In which I am back

Again. I know, more comebacks than someone who has had a lot of comebacks. Don’t ask me, that would be pop culture.

First things first, the cats are flourishing. They are 10 years’ old next week, but obviously they are my tiny kittens and always will be. I’m still working from home, and Belle spends most of her days on my desk, to the point where she’s there by 8.30am because she knows the routine. She is a regular participant in Webex calls, usually flashing her tail across the screen. Charlie is still international cat of mystery, but he’s started sleeping on the armchair in the study. My background noise is Scala radio and kitten snores, and I cannot think of a better one.

Anyone who thinks I’m giving that up to go back to working from an office is fucking deluded.

Still in lockdown, and still fine with it. Yeah, I know that the country has opened up but that’s just dumb given the way that the Delta variant is ripping across the land, so I’m ignoring it. Bozo Johnson can fuck right off, and when he gets there, he can fuck off even further. No, my language has not improved in the intervening year since I last posted.

What has changed? Erm… Greek! Abandoned the idea of doing A-Level, but I kept working through the syllabus for a bit. Did loads of Plato and realised I’d forgotten all non-philosophical Greek, so did unseens and comprehensions for a few months. But now, my tutor and I have agreed that we’ll work through the whole of Medea. I’m about 95 lines in and I love it so much. Translation is magic. Jason, what a bastard, eh? Although Medea is Greek female character least likely to be novelised as part of the current boom in re-writing Greek myth from the female perspective. My vote goes for a novel about Helen, because I think she gets a rough deal. The Trojan War isn’t really her fault, it’s Aphrodite who gave her to Paris as a prize and kicked the whole thing off. Stick that in your agency pitch.

I started working out with a personal trainer in January, over Zoom and once a week. It’s been very effective, not to mention painful and exhausting and far more hard work than I would ever do on my own. Which is entirely the point.

Oh, and I’m blonde again for the first time in roughly 111 years. I liked being grey but then I got bored. I went champagne blonde at Christmas and then couldn’t get a hair cut or colour for 6 months. I had to make the dark roots a feature because there was no hiding them.

WandaVision, Falcon & Winter Soldier and Loki. I am firmly locked in to Disney+ for these. I’m even seeing Black Widow at the cinema. Well, drive-in, which is the ideal cinematic experience, given that it combines the big screen with no other people near you. It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to get us there but thank you Nightflix.

The rest is much the same. I read, I eat biscuits, I sit on the sofa for hours at the time. Musing. All right, dozing. Whatever.