February 2021

As always, the changing of seasons offers some slight respite from winter-induced gloom, though sadly this year there's still a lot more to be miserable about than just the dark season.

February 1st is hourly comics day, and if you haven't already seen them, mine are here (I'm quite pleased with them this year if I do say so myself)

As mentioned in those comics, a few days prior I severely stubbed my toe on the bottom leg of my bed. It seemed like such a stupid injury that I refused to accept the possibility that I'd broken it, and hoped the pain would go away soon. Sadly, the pain basically prevented me from doing anything much more than hobbling to the park round the corner with the dog once a day, so I started getting decidedly grumpy and cabin fevery.

My partner always buys a copy of Wire magazine once a year for the best-of lists (which are very good). Now we'd both thoroughly perused it, I made this collage (during a long seminar to keep my hands busy and my mind focussed, the joys of online learning eh 😬)

Not particularly pleased with how this looks, but some interesting design — and otherwise — prompts (pulled from a much longer list) that we all read out collectively one by one during a lecture session.

Like many people, I'm a bit miserable about the shape of my lockdown body, though I am also working hard to love it as it is, and accept that it probably ain't changing any time soon. Unrelatedly, me and Tabitha baked another cake :)

Bond viewing marathon continues... A View to a Kill has one of the best Bond theme tunes ever, and stars Grace Jones and Christopher Walken as the hot villain couple, and yet somehow still manages to be not that good. Shame.

In which I FINALLY accept that maybe my toe is broken, and go for an x-ray to confirm that yes, it absolutely is. (And then spend the following two weeks terrified I caught COVID in either the x-ray or A&E waiting rooms full of people)

Felt very weird to be 'out in the world' as over the last month or so I've retreated more than at any point previously, having gone on leave from Samaritans and switched entirely to online shopping. I'm definitely even more isolated and indoors than I was even during lockdown 1 way back in March/April 2020, which is... not great.

Mood.

My desk is basically where I spend most of my days, seven days a week at the moment, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm QUITE BORED OF IT

Got Chinese takeaway for Chinese New Year! (Which obviously was like an hour and a half late and decidedly mediocre because who tries to get Chinese Takeaway on Chinese New Year?!)

When you've spent the majority of the last year with the same two people and basically no one else, things sometimes get weird conversationally (please submit your ideas around this theme tyvm)

Concerned about my toe-pain-induced sedentary lifestyle I have once again returned to home-workouts. UGGGH. This time though, rather than trying to follow some fixed program, I am just having an enthusiastic bop for half an hour to my favourite tunes each morning, and hopefully that's doing SOMETHING?!

The Living Daylights is the first of two Timothy Dalton Bond movies — Timothy Dalton OBVIOUSLY being the hottest Bond. This movie doesn't quite live up to my childhood memories of it, but is still a reasonably fun time.

Just felt like I should do a visual diary about my housemate Tabitha, because she is, frankly, my ROCK of general cheerfulness and household morale through this whole thing (and I occasionally get shivers of horror when I remember the 10 or so other people from spareroom I interviewed last year and how much this whole thing might have sucked infinitely more if I'd chosen differently...)

As part of my ongoing celebration of both Tabitha and my partner, I made them pancakes with many toppings! (Our other housemate has been with family in France since like October and shows no sign of returning but I hope she comes back one day as a) I miss her and b) I don't want her to decide she's gonna move out and stop paying rent 😅)

One of our kind of... sideline, but still mandatory uni modules involves creative coding, and I HATE IT. Don't get me wrong, the results are cool but coding succcccccckkkkkks if you're me. I tried to learn to code when I graduated 10 years ago (like, really threw myself into it, bought books and worked hard) but absolutely nothing would stick. Tried a couple of other coding workshops in subsequent years but... I just don't have it in me. I know that sounds defeatist, but that's how it is. This tutor threw loads of complex ideas at us and then was like 'have at it' and I literally burst into years after 5 minutes of failing to make anything other than a blue screen appear. It's genuinely the first time that I've EVER been tempted to just bunk off the rest of this module.

