The cherry season is officially over. We picked and used most of them early last week, for some jam, and a pie, and lots to simply eat.

We did a final round yesterday, now that the cherries are well overripe, and knocked and shook down the ones we couldn’t reach to pick even from a ladder. Over half went straight into the compost heap, rotten or moldy or half-eaten by birds. The rest (maybe 2 liters) went into the fridge, and will be gone by tomorrow night. I don’t think we’ll find any more edible ones now.

Some of the birds eat while the cherry remains attached to its stalk and branch, so they manage to eat everything. Others pull of the cherry and then try to peck it while they’re holding it, but unfortunately they frequently drop it, so we find lots of cherries with just some large holes pecked into them.

Today we were three people in the office! Spread out, each one in their own corner, so it almost felt like I was still there alone – especially since no one from my team was there.

It’s not a bad way to get back to work. Week 1, get used to being in an office. Week 2, get used to other people in the office. Week 3, get used to office noise.

This reminds me of a humorous document, making its rounds by email many years ago I think, with tongue-in-cheek instructions for how to ease your employees back to work after a vacation. It was roughly in the same vein. Day 1, let the employee spend some time sitting behind a desk, and so on. I couldn’t find it on the internet though.

A quote from the back cover:

Wheeler Burden suddenly finds himself dislocated in time and space, from 1988 San Francisco to Vienna in the year 1897. It is precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.

The place and time – Vienna just at the turn of the century – might seem random, but not so from Wheeler’s point of view. During his school years, he has heard endless stories about this era from one of his teachers, stories so interesting and told with such passion that he feels as if he had already been there. And now he is finally there for real.

In Vienna, Wheeler meets various bright young Viennese, including one Sigmund Freud, as well as a captivating young American lady, with whom he soon falls in love. He is determined not to do anything to change the course of history, but inevitably cannot resist getting involved with the people he meets.

In parallel with his experiences in Vienna, we’re reading about Wheeler’s past life (in the future) as well as about his parents and grandparents. The book is not so much about Wheeler as about his family. The two time stories – the weeks in Vienna, and the years in the past/future – unfold in parallel, and connections between them appear in unexpected places, until the whole thing becomes a strange loop, future history becoming seemingly inevitable.

It’s a love story and a mystery and history lesson and a book about ideas (and how they change the world). If “a rich tapestry” wasn’t such a cliche, I’d call the book that. It’s a great story, well told, a pleasure to read. Somewhat confusing at times, but only enough to make me think when I finished it that I should read it all over again.

Another glowing review.

Amazon UK, Amazon US.