Absolutely Positive

Two Sainsbury's deliveries later, I am still showing two lines on the little plastic thing.  I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't confused it with a pregnancy test and am, in fact, pregnant.  This would be remarkable for a number of reasons and the Daily Mail would love it. 

The first Sainsbury's delivery person made me feel a bit daft.  On seeing the van I wandered down in my slipper socks and mask with a Waitrose bag and said hoarsely, at a safe distance, "I'm here mate."  He withdrew almost imperceptibly in his cab and said "Are you Jane Capon? Are you isolating?"  He then said if I'd read the text or picked up any of the calls he just made I would know that because of my disgusting COVID the shopping would be deposited outside.  I sort of said "Oh" and went back in, and looked wanly through the glass door, feeling like a plague victim (minus buboes or imminent death).

The second Sainsbury's delivery person cheerfully knocked on my apartment door having miraculously got in the building, apparently willing to brave the plague.  I popped on a mask and told her I was positive.  She said "Everyone is!". Turns out she had it last week.

I look forward to getting one line on the test.  In terms of the illness, it's been a rough few days and quite a lot better today.  I might even try going outside for a walk (but will paint a red cross on myself so people avoid me).  Lord have mercy upon us. 

   

COVID in the time of COVID

Well it had to get me, finally.  I'm the last skittle standing, the last couple in a dance marathon.  I'm Bruce Willis in Die Hard.  But, it got me.  I've probably had it for a day or two.  Thursday I definitely had that "I'm coming down with something" feeling, popped some Lem-sip capsules, and went to work.  In my defence, I had three recruitment campaigns all crowning in the space of two days.  What are you going to do?  Much as I hate recruitment, I had to do it, so I went in.

In my defence, most people I know have already had COVID.  In my defence, I thought that after two years maybe I wasn't going to get it.  In my defence, I've only got a sniffle.  But I took my last (free) lateral flow test and the positive result was unmistakable.  Blaring.  Visible from Portsmouth.

So that's me gone viral.  It's my own fault.  I've been carrying a mask in my bag and not wearing it.  It feels naughty but good, like eating two Grab Bags of Walker's Crisps.  But a mask in your bag will not do much for you. 

I've now ordered my first non-free box of LFTs, so that I can find out when I'm able to go back to work.  Of course, the nature of work these days means I can do most of it from home.  Technically I'm sick, but I've been bouncing up and down stairs this week shepherding candidates around.  Ironically today while doing that I was wearing my coronavirus leggings.  (My design, but not my legs).

Work in Progress

I realised today I hadn't showered for five days, which is quite disgusting.  It may be fairly obvious that my mental state is not all it could be, but I am intermittently fighting it.  The thing that helps (apart from actually having a shower so that I look normal) is watching Trinny Woodall videos, and reading Bored Panda threads.  Bear with me.

You may recall Trinny from the television, when she and her co-host Susannah used to grab people by the boobs and tell them what not to wear.  Trinny has come on a lot since then, and has made herself into a brand, literally.  When she's not flogging her makeup she makes videos showing how to wear clothes.  There is a slight problem in that I'm not 5ft 10 and built like a surfboard.  (Rather 5ft 4ish and built like a hovercraft.)  But it's her sheer enthusiasm and joy I love.  And now I put my next day's clothes out at night, looking forward to sallying forth in a harmony of colours and prints.  I'm not sure what sallying actually is, but it sounds like a good thing to do.

Bored Panda trawls platforms like Reddit to find people in such utterly dysfunctional relationships that it is a relief simply to be boring old me with my neuroses.  

Today I tried to go into work.  Yes, it's Easter Saturday.  There is something I need to do which, try as I might, I could not do at home.  And it needs to be done, ideally, before I go back after the Easter weekend.  Feeling utterly <MEH> I thought well maybe now is the time to try that shortcut that everyone mentions, the one I've always been too scared of because it looks like where you find dead bodies.  

Walking up the road to the dead body path was pleasant enough, and then it's about a quarter of a mile alongside woods and fields and no fucker can see you and I didn't even dare look behind me.  I know this is ridiculous but I'm a city girl.  The country is just full of nobody being able to see you die.  And then you're over a bridge on the A3 and into the school grounds.  It didn't occur to me until I got there that even with the code for the door, the school might be properly holiday-locked-up.  Which it fucking was, of course.  So I walked home the longer way, along the road.  I might, if I can get up early enough try walking in a couple of times a week - it's about half an hour.  Exercise is good for <meh> brains.  Apparently.  

