I know *exactly* what you mean, but I do think there’s a certain dignity in growing old gracefully and letting nature take its course. For instance, I was looking at pictures of Kylie Minogue in Hello (or was it OK) today (I was at the hairdressers, the only time I ever get to flick through glossy magazines) and I couldn’t help thinking that something didn’t look right. I don’t know if she has been botoxed within an inch of her life or whether the magazine picture editor is a dab hand at the old Photoshop retouching, but she looked so odd without one single wrinkle / smile line on her face. It makes her eyes look out of place in her face, as if they are too small and catlike.

Women need to reclaim their wrinkles! Although if anyone wants mine they can have them! ;-)

I am also learning to understand why foreign fiction has such a difficult time here in the UK. People are concerned that the author’s intention and voice has been lost in translation, that the publisher and translator might have taken liberties with the text.

It’s the classic British approach where the glass is never half full, but always half empty. To worry about what is lost in translation is such a negative approach to translated literature that people need to stomp it out and, instead, think about what it gained in translation. The first thing that springs to mind is, of course, access to a text that would otherwise be unobtainable. Secondly, a chance to experience the voice of a culture different to one’s own. Thirdly: more literature, simply because ideas and movements can transcend linguistic borders and enrich another culture’s literature.

For the first time I checked the stats in my control panel. And what a surprise – most visitors come from the US, followed closely by the UK. And then – in third place – Russia! I’m intrigued.

This is likely explained by a) the US based ‘bots’ of Google, Yahoo!, Bing, et al spending the most time on your site, indexing your pages, so as to determine where your site ranks in their search results; b) UK visitors aware of Peirene; and c) Russian spammers visiting the site, looking for a way to farm unwanted links to their nasty sites.