• California, December 1976. A new album by the Eagles satirises the shallow materialism of mid-70s Los Angeles, portraying it with dry humour as Hotel California. In the title song, a traveller on a dark desert highway stops at a hotel that looks inviting, but soon finds himself trapped in a nightmare as inescapable as it is seductive. An unnamed woman stands in the doorway, welcoming guests. ‘Her mind is Tiffany-twisted’, sings Don Henley. In other words, warped by an insat

Outside my new home cherry blossom has appeared. It has arrived in the past two days – unexpectedly, since the wind still carries a...