journalling

2026 w05/january review

vanadium steel professional quality for 78p? chat, do you share my concerns?

hooks for

31 Jan 2026 • 4 min read

i am not there. where you're thinking of. i don't live there. i don't live near there. i don't know anyone who lives there. but i am being shown what's happening there anyway. there's no box i can tick to say 'scaring me will not make me economically viable' to make them stop. so i have to breathe & say out loud to myself 'why am i being shown this right now?' when every page loads, instead.

why am i being shown this right now? is a spell.

Mr Norrell assured Mr Strange that he would find war very disagreeable. “One is often wet and cold upon a battlefield. You will like it a great deal less than you suppose.”

my january intents were first to take no damage. i took no damage. i felt a strange pressure one ice cold morning that threatened to become a sore throat, so i put myself back to bed & took two of everything in the Respiratory section of the medicine box, & set an alarm for four hours to take two more, & did nothing all day & the next day i had not got ill. can't prove anything. but i took no damage.

second to read in a blanket nest with the dogs. i did do that. not always novels, sometimes it was articles or essays or whatnot. but i did read every day. it's a good default. the dogs figure out between themselves who sits on my lap and who sits in the crook of my legs, and then when my legs go dead and i have to move they both complain equally. i haven't been keeping the storygraph updated, because i have deliberately not been carrying my phone from room to room with me.

third was to stay on the vitamins. i did do that. daily multivitamin & extra vitamin D. i think maybe we should get some B12 or B-complex too (i'm not giving you medical advice but do go look up the symptoms list of B12 deficiency, it'll remind you of someone you know even if it isn't you).

fourth was to do a bit of sewing, ideally in daylight. that was kind of a stretch goal, but i did do it! I made a pillowcase, & i darned seven socks, & i sewed loops in some items that I wanted to be able to fling on the door hook instead of giving them a hanger every time - i don't wear things that require a shoulder-shaped hanger, you understand.

fifth was to make notes on the ghastly course. i don't want to think about the course right now. it's bad. i was angry. but i uploaded a file on the assessment deadline day with the correct headers & i conveyed that i knew what they were asking.

sixth was to clean the stair carpet & railings. that's oddly specific. maybe i deliberately chose a cleaning task that has no emotional weight for me. i did do that. sugar soap on the railings, & the metal comb thing on the stair carpet. you know the one. it was being influenced five or six years ago. it pulls up a lot more detritus than a vacuum or a sponge, & it's quiet so the dogs can watch from the top step.

The dining-parlour lacked some of the convenience that other dining-parlours have; it was open to the sky and there was a young birch tree growing in the middle of it. But this troubled Lord Wellington’s servants not one whit; they were accustomed to serve his lordship his meals in far stranger places. They had set a table beneath the birch tree and spread it with a white cloth.

we inventoried the tool trunk & recategorised things, made them a bit more grabbable. labelled things. noticed that we have tiny screwdrivers for glasses & electronics & the enormous paint-opening screwdriver but nothing of medium size, so i have to decide whether to buy new suspiciously cheap screwdrivers (vanadium steel professional quality for 78p? chat, do you share my concerns?) or ask elderly acquaintances if they could bear to pass on some of their accumulated shedware.

we inventoried the food stores, too. insufficient dry goods rotation has been occurring, we've been eating what's easy. but nothing's actually spoiled.

i've left the property six times. he's left it twice. we change into clean rags when we get back. placebo decon.

january spending was £363, because some household things that are on four-monthly & six-monthly deliveries lined up. not a problem.

Strange was able to make his own preparations for war. He collected together his silver dish; half a dozen books of magic; a pair of pistols; a light summer coat with a number of unusually deep pockets; a dozen hard-boiled eggs; three flasks of brandy; some pieces of pork pie wrapped in paper; and a very large silk umbrella.

we've drawn a bit - we both have that horrible school-learned thing of 'only people who are naturally good at drawing should ever draw' even though we know it's shit. but we added a ream of A4 printer paper to one of the grocery orders & we sit up at the dining table with a pack of suspiciously cheap acrylic markers & draw silly challenges at each other. I liked the day we drew 'trams in places trams shouldn't be'.

we finished painting the clock faces & assembled them & put batteries in, so now for the first time in over a decade we can glance at the time without waking up a screen. in two rooms, anyway.

linux on the older laptop is running perfectly. I don't use demanding software, to be fair. i have only opened the newer (Win11) laptop three or four times this month, to pick up specific things. I don't want to hang out or browse in the windows laptop; it feels like it's not on my side. that's the closest i can describe it. not antagonistic, even. just orthogonal.

intents for w06

take no damage
change bedding & the sofa blankets
rake & weed if there's a dry day
pot up two big indoor plants with the houseplant compost i fetched
scrub out the seed trays and pots from the greenhouse
some music piracy

intents for w06

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