The builders go on with their buildery lives...

[flemmings]

Possibly the guys renovating southern next door may be wishing they were at home in isolation, but I doubt it. They're busy, they're paid, they're in company, and they've been wearing heavy-duty masks and filters since last autumn. The bumps and conversations (and yes ok the cigarette smoke) do lend a much-needed air of normality to my life.

The timeless bubble feeling I spoke of yesterday lasted just until I tried to make a list of our current infants and toddlers. Couldn't name one. Consulted an old list from a year ago and slowly, slowly, the names came back. And so did the apprehension of a world out there that's not out there any more and now I detect a certain chafing of the spirit, expressed by a distinct lack of patience with Wilkie Collins' narrators. No, I do not find your dirty old man butler or your catty charitable spinster amusing in the least. Get *on* with it, man. Where's Marian Halcombe when you need her?

Feeling just fine yesterday, I left off the anti-inflams after breakfast, which led to a miserable knee-twinging night and a knee-grinding today. Shall return to judicious medicating. Also read to 3 in the morning, an historical Japanese novel by a Japanese where, for once, a woman marries into a family much nicer than her birth one; and consequently slept in to past 11, in the old fashion of my 40s. Natsukashii...