the quirky brunette: Sunday Summary | Friday night and the lights are low...

Dear FOQ

So here we all are! One day away from the end of the longest yet swiftest month.

Thirty days has September,

April, June and November.

Unless a leap year is its fate,

February has twenty-eight.

All the rest have three days more,

excepting January,

which has six thousand,

one hundred and eighty-four.

– Brian Bilston

Probably already kissing goodbye to all our good intentions.

via here

We’re in a strange flux state at the moment, I think (what? Another one? I hear you wail; haven’t we been in a strange ol’ state for the last two years?). We’re being told in one ear that we can be a little more fast and loose with masks... we can go out, we can claw back what little’s left of our lives BC... all the while the latest variant lingers.

Have we been thrown under a bus...

via here

...yet again?

Or can we really emerge, blinking from the Covid Cave, safe in the knowledge that those making the rules think we’re safe to be let out into the wild?

I’m both elated and cautious.

I’m enjoying the freedom of being able to make plans without as much of a proviso any more, but I’m also somewhat timid about letting the walls down too soon. Imagine my relief when our vicar this morning encouraged us all to respect one another’s space, even now.

For the most part I live for people respecting my space, in case that weren’t evident from the last 43 and a half years of my existence...! I’m still going to be wearing my ‘I was social distancing before it was cool’ tee-shirts regardless of where we are on the curve (and is the curve even a thing now?).

On Friday night, I went to a workmate’s fortieth (which had been postponed by the ‘Vids twice in 2021, so technically the birthday girl was preparing for her 40¼th by the time the long-awaited event took place).

Dressed up, all out.

And it was both epic and strange; an epic-strange-epic sandwich.

Epic because we could be without masks for long enough to hold conversations... or at least try to because we’d all forgotten how hard it is to be heard over music...

Strange because we’d all forgotten how to ‘social' in the last two years. (OK, perhaps that’s just me; I’ve never been one for small talk so if I reach a point whereby I know there’s no point in initiating conversation because of the aforementioned music volume, I will just sit there and smile beatifically, or mime the need for another cheeky prosecco, or look longingly at the dance floor, summoning courage to unleash the flailing beast within.)

Juan, trying to educate me in the ways of salsa when I clearly never inherited the dance genes in my fam. Props for trying, though...

But then epic again when the dancing stripped us of a good few inhibitions, which we felt compelled to cling to because we’ve just spent two years avoiding other people and that mindset isn’t going away overnight.

In short, though, this rather marvellous party turned out to be the best possible reintegration into society, and into something approximating Normality. Thanks, again, Lyndsey! ♥️

Plus I got to wear my new flapper dress

Nothing says class like a hurriedly-taken toilet selfie, baby.

and reawaken the long-dormant Louise Brooks–QB-hybrid within, the one who’d been buried under middle-aged spread and lockdown lbs.

So that was nice.

This fortnight, I have been mostly...

Reading 📚

Digital Minimalism | Cal Newport

A Theatre for Dreamers | Polly Samson

and finishing...

The Confessions of Frannie Langton | Sara Collins

I'll admit, I read this in about an eighth of the time it took me to come around to reading it (blame lockdown; that's what it's there for).

***Here, possibly, be spoilers...***

And I did enjoy it, up to a point. Critics on Goodreads thought the relationship between Frannie and her mistress was predictable and maybe it was but it seemed to evolve organically. And Frannie's perspective was one rarely seen in literature, of a black, gay woman who had used having been taken advantage of... to her advantage, learning to read (against expectations) but then exacting her revenge on the men seeking to control her.

But the ending was a little meh. There was certainly predictability in the way, or state, in which Frannie found her mistress once she returned after having been evicted, and there was the usual frustrating cryptic reveal of who Frannie's mother actually was (I'm still not sure but I think I know who it was...).

Watching 📺 🎥 💻

Sort your Life Out with Stacey Solomon

Not to be confused with Nick Knowles' Big House Clearout on Channel 5. One's Stacey, one's Nick. Got that? Don't, whatever you do, muddle them up...

Right, now that's all covered off, I'd very much like a week's access to a warehouse and somebody to organise my worldly goods by category so I can declutter the lot in one go. Anyone fancy volunteering?

The books and stationery alone would raise eyebrows.

Toast of Tinseltown