Friday 16th December - energy slump

I'm supposed to be joining our book club zoom tonight; it's a 'mixed meeting' in the sense that some meet together as we all used to, each bringing a plate of something halfway between party food and supper food. We would graze on a mixture of bread and unusual cheeses, olives, marinated prawns, sliced cold meats, salads and savoury snacks, followed by a mix of fruit and dessert. Luckily we all have reasonably robust digestions.

Now we are a mix of face2face and zoom members. This is a curious situation; the conversational conventions for zoom and in person mmeetings are very different. Also, we zoomers can hear, but not see all of the face2facers. We watch, it's a bit like watching a TV programme,  and listen, and a disembodied hand will appear passing a plate of quiche or bowl of salad. There will be a conversation round the table, and a conversation using chat between the zoomers, commenting on the 'programme' that we are 'watching'. 

Later, when the food has been consumed (we zoomers have usually got a drink - wine, sherry, tea, water - and some kind of snack - crisps, cake, biscuits - too.

Tonight the book club is discussing 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery and then deciding between 'Slow Horses', 'The Twyford Chronicles', 'Outliers', and 'The Nickel Boys', if I have remembered correctly.  I've said my prefernce is for any except 'The Nickel Boys' which sounds a bit of a tough read.

I'm not joining in; the events of December have caught up with me, ending with with that slippery descent at the beginning of the week

(Not surprised that Tuesday was a day of doing nothing! I'm improving day by day)

And the usual end-of-term energy slump has landed. I shall be asleep in bed before they start on dessert.

However we have created a decent looking stack of mostly Christmas presents and stuff to take to our halfway meeting point with our children tomorrow.