Quite possibly all you need

Books and gin. Gin and books. I participated in the #6books6people challenge/meme, whatever you want to call it, on twitter this morning, after being tagged by various people. It then occurred to me that there was a blip to be had in combining that pile of books with the four bottles of gin that arrived from Master of Malt yesterday. It was Mr A who suggested putting the Dingle bottle in a recumbent position... taking its ease on top of a book. It looks very relaxed. Two repeats in this order - the Dingle and the Lone Wolf - plus two new to us but from Scotland (via Kent - Master of Malts...), i.e. House of Elrick Old Tom Gin and William Kerr's Borders Gin. Let's see what we think in due course. I hope this doesn't provoke my sister into further attempts at competing.

As to the books, well I've snuck something of personal interest in there. Launches on 2 June.

It's been a wild (and periodically a bit spitty) day, so neither of us has been out. I've kept busy with spinning, reading, watching an event from the virtual Hay Festival (during which time I was chatting to Ridgeback13 on what's app - most twenty-first century; we were also commenting on Maggie O'Farrell's wallpaper, which is rather more twentieth century as a pastime), and some light emailing, catching up on some business from the week.

Today my spinning was essential to my mental wellbeing as well as my physical health. I woke up this morning with a fairly high level of anxiety and general pissed-off-ness. As the day has progressed (and given I felt like a new woman after 50 minutes on the spinning bike), I identified the bases of my current feelings. I am absolutely incandescent rage over two things: the proposed quarantining of arrivals and the conduct of Dominic Cummings (and even more so the defending of him during the course of today). I'll leave the latter to people who are far more eloquent than I am at expressing the consequences of "spaffing" (BJ) political capital up the wall in this manner in order to defend the indefensible, and concentrate my fire on the quarantine policy, which is just the most ridiculous thing to propose when the UK *still has* one of the worst infection rates in Europe.

But more than that, I take these sorts of things personally. I've been happy to stay at home during a public emergency, but now to suggest that just as everyone else starts thinking about some gentle mobility, the UK will be special and have a quarantine policy offends all reason. In fact, it's not a reason-based policy, any more than anything else this bloody government does, but rather an attempt to show we are defending our borders. It's performative, even though the person performing the policy, the Home Secretary, can barely string two coherent sentences together. But thinking about it, of course, like so many policies this is one which will largely affect poorer groups in society, who will be forced to take more expensive holidays in the UK, because they cannot afford to spend a week in Greece, and then two weeks quarantining after they get back. On the contrary, people like us can indeed swan off for a while (I full intend to), going around Europe to do my research and present it, and then come back and spend two weeks working from home, with deliveries to keep us going. On top of the week when we were told it was so important that we are ending free movement... no wonder I wasn't in a good way psychologically this morning. Anyway, back to try to focus on controlling only the things that I can control, and letting the rest of it float past me.

I leave you with Dilly Keane. She's got them all worked out.