A general catch up before the holidays

Our main holiday is fast approaching and the usual pre-holiday things are getting done. Of course while we are driving to Italy, Emma is off to the Far East for just over a month. She has been reading some guidebooks and is now really looking forward to it. We have our anxieties about her being so far away, but have our fingers crossed it goes well.

My trading programme will finish its first block this week. The latest results are fine, entirely in line with the testing. I have, for the first time in many months, no significant pending research projects and am just about set for the first "ramp-up" which is scheduled for the week commencing August 9th.

We have just received planning permission to knock down our old garage and erect a new one with a gym on top. Work on this is also tentatively set for August 9th, though we are not very advanced with our clearance work. I can see that being pushed back

There was an article by Naomi Wolf in this weekend's Times about returning to Oxford to finish her D-Phil. I remain really disappointed about not getting on my chosen programme, and articles like this don't help. Still I am a huge fan of her book The Treehouse and had I known she was in Oxford, I would have kept a look out for her - perhaps I would have seen her cycling through the centre as per the photo in the Times.

Emma has filled the time since term finished by embarking on a plan to learn how to cook a wide variety of tasty meals. So far she has made scones, a vegetarian mousakka, a chilli dish, butternut squash risotto and a curry. All good stuff. Plans continue for her to share with several of her Cambridge friends when she moves to London in the autumn - they are currently looking at Clapham, Shoreditch, Fulham and Camden - typical young professional places

My current reading is mainly from a selection of biographies, early prep for starting my biography project in the autumn. So I am slowly working through biographies of Maurice Bowra, Spinoza and the newest Carravagio, studing the form and structure of each as per the critical facilities I have developed from my recent course. I am really enjoying the Carravagio book, a painter who I have long wanted to find out more about

Carravagio's St Jerome and Judith beheading Holofernes

I am also reading Sebastian Mallaby's history of the hedge fund industry, More Money than God, which looks very promising so far

My annual watching of the Tour de France has been curtailed by trading. Over the last seven or eight years I have watched this quite religiously, and have really enjoyed Armstrong's dominance - but this year he is out of contention after not being able to stay with the leaders on today's climb (probably the effects of the three crashes he was involved in - that would never have happened in the "glory days")

The continual interest in maids had thrown out a picture of Marilyn Monroe from the 1950s in a fine costume


And a long interview with Isabella Rosselini has reminded me how gorgeous she is

Finally, I, like many, have been rather taken with the Anna Chapman spy story. I can see how she might have been very successful at seducing important people - I wonder if our spies look like this? And the fact that most of the media's pictures come from her Facebook page adds an extra attraction to the story. Her tourist shots are extremely un-spy like!

We have some pictures like this from our recent trip to New York