Wobbly Timetables

It's an amazing feeling to wake up in the morning and not have to get up. Work begins again on Monday and I'm trying not to think about the awful predicament of the students, all isolating at a time when they should be at their most sociable. And imagine, that strategy of barricading them into their halls of residence in Manchester with the virus. Surely that is akin to a war crime? The worst feeling is powerlessness, hearing them speak in online sessions and not being able to fix the big picture, which is affecting everything they think and do.

This means that whenever possible, I'm embracing laziness. Sometimes I've made a timetable, but it's  quietly vanished, largely because quite a lot of it involves housework. I have managed to start recording, and the wobbly plan today is to do some more of that. There is more 'book' to do, but the sub-editor is on a break and I need to write to her with some questions, and also wait for a secondhand copy of Margot Shetterly's book Hidden Figures to arrive, having given away the first copy to someone and neglected to note down a page reference.

I think Offsprog Two is going to have the piano we had in our big old house. It will be sad in some ways to see it go- it was hugely important when I moved here to have a room big enough to put it in, and I've written some songs on it. But every plan I have to play it is in the future, and has been since I moved here eleven years ago. Maybe when arthritis takes my hands, I'll get another, smaller one, but for now it would be nice to fill the space with the guitars which are languishing upstairs in their cases. I might have a bit of a play on it before it goes, safe to do because my neighbour works for the NHS and normally I try not to make too much noise (the walls here are only one brick thick), but everyone is working flat-out, beyond their speciality, and she is not there much at the moment.

It's quiet out there, so quiet I can hear the birds in the back gardens. Cars have been roaring past the front door in recent weeks, trying to drive away from reality. No matter how enormous your car is and how offensive your driving, you're still in the same boat as the people you normally look down on. You can't drive out of this predicament in your Range Rover, and most people can't get to Antigua like Lady Haw-Haw of the Offensive Tweets. Maybe everyone's just having a lazy morning.