I caught a cold. I have all the usual symptoms, plus an earache and dizziness. I’m feeling massively sorry for myself, I’m out of soup, winter’s arrived, it gets dark too early, and the apartment is cold, too. To cheer myself up, I’m reading Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin, he of the Aurelio Zen mystery series, fairly recently made into a three-part BBC/Italian TV miniseries. The miniseries was very beautiful to watch but hopelessly confusing. The book–this one anyway–is a lot better. I’m enjoying it. It’s fitting my mood. In Dibdin’s world, Venice is dark, dank, narrow, smelly, dying, corrupt, fascist, and poor. And it doesn’t have any soup, either, except the kind of nasty stuff you’d find in a canal. Yup, perfect.