PT is always honest, so I'll level with you: I've hung on to hope up to now, but I've really struggled today.

You get good days and bad days, I guess.

It has been a very stressful week, and the weekend brought an onslaught of unwelcome news. Just too much to adequately process:

I learnt on Saturday of the passing, because of COVID-19, of Professor Aileen Baviera, who helped me with my most recently published project. She was a wonderfully approachable person, as well as a highly respected academic, and she will be very much missed.

Then there's the surging death toll in Spain -- today to 1,720 (from 1,326 only yesterday). I fear for all those lovely Spanish people who dealt with us so kindly and warmly just so very, very recently. Stay safe, Fabio, and Pati, and Beatriz, and Serge, and Patricia, and all the rest of you...

Then there was the news that West Kalimantan has precisely one ventilator...

And, on a very different note, the news that Emirates is slashing its global flights. We'd been tossing up -- try to change our flights with Emirates, or rebook with Malaysia Airlines? -- so we were somewhat ambushed by this news. (Not that it changes the fact that we can't say for sure when we can get back into Malaysia anyway...)

We haven't been near the shops since Friday morning, and I'm dreading our next foray. Shortages, queues, the kind of proximity we're being told to avoid -- none of this is good, and preliminary investigations into getting things delivered also threw up a raft of obstacles.

I'm sure I'll bounce back. I usually do. But today I'm deflated. Even though I know I'm much better off than so very many, I just want to put my head in my hands, and howl.

This from Cangas, in Galicia: "Don't worry. Everything is out of control." How apt...


The photo at the top is from Huesca. I never found out precisely what the story was, but the angel figure is at one end of the wall, stalking this lurking devil figure at the other:


It seems as though this is what life is all about now. The good (health, security, well-being, and human solidarity) versus the bad (sickness, death, disintegration, disorder, and rupture).

Go, Angel, go!

And here's a shrine in Cordoba: "Under the shadow of your wings, protect us."


Amen...