We have a takeaway every Thursday and it's a genuine high point of the week. this week, some particularly good burgers (but mostly I just enjoyed how vibrant these Caran D'Ache Supracolour pencils are against the red paper)

I met Fran on OkCupid a little after I met my now-partner, and we went on a couple of dates with them. I got that weirdly confusing thing in a dating context which is quite a powerful friend-crush... I ummed and ahhed about whether to see them again or not, because I knew I didn't want a romantic thing, but also thought they were suuuuper cooool and really wanted to be their friend. So in the end I just told them that, and they felt the same way, and it was like.... YEAH! FRIENDS! 

And then the pandemic happened and we didn't really have the chance to like... seal the friendship deal in terms of the face-to-face hanging out that I think we both hoped we'd do, and midway through the year they decided to move to Birmingham so that they could live in a massive flat alone for half the price of sharing a shitty tiny flat in London with someone they didn't even like. Which is totally fair enough but I was still sad about it. 

Anyway, because queer Ok Cupid in London is a hilariously small scene, they'd also been chatting with my partner on there... They initially got off on the wrong foot due to a minor disagreement over various factions of the left of the Labour party, but quickly realised they both had a lot in common in terms of video games, movies and other shared interests, and have ended up chatting and sharing silly jokes pretty regularly with each other.

We FINALLY got our act together and arranged a social with all three of us, where we watched the terrible and utterly bizarre Wachowski sisters movie 'Speed Racer' while voice chatting over the top of it, and it was a really fun time. (I hope they move back to London so we can play boardgames together IRL again one day...)

Licence to Kill is the better of the two Timothy Dalton Bond movies, mostly because of the scene where Timothy Dalton wakes up in a bedroom in the bad guy's lair after being poisoned, and is briefly thoroughly disconcerted by this statue at the foot of his bed 

Counter to popular (?) opinion I feel precisely nothing about the latest round of announcements, because I for one won't be doing any face-to-face socialising (other than maybe occasional meetups with one person in a park at a distance) until I've had my vaccinations, which is likely to be late summer at the very earliest. Clubs in June?! lol, no thanks

Though (like every year) I've given up chocolate for lent, my work sent me some belated brownies to celebrate my 10 year anniversary there, and I think God would understand that it would be churlish not to eat them... I hope...

Here's a small good news update from the desk of Emma!

Bad drawings (I did them while watching Toy Story 3 and weeping prolifically), but I think about cat man a lot. 

Had to order a new Moleskine for visual diaries so decided to get some new Tombow brush pens (my felt tip of choice) while I was at it. I've never had browns before despite often needing them, so decided to treat (?) myself.

At this point my toe is tentatively back in action but it still really hurts if I walk too far, so we'd been pretty reliant on online shopping deliveries (my partner refuses to go to the supermarket which is totally fair enough). I actually really like going to the supermarket though, there just isn't a big one within easy walking distance of our house... But Tabitha drove to big Sainsburys to I hitched a ride and got MASSIVELY OVER EXCITED and spent way too much on vegan goodies. 

Anyway, February was short and felt kind of like a something-and-nothing month in this interminable ongoing strangeness, but here we are at the end of it. 

I know the quality of my visual diaries is not what I would like — a combination of really not having that much time (between MA and work commitments I am at my desk almost all of every day and rarely have the energy to do anything particularly fun or indulgant for these at the moment), AND the ongoing lack of stimulation/inspiration from, y'know, the outside world and that. Particularly this last month with my broken toe.

I'm trying to tell myself constantly — you've been doing this for eight years and if you can do it through this you can do it through anything. I don't *owe* quality to anyone, though I do enjoy trying to make a fun blog out of them at the end of each month. 

I talked on the phone with a friend this month who said it was easy to forget how long it had been since we'd last spoken (many months!) because my blogs meant it felt like she knew what I was up to. It's a blessing and a curse I guess — I am scared (like everyone else) that friendships are going to have faded or gone when we come out the other side of this, and I hope that by sharing some of my life — selfishly — people might feel more connected to me and more likely to wanna hang out when we do get to 'the other side'. But equally maybe sharing like this means you all feel like you've had all the Emma you need and there's no need to hang out IRL? WHO KNOWS...

But I'll keep doing this and I hope that one day soon we'll all be able to have my belated 32nd birthday pizza party (Rescheduled from March 26th 2020 to September 26th 2020 to March 26th 2021 and NOW, NEW DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES: September 26th 2021 :)