When I was in Oxford a couple of weeks ago, I found the time to visit a place I'd wanted to for a while. It's situated on the Turl, just yards from my old college (Exeter) in a spot that used to be occupied by a rather good Indian restaurant called the Taj Mahal.

The QI bookshop is just that - quite interesting. It's a round bookshop, with shelves round the edge and the desk in the centre. Books are arranged by an eclectic mix of categories so that fiction, non-fiction, children's and adult books are all jumbled together. Categories include 'Innocence', 'Eating', 'Oxford', 'First Love'. You could spend hours here, stumbling across books you never knew you wanted.

I found a fabulous little paperback called 'Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you', all about the art of chiasm. No price was marked so I asked the assistant who looked it up, saw that it wasn't on the system and made up a price. £7.87. Fabulous.

I shall be quoting from the book at length in a future post!

This evening I went to a free concert given by the Philadelphia Orchestra in a local park. It was a lovely evening, warm and breezy, in a beautiful setting, with a really top notch orchestra playing some wonderful music. Jesse and Andrea had brought some cheese and crackers and wine, so we were well set up.

After the Star Spangled Banner, the programme began with the Leonore Overture (Beethoven), followed by Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor, both of which were new to me and both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. The final piece listed was called Variations on "America". I could hardly believe my ears when they started playing - not some American tune but good old "God Save the Queen"!!! I almost stood up and started singing.

The evening ended with some sing-along and clap-along tunes ranging from 'The Washington Post' to 'Stars and Stripes Forever' via 'America, the Beautiful'. I was quite grateful that no one was waving flags.

Wonder what Wednesday's going to be like?