At the back of my mind this week was the sense that nothing had gone badly wrong, chronic fatigue-wise. I appeared to be living a reasonable normal life doing the things I wanted to do at a pace and capacity that didn’t feel constrained, so maybe I’d cracked it? (For the unaware I’ve been working on pacing to reduce the severity of post-exertion crashes, basically relearning how to be in the world as a disabled person). It was getting a bit spooky as I got through another day, and then another.

And then I woke early this morning from a stress dream with paralysed legs and a sick feeling in my stomach. Ah well. The rest of today has been a mix of sleeping and trying not to engage with anything at all, because everything is difficult and frustrating, while still trying to move around and not just curl up on the sofa.

This is still good progress. I made it through a week with no fatigue symptoms during which I went to a kids birthday party and out for the eclipse, not to mention a decent chunk of website work, while maintaining a pretty good mood. Today might be nasty but as a crash it’s lower intensity than last year and I know how to manage it much better.

By the evening I was feeling much better, so am going to do a bit more writing.

I’ve been surprisingly upset about Jason Arday’s death this week. There’s been this sense of inevitable dread building over the weeks with relentless attacks from the right-wing press and this has been the worst possible outcome. One thing I can be sure of, the journalists and editors responsible will not think they’ve done anything wrong and no-one will hold them to account. This toxic culture war claims another victim.

I posted a quote from Gary Younge yesterday which bears repeating. “When people talk about the need for Black excellence I counter with an insistence on Black mediocrity: the right for black people to be as average, flawed, compromised & mistaken as any other group of people. The right, ultimately, to be human." I’m going to add his book Pigeonholed to my list.

I could say more but it doesn’t feel necessary. A shameful chapter for all involved.

Early morning Fiona was woken by an airplane noise which kept her awake for what should have been her lie-in. She checked the flight radar and it showed an incredible birds nest of a flight path.

A friend on the chat told us it was a TV relay service plane transmitting signals from cameras following this morning’s marathon in Birmingham back to the studio. Kinda crazy that they need to keep a plane up there to do the broadcast but I guess it’s the only way to ensure a clear signal in a wide built-up area.

I don’t know quite how I feel about this. On the one hand, that’s technologically pretty cool. On the other the fuel burned must be significant.

We’ve been enjoying the European athletics which have been happening in Birmingham this week. Fi’s a bit of a fan and I enjoy watching them in the same way I watch the football, appreciating these hyper-fit nerds doing their thing with moments of “OK, this is actually exciting”. I made a comment that one of the runners had real come-to-bed eyes so Fi started looking out for more “hello girls” smoulders. There were very few to be found in the dead-eyes of the 10,000 meters racers though. Those guys had seen some things.