Still suffering from A Cold. Here’s what I have done today:

• Slept well past noon;
• Cycled into town to deliver clean trousers to The Man, who got his muddy this morning whilst chasing a dog (who was chasing a chicken) through a country garden;
• Cycled home and collapsed on the sofa feeling sorry for myself;
• Heated up some canned soup for lunch;
• Watched many episodes of this seasons’ Spooks even though I’ve already seen them because a) I can’t be bothered to find something new on television that actually interests me and because b) as the Guardian’s “Chart of Lust” rightly pointed out recently, women everywhere are developing an obsession with Richard Armitage, and his nose, and the absurdly cool spy he plays. I’ve got a cold and midwinter angst; I’m allowed a small celebrity crush. Deal with it.
• Realized that the show called MI5 that I used to watch back in the days when my parents had a TV and I was trying to avoid my AP calculus homework is, in fact, simply Spooks re-named for an American audience;
• Had a long bath whilst listening to Classic FM’s Smooth Classics at 6; “your relaxation station.” Considered being embarrassed by this; thought better of it;
• Made something that resembled dinner out of pasta, half an onion, a huge clove of garlic, a carrot, and some cheese. Neglected to clear anything up after;
• Wondered if all this time alone in the house is making me a little crazy;
• Listened to the same Goo Goo Dolls song about twelve times in a row whilst perusing www.dooce.com
• Decided that I am definitely going a little crazy.

Note the absence of having got any work done. Or, for that matter, any Christmas shopping. I keep thinking that I’ll start feeling really Christmas-y soon and start looking forward to my favourite holiday with fresh zeal, but for some reason every time I think about it all that happens is that I get unnaturally exited for the fact that I’ll have a whole week off work. I want to be able to sleep in with my love and wake up and have bacon and eggs, and mungle around the house with neither of us having to go to work, or get work done; it’s the prospect of that which excites me.

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I have another cold; it’s bleak midwinter outside, all grey and frost and bare, spindly-limbed trees. It’s Christmas, almost, but it doesn’t feel it: I have the sense of running at full speed towards something that I can’t see, that’s just, perhaps, over-that-hill-there. We were meant to babysit tonight but because I’m feeling so rotten I’m staying home to soak in the bath and drink cup after cup of tea; somehow the prospect of spending the evening without The Man seems dark to me, even though I know I have a lot of work I need to get down to doing, anyway; even though I’m not great company at the moment anyway. I think this is what they call man-flu, maybe–but I’m not officially admitting to it, just throwing it out into the ether as a suggestion.

But in my avoidance of work, which today so far has taken the form of perusing The Guardian’s Books section (a far more highbrow form of avoidance than usual, to be honest), I came across this, which amuses me to consider. But my problem is not so much all the books I’ve bought but refuse, for some reason or other, to read, but all the books I’ve bought and would really really like to read but haven’t yet because other books keep getting in the way.

Take George Steiner’s My Unwritten Books: I’ve been on page three for nearly six months now, because I keep reading other things. Or Oil! by Upton Sinclair, Nature Cure by Richard Mabey, The File on H by Ismail Kadare, all of which are lingering near my pile of “books I’m currently reading,” as if they, too, want to be included; all of which I’ve dipped tentatively into at some point and then withdrawn so that, in their stead, I’ve finished Orlando, The Night Climbers, various novels by Colin Dexter, and an über-academic text on Walter Benjamin’s writings on The City (as a literary idea, so therefore, in my mind, it deserves unecessary capitals).

Then again, maybe I’m just in denial. Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me that actually, I don’t really want to read these books, in spite of the fact that I think I do. Or maybe I should just buckle down, concentrate on one thing for longer than fifteen minutes without finding something else more interesting, and actually read them.

But somehow, I think none of this is going to stop me from buying oodles of books this holiday season.

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With hands wrapped in cashmere-and-leather gloves, I braved a walk home yesterday on a day that was toying with being legitimately, painfully cold.  It can’t have been all that bad, or my feet, which wore no socks, would have objected at the first sign that I wasn’t racing to the bus stop; and my ears would have begun to hurt, and all those other signs that winter is in full swing and it’s a cruel kind of winter.  This was just a beautiful winter.  My hands turned numb from taking photos; I actually had to remove them from their gloves so that they could move around more freely inside my pockets, trying to remember how to be hands and not just frozen little extensions of the body.

the preponderance of drivers who have decided to honk at me lately while I try to cross the street.  More on that later…but for now, just another serene shot of gorgeous Oxford…

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