Things You Only Do on Holiday No. 23

Things You Only Do on Holiday No 23:

Deciding to read Proust

cf Moby Dick, Ulysses, the Upanishads. Watch it sit gloatingly on your hotel bedside table as you guiltily read an old Ken Follett the previous occupant left behind.

Although I did read (sorry, not even re-read) The Odyssey on holiday. Visting Mycenae was being in a place where myth, history and natural beauty are totally overwhelming and you reel about wondering if you're really there. And then you're also reading about it in The Odyssey. We even visit Clytemnestra's Tomb: almost ice-cold on a blistering day.

I'd bought the new Vintage edition because it was cheaper (£5.99) than the Penguin Classics: you don't mind the sun-oil stains and dog-eared pages at that price. A nice sunny holiday cover too. Well done Random House.

Things You Only Do on Holiday 147:

Travel for six hours in a stifling coach to stand in an ancient ampitheatre

And sing Baa, Baa Black Sheep

This happened. It wasn't us, honest.