kaberett | State of the Alex

I noticed, on Friday morning, that there were small birds having a bath in the gutter along the garages out the back of the house. It was charming, and cheering, and it helped.

The funeral is to be a week on Monday; A is coming down with me, for which I am very grateful; I have a bunch of things I want to say about Papa but none of them particularly want to come, it seems, so for now: a week ago last Tuesday I accompanied my mother on the train down to Heathrow and got more of the details; nothing anyone could have done would have had any significant impact on the outcome, and he probably never regained meaningful consciousness and probably experienced no meaningful pain for the majority of the proceedings.

Submitted baby's first paper at the beginning of November; am still nowhere near working all my hours but I'm hopefully making some progress and I'm feeling reasonably positive about this next bit + have somehow sprouted some reinvigorated stuboorn.

A Number Of Things going on, including more-profound-than-usual-for-me fatigue + elevated miscellaneous allergic/inflammatory response. Not much fun; seeing a GP on Weds; we'll see how it goes.

Miscellaneous culture: I have finished my His Dark Materials reread, complete with the two tiny books and all their ephemera, and put myself in the queue at the local library for La Belle Sauvage (I'm getting a copy of my very own at the beginning of December courtesy of A. -- we're going to an Author Event -- but I want to read it before then. I still haven't got a Miltank. I've watched the National Theatre's Follies (Thursday, live at an Oxford Vue); Hunted, feminist contemporary dance about witches, Friday at Sadler's Wells (which was cuntier than I'd expected but not cuntier than I should have expected), and on Saturday the last ever performance of CUNCRETE, which we caught at the Fringe la-a-a-ast year when it was there and that I didn't write up; we bought the CD.