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

— @HaggardHawks

I think Salieri missed me yesterday when I was looking after another cat and she spent most of today following me around (she is sleeping next to the keyboard as I type). The photograph above was a bit of an accident when I surprised her while we were reading in bed earlier in the afternoon (I know what a privilege that is – calling reading in bed work!). Her expression says a lot about the bewilderment I feel about this highly productive and satisfying, but also exhausting, day. I know I have just had a holiday, but I need another one already.

I was still awake at one in the morning last night, but not long enough to watch the debate live, so I watched the recording when I woke up after a short sleep. What can I say? The Fly and Fly Twitter stole the show. I had a great laugh before my first coffee of the day. I needed this: laughter. Otherwise, the only thing left is despair.

On a tiny, personal level things are developing in the right direction. It often feels like treading water, but we are nearing the two hundredth day of our local lockdown, worldwide way over a million people died because of the coronavirus, and our economies … well, you know. Most of us feel some kind of pain that is unimaginable to others.

A friend told me today that her phone fell and the screen cracked, but in the larger scheme of things, she just shrugged it off and is ‘reading through a cracked screen’. That phrase could be applied to all of us, to this year. If 2020 wrote a memoir, it could be called READING THROUGH A CRACKED SCREEN.

I have proofread three typeset manuscripts in the last while – all beautiful in ways that not even a cracked screen can deny. It is a survival strategy; to continue, to nurture beautiful things.

Be kind. Wear a mask. Support local.

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

— NICD