I suspect that my ground-floor office in a building with thick concrete walls is a better place to spend a day when temperatures were over 30C (31C according to my car on the way home just before 7) than my house, which gets very hot, especially upstairs.

I also decided that, given that insofar as we have a dress code, (a) I set it and (b) it's "No onesies" in normal circumstances and "clothes" in COVID times, knee-length cotton twill shorts and a button-down shirt definitely counted as appropriate officewear, hairy legs and all. I have to say, I rather enjoy just how masc a look that is, particularly finished off with rainbow Teva sandals and a Panama hat (with a rainbow ribbon). Or a recently rebuzzed buzzcut-with-quiff, when indoors.

I think I might go for a swim after dinner.

Today I met some friends who I haven't seen in person since before the pandemic, at a riverside cafe-bar in Benson (specifically chosen for having lots of outdoor seating, as I don't think any of us felt entirely comfortable eating indoors). I was quite nervous about it, but it was actually rather nice (it helped that we had a table right at the edge of the seating area, so didn't have other people on all sides).

After I got back, I assembled my swimsuit pattern, but haven't quite dared to cut it out yet.

And this evening I will be avoiding the football by going for an evening swim. With any luck it will have stopped raining by then.

I would really like to come back to work after a week off and find that lots of fairly straightforward questions have been left to await my return because they weren't urgent and my team weren't entirely sure of the answers.

(On the other hand, I still prefer this to the person who called me on Teams to ask what time we were meeting tomorrow - which was in her calendar - and then followed it up with a question that could easily have waited until that meeting.)

Mostly, though, I would just like to be less attractive to horseflies, as in the last few days I have been bitten several times while getting ready to swim and my legs are really, really itchy.

However, good news of the day: C had her final oncology appointment today and has been given the all-clear!

It's a year ago today that I met up with longterm friend L and newer friend B to swim in the river. I'd swum in the river with L once before, several years ago, but while I'd enjoyed it, I didn't feel that the pleasure of being outdoors really outweighed the inconvenience of getting to the river when I live on the other side of Oxford, and I didn't go again. After three and a half months of not being able to swim at all last spring, I felt rather differently, and happily agreed to the suggestion that we should swim together every Friday over the summer. And then somehow when autumn came round none of us wanted to stop; swimming together had become much too important to all of our mental health, as the pandemic continued. So we kept going, and actually started swimming several times a week; we bought neoprene gloves and socks, and then jackets and shorts; we swam in woolly hats and brought hot water bottles and flasks of tea to warm us up as we got changed, and we kept swimming as the temperatures dropped to nearly freezing. One weekend, we broke ice to swim; we never managed to swim with snow on the ground because when it did snow none of us was comfortable driving to the lake. Swimming has been a joy and a solace to us all, and so has the friendship it's brought us.

We will be going for an anniversary swim this evening, with fancy doughnuts to celebrate. And, entirely coincidentally, I've also just finished making a swimming-themed shirt.

For the first time in about ten months, I am not at home. Instead, I'm in my parents' house, for the first time in nearly 18 months (we saw them last year but only outdoors).

This feels very strange, but it's good to be here.

Despite being assured the the side-effects from the second jab should be minimal, I'm fairly sure that jab 2 is worse for me that jab 1. (That or having jab 1 on a Friday meant that I noticed it less on the Saturday when I wasn't trying to work.)

I didn't have any fever this time, whereas I had a bit last time, but once again I had a splitting headache, and today I was so exhausted that I couldn't even manage to summon the energy for a walk (this is the first time in a long time that I have gone a whole day without leaving the house) and really, if I wasn't on leave next week and today hadn't been the last opportunity to catch up with various people before that, I think I would have called in sick and spent the day in bed. (And I managed to get to lunchtime and contemplated moving the afternoon's meetings to tomorrow and going back to bed before realising that I really did need to talk to my head of department, and there wasn't a slot tomorrow when we were both free.)

Early night tonight, then.

I had an actual meeting with four other people today, in an actual meeting room. It was really rather nice to be in a different room from Teams and my email and have to concentrate on the meeting instead of having my brain trying to multi-task whether I wanted it to or not. (Less nice was the fact that one of the participants turned up and first said she'd dropped her mask while cycling over, and then that she struggled to hear if she couldn't see people's lips, and could we take masks off anyway? Fortunately my head of department said she wasn't sure I'd be comfortable with it* so we did the meeting masked and it turned out that the problem was mostly with students mumbling anyway.)

It was also one of the other people who's been coming into the office on Tuesdays' birthday, so five of us briefly stood awkwardly around the foyer eating cake.

