Look familiar? Yes, I did accidentally send this post out on Wednesday evening. Sorry for the spam, and thank you for your patience. I’ve extended the publication week discount out of gratitude.

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The nesting, I think, has begun. I’m the type of person who gets a bit weird if she doesn’t go outside during the day, but not this week. M returned from New York on Sunday and immediately set to cleaning the fridge. The radiators are covered in tiny clothes the older women in my family have knitted for babies who have long grown up and had babies of their own. We have been fortunate and given plenty, but a flurry of brown boxes arrived in the middle of the week, and at some point we will open them and put the contents in already laden bags. The air is thick with waiting.

The weather has helped. This cold drizzle is not for venturing in. I put the compost out, go to the shop to satisfy my desires (cheap chocolate sponge roll, Marmite, crumpets). I wake up early and immediately grab my laptop, knowing my brain will power down by lunchtime, capable of thinking only of carbs and baths and when I need to get ready to leave the house, because it takes me longer to go anywhere these days. I make lists. I feel, a lot of the time, like I am floating - not unpleasantly - in a kind of strange, salty pool.

Among this have been riches. An old friend travelled an hour for lunch with a fist full of comte and we ate pears and little buttery jacket potatoes and spoke about heartbreak. I have become obsessed with a ridiculous, if effective, podcast called “get sleepy” which does what it says on the tin. The street has exploded with blackthorn blossom, and the weather has blown much of it off, turning the pavements polka-dot. Other good things this week:...