under another sun

Got the morning started with some good poetry time, and may have finished my first ever villanelle, its repetitive form working well with my subject matter which was about walking around the hill fort wall. Felt powerfully antsy after a while.  Took myself off to the gym, then had to return when I reached the park, as I had no facemark. Nobody wears facemasks in the gym, but it was empty enough to have lots of space around me. It was good for mind and body. Also I was listening to the History of English podcast, by Kevin Stroud, which I have done for a year or so. It really is excellent, and relentlessly thorough. Food shopping then home again, sauntering across the park. Back to work, although focus was hard to come by today. Reading Rachel Boast's book Hotel Raphae l, which hasn't yet gripped me in the way that Void Studies did. There are two pages at the back of Hotel Raphael called   Reading | Viewing , which has all her intertextual references. Lots of Akhmatova, who I l...

A bit of a ditto day. Working all day, and hard, on Skelton Yawngrave. Beth going off to be filmed with a stinking cold. Still feeling weirdly out of sorts though. Spoke to Mum and Lorraine and Beth both phoned at lunchtime. Went for a walk in the cold at lunchtime, just for some air and get the circulation going for three quarters of an hour, then the rest of the day at home. I had been craving a can of macaroni cheese and so treated myself which I cooked with lots of added mustard, served with grilled tomatoes and some toast. Strange how something from a tin can be perfect once in a blue moon.  In the evening cooked a rather good stew, using the last of the turkey stock and some chicken stock, with lots of vegetables including the much maligned swede. Also did lots of laundry. For I am a non-gender specific domestic deity. Lorraine woofed the stew up gratefully when she got home, and we chatted lots on the gold sofa, before watching the silly but sunny Murder in Paradise , wh...