PhDiaries, #4
A Week In The Life, April 2026
Monday:
I start the day by finishing Empireland (affiliate link) by Sathnam Sanghera so that I can return it to the library. I keep having to stop so that I can process what I’m reading - “they did WHAT?!” - it’s a very well researched book and has taught me so much I didn’t know.
After Sunday’s aborted long run, I head down to the gym for a gentle treadmill session. I run a mile super slowly but up an incline to reduce impact on my joints but still get some training effect in, and it feels great. This relaxes me a little and I think I might have just got spooked…
I pop into Tesco on my way up to uni and - frabjous day! - they have the specific hot cross buns I’m looking for, which Lucy Knight rated highly in the Guardian.
It’s PGR board games night, which means I’m surrounded by pals when I get one of those ominous texts from my dad: “Can you call us?”
I take a few deep breaths - these sorts of messages generally mean bad news - and go to find a quiet room elsewhere in the students’ union building to call home. My mind races through all the sorts of bad news it could be - which means that in the moment when he tells me one of the cats, Finch, has been hit by a car and killed, my first reaction is that I was expecting much worse news. Still, I’m a little subdued for the rest of board games, and on the way home later the sadness really starts. (I keep thinking ‘it really hits’, which feels like an unfortunate word choice).
Given that this is a cat who once peed on me (on the sofa - the indignity!) I am surprisingly wrecked by the news, and end up crying as I try to go to sleep. The last time we lost a cat was a decade ago - in the interim I’ve lost my last grandparent and multiple family members, not to mention the global pandemic, and it feels like the grief reignites all of that.
Tuesday:
Safe to say, I haven’t slept well. I spend most of the day playing silly games on my phone (Color Slide and Pixel Flow, pictured) to keep my brain busy and try and pause the sads.
I dig through my photos and find this one of Finch at Christmas, stretched out in a patch of sunshine on the living room floor and truly living his best life.
Even if it ended horribly, not a bad chapter for a rescue cat.
Wednesday:
I’ve now played over 100 levels of Pixel Flow, and I take a screen cap of this one, which is a QR code, meaning to go back and check where it leads. I don’t end up doing that til I sit down to write this newsletter - and it makes me burst out laughing. Well played, Loom Games.
I finally make it outside for a run, via the Evri locker to drop off a Vinted parcel. It’s so annoying that it always is being active and getting outside that makes me feel better, not bed-rotting with a whole bag of Maltesers. The knee feels fine and running feels pretty easy.
I see this beautiful Instagram cartoon strip which, given the emotional rollercoaster of the last few days, unsurprisingly brings on all the feelings.
Thursday:
Things are looking up: someone I very loosely know1 has ended up with a QR code for a free Caffe Nero drink, which they send me as a wonderful surprise. So I spend the afternoon drinking an iced coffee and writing in the literature review for my thesis.
I also listen to an incredible episode of the After Dark podcast from History Hit: host Maddy Selling is talking to Dr. Alexandra Dold, an Outlander scholar, about the series. I loved reading the books back in undergrad and this discussion makes me want to pick them back up.
Friday:
It’s another day at the desk… and I get over 1,000 words written into my thesis. I’m feeling the time pressure of everything I have to do in the next few weeks.
Before bed, I crack open the new Kate Clayborn novel, The Paris Match (affiliate link), which I pre-ordered and which has arrived before its official release date. True to Kate Clayborn’s style, it’s simultaneously great fun and also incredibly deep, with wonderfully sensitive discussions of grief and pain mixed in with cute kissing scenes. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows - and that’s why I love romance novels! I finish it in one sitting.
At the time of sending this newsletter, my copy has just sold on Vinted - if you share my reading taste, it’s worth following what I post there, as I sell a lot of my books once I’ve finished them.
Saturday:
It’s Easter Saturday and it’s sunny! I take myself out to lunch at my favourite local spot: Chez Marcel. Whenever I have a weekend spent at home without social plans or anything involving spending much money, I like to go and enjoy a galette (a savoury pancake made with buckwheat) and watch the world go by from this gorgeously cosy spot in the old city. I crack open The Awakening - I bought this edition specifically because of the introduction by Barbara Kingsolver, and it’s so good. She explains how current this book feels, over a century after its original 1899 publication, and gives a few biographical details about Kate Chopin.
Then I head over to the Waterstones Cafe - it’s one of my regular work spots, and I can tell I’ve been sub-par from a mental health perspective from the fact that I haven’t been in lately. I get another few hundred words written and have a nice chat with the barista. Last for the afternoon, I go over to M&S Food to pick up a few groceries for the weekend, and bump into one of my friends from uni. He was in Brighton for a conference this week and tells me that one of our mutual friends bought a cone of gelato… and then instantly had it stolen by a seagull. Canon British seaside experience.
Sunday:
Today is my last long-ish run before next week’s Half Marathon, and I couldn’t have asked for it to go better. I cover 8.5 kilometres in the sunshine, with a few bursts of (relative) speed, and it feels really good. On the basis that chocolate milk is supposed to be excellent for post-run recovery, and it’s Easter Sunday, I join the queue at Swoon afterwards and get a cone of their incredible chocolate-giandiuja Bacio flavour gelato. It certainly feels like it’s doing me good.
In the afternoon, I catch up with the news from the Artemis II mission, thanks to the incredible news that the crew chose Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan (your favourite climate minister’s favourite artist) as their wake-up music today.
The crew has taken a photo of the Earth, which I read somewhere is the first of its kind taken since 1972. This is a year that also has huge importance in the history of climate policy: the Club of Rome published their Limits to Growth paper and it was the time of the first UN conference on environmental issues, in Stockholm, which led to the creation of the UN Environmental Programme. I’ve been writing about both in my thesis document this week, so they’re top of mind, and I find myself wondering whether we will make such great leaps forward on environmental policy this year too.
Later this month, Colombia is hosting the first international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. I will fully admit that when I first heard this, I thought “well what’s been the point of 30+ climate COPs if we still haven’t got to this?!” But, as ever, I’m choosing to be cautiously optimistic. I’ll be following the proceedings through media organisation We Don’t Have Time, whose work I respect and trust.
I spend the afternoon and evening working on an important project: my own website! I’ve been wanting to have somewhere to share what I can offer in terms of freelance and short-term work, and bring together all the disparate strands of what I do. I’ve got some plans to make happen…
About six months ago, they posted in the Bristol subreddit saying they had a spare Caffe Nero voucher code they couldn’t use, and asking if anyone wanted it. I messaged them immediately and they sent me the code. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from them again - which is fine! - so it was an amazing surprise to get another QR code dropping into my Instagram DMs. People are really good, actually.