When the turn came round again of the woman who runs my book group, and who has chosen not only my favourite two books of my time in the group but probably also the best book I have read in that time, expectations were bound to be high. So we'll start by saying that The Master and Margarita was a disappointment. It wasn't really Bulgakov's fault, though. The book was written intermittently over about ten years, not finished, and then messed about with for a further twenty years after his death by his wife until it was finally published in the 1960s. Personally, I think this goes a long way towards explaining the lack of any overall structure, episodes that are overlong and seem to have no purpose, and a rather inconsistent and weak ending. At least two people in the group gave up on the book rather quickly.

However, others very much enjoyed it, and one has rushed out to buy tickets for a current production of one of Bulgakov's plays as a result of reading the book. My boss, who wandered past as we were waiting to go into the room where we were meeting, has apparently devoured all the Bulgakov he can find. And I have some sympathy for this point of view. The first chapter, in which the devil arrives in Moscow and discusses the existence of God with two writers, is an excellent opening, while the second, a reimagining of the trial of Christ before Pilate, is very interesting. And other episodes stand out, particularly the devil's magic show, during which the master of ceremonies literally loses his head (see the cover of the Penguin Classics edition).

A major motivation for writing the book seems to have been frustration at life in general, and literary society in particular, in 1930s Moscow. The wish fulfilment of the devil and his retinue tearing through critics and theatre managers while bemusing the secret police may well have been psychologically helpful to Bulgakov, but ultimately it doesn't make a novel, nor does it fit together very well with the sections that do have some sort of plot. Next book, please.

There have been three plays on in London in the course of November with some connection to Moliere. Well, two-and-a-half, really, but we'll get to that later. The post I've been half thinking about writing for a couple of weeks has been rather forced upon me by the discovery in yesterday's Guardian of a production of Bulgakov's play about Moliere's life. This was even more weird because I've just been reading Bulgakov's The master and Margarita (of which perhaps more next week).

At the beginning of November, I saw a review of Le malade imaginaire. Then, two weeks ago I saw a production of Tartuffe. Well, a production which included a mimed gun battle and the line "Ou est le Moliere? Ce n'est pas ici!" Oddly, despite mainly being about a dysfuntional troupe of French actors (supplemented on occasion by members of the audience), it retained much of the original plot (supplemented by topical humour, pop-culture references and much shouting and swearing). It was patchy, but sometimes very funny, and ended by inviting the whole audience onto the stage for a group hug.

Of course, all of this Moliere activity is merely building up to the big event, the all-star Misanthrope which starts in a few weeks. I will be going to see this in the new year, but one can only hope that London is not Moliered out by then and it receives a decent audience. One wonders why a seventeenth-century French dramatist is suddenly so popular with London theatre directors. I acknowledge that the plays are good, but then they haven't changed in over three hundred years.

By the way, I do sometimes wonder if a dramatist whose most famous plays are called the Misanthrope, the Hypocrite and the Hypochondriac isn't specifically asking me to go away and have a long think about myself.

No time to write a post last weekend, as I was in Birmingham playing games. With a great deal of fun and no little success, which in combination made for a good time. It also meant that 2009 has failed to become the first year in a very long time when I didn't go to a games weekend. I thought I'd get the convoluted syntax out of the way early this post.

This week's main activity was a gig. This is unusual for me, but then the band is rather unusual, being best known for performances on BBC Radio 4. I had heard about half the songs before; indeed Mitch is on record as saying that he feels more like a musical performer than a comedy performer because audiences get annoyed if he doesn't do old material. However, they are entertaining songs, and bear multiple hearings. Also, many of the links did include new material, and there were also numerous reminiscences from earlier in the tour, which were a mixture of interesting and amusing.

A fun evening, preceded by a rather nice meal, and only slightly dampened by the torrential rain that occurred as we walked to the venue. My coat still wasn't dry the next evening.

There's a fair amount of coverage of the London Film Festival if you know where to look, so I won't be talking about any of the more prominent films. Largely because I haven't seen any of those. How should two people go about choosing which of roughly 200 films to see, especially if they can't really take time off during the day?

I thought the plan was a good one. Each person draws up a list of films that they are interested in. They then choose the one film they most want to see, and the one that they most want to see from the other person's list. It wasn't that surprising that we ended up with two Latin American films, although it wasn't inevitable. More surprising was the fact that we ended up with two French films.

