To cut a long story short (and leave you without anecdotes about my digestive system), I have today accepted that I might be ill and thus have permission to stay indoors and do lazy stuff. If you take out the bit where I sobbed for about 30 minutes whilst watching Gareth Malone Empower Women Through The Magic of Song today has mainly looked like:
I realise I am, once again, plunging myself into parody but, yes, fruit tea. In a
Penguin Gatsby mug. I've got a bewildering number of literary mugs but this is the one which, on pain of death, no one is allowed to use. Back at the start of September a Temporary Housemate used it and the looks of horror which this generated on the faces of my other housemates probably points to the fact that I have issues. Not wanting to do something like shout in the face of Temporary Housemate and come over weird with the whole 'erm, yes you can use the Woolf mug or any of the Shakespeares and you may even borrow the Byron but NEVER GATSBY' I did the most mature thing I could: I hid the mug. Which makes the whole parody-of-myself-fruit-tea-thing seem perfectly normal and acceptable. This tea is raspberry and something and something. The somethings are because I decanted these tea bags from their box into a nice metal tea box I picked up for 50p at Deptford Market. Which is nice for storage but, when you forget to properly label it, makes knowing what you're drinking more challenging.
Really I should be progressing with The Great Homemade Christmas Present Extravaganza that currently exists only as the pile of fabric I bought from Fabric Rehab but, hey, rules of being ill and not doing actual stuff, so I thought I'd make a start on
Crochet School. Yep,
Crochet School. My mum taught me to crochet when I was six or seven but I haven't done any since the mid nineties when I stopped making things because any time that didn't involve reading Smash Hits or hanging out at the Odeon on Briggate was, quite frankly, wasted time*. So I thought I'd start the class from the beginning as a conscientious student and turns out, I STILL REMEMBER some of the stuff. It is almost like riding a bike (hopefully without the bit where you - okay,
I - don't ride a bike for five years and then you -
I - do and your -
my - bottom hurts for DAYS). Maybe everyone will just get granny squares for Christmas instead.
I got the Zadie Smith book of essays in September during the first
Do Cultural London Stuff Eat Cake night, this one at the
Wellcome Collection who have a bookshop stuffed with books I want to buy. I read a couple of the essays - I honestly think I'm a little in love with Smith's writing - and then promptly left the book at @arexx's flatwarming (I also left half a bottle of rum, I didn't try and claim that back. I am a good guest). And then it stayed in that flat for a while (
and went on a trip to Nottingham) before it made its way back to me by which point I was reading
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks so it got pushed to one side. Also in this book's adventures, I got borsch on it when, y'know, the big purple soup made with Veg Box Veg leaked in my bag. So
Changing My Mind has had it tough these past couple of months. Anyway, it's clever and beautifully written and makes me want to write essays on
Middlemarch all over again. Which is genuinely pretty much all I ask for from essay collections.
*Of course neither Smash Hits or the Odeon on Briggate exist any more. This officially makes me feel old.
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