Nothing to Declare Except Other People's Genius

My only piece of post yesterday was an offprint of an article from a scholarly journal. Although it is without doubt the leading journal in the field, it can't be often that that could be said to occasion true excitement, even in someone who receives as little post as I do. However, yesterday it was the cause of much jubilant jumping round the kitchen and firing off of exuberant emails of congratulation. For it was written by one of my Very Best Friends, and I am absolutely unspeakably proud.

She and I have been bosom chums since our days as first year undergrads, when I was having chaotic affairs and drinking cocktails and hanging round the Union, and she was hoovering up every single university prize, while having chaotic affairs, drinking cocktails and hanging round the Union. Her genius having long been recognised, it was especially thrilling to see the hard evidence of it arrive in a slightly rumpled A4 envelope quite unexpectedly. I am now going to make anyone with an incipient academic career out there sick, by pointing out, as an additional swank factor, that this highly impressive material was written in the first year of her doctorate. Now wouldn't you be jumping round the kitchen with pride?

As if this weren't glamorous enough, yet another insanely gifted friend has just had a book published by OUP. If you have a look here you can read all about it, and I dare say purchase your very own copy, too. It tells you how to say words, which no one will deny is a very useful thing to know. The perfect Christmas present, no? And the source of deep delight in my bosom. Hurrah!