I'd also emailed the bus company last week to ask whether the offer to extend season tickets to make up for any time lost during lockdown still applied. I didn't hold out much hope, really, after fifteen months, but given that the last time I used a bus was the day my new annual pass started it seemed like too much money not to at least try, and somewhat to my surprise I got an email today asking when I wanted the extension to start. So now I have to decide when I'm going to feel comfortable taking buses again. Maybe after my week's leave? My first day back in the office will be 13 days after my second jab. (I will probably still be losing money on the pass, given that I'll only be using the bus two days a week to start with, but it still feels a bit like a year of free travel.)

*she knows that I've only had one jab so far** and am visiting my parents next week

**though I've managed to bring my second forward to tomorrow now

I don't agree with everything in this article, but it makes some interesting points and I was glad oracne linked to it yesterday, given that I am currently grappling with the question of what the working patterns of my team might look like when (if) things return to "normal".

It does strike me, though, that an awful lot of these thinkpieces about how hybrid or fully remote working is the way to go and the days of working full-time in offices are over turn out to have been written by people who were freelance and/or remote workers before the pandemic; people whose jobs really don't involve directly supporting other people or collaborating closely with a team, who are nevertheless that those things can be done just as well remotely as in-person.

Even for a team who are directly supporting an academic department, like mine, there are surprisingly few core tasks that can't be done remotely. The argument for coming back to the office is mostly based on intangibles: creating an environment that feels like a vibrant, busy department where students and academics want to spend time rather than just coming in for lectures and then going their separate ways; supporting newer and more junior members of the team to learn from their colleagues and develop in their roles. Managing a team remotely, making sure that everyone is supported and that at least some communication between individuals remains instead of everything going up and down the hierarchy, has taken an enormous amount of work and is a big part of why this year has been so very exhausting (not that I think that managers' preference should really be driving decision-making). Lots of people have said that they prefer working at home because there are fewer interruptions, without realising that those interruptions are often actually a key part of their job, even if they aren't specified in their job descriptions, or don't feel as important as the bigger tasks.

I think we'll end up with a hybrid arrangement (probably most people in the office 60%-80% of their contracted hours, and some who prefer being in full time), but I'm also finding that a lot of people (including me) are realising once they go back to the office that they do enjoy being there, and maybe even prefer it to working from home. Yes, commuting is a downside, but even apart from the possibility of in-person interactions instead of more bloody Teams calls, very few people have as good a setup at home as at work. (My working from home setup is pretty good; I brought my work chair home at the start of the pandemic, I have a big monitor as well as my laptop screen, a separate keyboard and mouse and a separate room to work in, but a desk that is a good size for a sewing machine is not a good size to work at.) It'll probably all be quite straightforward to implement, really; it's just taking an awful lot of planning.

After nearly 15 months of lockdown or semi-lockdown, there are so many things from the Before Times that feel like they belong to someone else's life.

I haven't worn any of my coats since March 2020. When I go out, it's either in the car, in which case I don't need a coat, or I'm walking, and wear a waterproof jacket instead.

I used to wear necklaces for work, but I haven't worn any jewellery apart from my wedding and engagement rings and watch since March 2020.

My office is full of my work shoes and boots, which I obviously haven't been able to wear while I've been working from home, but I look at them now and can't imagine wanting to wear any of them again. The main reason why they are in my office in the first place is because they're not comfortable enough to walk to and from work in, and most of them were bought when I was still someone who wore skirts and dresses. And now I have an office full of shoes I may never wear again.

I'd pretty much stopped using shoulder bags before the pandemic, because they always hurt to carry, but unless I have a backpack full of work stuff (or a bag full of swimming kit) I mostly just have my phone and keys with me these days. (My phone case has a slot for my debit card; I haven't been carrying my wallet, with my other cards, and haven't used cash at all since last March.)

In anticipation of visiting my parents! and spending time with a friend who's going to be holidaying near Oxford! I thought that possibly I needed something in between Massive Work Backpack and what I can fit in my pockets, looked at all the bags I currently own, decided that they definitely belonged to someone else's life, and ordered a small sling backpack. I apologise in advance if doing this turns out to jinx the reopening and we all have to spend another six months in lockdown.

The news is full of rising COVID case numbers, although I was at a meeting the other day where our Professor of Infectious Diseases seemed fairly upbeat about things and suggested that given the progress of the vaccination programme this wouldn't necessarily lead to increases in hospitalisations and deaths, and suggested we shouldn't be worrying too much. On the other hand, I've now got two active student cases in my department, having not had any at all since New Year, so it's hard not to be worried that we're staring down the barrel of the next wave and counting down to another lockdown. And, foolishly, I was just starting to feel a bit hopeful for a return to normal, and thinking that maybe once the pandemic is over my job will stop being a complete and utter nightmare (not that that's guaranteed, either).

(Also, I realise that I've been assuming that the pandemic has turned all jobs into complete and utter nightmares, but maybe it is actually just mine? Or at least, the higher education sector? Are other people's jobs not actually nightmarish right now?)