Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

 RL is quite chaotic right now. I am once again applying for jobs (not unexpected! my current one is a temporary post and while they would definitely put me somewhere else when it's finished, I'd rather have more choice about that than waiting-and-seeing would grant me). I have one interview coming up next week and two more applications in and I had forgotten just how time-consuming and mentally exhausting the application process in my field is. 

Other thing to say is: does anyone here want a Bluesky invite? I seem to get them pretty frequently and have one to give away at the moment to any DWers I know who are interested. 

 I am so liking the new job. I work three days a week from the office and one day a week from home, which is about my WFH sanity limit. One day a week feels like I'm borrowing space from my home to work in. More than one feels like my work has moved in like the assorted boyfriends of several past flatmates - you start off thinking "ah, so-and-so's here again" and before you know it so-and-so has taken up semi-permanent residence on your sofa, controls the TV, never does the washing up and pays zero towards the bills. 

Recently read: I just got to the end of Andrew Pyper's Lost Girls, which I read many years ago and have been wanting to re-read ever since but could never remember enough about the book to find it again. It turns out, having found the paperback at my mum's house, that I'd misremembered a) the cover b) the protagonist and c) the setting so that probably didn't help. Anyway, it's a sort of ghost story thriller, nicely done.

Currently reading: Lots of Tolkien. Very much back into Tolkien, thank you Rings of Power for reawakening this. The Silmarillion, in its shiny new illustrated edition that Mr eye_of_a_cat got me as a wedding anniversary present. (There's a lot of gorgeous new Tolkien editions about at the moment!) And 'The Lay of Leithian', the unfinished epic Beren and Luthien poem in one of the 'History of Middle-earth' volumes. 

In non-Tolkien material: also reading Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, which is a memoir of growing up on Orkney and returning there; and listening to Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, a nonfiction book about the impact of humanity on Earth and what would happen if we all vanished tomorrow. 

Currently singing: after a lengthy back-and-forth on the Tallis 'If Ye Love Me', in which we were going to do it for somebody's appointment(?) as an acolyte and then didn't because the Archbishop who has to actually do the acolyte-ing got called to London for the Queen's funeral, we are now back on it with the intention to sing it for when he becomes a Deacon.

However! The acolyte-appointing happened last week when I was on the rota as cantor, to sing the psalm - and we fully sing the psalm, it's not spoken. (Technically it is chant rather than singing singing but, if I'm reading music to do it, I'm singing.) I was absolutely terrified about this, because while I don't mind speaking in front of a crowd, singing on my own in front of a crowd is nerve-wracking enough, and the church was really busy because of the acolyte thing and the Archbishop was there, and while the Archbishop is nice enough he is also pretty musical himself and it turns out! was a choirmaster when he worked in Rome. NO PRESSURE. But anyway it went really well and I am really happy with how well I sang it! 

Currently watching: Willow, the new series (although we did rewatch the 80s film first), on Mr eye_of_a_cat's suggestion that we watch it because "the people who hated that Star Wars film and Rings of Power seem to really hate this and therefore it seems like we'd probably like it". It's so good! It's just lovely. Highly recommend.