"Laura made us a gift of a painting.   She painted it for us.  It's a still life with a few household articles, unimportant in themselves but holding a certain sentimental value: a kind of personal iconography.  I forget about it for long periods at a time, because it’s always there, and then sometimes it catches me unaware and I look at it.  I feel I'm satisfying its impatience to be regarded.  It hangs near some of the articles it depicts.

I read a lot.  John Updike died two years ago.  I read the reviews, anticipating how the literary obituaries would strain for an effect, trying to give some indication of the sheer quality, texture, scope, volume and continuity of such a body of work.  They didn’t have to.  He'd done it himself.  He said his aim was: “To give the mundane its beautiful due”.

That sounds like a small ambition, but it’s not.  Simple things are very hard.  Laura gave our mundane things their due."

Michael Cannon