MICMACS is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest. It's a film about the arms trade where in the first five minutes one person is blown up by a landmine and another is shot in the head. Oh, and it's a comedy. If you know Jeunet's work you'll know what to expect, and if you don't then go and watch Amelie instead. MICMACS is very silly, and quite fun, but only counts as a qualified success because due to scheduling reasons only I was able to watch it.

The film we both wanted to see we couldn't, but it now seems even more of a missed opportunity because of the Argentine film I chose in its place. To be fair, quite a few intriguing things happened, but even if the subtitles had been better I'm not sure the film would have made sense. Occasionally I wondered if some of the characters realised they were in a film, occasionally I wondered if the editor had used two takes of the same scene. Perhaps we should have been warned by the fact that it was screened in the Institute of Contemporary Art rather than in Leicester Square.

The Peruvian film I thought was quite good, if with a weak ending, but I am not qualified to comment on the political and social metaphors involved. The other experimental choice remains for tomorrow - it has been marketed in a way that makes it sound like Man on Wire, but we have yet to discover if this is anything more than a sensible way to market a French documentary right now. Our current low expectations may help us out, of course.

At this point I feel that last year was more successful, although then I didn't get to see the film I most wanted to. We are unlikely ever to know whether we got lucky with our risks then, or unlucky with our risks now. Alternatively, perhaps I have become pickier about my film watching.

I seem to be relatively good at spotting money lying on the ground. In fact, several months ago I had a run of about ten successive days where I found money, although the day that I started looking actively to maintain it was of course the day that the run ended. If I'm in a shop, I always give the money to the sales assistant, even though I've probably only stopped their till from balancing for the day, but money in the street is fair game. After all, how could someone identify their lost coins even if they did go looking for them at a nearby police station? I may have some residual guilt about this, however. On Monday I saw a penny lying on the floor of a bus, and I don't think that my sole reason for not picking it up was the possibility of my falling over and looking stupid. Once I got to work, it turned out that I was one penny short of the exact cost of my lunch.

Of course, things that are insignificant to one person can be very important to another. A lawyer emailed the library this week looking for information about the Moors Murders, specifically the judgment in the original trial. As it happens, Hindley's appeal did get some coverage in the legal journals, because it was on a specific point of law, but almost no first instance criminal trials are reported, and the transcripts will have been long discarded. I thought I was going to be recommending a trawl through microfilm of 1960s newspapers in a large public library on the off chance, but it would seem that you can buy second-hand copies of an out of print book containing a transcript through the various bookseller websites. The lawyer was very pleased, so pleased in fact that he offered to buy me dinner. I have as yet not replied.

While I'm talking about minutiae, here is Miniaturk. "All the periods and all the locations of Anatolia. Now in one time and place." The English language version of the site doesn't seem to be working, but I don't want to link to the Wikipedia article. English language guidebook, with pictures of the models, readily available to interested readers based in London. Very much my sort of thing (the Chinese equivalent was my favourite part of a childhood trip to Florida), especially once it became clear that they had included impressive buildings from the ancient Near East. Although there was a slightly amusing tendency to rebuild, restore or improve buildings: "the Miniaturk display shows how the medrese will look when restoration is completed."

I recently attended my sixth annual party on Primrose Hill. Some friends of mine moved into the area five years ago and, because they have many friends and a small flat, they decided to have a hill-warming. It was a great success and became an annual event. However, there is a good chance that they will have moved away by next summer, so the hill party may be no more.

The nature of the party has changed over the years. I'm pretty sure there were no baby-strollers at the first one, for example, and the energy levels in the football game have clearly declined. Still, there was always more food than could possibly be eaten, including a whole salmon, and there were always more interesting people than could be talked to meaningfully even at a twelve-hour party (with supplementary Sunday lunch).

If there is no hill party next year, the memories will live on. Playing softball in the dark. Insulting celebrities and their dogs. Taking over the upstairs neighbours' flat for added room. Most importantly, from my point of view, the first hill party was where I met a certain beautiful, intelligent and witty woman. It was another three-and-a-half years before we met again, but two weeks ago was the second time we were at the hill party at the same time, and this time it was as a couple.

My workplace's response to swine flu has been to scatter anti-bacterial hand cleanser around the building. Do they know it won't work against a virus? Do they think we don't? When will we be hit by the first case of MRSA?

For those who don't know, Thought for the Day is a moment for reflection during the morning news programme on BBC Radio 4, where a religious figure draws a spiritual message out of the day's news. Strangely, it always seems to come on while I'm in the shower. A couple of weeks ago, the controller of Radio 4 was being questioned by a panel of listeners and, as happens every so often, they asked whether atheists would be allowed to contribute. Mark Damazer provided the normal response that a range of voices were included (which is true - Christians of various denominations, the Chief Rabbi, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, etc), but then said something new. Apparently, the BBC Trust is reviewing exactly this point, and will make a recommendation later in the year.

