Fighting colds, Blair's regret and critics on Adichie

Not a great weekend not least because I appear to be battling a filthy cold- i wonder if I picked it up on the plane. I hate colds because of their ambiguity-You know the feeling- you're not really unwell enough to completely drop out of life and yet you just feel like crap and like crawling into bed and staying there forever....

Tony Blair must be regretting the day he let slip the statement that he would not serve a full term following his reelection last year. Ever so often the UK media descends into a frenzy trying to speculate and get him to name the date. Brownites, acolytes of the taciturn Chancellor (the presumed anointed successor) leap into the fray and talk about how Blair's continued presence is a liability to the Labour party. The Tories watch, cautiously egging them on from the sidelines and rumours swirl of a final treachery in which a third party, a dark horse is anointed in Gordon Brown's place at the last minute. This morning, one of the leading contenders for dark horse- Alan Johnson the Education secretary was on the radio to talk about the new school meal standards Labour were introducing- away with deep fried food and semi-processed "meat" and in with fruit and veg- but all the interviewers wanted to talk about was whether he had any plans of running- like a true politician, he refused to be drawn, one way or another, simply repeating "I've made my position clear and I have nothing to add" in a rather unhelpful manner.

Stuck in bed over the weekend, I devoured the Guardian and was pleasantly surprised to see two Nigeria-related items in the Review section- one was Diana Evans' account of her reading tour of Nigeria facilitated by her publishers- Jeremy and Bibi of Cassava Republic and Naijablog fame http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1863011,00.html and the second was a distillation of two reviewers views on Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1862903,00.html Both reviewers were generally positive, but the Times reviewer was upset at the effeteness of the only major white character in the book, Richard whom I quite liked. The Telegraph reviewer however was upset that the book was not longlisted for this year's Booker Prize, a sentiment echoed by the Independent in an earlier interview http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article1219876.ece

Over the weekend, with my cold and blocked sinuses I yearned for some hot pepper soup, but a friend brought me the next best thing- beef chilli ramen from Wagamama- as I slurped the noodles, crunched the onions and chewed the beef, I could feel myself getting better. ....