Wednesday and as my partner and friend drive off to a day at Chatsworth I get a call from a friend who is beginning to surface from a bout of COVID. So a chat to start the day with and then I am up and having my now usual flax enhanced muesli and coffee. I zip about doing some chores and ensuring the squirrels food box is full. As I check my emails I find that I have an Elders meeting at 11 o’clock that was not put into my phones diary. So I make coffee and settle down in front of the screen and spend the next hour and a half talking with friends as we try to make sense of what is happening to us and to our relational environments. COVID cuckoos and relational continuity were amongst the themes. Meeting over I down some chicken soup and do some Christmas preparation. Soon its time to train, so I get into the garage and row for thirty minutes. My jab site is still sore so rowing is not the most comfortable exercise but then nothing is. As it turns out its an okay session.

I retreat to the sofa to record my session and then change out of my kit. Back on the sofa I settle down to read The Cat Who Saved Books. It is a lovely book and I sit and read it to the end. It made me think about my relationship with books and why I read and what I read. I can definitely identify with the sense that my books are important and that they are powerful. It makes me remember the way the Jewish families that were part of my childhood and youth so valued education and food and that books were valued for the knowledge that they contained. For many of my Jewish friends knowledge was the their protection from their uneasy place in British culture,in fact any culture.

My daughter and I eat tea and I settle to read some more before succumbing to TV. My partner and friend return from Chatsworth fayre and in due course we all settle down to try and navigate the twists and turns of Shetland. After that its the news as I type the blog for the day.