funny song “A Little Priest” with the lyric

“No, y’see, the trouble with poet is

‘Ow do you know it’s deceased?”

What appalled them, apparently, wasn’t the graphic (ish) violence but the whole idea of cannibalism. Which makes me wonder whether they knew anything at all about the film before they came to see it. Maybe they thought it was the latest instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Anyway, we managed to enjoy a steak and mushroom pie this evening, so either I’m completely callous or the effects aren’t too long-lasting..