Country Girl

I am, perhaps for the first time, at a loss for neat words to express myself at the moment.  When you move house, and move house, and move house, and still feel unhappy, then there is a common thread.  I know that the suburban gothic horror that goes on in my head is probably the source of my unhappiness.

Where I live is a really nice market town, surrounded by spectacularly beautiful rumpled countryside.  I work with lovely people.  On the minus side, my job sucks the most unpleasant arse.  And I'm about forty minutes' drive from writing groups and performance spaces and creative people.  But on balance life is stable and comfortable, if slightly parochial.

Nearly three years ago I returned to a country that is just a ghost of something.  It is run by soulless people with no sense of shame or honour.  People who will lie as easily as they draw breath.  I'm sure there is something of this in most countries but there is a horrible maliciousness in this current UK government.  It feels like they want to keep people on a low income down as far as possible.  And those of us on a middle income are not safe.  In France, fuel prices have risen by 4%.  In the UK by 54%.  People are having to choose between heat or food.  And the government doesn't give a shit.  As long as all their mates keep trousering profits, they'll tell us to put on another jumper and eat cheap pasta.

Sorry.  I wanted to write something entertaining.  All I can think about is the people I miss, and the things I miss.  I am still on a WhatsApp group from Brussels because I cannot find it in my heart to leave.  Was I stupid to move back to the UK?  It felt like a compelling need at the time.  But I miss Europe.  I am a European. 

Move It

One thing I've become terribly good at is putting my entire life into boxes.  I'll be celebrating Valentine's Day with a second negative COVID test (hopefully) and then next day I'm on the move again.  Not far, just down the road. I could probably do it myself with a big enough trolley.  But I have two masked and gloved chaps named Marco and Rafael doing it for me.  That makes them sound exotic like teenage mutant ninja turtles.  I fear they might be just men with ven.

Who knows how this next phase is going to go.  I'll have more space, for sure.  I can put up my pictures and paintings.  I can sit in an actual kitchen to have my vast amounts of coffee.  But I cannot get over the feeling of its being a prolonged glamping.  Nothing feels like home.  I'm not sure when last it did.

If I could tell you I have decided to settle down I would, but I have not.  With the state that the UK is in, I am drawn increasingly towards my second country and may well end up back in Brussels.  I know Belgium is probably just as corrupt, but at least it is still part of the EU (as am I, according to the chip in my Belgian ID card).

But for now, I'm an Ealing girl, as once I was many years ago.  The resonance of remembered Ealing still holds me in a sort of embrace.  It's a fairly cold embrace at the moment, with most things being shut.  But I could be in a lot worse places.

Driving Miss Crazy

I last drove a car in 2012.  Before that I think 2008.  So most of the last 13 years has been spent not driving.  It had reached the point where just thinking about driving made me feel sick with anxiety so, although I have a Belgian driving licence, I did not drive once in Belgium

Recently I've been wanting to get through this because I want to be able to use a car.  More specifically next weekend.  So I signed up with a car share thing.  I figured that if Tom Cruise (just a few days younger than me) can pilot a helicopter in a death spiral in the mountains of New Zealand, I could drive a Hyundai around Ealing.

I'd love to tell you it all went perfectly but trial run number one yesterday failed completely because there was something wrong with the keypad in the car.  Trial run number two was this morning.  The car was completely frosted, so I spent about fifteen minutes trying to work out the heating and the wipers.  Then the car wouldn't start: unsurprising as it was 0 degrees.  And then, bingo bongo, I was away.

Having rarely driven a new car, and certainly not one this new, everything felt sharp, and a bit too twitchy.  Bear in mind my first car was a 1976 Chrysler Sunbeam, which was like driving a rhino.  Out on the road, I was absolutely fine.  The only problem was when I went to put petrol in and couldn't get the cap off (I've googled it now), gave up and then found myself locked out of the car, with the swipe card inside.  Fortunately, car keys do still work as keys, but I had a bit of a wobble there.

Coming back to the car park, I executed a perfect parallel-park without using the cheating screen.  It's just like riding a bike.

Getting through this has been a major thing, so I'm pretty pleased about it.

Not On Mute

As ever, I am preparing to prepare to move.  My life over the past nine years has mainly consisted of packing up my stuff. There is something of happiness about it, as if one is going on a long trip.  A bit like Dracula with all his boxes of earth going to Whitby.  

