Twelve Days in the Year: 27th May 2025

The good news is that I slept past half four for first time since we returned from Bulgaria on Friday – having been waking consistently at half six, i.e. half four in British money, for the last few days of the holiday; no inexplicable wakefulness, and no wake-up call from Hector feeling insecure. The less good news is that it’s half past five, and the alarm clock dragged me out of a series of incredibly strange dreams, something to do with swimming in the sea as part of an organised group and then desperately searching for the house where I’d left my coat, which had mysteriously vanished together with all the people I was with, but instead finding a desiccated squid-like creature that then began to move and talk to me. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn… Feeling completely dazed and groggy as a result, and it takes a long time to shift.

Nevertheless, up I get to wash last night’s dishes and make tea. It’s the first day of a new morning routine, as A.’s place of work has changed to somewhere another 10-15 minutes’ further on from the old location, so she has to leave the house at quarter past rather than half past seven. It’s going to take some negotiation and experiment to get this right; we embark on a complex two-step between kitchen, sitting room and bathroom, solved primarily by my staying out of the way. We can work out how to get us both into a state of readiness, for example if I need a lift to the station, once we’ve got the basic procedure down. I sort out the cheese – I’m making Bulgarian Sirene again, as it’s illegal to bring it home in luggage – while A.’s in the bathroom, then continue washing up once she’s out of the shower. Olga is being very demanding and constantly underfoot; I pick her up for a cuddle and she digs her claws in through my thin nightshirt. Shower and shave, and it’s still only eight o’clock.

I go out to check the garden; there’s been a bit of rain overnight, so the newly planted borlotti bean plants are looking happy, and various things in the greenhouse that I potted up yesterday have perked up enormously. Three more emperor dragonflies have emerged from the pond overnight; one has already flown off leaving just its exuvia, one is fully emerged and drying off its wings – it really hasn’t chosen the best day for this – and a third is only just pulling itself out of its old body.

I settle down to two hours of emails, catching up after a fortnight’s absence in which I actually managed to ignore the accumulating pile in my inbox. It’s mostly reviews editor stuff, with just a few more urgent departmental tasks, some student references, a bit of social chitchat with people who liked a short review that appeared while I was on holiday, and a growing backlog of requests to review article submissions, funding applications and promotion cases. At least none of this demands much inspiration, just the methodical updating of spreadsheets and sending out formulaic acknowledgements with a promise to send out editorial comments in a week or so.

Break at half ten to go into town to get a haircut – I’ve been going to the establishment long enough for the barber to know not to attempt much conversation, so long as he gets to comment on the intractable nature of my hair – and to buy some fruit. The Co-op continues to have almost empty shelves (I must admit that early William Gibson novels led me to expect that cybercrime would be about daring heists in orbital stations, not sabotaging supermarket stock systems), but the visit is extended by meeting neighbours who wanted to ask about the holiday.

Back home for coffee and a slice of my unsuccessful attempt at Portokalopita (orange pie) – at least it is now obvious what I did wrong and how the phrasing of the recipe was unhelpful, so I should do better next time. Another brief excursion down the garden to check on the dragonflies; the wing-drying one is still there, perhaps because of the drizzle, while the other has now fully emerged but not yet extended its wings. They really have picked a terrible day to venture from the water; I’d always assumed that they must have some means of discerning whether conditions will be suitable, but apparently they are determined optimists: we’re past the late May bank holiday so it’s bound to be nice…

Another hour and a half of emails, interrupted by software updates that refuse to be put off. Phone call from A. to rant about her new working conditions and inconsiderate management. Break for lunch – asparagus soup, made using the woodier spears because neighbour didn’t pick them consistently in our absence – and catching up on the Doctor Who episode from three weeks ago. Another one that seems excessively concerned with the show’s own history and mythology, such that it becomes both MacGuffin and deus ex machina, and all the stuff about gods and the power of storytelling felt extremely Neil Gaiman-esque (which may of course mean that he stole it all from Nigerian traditions).

Lunchtime dragonfly update: one has flown off, but the other still hasn’t extended its wings, and the plant to which it’s clinging has bent down dangerously close to the water. I endeavour to prop it up out of harm’s way – if the wings get wet before they’re ready, they can be damaged beyond repair. Half an hour later it starts to rain heavily, and I have to run out with an umbrella to try to rig up some shelter. It would be really good to have half an hour of sunshine this afternoon.

The afternoon passes with yet more emails, but by the end of it I think I’ve answered almost all of them (apart from a high school student who said nice things about one of my books), without having been able to delete as many as I’d like. The aggravating thing is that, because Outlook marks a message as ‘answered’ if there is a reply earlier in the thread, even if the latest message hasn’t actually been answered, I have to keep checking whether or not I’ve actually done it. Pause for a cup of herbal tea – it’s raining too hard to go into the garden again, so I just have to hope the umbrella is holding – and see the news that Cardiff is going ahead with closure of its ancient history programmes, which leads to feelings of anger and despair at the state of British universities and their senior management teams. At least I can feel that I’ve had a decent run, and have a range of homecraft skills (beer, sausages, cured meats, cheese, baking…) that could conceivably from the basis of a second career – but I would miss the teaching.

I finish the last email just as A. gets home; hastily give the cats their tea, which they should have had half an hour earlier, and then get ours going: chilli, as the go-to comfort food. Down to the garden again to pick salad leaves, and can see that the dragonfly is still there, apparently undamaged but no sign of it flying off. A. is shattered and grumpy, so after food I leave her to enjoy peace and quiet (and old Pride and Prejudice episodes) to catch up on the recording of last week’s jazz composition class, focusing on polyrhythms – I’m not going to have time to develop anything for this week’s class, but at least I’ll know what everyone is talking about after my absence.

Final trip to garden; dragonfly still there, so just have to hope it’s gathering its strength before a quick flight away from the pond. Watch the final ten minutes of the penultimate P&P episode while writing up this entry; Hector snuggles up next to me, Olga is on A.’s lap, Buddy is asleep on his cushion. We head up to bed around half past eight – partly due to tiredness, and partly because the cats all indicate that this is their expectation. Read another chapter of R.F. Kuang’s Babel, with which I am making very slow progress, mainly because it keeps giving me nightmares about being in Cambridge, and then a sudoku before lights out.

Next morning, the dragonfly has gone. This may be the first part of an improving tale, in which I am rescued by a helpful dragonfly who explains that in its youth it was saved from drowning by a helpful idiot setting up an umbrella over the pond.