Back in the middle of August, the email I’d been waiting for arrived: the university library had decided to tentatively let a few people with alumni access back into the building. Just for a few weeks during the summer holiday. Before the actual current students came back.

That same week, I finished the novel edit that (if anyone’s been paying attention) I’ve been working on since February. I was just about to embark on a new project. A new project I was at that point considering reducing the scope of dramatically because I didn’t have library access and therefore couldn’t do the research.

The next week, I went into the building. I think it might actually have been 9 o’clock on a Monday morning. I said to myself: now, don’t go overboard, will you? I stayed for my full allotted four hours and got nine books out. Ten days later, I got another email from the library helpdesk: we’re, ah, glad to see you’ve been back in - what is it, four times now? We’re extending your access. Special dispensation.

And I don’t mind telling you, I’ve been like a pig in muck. The sheer volume of library books I’ve got through in the last month and a half - the majority of them nonfiction, but not all. Enough that I’ve started the new book, more or less, and it’s stretching its tendrils out in my brain, and I think we’re just about going to be okay cohabiting in here for the next few months. Let’s see how it goes. I’ve not been able to do Big Research, just like I’ve not been able to do Long Writing, since about the end of 2019. Maybe longer. It’s been exhausting - but in other ways it’s been absolutely necessary.

Other than that, not much else to report. I’ve spent two solid months disliking 90% of the films I’ve seen, of which there haven’t been many. I’m starting to think that’s saying more about me at the moment than it’s saying about the cinema. Come back in three months.