I'm not sure yet where I'm going.  There are many options open and yet seemingly closed.  I have applied for a lot of jobs and not got a single interview.  While this could be for a number of reasons, I'm fairly sure it's my age.  There is no getting away from or around this.  However excellent my skills and experience,  I suspect employers see someone who left school before they were born as not the right fit.  A lot of equal opportunity policies don't even include reference to age, and I suspect there is unconscious as well as conscious bias.

But I'm not discouraged, and will keep applying for things.  In the meantime, I do need somewhere to live that is more than a prettily padded cell, particularly as this working at home lark seems likely to continue.  The most sensible thing would be to put everything in storage and go back into a house-share, until I know what I'm doing.  

One would think at nearly 59 I should know what I'm doing.  Recently, before we entered the current stringent lockdown, I had a lovely walk with some old schoolfriends.  Refreshing very old friendships has been one of the nicest things about coming back to the UK.  And a tiny, almost inaudible voice said this is where you are supposed to be.  Now, one should always be wary of little voices telling you things but this one seems to know something I don't.  

Perhaps I should just stop pushing against the current, and be still for a while.  Maybe that is what to do.  

Broad Thoughts From A Home

I've run out of words to say how crap things are at the moment, and it's crap for everyone else too so it kind of feels self-indulgent.  At least I'm relatively healthy, and employed, and have a roof.  Not to be sneezed at, nor continuously dry-coughed at.

But things are pretty crap.  Living and working in a 20 square metre studio, and seeing very few people, is doing my head in.  I will soon resemble a badly hollowed Hallowe'en pumpkin.  

Life seems to be going on (or not going on, or going off) elsewhere.  I hear the woman across the hall's pealing laughter often.  Somebody cleans the hallway at about 7am on a Tuesday morning, quite noisily.  I've yet to peep and see who it is.  Living nearest to the front door, I tend to take in parcels, for the company if nothing else.  People slam the front door when they go out but I don't have the heart to be angry, because they are a presence.  Well, an absent presence.  

Everything is filtered through screens.  Facebook and Instagram and Digital Spy Forums are little windows to live in.  I'm also part of the Next Door neighbourhood platform but that can be less than comforting.  It's actually a bit suburban gothic horror:  a white worm found in tap water, tales of drug-dealing by the Co-op, screenshots of men in hoodies caught in back gardens.  

Each weekend I promise myself I'll catch up on work so I don't start the week feeling lambent terror at how behind I am.  Each weekend I never do.  Perhaps this one will be different.  (It won't be).

  

365 Days Later

A year ago today I folded away my Belgian life and got on a train.  Under normal circumstances I might have been settling quite well into a London rediscovered, friendships newly picked-up.  But these are not normal circumstances.  I've now being doing my current job for longer at home than I did in the office.  Apart from the obvious shift in location there's been a huge shift in the nature of my work, and not for the better.  I imagine many of us have experienced that.

One thing that has become clear is that for all the well-being mailings we have received from Work, the only person who is going to mind me is me.  Various health conditions, none of which are particularly threatening alone, have decided to form a gang and make life really quite shit.  So I'm getting up early, doing gentle pilates, and a bit of spiritual stuff before the buttered toast.  Drinking vastly less wine, vastly more water.  Trying to bung in a bit more pilates later in the day.  Eating a reasonable amount of veg. Trying to sit properly (I've discovered that the lateral hip pain that has bugged me for a year may be due to sitting with my legs splayed and feet tucked back under the chair).  Taking breaks and fiddling with plants and beads during the day.  Watching Tom Cruise films.  Nothing revolutionary but it helps.  Small gentle things.  

Perfect health is not really a destination as you get older.  I'm not going to wake up one day in excellent fettle.  But if some things can be mitigated or undone, that is progress along the road.

So one year on, any regrets?  That's hard to answer.  I had to come back to the UK, it was a compelling feeling.  Whether in retrospect it was the wisest decision remains to be seen.  At the moment it feels a bit like living in a poorly directly horror movie.

The Comfort of Strangers

I've developed two minor obsessions during lockdown: one is Tom Cruise and the other is the Reddit relationship advice boards.

