2026 w06 sunday review

intents were: take no damage DONE; change bedding & sofa DONE; rake & weed if there's a dry day DONE; pot up two big indoor plants MISSED; scrub out seed trays & pots MISSED; some music piracy DONE.

It's been unendingly grey & damp but the latest I got up was an 11am, mostly they've been between 9am & 10am. Hugely better than previous Februaries. I really want to congratulate us on how we've handled this winter! we've eaten real food & stayed on the vitamins, & the tables & beds & dishes are clean even if the floors aren't quite.

I finished pulling the (hundreds of) logins out of Chrome on the Windows laptop & onto paper. I think the next tinfoil-hat-adjacent project is to pull my photos out of Google Photos. Of course, they might have already used my specific dog photos & hedge photos to train the machines, but I will feel a little better once I have removed them. 2026, the year of locking the stable doors.

I enjoyed reading Basil Thomson's 'Queer People'. It's about crime, cons & incompetent spies during the Great War ('queer' in the title meaning crooked or misaligned, nothing to do with anyone's personal lives).

"They were prone also to engage quite unsuitable people—the sort of people who in war-time at once become what the French call Agents doubles; that is to say, they attempt to serve both sides, either with the object of obtaining double pay or of making their lives safe in the event of detection. What these men do for a living in peace time is hard to guess. I can imagine them running cheap gambling-hells, frequenting the docks to pick up some dishonest profit, resorting to a little blackmail, and performing the humbler offices for the White Slave trafficker. In war-time you will find them swarming in every capital, for war is their brief summer. The money they get by their complicated villainies is spent with both hands. They live like princes and dress like bookmakers’ touts."

That smell of anyone to you?

I went out on Wednesday (had to get the dogs' tablets) & popped into a supermarket to see if anything appealed. I went as far in as the alcohol aisles to see if there was a little bottle of fizzy wine to have in the house for when the good news story breaks. There wasn't, and a full size bottle would be a silly waste. I left with a bunch of flowers & a bag of tortilla chips. Saw a wren on the walk home.

I heard fewer warplanes in the second half of the week. I don't imagine they've stopped entirely, I expect they're just annoying someone else's sky.

I haven't done any sewing - honestly it's been too dim & I don't like to sew by artificial light - but I have picked up the crochet again, adding to yet another moss stitch blanket rather than starting a garment or anything shaped. Just something to keep the hands off the scroll.

And what if the fan remains un-hit? What if it never happens? Well, then I'll have built myself a quiet & efficient life & household for nothing. Bet you a bay leaf that I can be crazy at home for longer than I pretended to be sane among people.

intents for w07:

• take no damage
• pot up two big plants
• scrub seed trays & pots from greenhouse
• sewing, preferably in sunlight
• test the eggless pancakes recipe we found