Life in the Old Bitch Yet

One of the many things I learned since coming back to the UK was how to live in a small space.  In Belgium I had places that were ridiculously large - in one flat, an entire room for dining and an entire room for sitting and an entire room for bed.  So many rooms.  Now, I'm pretty much in one room.  I have a toilet/shower room to the side.  It's what might once have been disparagingly called a bedsit.  I think of it as a cosy studio.  It's going to be jewel-like and tiny and beautiful once sorted.  But cosy means I currently trip over things a lot.  It won't be COVID-19 that gets me, it will be the fucking un-unpacked boxes.

I've also learned something approaching patience.  I returned to the UK only with possibilities or lack thereof.  More lack thereof than anything.  There was a lot of crying in the shower.  I gritted my old amalgam-filled teeth and carried on, not really with any sense that it would work out, but it did.

What does this all mean?  Maybe that you can teach an old dog new tricks.  An old bitch, strictly.  And I can now walk on my hind legs and do presentations to 30+ colleagues via the internet. 

Another space-saving trick there.  Woof.

Going Viral

My, that was a fair old pause.

As you might know, I'm now happily and permanently employed at a university, and have moved to a tiny flat in Ealing.  That should have been a couple of neat bows to tie things up, should it not?  The -after tagged onto happily-ever.

Then covidity arrived.  Within the space of a week we went from having jolly drinks at work together and joking about people going off precipitously sick with man-corona, to being in seclusion, working from home until further notice.  I'm adapting slowly to co-ordinating 30+ people from home (who are also at home) from my bed, with my computer resting on boxes.  Because I just moved, and have no furniture, and am basically camping.

Today is Mother's Day and my birthday.  It's fine (I'm not saying that in a Ross from Friends way).  It really is fine.  My best present will be that you all stay well and keep laughing at my lame jokes.  I can celebrate after these projected months of enforced solitude are over.  I've been much heartened by the goodness I've seen displayed, and the willingness to help vulnerable people.  I've been much disgusted by the sheer cuntery that can clear a supermarket of all its staples with piranha rapacity.  I don't care how worried shoppers are: every unneeded item bought is leaving someone else without.

We'll get through this.  Thank god we have the internet to help us, and connect us.