Andy Murray is the be(a)st

• A better week at work this week. I had been worrying for the last month or so about setting my goals for the year and feeling a bit overwhelmed and tired, and then when I came to actually write them I realised I had quite a few goals that were ambitious but achievable, which was really good. I also had a bit of a breakthrough with productivity after feeling very scatterbrain for the last couple of weeks. It’s really helpful having been given an ADHD diagnosis last year and be able to recognise this for what it is and work with myself gently to improve things.
• I made a Japanese curry which was really good.
• Andy Murray played some really good tennis and, yes, I cried about it.
• The manual labour this week involved transporting forty sacks of compost onto my grandparents’ treacherously icy front patio. My grandad may be 89 and barely able to walk but that doesn’t stop his industrial-scale garden produce.
• We’ve watched a couple of films the last couple of days. First came Red Eye, a very silly Wes Craven thriller starring Rachel McAdams and a detestable Cillian Murphy, in which some fisherman bazookaed the defense secretary’s hotel room. Despite being the silliest film I’ve watched in a while I was enjoyably tense throughout and quite enjoyed myself. We also watched Emily the Criminal. Luke and I can’t get enough of new, serious Aubrey Plaza. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her in Parks and Rec at the time, but I tired of it a little over time, and have absolutely loved the White Lotus and Emily the Criminal roles for her. I’d say the film itself was a solid 7/10. It was very tense in an entirely different kind of way. It was interesting to watch someone be very scared and in danger and then repeatedly choose to put themselves back into that situation - I feel like I haven’t seen that very often.
• I finished reading Jane Eyre and I would say that I quite liked it, and am glad I read it, but I didn’t completely love it and I’m not sure if I’d revisit it. I moved onto Stay With Me by Ayòbámi Adébáyò which was a book club read with FT Embrace at work. We haven’t had book club yet so I won’t say a lot, but I found this very readable, but incredibly grief-porn-y. It was good, but it was also too much. I then read a graphic novel called Ballad for Sophie. This was very highly recommended by Ariel Bissett on the Books Unbound podcast which I enjoy listening to. I don’t often read graphic novels, but would like to read more so I was happy to take this recommendation, especially as it’s about two rival pianists and I play the piano (can you still say you play the piano when you sit down to it approximately 5 times a year? I choose yes). I was really enjoying this book, and then halfway through there was reference to one of the pianists having “a rare condition… chronic fatigue”. This was upsetting - I will link you to Anna’s post to explain why. I also found that the book was very much written/drawn under the male gaze. But despite both of those things, I enjoyed the story and a lot of the art was beautiful and the final piece of music that was written in notation form was a lovely little Chopin-meets-Studio-Ghibli treat. I’m now reading, and enjoying, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot.
• I am highly suspicious that I have a cold coming on. I woke up with a very sore throat and found myself coughing quite a lot during my morning Peg walk (to be fair it was “feels like -5”). It’s always hard to tell whether these things are an ME exacerbation or an acute illness but I’m back in bed for the rest of the day in the hope of nipping it in the bud with oranges, and tea.