In the center of a hurricane there is a region where everything is quiet. That is today. I’d like to spend the entire day sleeping, but I do have a bit of catch-up to do, so here I am.

I spent yesterday in London, mainly because I needed to go and see a gender specialist to get declared sane again. The NHS does not believe that trans people are really serious about what they do with their lives. They think is just a phase we are going through, and that sooner or later we will be Overcome with REGRET, and will beg on bended knees to return to the gender we were assigned at birth. Therefore I am required to have an annual consultation with a gender specialist who can let them know whether there are any signs of the onset of this expected phase of my life, and the anticipated emotional trauma. I’m afraid I keep disappointing them.

Following my appointment I headed off to the British Museum to worship Ishtar and re-acquaint myself with the many fine pieces of loot therein. Though I continue to be embarrassed at my ancestors’ kleptomania, I am rather relieved about the amount of stuff they took from what is now Iraq, because so much of what remains has been destroyed or sold to private collectors by the invading armies.

While there I noticed that the BM is now selling bookends. These are, of course, irresistible to anyone with a sizable library. The even worse news for me is that the models for the bookends include the famous Egyptian cat statue (£30 for a pair) and the Assyrian winged bull — some of you will remember the term Shedu — (a whopping £55 each but a must have for me). A full list of the bookends they offer can be found here.

I was by no means the only person to visit the Museum yesterday. I ran into: Madeline Ashby & David Nickle; Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman; the Foglio family; David Levine & Kate Yule. I’m sure there must have been others.

As I had been too busy to shop at Worldcon, I popped into Forbidden Planet to collect copies of Resistance by Samit Basu and Afterparty by Daryl Gregory.

I got home late last night. This morning was spent sleeping, paying the rent, topping up on Euros, and buying food. Tomorrow I will be off to Ireland, via Bristol where I need to collection more copies of Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion from Jo.