I’ve been working hard on a review for the Jacobin (a left-wing US internet journal, as I understand) of a book about the Arab-Israeli conflict. I may post it here later. Hence the lack of comment – from me – on the latest extraordinary events in Britain and all over the world. That will resume soon, and will probably feature our Prime Minister, currently languishing in St Thomas’s Hospital with the virus he’s proved so incompetent at dealing with up to now. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, they say (or used to); so I’ll try to get my comments in before that point. I really hope it doesn’t reach that. I’d prefer to see him live and be humiliated.

Before then I must clean my house. I usually, of course, have a woman in to do it – I’m a  professor, after all (joke) – but she has to isolate herself too. Otherwise I’m doing OK, with kind children and neighbours to keep a distant eye on the old bugger, plenty of booze, and a freezer stuffed with pre-prepared junk meals. I worry a bit for myself, with an ‘underlying condition’ (but doesn’t everyone have that, even if it’s a healthy condition? Sorry, but academics are prone to be pedantic); but I’m far more concerned about others, especially NHS workers and my brave paper boy, and the country generally. But it’s good to know that I’m serving the nation by lounging lazily on my couch.

For reading I’ve just bought a book on Viking women: Johanna Katrin Fridriksdottir’s Valkyrie, which looks terrific, and terrifically feminist; and may help me understand Kajsa and my other female Scandi friends better.