I appear to be having one of those days when coffee is keeping me upright. I'm working, let there be no doubt about that, but I'm also clutching my coffee cup like there is no tomorrow.

First, though, there is the Booker longlist. After a few years where the prize appeared to be a tiny bit lost, the year's longlist reads like the Hay Literature Festival programme: Sarah Waters, JM Coetzee, Hilary Mantel, AS Byatt, Colm Toíbin, William Trevor and Sarah Hall. Respectable, safe and commercially viable authors.

I used to rant against how the Man Booker Prize was held up as promoting the best and most exciting literary fiction around and how big a sham this notion was - but I think that nowadays the public has seen through the "best and most exciting" hype and expect solid, slightly conservative literary fiction from their Man Booker nominees (and the Man Booker seal of approval has certainly turned into something of a canonisation tool, hasn't it?). At any rate, I should get back to Byatt's novel and pick up Toíbin's Brooklyn - and promptly forget that I may have picked up another three Georgette Heyers..

Oh help me shopping gods, for I have fallen in love with this skirt at the same time as I suddenly have to find an extra £850 in my budget. I have also found Totally Buttons - a site feeding my button obsession (I do not need any more. I have just acquired even more vintage buttons).

Finally, on a very pleasant note: yesterday David and I celebrated four years together. The four years have been rollercoasterish, filled with adventures both good and bad, but we've always been very good together even if Life kept throwing us curve balls for a wee while. Here's to far more years together and hopefully they'll be a tiny bit more .. staid.

(Photo? Our local foxes and their cubs playing in the sunshine..)