Day 88

Maybe being on holiday is a good thing, after all. I did nothing yesterday except fix the crackle on my mixer (thanks, Marty, for some brilliant ideas from an electrical genius), read yet another Elly Griffiths Doctor Ruth Galloway book lying on my bed in the Baby Cobra pose (and that felt deliciously helpful), and walk round sofa show rooms with M (indulgent, eye-opening, and another lady’s life story freely offered and now stored in my cannibalistic writer’s mind). And I hung the second set of solar-powered fairy lights on the garden fence so now the whole right side of the back garden as you face the house is gently illuminated at night. They will now stay there for as long as we live here or until a storm rips them off the fence and carries them off to some destination unknown (and then I’ll get some new ones, because I think we’ve been missing fairy lights in our gardens, will o’ the wisps to illuminate our ways).

The net is closing in. Perhaps I’ve used this phrase before, but never before have so many people in my immediate circle been testing positive for covid-19. This government’s foolishness knows no bounds. Many people I speak to aren’t even aware that lateral flow tests will stop being free at the end of this month. Many people do know, and are angry. It’s like this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, coming on top of all the other financial burdens and hardships the government is choosing exactly now to impose on the poorest in this country. It beggars belief, and Z said yesterday he thought a revolution was coming. Perhaps he’s right.

The war continues. We actually know very little here about what’s really happening. Much of what we hear is rumour and counter-rumour. Is the mainstream media deliberately blurring the edges of it so the people of the West don’t panic about the nuclear threat? I shrugs and despair (again) at inhuman humanity. And when a kerfuffle happens at the Oscars, it forces real stories like war, poverty, and death from the public eye. A confirmation that Bregman (see, I haven’t forgotten him nor his Humankind book) is right when he says watching and reading the news is very bad for your mental health, focusing as it always does on the darker side of human nature. The Oscars – who cares? Rich people playing games. Apparently there’s a dress code for the ceremony. Who knew? Dress how you want, for fuck’s sake.

Acupuncture later.

I need some breakfast. There are millions who need it but don’t get it. Context.

I have a poem to write for a birthday tomorrow.

I cannot lift my words from realities into universal truths today. I’ll leave the soaring to others.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 45