Signs

Yesterday the finance department had her birthday, so at three o'clock this happened:

Afterwards I overheard the head curator, his voice ringing with a deep, quiet satisfaction, telling someone that he thought it was the best afternoon tea we've ever had.  It certainly took a lengthy period of sustained effort to dispose of it all and by the time I returned to my desk there was only enough time left in the day to prepare for the morning's tasks and challenges by reading out tomorrow's horoscopes pertaining to the two Sagittarians, the Scorpio and the two Aquariuses dispersed around the office. The latter three scoffed, but all of them listened. More fool the scoffers! After all, it's not as if we don't all work in a building which is entirely planned around, and determined by, overlapping investments in superstition and magical thinking around numerology, dates (11am, 11/11), the occult power of anniversaries, and ceremonies invoking the position of the sun relative to the earth. I don't say all this like it's a bad thing, of course. Modernist iterations of archaic rituals makes the world go round. It's not all about momentum and gravitation!  

I really value and enjoy reading my daily horoscope and I put total faith in the messages it has for me. But in order to form a properly complete picture of what life has in store for me I do like to supplement the straight-out star sign stuff with material drawn from the daily reports produced by my hormonal tracker, and sometimes with the contents of a fortune cookie (although the last one of these I cracked open said 'Be easy under circumstances' - hm.) Since I cannot find an app which will just seamlessly merge these sources of information for me I am going to do it myself for a week or two and see if the insights generated bring me to the next level. And if I'm going to compile my own futurological texts I might as well throw in some info about what's going down in Pinvin and which battles of the past happen to have some semi-arbitrary association with this one day of the year.

Friday 27 July

With your estrogen levels finally on the rise, you're in the right place at the right time today, Laura! Mercury is retrograde so use your improving mood and memory to commemorate the ceasefire on the  Korean peninsula, which happened 65 years ago today. What are the odds! This is a good time to bet on yourself: if you feel like you're taking a risk, then you're doing the right thing. Should cramps strike, you might try a cup of chamomile tea; otherwise, head to the Coach and Horses Pub on the Pershore Road for a fun origami class and put your increased spatial awareness to work. Lucky colour: Pink