The Tom Cruise thing is not your standard crush.  It's more that he feels like a safe pair of hands, if you put the slightly odd faith to one side.  COVID-style life feels so unwieldy and unceasingly stressful that you just think "Tom would know what to do."  Indeed, he's negotiated with the UK Government to continue shooting on his latest film, even though the industry is pretty much shut down.  Because he's Tom Cruise and no-one's going to say no.

He sends his co-stars birthday gifts, year after year.  He not only stops for traffic collisions but pays people's hospital bills.  Most people who have worked with him say he's a really good bloke.  He's probably an utter nightmare to live with but, fortunately, I don't have to.

I've never had the Rapunzel syndrome thing where rescue is to be desired.  If I were Rapunzel I'd weave ropes from hair and abseil down the tower.  I've got my own set of Allen keys and can handle stuff.  But just occasionally you want someone to say "It's OK, I've got this".  The world just feels like a safer place with Tom in it.  No idea why, especially given that he'll sit on top of the Burj Khalifa for a laugh.

The Reddit relationship advice boards are the other extreme.  I am reluctantly drawn to the drama of other people's lives.  They get some wonderful advice and one woman in a particularly horrific situation was offered money and transport by strangers, so she could leave.  It's both heartening and distressing simultaneously. 

I suppose what these things have in common is the management of situations and the setting of life back to a benign neutrality.  And we kind of need that now.  A nice, warm, friendly neutrality.

The other night I dreamed of being in Tom's bed (on my own, naturally).  It was all pale and expensive, with a ridiculously fluffy duvet.  I spilled a whole cup of black coffee and he just said it was fine, put everything in the laundry.

Finger Food

I've been up and down to the Royal Free so many times recently that they are likely to name a wing after me soon.  Nothing particularly serious, just this slow-to-heal finger.  I take particular delight in the fact that when asked to show it, there is almost no option but to swear.  Although it's American swearing, so slightly ersatz.  Although one might argue that the middle finger has taken the place of flicking the Vs, much-beloved of those in the UK over a certain age.  There is nothing quite as casually contemptuous as a lazy V flick.

After clinic, x-ray and clinic, I was desperate for cheap starchy refreshment.  They've got a cafe but with all the distancing lark, the queue was huge.  I put desperation on hold until Paddington, where I had clocked there was a Pret open.  Paddington is still very odd, lots of staff in bright pink gilets hanging about, but few travellers.  With my first shop-bought coffee in months I sat on a station bench and shovelled down a slightly burned Danish pastry.  The coffee was nothing to write home about but it signified a world outside still functioning, albeit behind perspex and without seating.

It takes nine minutes to travel from Paddington to Ealing.  On a wall just out of Paddington Station is the instruction EAT DA RICH.  No recipes given, mind you.

Flipping the Bird

My middle finger was signed-off at the Royal Free on Friday.  Prior to the signing-off, my temperature was taken and there were questions.  This did not happen on the two previous visits.  I'm not sure if it was the mutual masking or the strong accent of the nurse, but I simply could not understand the last question.  It ended with "...coronavirus?" so after the third attempt (any more would have been embarrassing) I just said "I don't think so."  It is interesting to postulate that whole lives might turn upon such misunderstanding and embarrassment. 

The finger still looks like it's been in a fight and lost, but it works, and is the right colour now, at least.

As always, I thought I'd take the weekend to get a jump on my week's work ahead, and as always I did not.  A life's habits are hard to change.  Instead I spent the weekend on Netflickery and wondering how my tiny flat got so disgusting when I don't appear to have moved.  Perhaps there exist the opposite of Disney birds that come in and fuck things up for you.

Sunday afternoon I took a walk through Walpole Park, trying to identify where we had waded thigh-deep in the pond during the ladybird summer of 1976, and had squealed at the thought of possible leeches. 

Spare Change

Today I took a walk to the south, down Barnes Pikle to Mattock Lane, around Ealing Green and all along St Mary's Road.  People were out in short things and scanty things, grouped in the long pale grass on the Green.  Shops are on the fulcrum of reopening and there is a feeling of our being nearly through it.  Let us hope.

I've not been down St Mary's Road in a very long time.  Forty years ago this September, at the college that has since been digested by the University of West London, I started and did not finish an art course.  As an extremely poor student in all senses, I would go to the New Inn or the Castle and drink bitter lemon, unless someone else was buying.  The New Inn smelled of creosote, and had sawdust on the floor, so memory tells me.  Peering through its windows, there was no hint of sawdust; the trend for faux Dickensia probably passed a long time ago.

The chippy is now the Kebab Delight.

