Seeds, roots, blooming flowers, and renewal

It's the early afternoon, and the sun is streaming through our living room windows, and there are daffodils in a vase, and everything is generally wonderful. Today is the last day in what ended up being a ten-day holiday — something I didn't realise I needed until it happened.

I spent the first four days of the holiday up in Anglesey staying with gwehydd and her husband and son. Matthias and I have quite a few friends in that part of the world, and try to get there once every year or two if possible. Apart from going out to a restaurant on the Saturday night and a pub lunch on the Sunday, we stuck pretty close to home, as our friends' toddler son makes it difficult to do lots of travelling. But to be honest, a weekend spent hanging out indoors, playing board games and laughing at the adorable antics of our friends' son was exactly what I needed. Anglesey is a really beautiful part of the world, and unfortunately on all previous trips it's poured with rain. This time we were lucky enough to get sun during the moments we ventured outdoors, which was fantastic. gwehydd and her husband are going to be doing a lot of travelling in the upcoming months — he is a university lecturer and is on the verge of taking first study leave and later a sabbatical — so it was good to be able to catch up with them before they head off overseas. Our other good friend in Anglesey is married to a Polish woman and is about to move to Poland with her, so we're also not likely to see much of him in the next year either (unless we go to Poznan for a holiday, which we've been idly considering for a while but not planned seriously). It was therefore great to be able to catch up with everyone before they scattered to the four corners of the Earth.

After our trip to Anglesey we spent the rest of the holiday in Cambridge. I realised that this was the first holiday I've had in about four years that hasn't involved either going somewhere else to stay with friends or family, or having people stay with us, neither of which I find particularly relaxing. It was so amazing to just be able to hang out in Cambridge, binge-watching TV, cooking loads of food, and doing life admin without any demands on my time or feeling like I needed to entertain people. I think I'm going to insist on having at least several consecutive days of holiday like this every year from now on!

We did go out with Cambridge friends to the pub on Thursday night (I think I ended up spending most of the time ranting with shinyshoeshaveyouseenmymoves about Song of Achilles (which I detest and which seems to pop up in fandom spaces when I least expect it) and our general dissatisfaction with the direction some corners of fandom seem to be taking), but other than that, Matthias and I only left the house for some forays into town to buy food. (Inevitably, these coincided with pouring rain.) We made an attempt to binge-watch Daredevil, but have so far only made it six episodes in — not because we don't like this season, but because we had so much other TV to catch up with! In any case, I'm thoroughly enjoying Daredevil so far, although it does suffer in comparison to Jessica Jones.

I'm also doing a reread of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart books, which are as good as I remember them. There are some authors I like for their characters, some whose plotting is exquisite, some whose themes resonate deeply with me, and some I like for their turns of phrase. Pullman is one of the few whose work is good at all four of these elements, and whose books always reward rereads. Coming back to these familiar stories is like settling in under a warm blanket.

All in all, the past ten days have been utterly restorative. I kind of wish I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow!