I've always been rather in awe of people who set themselves a five year plan for their career or life goals, and I'm not sure I'd ever have the discipline and singleminded dedication of sportspeople whose focus is solely for their next competition.

Indeed, as the 2020 Olympics are now underway, a year late, I feel for the athletes who have spent five years anticipating this moment, only to be told that due to covid results, they can no longer take part.

One of the consequences of the pandemic is that we can no longer plan ahead with confidence. It's good to have hopes and dreams but it's evident we need to hold many things much more lightly than perhaps we used to.

Closer to home, though, and with less at stake, we're planning for when we might meet together again to talk about books...!

This afternoon there is an opportunity to join me in meeting the novelist Esther Freud at The Cut in Halesworth when she'll be talking about her latest book 'I Couldn't Love You More'.

You can come along to the auditorium - seating is in bubbles and the usual precautions are being taken - or you can watch our conversation live-streamed on your computer at home.

What could be nicer on a rainy afternoon, than listening to a fascinating author talk about an intriguing and compelling work? Read about Esther here, and scroll down for details about this afternoon's event.

And tomorrow evening I'll be running another Zoom discussion for Browsers Book Group, hoping that this might be our penultimate online meeting! We're all eager to meet in person again, I know, but it really has been wonderful to keep in touch through these online conversations and I'd like to thank everyone who has taken part so far. Please reply to this email and I'll send you the details for logging on.

Thank you for reading.