headed out to skating. Forgot water, which was bad, and also skates, which was worse.

Ooh, that's something to chew on. People are going to be actively looking for weird, gnarly, unpredictable.

a delightful person I work with returned to the office today saying that the meeting she'd gone out for had not gone well. "I forgot to invite anyone."

Today’s joy: discovering a book series I love that I thought had three books actually has ten books 😍

I'm rereading the Puffin Mahabharata, which is the edition I read as a kid, and wow, ok, I know the story, everyone knows the story, but it's a VERY CRAZY STORY. things just keep happening! super weird things!

10% of profits from this special edition will be donated to Mermaids, a charity that works to support trans, nonbinary, and gender-diverse young people in the UK. I'm very happy and excited about this one!

My brilliant friend Ruth wrote this incredible essay about grief and the ways that trans people are failed by institutions and the ways in which we must - must! - resist doom to create something better. We find solace and solidarity and help and hope in community 🏳️‍⚧️

Minor manuscript tweak took the entire day, still not really pleased with it, starting to get super dispirited about the whole thing. what else is new I guess but it kind of feels new.

I've been a bit, eh, it's fine, kind of goofy, about the Murderbot tv show so hadn't caught up, I see they waited till ep 10 to be brilliant, compelling tv, in which Gurathin does *not* look like one of the aliens from Galaxy Quest

Seen this morning on the side of a mid-sized removals van: "ASK US ABOUT OUR HEARTBREAK SPECIALS"

my friend @llincathryn.bsky.social’s latest, All Is Bright, is a lovely tender Welsh f/f that lifts & deepens with Advent, and you can in fact read a chapter a day in December, and preorder now www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FS4G5PKX

via @tausierra.bsky.social I love this of course and somehow I think @asakiyume.bsky.social will as well

second time in a month that we've had a day completely derailed by Zipcar, who unfortunately have the car club monopoly round here even tho they're shit.* * remember that time they rented me a car when they thought I HAD NO LICENCE!! 😱

I got excited cos there was a body jewellery place in the neighbourhood. Wall to wall straight girls and not a spike or a nipple or VCH in sight, sigh.

Just hit 100 books read this year which is unlike me! best so far is either I Who Have Never Known Men (Jacqueline Harpman, wildly brilliant feminist dystopian SF, they're advertising it on the Tube!) and Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins, wildly brilliant epistolary punk SF. Highly rec both.

the sellers of the house we're buying send email. their solicitor is from Widgets Law. I have a heart attack. ...no, they haven't instructed Widgets Widgets Law, a firm I dealt with frequently in re: sums of money involving seven zeroes! different people! everything's FINE.

my job other than being a writer also requires me to spell things very much correctly, I can't spell manoeuvre or caffeine

reading a book pitched as contemp women's fic, which it is--kind of? then I thought. paper counterpart licence. Camden is a cheap London borough to live in. ppl make video calls but they don't text. turns out it's a book about 30yos set in 2020s by author who would've been 30 in 1990. gotcha.

Big news- the absurdly overpriced Robert Jackson Bennett sequel, A Drop of Corruption is 99p for Kindle today only. It’s an amazing book don’t pay £14.99 for it!

I have this evening made a restrained purchase of a single <£15 item off of A Website. They have felt the need to email me 9 times about it.

I tried a Lime bike for the first time today! it was fun, I think, though not enough to make me like cycling for its own sake - turning right through three lanes of traffic, particularly unenjoyable - but the electric assist is fun.

ahhh! this little book is one I'm very fond of.

I have so far managed to avoid the touristy part of the commute, but today I walked past a queue of fully 50 people waiting to get a selfie with a red telephone box

From yesterday; me telling the story of Arjuna, Brihannala, and Krishna, a queer tale from the Mahabharata

so apropos of nothing, let me tell you that there are two (2) known trans people in the Mahabharata. Shikhandi, who asked the spirits if he might wholly transition before his marriage; and Arjuna, who rode into battle with Krishna as his charioteer, having witnessed for him the word of God.

this is a lovely book! exactly what you would expect from a Spock book by Una.

I went to the pool tonight after a long time away and it was lovely! the great joy of swimming not in a lake is you can put your head underwater!

look, a five-day tube strike is just not what I ordered, ok. it is not what was on my weekly Amazon order from the universe.

well, if we're all doing it. there was a huge rush for Yuletide 2009 because you actually had to have an account to sign up that year - don't think I thought it was a big deal at the time!

What an excellent cat.

I’m so pleased with my little zone 2 balcony garden but especially with these!

you know how one part of your soul is always, immortally seventeen, and in unrelated news, the cute butch at Waitrose said she liked my hair!!💕

the bits of fandom who annoy me hate SNW now? I’m not going to act on this information in any way but it amused me

two snapshots from my commute

today, two cyclists tried to kill me within one minute of each other! excellent work, team north London cyclists.

this is my first Wednesday in a while with a word count of exactly zero! shunya. neoini. none. and cos I don't work on Wednesdays I actually know to the £ how much this costs me. urgh.

book rec: The Real Deal, by Caitlin Devlin - assured contemp about the traumatised adult alumni of a reality tv show about kids in stage school. cool & popcorny but fascinatingly, in conversation with Ballet Shoes - which after all is also about high-pressure exploitative kids stage school.

Important announcement: the trendy green pistachio Lindor are actually nicer than all the rest put together

for reasons I'm carrying around two laptops & a bunch of other crap, now's not the time to desperately need to lug around a paperback, but I've just started Ammonite, and, uh

Only from fallibility can come sincere exhortation

first day at a new job tomorrow! kind of. anyway I just double-checked my (extremely easy, made-in-heaven) commute, and picked out a dress.

hi people who quote-post something with no additional text just so those who have reposts turned off will see it, surely you're not unaware that everyone hates you

in case anyone was worried, why yes, the chillies did miss me

Home from the north! It's been 10 years since I decided to plan an annual week's holiday in the Lakes and invite my 12 closest friends to come with. it is a lovely time! pub lunches and scones, walks and wild swimming, toasts and ghylls and pots and forces.

related: nearly everything in Coniston is named after Bluebird K7, which is quite right and proper, but I did wonder unforch aloud in the fudge shop, if blue Bluebird fudge tastes like sunk boat.

Weather dreadful, but wandered into venerable Coniston pub as it opened asking for 18 people to be fed, and we were greatly fed.

my whole aesthetic these days: writing, wild swimming, hair

more life beside Coniston Water

wild swimming on August bank holiday

Coniston in another mood, plus it’s so late in the season that the brambles are ripe