1. Apparently I have taken 71,285 steps this week, which translates to a grand total of 55.56km or 34.5 miles. I'm not entirely sure I believe this, it sounds like a ridiculous amount for just walking between the bus stop and work (admittedly the best part of a mile each way), the shops and work at lunch time (about half a mile each way, I think, or maybe three-quarters of a mile) and from the ring road to work three times (two and a half miles each time). I have also apparently climbed 79 flights of stairs. This is definitely not true. Mostly I have climbed two flights of stairs, one at home and one at work, quite a lot of times each (I have to climb one or other of them every time I want to go to the loo, unless I'm in bed, just for starters), although admittedly today we had a Faculty away day in a college building where you had to go down three flights of stairs from the conference room to get to the loo and climb back up them afterwards.

2. I have read half of The Ringed Castle, which is quite impressive given how thick it is and how much of the week has been spent at work (or walking and climbing stairs, apparently). I am still enjoying Lymond immensely.

3. I came back from my lunchtime walk on Monday depressed by the Stygian gloom of the day and emailed T to say "I want to go to the south of France". So we are going to be spending a week in Avignon in March. It's good to have something to look forward to at the end of term.

4. But since then the sun has come out, and it's been cold and bright with amazing sunrises and sunsets, the kind of weather that makes my heart sing.

5. Having been driven very close to the point of no return with Twitter by all the people who don't like Stephen Moffatt's work tweeting about they watched the Sherlock New Year's Day special despite not liking it and it had proved that they were right not to like it because they hadn't enjoyed it at all, I was driven right past it when I looked at the site on Monday evening to discover that some journalist had been telling people that they weren't allowed to be upset about David Bowie's death because it wasn't like they'd known him personally. I haven't really looked at it since, and haven't actually missed it at all. In fact, life feels rather peaceful. I think I might try spending my evenings transcribing early modern texts instead of hanging out on social media. When I'm not reading, anyway.