A duel? Are you mad?

As I write this, we are almost arrived in March. Here in Ireland, we’ve been in a lockdown since the end of December, restricted to 5km from home for everything but essential travel. These restrictions are set to continue at least until April, and it seems to me likely that, for most of us, they’ll continue until June. There’s not much to be done about it until the government can make good on their plans of vaccinating 1,000,000 people per month (which number will allegedly be reached by the end of June), but I don’t mind confessing that I’m sick of it, and only going to get sicker before there can be any relief.

I mean, this last week I hardly did any exercise at all, because the confirmation that we’re locked down for at least another month — however long expected — sent me on a wobbly journey of self-pity. We’re all running out of resiliency, since none of us are accustomed to so little in-person contact and so much planning for every encounter with other people, even as casual as going to the shops. I can understand, if not condone, the anti-lockdown protests that sprung up in the last week. Even though I suspect the organisers of being right-wing anti-government assholes, with all the shit that goes with them.

Me, I’m reading a lot of fanfiction and trying not to get stuck in fretting over what I can’t control. Star Wars Leia-time-travel-fix-it-fic. Example. And my favourite.

Shortly after reading E.E. Knight’s Novice Dragoneer, I ordered its sequel. Daughter of the Serpentine is, thematically and tonally, very much in the vein of its predecessor. Ileth is now sixteen, and officially an apprentice dragoneer. But her position remains contingent and precarious, especially as trade revenues in the Vale Republic have dropped in the wake of their disadvantageous peace with a neighbouring power — and dragons and their support staff are a significant burden on the exchequer. Meanwhile, to the north, Rari pirates are also stifling the Republic’s trade, and Ileth is about to find herself in the middle of a war — while also dealing with a powerful man who thinks the best way to get what he wants is to claim her as his daughter. Although it remains disappointingly short of queer main characters (sue me, I have developed preferences in my middle age), it’s a fun, entertaining story about professionals. With dragons.

I’ve also been rewatching the Ioan Gruffyd Horatio Hornblower series. Damn, that man is too pretty to be real.