I don't know if this was the first mention of the review in a public forum, but if not it seems to have been the one that kicked off a small amount of media coverage. I'm not sure why. I remember, roughly ten years ago, a slot called something like the Saturday essay, which as far as I could see did exactly what the questioners were asking for. There must have been a reason why it stopped, and I presume it wasn't because Frederick Forsyth used the slot to call upon the military to overthrow Tony Blair (that really is what I remember hearing). After all, last Wednesday on Thought for the Day, the Bishop of Liverpool appeared to encourage God to unleash a second Flood.

While I'm talking about the BBC, a rather odd thing about its Wimbledon coverage. During the tournament, there were (I think daily) podcasts by Pat Cash. Now Cash is a former Wimbledon champion himself, and an experienced contributor to the BBC during the championships. His colleague in the podcasts was a little more surprising, being a rather unsuccessful former player best (if at all) known to the British public for walking off court after a McEnroe-style rant at the umpire. His name is Jeff Tarango. I wonder if anyone dared to tell him why he had really been hired.

It is possible that some of this post has been used before. If so, then I claim it as evidence of my foresight.

When I was at university, one of my exact contemporaries received a small amount of media coverage for being good at sport (well, bridge, but I'm hardly going to knock one of the most popular and recognised indoor table games). It prompted me to wonder which of us would end up being the most famous. Little did I realise that one of us was going to become the best in the world at her chosen profession (cricket).

Four years ago, Claire Taylor had already achieved the highest one-day international score at Lords (beating the record of one Viv Richards), and a bus-top tour round Trafalgar Square. Sadly, though, neither of these things was at all well-known. This year, though, she has been voted player of the tournament at two successive world championships, helping England to win both competitions, and become the first woman to be named one of Wisden's cricketers of the year.

Claire had a go a few years back at being a full-time professional cricketer, and it proved not to be financially viable. It may well be for the younger members of the current England team, and Claire has done as much as anyone to make that possible. I hope to hear more about her exploits for the next few years, and wish her well with whatever she decides to do once she does stop playing.

The new Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, has made the strongest statement yet that some of the BBC's licence fee should be allocated to commercial broadcasters. At least some people at the BBC will have thought that having a former colleague as Culture Secretary would be to their advantage, but it doesn't seem to have worked out like that. Of course, a Labour Party policy planned for 2013, such as this and Bradshaw's other plan to ensure that as many people as possible receive the supposed fundamental right of broadband, is probably meaningless, so the speech is less worrying than the persistent rumour that the Daily Mail is going to buy the Independent. However, it still annoys me.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if we had fewer television channels. An increasing proportion of my television watching is BBC documentaries (The Incredible Human Journey and a series on meteorology being recent highlights). I pay the licence fee because I want good public service broadcasting, not a competitive market. Setanta has just collapsed because it paid too much for the football rights that it secured. This was not because it had to compete with an unfairly publicly funded BBC, but because most people have been spending more than they should on most things recently.

Something more fun to finish with. There has been a sizeable row in the EU over how to define rose wine. Now I always assumed that there was something special about rose that meant you couldn't just mix up appropriate amounts of red and white, but for a while it looked as though the EU was going to say that such concoctions could in fact use the name. In recent years blends of grapes have become commonplace, and I did once see a bottle of sparkling red, but we should probably be grateful that the rose producers were successful in their protest. I am tempted to see if I can mix Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir to create Pinot Grigio Blush, though.

Some of you will probably be aware of the Monopoly pub crawl concept, the idea being to visit a pub on each street space on the board in sequence. I have seen a timetable for performing this in London in the course of a day, so while I am sure that I would be unable to achieve it, I am prepared to believe that other people have.

Much more in my line was the pub crawl that I attended a few weekends ago. The organiser had located six more or less wedge-shaped pubs reasonably close to each other in London, with several groups moving between them and ending up together in a large pub. This last would ideally have been roughly in the middle of the other six and round, but we settled for one that was willing to let us book the main area and provide food (actually, persuading a pub at rather short notice to open just for this event was very impressive).