Several later-famous people passed through the rather plain doors of the college under its various names, but what struck me today was a plaque not to any arty rock stars but Lady Byron (mother of Ada Lovelace), who founded on the site a school for working-class boys, in 1833.  Generally progressive in her views, she insisted the school be run without use of corporal punishment.  Given that my school headmaster was still handy with the cane some 140 years later, that was quite forward-thinking.

Then I walked up to the Tesco Metro where the beggars hang around.  Nobody carries change these days so they are often disappointed.

Ball Handling

I want to tell you about my two companions. 

Much of my life has been spent not achieving.  There is a good reason for this, and it's only partly laziness or not-arsedness.  I look at other people in awe; what they have done, what they undertake,what they have the sheer balls to throw themselves into. 

Every life decision is, for me, underwritten by anxiety.  If you have ever played in the position of goal attack in netball (as I did at school, poorly but enthusiastically), you will remember how the opposing team always had someone tall in goal, blankly looming, blocking your every attempt to shoot.  This is what anxiety does.  It blocks your every attempt to shoot. 

An example of how this works in everyday life:  I'd like to sign up for Zipcar or similar but anxiety says what if you bring the car back and someone else has parked in the designated space.  A person without anxiety would either not consider this, or not be bothered.  It stops me signing up to Zipcar.  It's no good saying this is not reasonable.  Obviously I do find ways around this bastard anxiety quite often or nothing would get done.  But it's exhausting.

So that's my everyday chum, looming over me, standing rather too close while I flail around with the ball, in laddered tights (ah, netball).

The other companion waits down the road, like a very unmotivated, lumpen stalker.  Just waiting for everything to go tits.  And this one is called depression.  Depression has no face, just a powerful vacuum, and it waits until something goes wrong and sucks me in.

These two rather shitty companions tend to get in the way of doing much because all of one's energy is spent trying to be normal, rational, and getting on with life in a relatively productive manner.  And that can be bloody tiring. 

I can and do give them the slip when I can, and that is lovely.  They are not great company.

But in case you wonder where I go from time to time, I'm probably stuck with one or other of these boring bastards, trying to breathe them away.  Oh, you may wonder, what about medication?  Trust me, I've tried.  The problem with taking medication for anxiety is that it tends to be like applying a lump hammer to a pin. 

Life is actually fairly normal, considering.  But like I say, these bastards do get in the way a bit.  That's my excuse anyway.

Nailed It

A hospital during a global pandemic would not be first on my list of places to go on a sunny weekend, so of course I have ended up going to two.  

Over the last few days I noticed that my left middle finger was swollen and painful.  By Saturday morning I could not bend the finger, or make a fist (for righteous anger, for which there are so many reasons).  The red swelling was creeping down the finger and going a bit purple.  So to Ealing Hospital Urgent Care, where marvellous people gave me antibiotics and codeine, and a referral to the hand trauma clinic at the Royal Free for this morning.

This seemed a bit over-zealous, but the marvellous people at the Royal Free stuck needles in me, swabbed me with iodine, and then removed my whole fingernail.  Somehow, I am managing to type with a bandaged sausage finger.

Things noted:  Hampstead might be the loveliest place in all of London.  Also pretty much nobody on public transport is wearing face-covering.  I, with my cut-off leg of legging, felt quite overdressed.  Even the doctor who did my hand was wearing no mask.  Clearly I didn't get the memo.  I will continue to wear something when I'm around people in an enclosed area.  Apart from anything else, it makes me feel mysterious.

Going to have a lay down now.  My manicure had exhausted me.

La Rentrée

I'm a vital player in putting together a plan for phased re-entry to our Laboratory.

What this actually means is, I am getting a lot of emails from people and I have no idea how to digest all the information and communicate it to our people for a possible re-entry starting next week. 

I say just open the doors.  Just let people come in. 

Those living far away will probably stay home.  Those with childcare issues will stay home.  Those who are a bit scared of the tube will stay home.  I can go in and do my job.  There is a lot for me to do but, ironically, there is as yet no plan for admin staff to return.  This plan was obviously drawn up by someone who doesn't understand who actually runs things.   Apparently I can prepare the Lab for everyone remotely.  I have skills but this is a stretch.

In the meantime I live on coffee, and snooze in the afternoon watching re-runs of "The Thick of It" because it seems like a fairy tale compared to our actual government.

