Today I joined in the global trauma and got tested for the coronavirus. I hate having my nose touched at the best of times, and to be poked inside was truly a miserable experience. it was over an hour ago and the inside of my head still feels tender. Boo. Bring on the vaccine.
Nearly the end
Nearly the end of the year. An artificial marker, perhaps, but I am rather tired and I hope the next year is less tiring. I don’t think it will be. There is a lot of worry and weariness to come – pandemic, work, this bloody flat, etc. And those are just the ones I can […]
Everything is open
Everything is open, I don’t understand how lockdown works. Well, I suppose it means there are fewer people out, which is certainly a good thing in a pandemic. But even the famous fish sandwich on the Golden Horn was open, and the famous fish sandwich man was there. We popped into the flat and saw […]
Plague island
That’s the European headline papers in the UK have picked up on, understandably. There is quite the fog of uncertainty about this new variant. My own current understanding is that: Viruses mutate all the time of course, and there is a new variant. It is appearing often enough in testing that it appears to be […]
Tier 4
London went into Tier 4 lockdown last night and there does seem to be a great deal of anger. I wonder if we are reaching a point where it will break. I’m sure much of the anger is at “cancelling Christmas” but much of it is, correctly, directed at Boris and his government. Everyone could […]
Year of sadness
I listened to a podcast on the coronavirus response in the UK. It went through aspects of the pandemic response over the last nearly-year, and asked if it was inevitable that things would be this bad. The answer, inevitably, was no. They summed it at the end: an unserious prime minister, a weak centre, good […]
Brief excursion
There was only enough food in the flat for one so I left it for the GF and went out for a short stroll and to bring myself back some lunch. I found a new street in Galata, one running parallel to Papadopoulous where the GF and I once viewed a very crumbling flat in […]
Small victories
A few small achievements on Monday to make up for the stagnant weekend. The first was that I finally managed to call the helpline for our visas to learn that they were still being processed, and that was why we had not heard back. A relief, as it was definitely keeping me up at night. […]
Time vortex
Weekend lockdowns put me in a sort of time vortex, I have no idea when it is. This weekend was particularly grim as I had a great deal of work including a meeting, and the sky was dark and grey so there is almost no light in our flat; what there is gets sucked up […]
Day the second
We didn’t go for a stroll after all, as it felt rather odd and unethical to be out when it was forbidden to actual Turks. Instead I did a good bit of work, and we did some planning for the flat (including a pinterest board (!)), ate biscuits with our tea and turned the heating […]