A day abed

Most of the day in bed.  Trivial symptoms other than fatigue -- sore throat, ears, puffy eyes etc. The negative covid test made me feel a charlatan. Also feeling glum about my writing, and wondering what I should do with myself instead.   

A text exchange with Keith this morning. Nice to hear from him.

Lorraine at Pat and Maureen's this morning. A busy day for them, with Louise and Will coming in the morning. Meanwhile, the new bed Maureen had ordered for herself, wouldn't fit up the stairway. The local outfit, VR Flowers where brilliant however, replacing it with a different model later in the day. 

Beth and Enzo came around in the afternoon. Beth doing an afternoon's work for her employer, while Lorraine had some Enzo time. I meanwhile slunk back into bed and was soon asleep.  

Derek flew in from Finland, was collected by Jason at Heathrow. But they had a puncture on the motorway. It was some sort of a pool car or hire car, and for various reasons, they were incredibly delayed arriving at 2am in Newhaven and staying the Premier Inn. Derek sensibly wanting to avoid my bug by not staying with us. 

When awake, I watched World War Z, where I found myself rooting for the zombies. Then a highly interesting documentary Hunt for the Oldest DNA, about the work of Danish evolutionary biologist and geneticist Eske Willerslev in obtaining DNA from soils from the pliocene, over 2 million years ago, by taking soil samples from an icy desert in Greenland. Willerslev properly charismatic. He said at one point that one of his main attributes was imagination. He said he got the idea for obtaining DNA from soil from going outside at lunchtime, and catching sight of a dog pooping, and realising that it would also be shedding DNA into the soil. 

This sort of thing is catnip for me. Apparently as the climate was hot then, there were forests up there, inhabited by large animals such as camels. The thing was that at that latitude it is dark half the year, and one of the scientists wondered if this created the ability in animals like bears, to hibernate. Also camel's eyes are well adapted to night vision, and these northern camels may be the reason.