At the beginning of the afternoon, each group was given six envelopes containing quiz questions, and each of these was to be opened and answered in one of the pubs. As it happened, my group started rather badly, but quickly got into our stride and seemed not to be adversely affected by alcohol consumption (or, indeed, the rather fluctuating composition of our team). Whether this was the case for other groups is not clear, as while we bumped into them occasionally in the street or various pubs, the structure of the afternoon was such that much of the time was spent in the individual groups. In any case, we won narrowly, and briefly I thought that I had won a bottle of champagne, but it turned out that it had been purchased as a deserved reward for the organiser, who had been thinking about running the event for around ten years.

I consume muffins fairly regularly. Some years ago I went to a party also attended by an employee of one of the coffee chains, who had obtained permission to bring along that day's leftover food stock. That was a good party.

My favourite flavour of muffin is lemon and poppy seed. I have on a number of occasions joked that this is due to the opiate content. Recently, though, I read in the Guardian about a woman who had tested positive for illegal substances, but strenuously denied taking them. Eventually, after a series of tests, the doctors seem to have decided that the cause was her propensity to consume bagels covered in poppy seeds.

To link two surprising reading stories, longstanding audience members will recall that when I catalogue books I tend to read the preliminary information, ostensibly to assist in assigning subject terms, but in fact to come across things like the following. An author of a perfectly standard, recently published law book decided to dedicate it to Ra, sadly without further explanation.

Yesterday, in another place, I was asked if I was going to post about my activities of last weekend. I have considered this, and I may well do. However, first things first. What was I doing in the middle of January?

This does deserve a post, even if some readers will have already forgotten hearing about it from other people. It was a long-planned birthday present, and one which, to be honest, the inspiration for I did not really understand. Live performances I do understand and appreciate, but part of it is direct experience of a performer, or at least an interpretation, and while I like classical music I do not know even my favourite pieces well enough to spot variation and nuance between different conductors and musicians. So the warm-up, basically Verdi's greatest hits, was pleasant enough but hardly special.

Then, after the interval, the insanity began. The choir filed in very slowly, dressed as monks holding torches, to the tolling of a large bell. It then became clear that dance and performance were going to be involved as well as music and singing. I don't know how widely available this production is, although I do know that it is currently touring the world, so I won't go into great detail, but I will talk about O Fortuna, because it is the best music in the piece and received the best interpretation. Central on the stage was a great turning wheel. On either side, two performers on stilts, both winged, one all white and urging the wheel upwards, one black and urging the wheel downwards. This was one of the more sensible and realistic events that occurred in the production, in that I understood exactly what was going on (although it did take me a little while to work it out).

The O2 is not well situated, but it does seem to have a knack for putting on events of the kind that you really don't see anywhere else. And the Chinese restaurant serves jelly and ice cream as part of its buffet.

Last Saturday was rather busy, not least involving my second five-kilometre run of the year (bets welcome on how many weeks I manage to maintain regular visits to the gym). Therefore, much gratitude to the BBC for allowing me to peruse the radio schedules at my leisure and listen to programmes over the internet. Most of my listening is done this way now; indeed, easy access to daytime radio is one of the reasons for the reduced contribution to this journal during the second half of last year.

I have just listened to Michael Rosen, accompanied by a friend with a growly voice, investigate the history of Winnie the Pooh in Russia. It would seem that there was an unauthorised translation, turned into a series of cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s. Anyone who would like to see what the Russian animators did with him should go here.

I have a friend who works at GCHQ. Learning that she was moving and, knowing her and her views on the job, I assumed that she had become bored and decided to do something else. So I joked that the details would obviously be too secret to talk about, and was then rather surprised when she said that the move was "with work", and agreed that she shouldn't say any more. Hence I am not revealing her destination in this message, as it provides me with an obvious interpretation of what is actually going on. Besides the one where she decided to mess with my head, of course.

For reasons far too complicated to go into, today I have been thinking about a Paddington Hamlet. It would be discovered that he had actually been sent away to England on the orders of his wicked uncle, and that he had been left in the railway station by pirates not knowing what to do with him once they had captured the original ship. The play would then consist of his journey to South America to regain his throne. I think that Paddington's curiosity, sense of adventure and tendency towards slapstick humour (cf. the duel) would lend themselves well to this project. "What a piece of work is a marmalade sandwich!" The ending might have to be changed to be a little more acceptable to his traditional audience.

During shelving this morning, one of my colleagues discovered a journal that she had never seen before. She was incredulous that we subscribed to it, as it is some way outside our collection remit, and was about to demand that the subscription be cancelled immediately (we are rather overspent on our budget this year) when we discovered that in fact it was a donation. At which point my brain clicked into gear.