Whose Line

The anxiety continues; gallops almost.  One of the horsemen of the apocalypse.  Good to know that something is moving.  I'm still breathing into it, as that seems to be the only weapon I have.  I push the breath down, through the worst of it.  This works for about thirty seconds.  Fortunately I breathe quite often.

Today I took a different walk for my shopping/foraging, which seemed bold.  Trees have bushy legs like a fluffy cat, and the grass is out of control, heavy-headed with seed.  I am taking Benadryl on the daily, as the youngsters say, just so that I can go outside without sounding like a broken accordion.

I spoke to a lady in the supermarket about succulents, and then had a brief chat at the checkout.  It's the most talking I've done in ages.

Yesterday, Tony Slattery liked a Tweet that I'd made on one of his Twitter posts.  I've always had a soft spot for him. Now we are both old and resembling burst sofas, I just wish for him to be well.

We of a certain age are somehow bound to Tony Slattery.  Dark and seal-like in his youth, with a dangerous edge, he has become slightly undone with age.  Those of us who are a little unhinged recognise a kindred spirit.  Many years ago I saw him the worse for wear on a train and my heart lurched.  And then I met him through mutual improv friends one night at the Phoenix in London. He said "I'm Tony" and I replied "I know".  Because it was a fucking Richard Curtis film.  And then we moved to Notting Hill and I had his floppy-haired babies.

Actually I moved to Brussels.

Sweet and Low

I doubt that many of us will come out of this as heroes.  There are those who every day put their well-being at risk in order to do their jobs and while this is nothing but heroic, I suspect that they don't feel like heroes either.

Most days I feel like anxious fudge.  And, appropriately enough, I'm fudging most things.  Not quite as badly as some heads of state, but fairly badly.  Earlier this week I gave myself a talking to in the hope that breathing through the fudge would calm the anxiety, and allow me to work.  This was effective as long as I remembered to do it.  The trouble with being anxious fudge is that this who you are.  Fudge is not, for example, a serene mint cream.  We'd all like to be a mint cream. 

Most of most days is spent trying not to lay on the bed watching true crime documentaries, or something about Mary Magdalen, so that I can nap.  Right now the urge to nap is overwhelming.  This is all so damned exhausting.  I would give anything to go back to work, even it means wearing a pillowcase over my head.

Heroism on a very, very small scale will be just getting through this bit.  And then we can get back to fires and floods and Brexit for some light relief.

Allergy in the Time of COVID

This is not a romance, be strongly advised of that.  Today as I woke from a nap while watching "The Elephant Man" an email was read to my eyes, ending...and I cannot tell you why.  Somebody in my nap-dream had broken off with me by email and although it was disappointing, it was not entirely surprising.  I would probably break up with me too.

I have dreadful allergy symptoms at the moment, even when indoors.  Seeing as there is little to be allergic to in my flat except dust, most of which is my own dander, it seems I am basically allergic to myself.  This seems to be taking the auto-immune response a bit far.

This weekend, the world has apparently gone back to some semblance of normal, choosing to believe that sunshine proffers immunity to a prickly, somewhat deadly virus.  It is understandable, in a way.  We've all been locked up, or down, for so long that it would be easy to think "Well, I'm either fine or I've had it and anyway, look, a park."  I had a dog like that once, she would go nuts when she saw grass from the car.

I shall continue to stay indoors with my violent skin flakes, not because I'm good at following rules but because I want a future, and to see you all again.  When the time is right.

Go Figure

You know you've been indoors too long when you see a figure on someone's doorstep and wonder, in all seriousness, why there is an Antony Gormley sculpture standing there.  It was just a bloke in a hoodie, of course.  I suppose it could have been a visiting art installation, but it's unlikely.

My walk to the Co-op takes me past the fire station, where other figures of note might be seen.  Although all I saw today was a fire-tender and some trousers and boots on the floor.  I know it's for speed but it does look terribly untidy.  I've just realised, only now, that fire-tender means something that tends a fire and not whatever other definition of tender you can imagine.

The man in the Co-op gave me a recipe for chicken.  This is the most contact I've had with an actual human being in so long, I could fall in love with him.  Or his tattoos at least.  I did quite a lot of work today and took no nap.  The vast, overwhelming exhaustion has gone off now, hopefully for good. 

The highlight of my day apart from going to the Co-op was putting the bins back.  Every time the bin men come, I put our many bins back in line out front. It gives me a sense of control. And then I wash my hands.