Welcome to Book Club!

If it’s 7.30pm on the last Tuesday of the month it must be book club... but tonight’s meeting was a little unusual in that it happened via Zoom.

The book we were discussing was ‘Lie With Me’ by Philippe Besson, which only about a third of us had read - understandably in the circumstances - but which got generally favourable reviews (personally, I loved it!).

However, the majority of our chat was about how we’re all doing, what the impact of Covid-19 has been on our lives and work (our group includes pharmacists, teachers, airline staff, Passport Office staff, freelance artists, academics etc), the range of real world activities and online cultural pursuits we’re getting involved in, and a spot of Laughter Yoga. All in all a very enjoyable 90 minutes, and the largest social gathering I’ve attended in a couple of weeks.

It was a real boost!

Today’s song is unrelated to the meeting but it also gave me a boost. It’s a new song by one of my musical and personal heroes, Michael Stipe - which he unveiled online a couple of days ago.

After 3 decades fronting REM he’s been relatively quiet on the musical front for the past decade - although still very active as an artist - so it’s great to hear this demo of a song he’s working on with Aaron Dessner of The National. It’s certainly timely; it’s called ‘No Time For Love Like Now’ https://youtu.be/MYgpEcXf2S4