Old Town view

As our kitchen window had been so filthy for so long, I'd forgotten that it is possible to get some really good views out of it (we also don't eat in the kitchen any more, as there isn't a table, so that doesn't remind me to clean the window so regularly). Today, the haar cleared (at least for a while), so I got a few photographs out of the kitchen window (and enjoyed a very pleasant walk along Great Junction Street, up the Walk and back through the Park in order to get my steps (and some wine)).

Workwise, the day wasn't quite as tough as it might have been, as my 6-8pm commitment is actually on Wednesday. However, my 6-8am commitment did go ahead, so I got up about 5.20am, and had a cup of coffee, before plunging into an excellent webinar on my book involving colleagues in the Asia-Pacific region. The side effects of lockdown allow us to rethink these types of possibilities. Of course, having to get up early means it's hard to sleep the night before. Plus I got back into a bit of doom scrolling last night because I think that Trump and Co are genuinely trying to pull off a coup in the US (so I had very little sleep last night). But I don't, on balance, think they will succeed, mainly because of the size of Biden's majority, which is much more substantial, obviously, than Trump's was in 2016. But before we get to the point of a full and proper transition, there's a lot of political and legal calculations and manoeuvring going on, including, I suspect, Trump making the case for a pardon of any federal crimes committed.

Anyway, after a busy day, I abandoned my post at the laptop relatively early to spend some quality time with my spinning bike. That helped me to get rid of a lot of the stress of the day and the previous night. What also helped was a comfort tea, comprising homemade soup with burek from Kukina on Leith Walk, a few glasses of red, and an interesting programme about Cornwall and poverty (during the pandemic) with Simon Reeve, who I really rate as a broadcaster.