You Can Call Me El

Hello again. Here we are still in lockdown! Isn’t it interesting that in the UK we seem to refer to it as lockdown, while other countries are calling it quarantine? Right?! Lockdown rather than quarantine! What’s that about! I know this is using quite a loose definition of the word ‘interesting’. But I thought it was, or at least a tiny bit noteworthy, and on balance, I think that’s partly as a result of one of the many annoying new habits I’ve picked up recently. This habit is one I like to call ‘being furiously observant all of the time’, and it leads me on to the subject of this post, which is Mindfulness and Gratitude Oh My God. In this new observant state, I notice so many things. I see specks of dust on the bedside table. I hear the clatter of a mug onto a table. The vibration of a phone is excessively loud. I can hear birds singing, even though there’s nowhere for them to live near this flat so I don’t know where they can be. The tiled floor feels smooth and hard and t...

Hi friends. It’s me, Eleanor. Long-term fans of me will remember this blog from my third year of university. That’s right! I spent a year abroad as an English Language Assistant in Chemnitz, Germany, and I kept a blog every week, and I’ve revisited it today for the first time in five (5) years. [1] And now here we are on 22 nd April 2020, in London, England, the world. By my count, this is week 5 of enforced working from home, and about a month since lockdown officially started. Hope things are going well!!!! I was moved to sit down and write this today for a couple of reasons. I will lay them out for you here: Number One : As of yesterday, I am on furlough and I don’t have any work to do apart from domestic labour such as keeping the flat clean and tidy, which because of Feminist Reasons I’m not fucking doing, even though it would actually make sense for me to do it because my sweet boyfriend is still working full-time/breadwinning as we speak. (“I’m not your litt...