Well, I've bought all three Wolf Hall books on audio, totaling something like 98 hours, which I think is fine and maybe will see me through. All is business as usual here - feeling very stressed about work, even though it's a Saturday, which is annoying. At 10am on the Monday I was sat on a sofa beginning a Very Dull strategy meeting which we all hate and out of which very little usefulness ever comes. I rolled my head back a bit to loosen my neck and also to try to avoid the very big yawn I was about to do (nowhere to hide on camera), something clicked, and then I spent the rest of the day slowly freezing up on my right hand side. Ended up lying on the floor with Alice's hot water bottle, and was basically useless for Monday and Tuesday, and sort of resentfully useful from Wednesday to Friday. Hence the stress. And it's so silly because they're just books, but they matter so much to people. Also I forgot one of my favourite author's pub days, for the final book in a series, and I'm so embarrassed that I've been ignoring her ever since. I have to fix it but I've just run out of words.
Other things . . . I might have a date, with a man called, unfortunately (or fortunately?), Leonard Cohen. Not sure what it will entail but I'm meant to whatsapp him this weekend to sort, I suppose, either wine and Zoom or a socially distanced walk. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/dutch-official-advice-to-single-people-find-a-sex-buddy-for-lockdown-coronavirus. I was defintitely born in the wrong country.
Also, Rachel's dad has been diagnosed with prostrate cancer. He's going to be ok, or should, it's the size of a frozen pea apparently, but cos of Covid (reallyreally does need to be a single contraction to cover 'because of Covid' - henceforth, 'cosvid'). So, cosvid, he has to wait three months before they will do anything at all as the Covid danger is considered worse for him than the cancer, and also they're just not doing anything but urgent operations. The thing is, they already lost his blood test results for eight weeks, so it will actually be five months. I want to ring the hospital, pretend to be Rachel's far too nice mum, and invoke MY mum, who would somehow speed things up just a bit. Not in an unfair way, but it has already been two months later than it would have been, and it's dangerous. I love Rachel so much. I feel so lucky to have met her, and the idea of her moving away, and the fact she can't even see her dad cosvid, but instead had to find out on the phone just feels awful and makes me want to cry. It also made me realise that if she does move back to Manchester, I'm not ok with us not staying as close (or at least nearly) as close as we are. I wish I fancied her or she fancied me, because honestly, three years into a friendship that would never have happened had it not been for the Great Vampire Diaries Obsession of 2016, I feel like she's sort of my soulmate. And I know that's silly, and I will never tell her, but there just aren't many people who I feel as comfortable with and who balance me out so brilliantly. I usually feel like I don't even have to ask her, she just knows what to say to calm me down if I'm feeling awful, and I think it works the other way too. We work really well as a partnership - she plans things amazingly, I like to decide things. On holiday I get to pick restaurants and she gets to pick location. Going out she doesn't have my panic about organising group things, and actually does the research and makes things happen and changes her life in ways that fill me with awe. Obviously neither of us are perfect and three years isn't very long, so at some point I'm sure we will have a horrible row, and Rachel hates conflict so I'd have to insist we talk about it. But then again I WOULD insist that, so maybe it would be ok.
Maybe I'm not going to fall in love in a romantic way again, or not to the same amount (which I'm sure is a relief to you, endless repository of my pining after my ex for about a decade), but if instead I get to make new friends like Rachel, maybe that's ok? And I can adopt and take my adopted kid to the woods when it's Autumn. It will be fine because the adoption system is super straightforward for single women approaching forty.
It's possible that lockdown is giving me too much time to think. Rereading the above I've also drifted with incredible speed from Rachel's father to me and my problems. I suppose I could edit it a bit but I do feel like that would be cheating.
What else is happening? Well, I'm trying to ensure that a book I publish isn't racist, even though the author is, owing to her being born from generations of white aristocracy but owing much more to her utter refusal to ever consider that could be the case. It's not going very well. The book is absolutely hilarious otherwise, which is the annoying thing, but she's got exactly one character of colour in the whole damn book (which: fine, it's a book about the Aristocracy and the world she knows) but she's made him servile and pathetic and it's just not ok, but there is no way I can see of making her understand this, because her choices come from systemic causes that she thinks are utter nonsense. It's just horrible, and I hate that I like her and think she's charming and talented and funny on the one side, and on the other is this strange, blank wall that she's determinedly unaware of and I can't help imagining is exactly the sort of blindness that led to the Holocaust. I know it sounds over-dramatic, but I'm absolutely sure that if I were not Jewish she would have put a character in one of her books who would be the only Jew, and who was an 'outsider because they are Jewish' in some way, or who happened to be rich and mean, and utterly not understand how doing that perpetrates the very worst of stereotypes and - particularly given that she refuses to look at what she's doing with proper rigour - isn't ok. And yet part of her DOES know it, otherwise that Jewish character would have appeared, and that makes the whole thing worse.
In cooking news... I've bought some amazing honey and walnut bread and eaten too much of it. And tonight I'm going to cook pot roasted pheasant, with pigs in blankets (yes indeed we are clearing out the freezer, thank you for asking, and no December wasn't that long ago because also remember time is meaningless). Must remember to see if we have any chestnuts. Am going to use this recipe(ish): https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/pot-roasted-pheasant. Also, going to roast a whole celeriac because this recipe sounds glorious: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/04/cauliflower-cheese-roast-celeriac-braised-carrots-leeks-recipe-side-dishes-as-mains-yotam-ottolenghi.
A couple of days ago I made a roasted chicken thighs and legs dish with leftover lemony, oily aubergine juices, mixed with a pickle of a fruit I still don't know that's from Goa, mixed with garlic and a little more oil. I chopped up half an onion, put in the leftover aubergine mid way and it was really delicious. Also made some curried rice that was ALMOST amazing: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020231-paul-carmichaels-curried-rice. I made the paste far too dark and thick, owing to the fact I had no limes (used satsumas), used hot, just cooked rice, and had no light soy sauce - dark soy doesn't quite work for this one. The rice was black, but incredibly tasty and spicy, so I'm definitely going to make it properly at some other point - maybe it will taste a bit like the rice Sophie and I had in Thailand years and years ago. It cost 20p, came in a bowl shaped heap and was sweet and salty and had egg and sometimes had indeterminate meat in. It was mostly salty, but as you ate it there would be sudden moments of sweet. Looking back I suspect it was caramelised sugar, and probably flavour from the wok as well. We ate it once during a thunderstorm, sitting under a tarp outside a restaurant. I've been trying to cook it ever since, but actually I suppose it can't ever taste quite the same, and it would be a shame if it did really.
Rachel found a virtual wine tasting 'A Grape Night In' (I know) which we're going to try next Sat eve. That would have been the day before my brother's wedding, a fact which just feels bizarre now.
Right, I'm going to go and help Alice in the garden, while listening to Wolf Hall. I suppose lockdown has its benefits...
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