It seems to be snowing outside—or at least the rain is thickening and whitening. We were planning to go out for tea at Mariage Freres a few blocks away, but the body shudders, in its Sunday afternoon torpor, at the thought of dressing up (coat, boots, hate, gloves, bumbershoot) and venturing into the gloom. Still one should really get out of the house at some point. A movie, maybe? ‘Parasite’ which is on nearby?

Or maybe it’s safer to stay tucked up inside, not risk encountering the Virus, unless we are, unknown to ourselves, already infected? A lovely dinner last evening with neighbours in the building, during which we all uneasily joked about catching it and neither embraced nor shook hands, but bowed courteously in the Japanese fashion, admiring the gesture’s reticence and healthiness.

Shall we go? says my husband. Well…

No, we are staying home, whether out of lethargy or fear (wetness, viruses). My husband will make tea. I will continue reading a new biography of Larkin, bought in London 6 weeks ago, and not very good: bits of Life interspersed with Poem Contexts and Analyses. My individual volumes of Larkin are in Palo Alto; here I have the Collected, most frustratingly organized, pages falling out, that defect of ageing Faber paperbacks.

Maybe I’ll go onto the back porch and dig another couple bagfuls of soil out of a big square plastic (faux terra cotta) planter, so I can chuck the planter. Presently it is too heavy to lift off its corner of the porch. Pigeons nest in it, despite the forks and shiny CDs spinning on their strings.The soil can be dumped in the back of the building garden.

Off to London and St Andrews next Wednesday, unless the Virus. . .

Beverley Bie Brahic