Mood

My normal routine has resumed. 

Work all day in the Office, alone. I kept my motivation reasonably high for most of the day, but eventually the constituents' assorted complaints about the state of the world got to me. It was definitely one of those days when a colleague or two sitting close by would have been a big help.

The other element to the tedious routine is scratching around for a Blip after a day spent almost completely inside a wee box staring at a screen. How I envy those with pets or children to Blip. My dinner (a typical last resort) was thoroughly unBlippable, although it tasted good enough. 

In the end it is my current book which takes centre stage. I have had it for about 2 years, but I had to put it aside during the tough parts of the pandemic because it is unrelentingly gruesome. 

The author was deported from Lithuania to a Soviet labour camp in Arctic Siberia in 1941, when she was 14. This happened a lot under Stalin's rule. I forget the number of victims in Lithuania, but it is eye watering. 

Her description of the conditions is horrifying, with graphic details of the effects of dysentery, typhus, frostbite, gangrene (from the frostbite) and starvation on people being forced to do hard labour for 16 hours each day, every day of the year.

She escaped after 7 years, found her way back to Lithuania, and went on to live to be 60.