Sunday Summary

This week, I have mostly been feeling like this:

All the feels. Up. Down. Up. Down. Plus the nausea*. Ever have one of those weeks?

You're (still) trying to find and pin down your happy, or at least your equilibrium, then a pair of numbskulls with elevated ideas about the size of their junk simultaneously crush you in the middle seat on a train, or some random woman on the street (albeit near the most salubrious pub in Shepherds Bush) tells you, randomly, to go away (in words that rhyme with Duck Cough), in spite of you patently minding your own business.

And then the trains fail on some level almost every day for a week.

...It's slightly more challenging to find your happy in those circumstances although having excellent friends sending you photos of burgers, cocktails and cocktail waiters late at night helps

(especially when you're concurrently drinking a cheeky late-night cocktail)

{Flamingos: adding panache to cocktails since,
like, forever}

as does having a lovely couple in the supermarket donate their Nectar points to you!

Such is life, as Ronan Keating once famously sang:

In light of the various ups and downs this week, I'm giving this week's Sunday Summary Honours and "Love Oo!"s to Natalie and Georgina (aka Norgstar) for services to Preserving What Little Sanity I Have Left and dispensing wisdom and humour all week (not to mention the best WhatsApp voice messages ever, from Natalie!) to keep me from not having a wig-out, Stressed-Eric-level:

Thank you both. Muchly.

And speaking of Norgstar, do check out her new blog, Rise of the Roost, in which our heroine renovates a 1930s semi in Wiltshire, and keeps uncovering absolute gems.

---

Aside from riding an emotional roller-coaster this week, I have mostly been...

Reading

Slowly, but surely. It's a curious read that makes me want to build and furnish doll's houses...

Watching

This may well be the most contemporary series I've watched on Netflix thus far...

Also,

It's ridiculously beautifully nuanced, funny and sweet. A huge testament to the original series. And it's also oddly therapeutic to watch last thing at night.

PS Please may I have a pet froglet?

See also: What to do if you meet a Clanger

Losing body parts

After three-and-a-half weeks of clinging on steadfastly like Nancy to her Bill Sikes... the toenail (big toe, left foot) fell off, or rather slid off, adhered to a plaster, still with nail varnish on it from (ahem) Christmas.

{J-Law wishes she'd never asked how the toe was doing...}

A universe of ewww. That is all I shall say now.

*Ergo the nausea. Hey, I've sat through almost every episode ever of ER, and all of House.

And yet.

Pinterest Pin of the Week

{Happy place}

Weekly Weblinks

Literary Linkage

• iPads 'better for babies than books' | on The Bookseller | I reserve the right to retain a small amount of scepticism
• Bookshop proposal for literature lovers | on The Bookseller
• Rosen goes on London indie tour | on The Bookseller
• Emma Donoghue pens children’s book | on The Bookseller
• Watch books being knocked over like dominoes | on TIME.com | via NYPL | for a Guinness World Record!
• Library lets users check out people as well as books | on Yonge Street (Canada)

Non-literary Linkage

• Good on you, Charlotte Church, for giving a damn | on The Guardian
• 'Poshness tests' block working-class applicants at top companies | on The Guardian | Argh, this country! >:-(
• Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day to keep fit? | on BBC Magazine
• Can we all join this Italian teacher's class next year? His homework assignment ethic is excellent | on The Huffington Post
• These adorably guilty dogs look adorably guilty | on The Poke
• Father customises daughter's eye patch | on Distractify | This is so sweet!

• Famous Baddies, made British (by this they mean the dated, mythical bowler-hat-clad, apologetic posh toff/Hugh Grant interpretation of British as devised by the Hollywood film industry...) | via The Poke

• A few very entertaining anatomy infographics (because who doesn't love an infographic...?) | on The Poke

• Love this (in spite of the rather dodgy material sourcing...)! Subterranean Facebook Blues | on Vimeo | via The Poke:

See also: Twittering Heights | on YouTube

• Goats riding horses | via The Poke | I appear to be somewhat obsessed with goats at the moment. Sorry (not sorry) about that.

And finally...

À bientôt, babies! (I fear I'm running out of closing gambits...)

qb xx