A slow and unsatisfactory day. I’ll have to do better tomorrow. C. and I got once around the garden – 2148 steps. Could be a lot worse.

 

I have discovered the pleasures of watching television while hunched over my kitchen table – and that means, on Sunday mornings, hunching there instead of knitting in the sitting room, during the Andrew Marr show. 

Andrew Marr has a lot of business to get through before he can get on to the Scottish election. I’m still hoping that he’ll invite my currently favourite politician, Anas Sarwar, the new head of Scottish Labour, in for a talk. “Campaigning as leader and abstaining from food from dawn to sunset during a Covid pandemic is not something I had particularly thought through,” he says in today’s Times (referring to Ramadan, of course). Which I find rather endearing.

 

No knitting today, and I think I’m ready for bed. I also think I’m still expecting an Amazon delivery.

 

Comments

 

Thank you for your help with my pre-cruise anxiety. Kristen, your anxiety about a one-night stay away was particularly inspiriting. If you can do it, I can too.  And, Tamar, your advice chimes with what – now that I think of it – used to be my mantra (I suppose one might say) in moments of pre-travel stress: when you suddenly think of something that needs to be done, do it right then. There were specific jobs I meant to get done today, and haven’t, and will now leave until tomorrow; that’s another matter.

 

Reading

 

I’ve moved forward with both “Mirror Land” and “I Vicere”. In the latter case, Sicily is beginning to experience a cholera epidemic. I’ve got that far forward in the book before, but it is interesting how differently one views an epidemic now that one is engulfed in one. I used to feel vaguely that we have made much progress since the 19^th century (which is true) and that we now know about the importance of pure water and general sanitation in warding off cholera, and that not much could ever happen to us. I now feel rather differently.