What do I do when I'm not doing anything?

It's that time of my insomniac night when I wonder whether or not to lie here worrying about things great and small, get up and have a hot drink, wake husband by putting on the light so that I can read, or trawl through my iPad.  The iPad idea is a bad bad idea. All the literature on sleeplessness pulls no punches about how bad screens are in the middle of the night.  So, of course, here I am on my iPad.  I've looked through the limited photographs I have on it, to try and find some entertainment for this late hour and to see what I've bothered to photograph of my daily life.  What do I do with my days?

 - walk around our fields looking for interesting (silly) things to photograph

 - bake. A lot. 

 - paint

 - garden

 - read

 - play: I learnt just this year that you can crush plastic water bottles.  Oh what fun I have (and how annoying that noise has become to my family)

 - relax

Then there's the sewing and the crochet- no photos of those on my iPad.  

The short version of this blog post would be .....

I AM A RETIRED PERSON WITH PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES TO PLAY.

Remember that book list? Harry Potter.

Firstly I must apologise for the poor quality of the photograph. It's the middle of the night; I can't sleep but my husband can, so I have the light on very dimly.

Secondly I must apologise that the photograph isn't even half the story - all the Harry Potter books are meant to be here. But I'm not at home; this is the only book I brought with me; the house I'm staying in has no Harry Potter books.  Imagine that!! 

Thirdly I must apologise that these books are at number 18. They belong higher up, but, as I said, I'm not at home, but I suddenly wanted to restart this blog and this list, and with only this book for middle-of-the-night company, what was I to do?

So ... Harry Potter.  I HAVE met a very few people who never understood what all the fuss was about.  Intelligent people with interests similar to mine, some I even class as friends.  But they don't understand the fascination for wizards and spells and good versus evil and the eventual destruction of that evil.  They don't understand the pure escapism of these adventures.  Oh well.  Their loss I suppose.  

I have read the books about half a dozen times.  They are the kind of books I can turn to when I really cannot settle to anything. (Like the way I use Middlemarch - I wonder what George Eliot would think!). And right now I can't keep away from Hogwarts ....