Dear Law School

As a prestigious law library, currently considered the best in our sector by our peers, we are constantly striving to improve our service levels. We hope that you will not be offended if we request a small contribution from you towards that end. On a completely unrelated matter, we are sorry to inform you that space considerations mean that we are having to review whether we can continue to display your journal with the prominence that it undoubtedly deserves.

Yours etc.

I wouldn't be too worried by this, except that earlier in the week I managed to sell someone £200 of legislation that was of no use to her. There are only so many times that you can tell someone it isn't a good idea to do something. I have discovered the art of deceiving lawyers. I tell them the truth and they do not believe me.

Colonel Nils Olav is one of the longest-serving officers in the Norwegian army. Yesterday, his thirty-year career in the King's Guardsmen was commemorated with a knighthood. One might wonder why this was reported by the British news media and, indeed, why I am posting about it. Well, he lives in Britain. In Edinburgh Zoo. He's a penguin. The Norwegians apparently donated Edinburgh Zoo's first penguins, and at some point a junior officer recruited one. This one has been in the role for so long that he comes to investigate when he hears military music, and has learnt how to inspect his troops when they visit him, as they did for the knighting ceremony.

One of the under-celebrated advantages of having a day off is the opportunity to listen to late morning Today filler.

When the Olympic Games were held in ancient Greece, it was traditional for ceasefires to be declared in any wars that were going on for the duration of the festival. This was partly out of respect for the gods who were being worshipped through the medium of sporting endeavour, and partly so that it would be safe for competitors and spectators to travel to Olympia.

I'm fully aware that the Greek city-states were quite regularly at war, so I'm not going to claim that the truce was always properly observed. However, I think I can be pretty sure that no Greek city state ever started a war on the assumption that their enemies would be too busy watching the pretty fireworks on television to notice until it was too late.

I don't know a lot about the history of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, other than this has been coming for a long time. I remember Saakashvili accusing the Russian government of orchestrating terrorist attacks on Georgian oil pipelines over a year ago. Frankly, when the Russians are accusing the Georgian military of genocide and the Georgians are claiming that they have withdrawn from Tskhinvali in order to reduce civilian casualties, I don't feel like believing anything that either side has to say.

The worst thing in the whole business is that we live in a world where someone's first instinct on seeing an elderly woman lying on the ground writhing in pain is to take a picture of her with their mobile phone so that they can sell it to the western media.

ETA: Would it be better or worse if someone had asked their grandmother to lie on the ground and pretend to writhe in pain so that they could take a picture of her and sell it to the western media? Difficile est saturam non scribere (Juvenal). I'm going to stop now, unless I find out that it's possible to win Olympic medals in cynicism.

The British Museum has been promoting this exhibition for six months, and in the lead up to the opening there was the requisite extensive media coverage and two separate documentaries on the BBC. So on experiencing the exhibition itself my sense was of slight disappointment. It was in the same space as the terracotta army exhibition, so I think it must have been a combination of knowing most of the content already and a certain amount of overhyping. For example, I came across reporting of a giant head. I've seen Roman heads that were three or four feet tall, so seeing even full statues that were only about ten feet tall, while impressive, wasn't quite what I had been led to expect. I did wonder whether the Romans has ever tried to present their colossi as life-size representations of the emperors, though.

There were good things. I especially liked the architecture section, both the detailed model of Hadrian's villa and the comparison between his domed Pantheon and later famous domes, including the one housing the exhibition. And they had obtained some rather nice ornaments from the villa as well.

Not a must-see then. Once you've been inside Hadrian's tomb, seeing a picture of it on a wall isn't going to do much for you. But if you don't know anything about Hadrian beyond his wall, and despite wanting to know more failed to watch the documentaries, you could do a lot worse than go along to the British Museum.

I had a root through my drinks cupboard this week. The result was a bit like the traditional picture of someone giving up alcohol, except in my case a significant proportion of the stuff going down the sink was very old cola. I've kept everything that claims it can be drunk later than the end of 2007, and organised the cupboard so there will be much less chance of my wandering round the supermarket wondering if I need to buy more tea or coffee and ending up with far too much.

There was also an interesting variation on the psychology of consumption. Put alcohol in the drinks cupboard and see it most days while getting out aforementioned tea and/or coffee, and end up dumping it down the sink. Display it in the fridge, having made the conscious prior decision to drink it at some point, and create a desire to drink it most times the fridge is opened. We do seem to be very good at playing little mental tricks on ourselves.