Update from The House of Plague, Day 67

[elisi]

I am somewhere between a Quaker and a Maureen? I mean, I am WRITING fanfiction (the most escapist), and reading Dante, Milton, Bunyan and various related texts...

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Man, 100, raises more than £170,000 for Covid-19 victims while fasting for Ramadan

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Video: Coronavirus in Africa: Ghana WW2 veteran in Covid-19 fundraiser
A 95-year-old World War Two veteran from Ghana has set himself the challenge of walking two miles a day for a week to raise money for coronavirus charities.

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Coronavirus: Clothes box bid to help Bangladeshi workers
An Edinburgh businessman is trying to help thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers hit by cancelled orders during the coronavirus outbreak.

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And finally, Led by Donkeys once more not just holding the government to account, but being more useful:

The Government has stopped releasing its Global Death Comparison slide (wonder why?) so we’ve published it for them – on an 18sq/m billboard on Westminster Bridge Rd. Unlike @BorisJohnson, we’ll be updating it over the coming weeks pic.twitter.com/RyFsuFYEAu

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) May 22, 2020

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Love that last tweet -- good on them!

[elisi]

They are SO good.

[astrogirl]

What's the duck for "Buying all the books online, seriously all of them, because book shopping is apparently my reaction to stress, plus I can tell myself I am Doing Something by helping keep bookstores in business while their brick-and-mortar stores are closed, and also I have somehow convinced myself that any books bought during the pandemic do not count for my total, and also I may have, like, a five-to-seven-year supply of unread books but what if it's not enough, because clearly anything can go wrong in this unreliable world of ours, including books suddenly disappearing from the Earth"?

Asking for a friend. :)

(OK, maybe that's the Keeping It Together Duck. But that one doesn't seem remotely specific enough, really.)

[elisi]

A... magpie duck???

And I approve. You can never have too many books. <3

[astrogirl]

You can never have too many books.

I do try to believe that, but I may be challenging that assertion every day. :)

[elisi]

OK, I there may be limits.

For example my mother kept buying me books of a series that she adores, and that I just... don't like. Except I couldn't tell her, so we had excess books. :(

Mind you. Behind me there is a pile of... 12 books that I am 'keeping out' because I am in the process of needing them around. Like Good Omens, which I have read (twice), but need to keep handy because of writing fic.

[astrogirl]

I think people giving you books you don't actually want is less a case of having too many books and more a case of having the wrong books, though.

[elisi]

Good point.

I read a couple, and decided that I quite simply didn't like the author's writing. She was just weirdly clinical (I don't know how else to describe it), like she was observing her characters under a microscope and I found it very offputting. But by then I had already been given about five more...

/it's late I am very sleepy, no one cares, go to bed!

[auroracloud]

For the first month and a half I was way too close to the crisis duck for my comfort, considering that normally my reaction to difficulties and stress of all sorts is the Keeping It Together Duck. But I've gradually turned into Maureen in May. Though I haven't got around to the emotional support children's books really yet, I've just been thinking about them.

[elisi]

Maureen is not a bad one.I've not gotten to the childrens' books either, but I count fanfic as escapist...

[beer_good_foamy]

The secret of being a quacker is to be a Maureen most days and a quacker now and then. At least that's what I'm trying to do.

[elisi]

Yeah, that's me as well.

*dives back down into fanfic*

[auroracloud]

*nods* I'm trying to get there, since I'm starting to do okay at Maureen-ing. I think I may have to just be daring and mentally declare a whole bunch of books Did Not Finish and take the bookmarks away and return them to the library if they're library books, or just shove them behind the shelf if they're mine. Because I realize my reading is being held back by the thought "I can't start this nifty escapist book I want to because I'm already reading about 10 different books" except I'm not actually reading most of them because either I'm not into them or I haven't been in the headspace for them since the lockdowns started. Hmm, I used to be shameless at not-finishing books, don't know what's making it hard now!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I'm a Maureen with a side of Quackers!

[elisi]

Snap! :)

[kathyh]

I'm veering wildly between Quackers, Keeping It Together Duck and Maureen but at the moment I'm in Maureen mode.

[elisi]

Yeah, I think most people are Maureen. Solid choice.

[sea_thoughts]

A cross between Quackers and Keeping It Together.

[elisi]

*thumbs up*

[sea_thoughts]

[elisi]

I love playing snap! :D