OYSTERHOOD is reclusiveness or solitude, or an overwhelming desire to stay at home.

— @HaggardHawks

A nearly screen-free day, so I am keeping this short. Had another gap in the night, hoping that it was day already when I woke up, but it was only three a.m. and Glinka was sleeping on my back between my shoulder blades. So I just waited for sleep to return while listening to the familiar white noise of Mama TV in the background.

We only did a tiny bit of work this morning, writing an acceptance letter to an author who will be publishing with Karavan Press. I will do everything I can to keep this dream alive and together with a team of wonderful people to assist me it looks like it will be possible, pandemic, economic apocalypse and all. I am channelling my inner Mary Wollstonecraft, Emily Dickinson, Marie Skłodowska Curie (who is distantly related!) and Virginia Woolf. (While doing this, I promise to stay away from childbirth, radioactive material and rivers. But I will remain sheltering in place – according to the Western Cape Covid-19 dashboard, we have had more than nine hundred! infections in the last twenty-four hours. Deep, deep breaths!)

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, reading, braaing, drinking wine and loving the sunset. I read the wonderful article about Poland in the latest Getaway magazine and it filled me with travelling longings. Mozart had another longing – he wanted to have his tummy rubbed while I was reading.

Auntie Helen, we really enjoyed reading Nancy Richards’s interview with you. We are considering LISTENING to Charlotte, but don’t know how yet… And we are definitely ordering a hardback copy for my Mom to keep until I can visit her in Austria again. This is one of those books that I insist on having as a hardback!

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

— Jane Austen

Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. Stay at home.

“Physical distancing remains one of the key strategies to curb this pandemic.”

— NICD