Splashes of colour

This morning I woke up, and realised that last night, after we'd finished reading to each other, I lay down, switched off the light, and fell asleep almost immediately. And I didn't wake till the builders out the back arrived at 8 o'clock. Wonderful -- I felt like a human being once more.

I still haven't been out and about much, but I did start on the photo book with breaks for sofa-lounging, and on a trip to the shop I did a detour via some vines with the Sony and its watercolour option. Another effort in extras -- the grey sky did not lend itself well. See also: this day last year.

Not having internet access for a week has been a great way of evaluating its highs and lows. First you notice how embedded it is in your life. S reading a US novel and asking me questions like "What are beef shingles?" . It's so easy to look stuff like that up on Google when it occurs to you, but sadly my database is not as extensive as Google's and I was mostly unable to help (spoiler: I still don't know what beef shingles are, and have no particular urge to). It's integrated into a lot of our offline activities too: online GPS tracks for walks, checking the local weather, using EatYourBooks to find out which of my cookbooks a particular recipe is in,  route planning, seeing what's on at the cinema, downloading the local paper, and so on. All of that is good.

On the other hand, how great it was not to have Twitter available! (I'd say the same about Facebook, but I don't use it much and mostly to keep in touch with what's going on locally). Once connection was restored, I decided not to crank up Twitter at all, and I've stuck to that. Instead I get my news from other sources that send me daily email updates: The Guardian, the New Statesman, the NYT, Washington Post, Irish Times etc. Some of these include links to other actual journalistic sources. It's so much less stressful, and while I might miss some good stuff, it filters out masses of time-wasting junk. Heck, I didn't even know Dominic Raab had resigned till lunchtime, and I didn't care either. And I was really glad I missed the live feed of the Toddler-in-Chief's weekend tantrums. It might be hard, but I'm really going to try to stick to this.

Have done tons of proper reading too! Almost finished Milkman. Thoughts will follow.