Dear readers of my blog,

certainly it is not a very convincing move to announce a few days ago I would not write on Graham Swift again for some time to come and to do so within less than a week. It might have been otherwise in a study with piles of work undone and lots of papers lost for the time being in files difficult to find because of being in no order whatsoever.

At the moment, though, owing to a refurbishment of my study that I had been thinking of for some time and which was realized, delivered and mounted by a local company of joiners according to my plans last week, I for once see through many angles of my work that normally seem to be hidden away. As a result, I also looked through newspaper articles kept during the period when the schools were completely closed, and there was one article I came across just after having uploaded the last blog post which dealt with Mothering Sunday as well as with Here We Are by Graham Swift.

While rereading this good article I recalled my first perusal and a silent wish on my part not to allow myself to fall under the spell of the reviewer's drift. In fact, this did not happen, though I still agree with most of his observations on both novels. Lothar Müller from the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, based in Munich, insists on Swift's view of all people being “secret agents”, both in the literal sense of following Joseph Conrad's novel of that title, which is an influence on Jane Fairchild, the narrator in Mothering Sunday, and in the figurative sense of living with their secrets all their lives.

Liebe Leser des literarischen Blogs,

Zeiten ohne Drang, dem fußballerischen Weltgeschehen nicht nur durch Verfolgen der Nachrichten, sondern auch durch Mitfiebern am Bildschirm auf der Spur zu bleiben wie in diesem Juni, wenn die lange geplante Europameisterschaft zum 60. Jahrestag der ersten im Jahr 1960 zunächst einmal entfällt, sind auch Momente, da die Literatur ihren Rang als Freizeitbeschäftigung wieder gewinnt. Denn Lesen ist überall möglich, selbst hinter der Maske im IC oder RE, ob zu Hause oder vor dem Bahnhof in der Morgensonne am Waterlootag, am kleinen Bildschirm oder mit dem Buch, das riecht und anzufaßbar ist, in der Hand. Lesen geschieht ja vielfältig, mit und ohne Bleistift, als Zeitvertreib oder als Möglichkeit, andere Welten zu entdecken als diejenige, in der man sich gerade aufhält.

Dear readers of this literary blog,

you may not miss watching international football now with Liverpool FC winning their first league title since 1990 when the likes of Ian Rush were still around to win silverware for them. With Jürgen Klopp the first-ever German manager to clinch that title, even fans of Schalke 04, the arch-enemy of Klopp's former Borussia Dortmund – that in 1966 beat Liverpool FC in a memorable Cup winner's Cup Final in Glasgow with the winning goal so surprising for the cameraman that you also see the goal being retrieved from the back of the net – now wish him well. At this time, we would have been watching the Euro 2020 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of that competition this year. Actually, reading has come to the fore for many, I reckon, who can do this everywhere even now, either at home in your armchair or behind a mask or “face-covering” when seated in an IC or regional train or when basking in the morning sun on Waterloo Day, which, of course, does not trigger the same associations everywhere. You may do reading in many ways, with or without a pencil, as a simple pastime or as a means to discover worlds other those where you find yourself at the moment.