From Munro to Loch

Zounds, I have got an Mp3 player at last! I've wanted one for ages, but I'm broke and trying not to buy books, or indeed anything much (But - I did just buy Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems after reading Wuthering Heights, and Vegan With a Vengeance after getting sick of living on beans and hoping vengeance will be mine when I make that extra special Beany Quinoa Croquette) . And yes I do realise that if I am sick of eating beans, I could eat meat. I don't want to. I eat the beans because they are nice and cheap and and it's the right thing to do for me. But being a bit broke means beans are too dominant and I miss Tofu and mushroom veggie burgers and fresh veggies and delicacies like fruits nuts and berries.... Where was I? The MP3 player is a much appreciated gift, and now I can finally listen to free books! Free is good. Money is bad. That's my theory. It's very complex. Of course, if you have any excess money you don't want, I would be delighted to spend it in Quinoa for the Croquette feasts I can't afford now I have purchased too many books.

The sun is shining, so I'm off for a walk in the park and a listen to something.

And with short story writer Alice Munro winning the £60,000 Man Booker International prize this week, I thought it would be nice to find something of hers out there to make my walk more than just avoiding eye contact with the hammered and puking masses of Glasgow Green.

This makes me sound very misanthropic, and I am, but it really is like that out there today. It's hot, and hot and Glasgow equals amplification - of drugs, drink and violence (and screaming bands of fluorescent teens hurling cider vomit and flesh all over the place). I may be simplifying, but not by much. Why can't everyone be a solitary alcoholic like me, hurting only themselves, quietly, with a confused smile?

I went swimming in Loch Lomond yesterday it's so hot, and it was brilliant - invigorating, refreshing. Cold water, blue sky. But then I got home and read that they fished two bodies out of Loch Awe today, and the whole experience seems a little less magical somehow. Even if fishing for humans is funny. The water was very very cold to swim in, with some freezing patches. Must have been a cold way to go. At the time it seemed nice, attractive. There were lots of Carling beer cans underwater, phosphorescent green like fake seaweed in a tropical fishtank which added a exotic air to the swim, as did the frisson of avoiding the broken beer bottles on my return to shore. I felt quite the adventuress. There was also an empty (I assume) giant white rubber glove there, still and heavy on the sand, which sort of unnerved me as I swam around it in magnetic circles, like it was a poisonous jellyfish I had to avoid, yet felt strangely attracted to. And then I got out, sat in the sun and annoyed legions of curious, fat black beetles by flicking them off my legs, arms, bag and book for an hour while I kept worrying about the glove and why its so wrong to have one under foot as you swim, ready to grab your ankle, pull you under and drown you. Stuff like that. Then I went home and watched Die Hard.

It was a very British kind of day out.

This is why I don't write a journal. I find people who write journals inexplicable and utterly fascinating. If I tried I would sound totally inauthentic, as if I was impersonating myself, and I would end each days entry with 'and then I watched Die Hard', which would hardly make me feel any better about anything.

Anyway - Alice Munro. Barnes & Noble is offering nine audiobooks free, they are MP3 files you can download. One of them is 'Fathers' by Alice Munro. The others include Laura Lippman, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L'Amour, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Lethem and Mark Twain.