It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book - Maureen Corrigan

This was a troubled morning.  Watching the Australian Open Men's Final.  Not the ending I’d have written.  But the fairest on the day, methinks.  Great tennis.  Immense stress.  And I was just sitting at home watching...

Still, at some point, hope goes and the inevitable is, well, inevitable.  Not a pleasant realisation.  I was gutted.  But there you go.  Andy Murray will win another day.  And we’ll enjoy that moment immensely.

My suffering was, however, compounded by the loss of my muffin recipes.  In moments of great stress, I tend to bake.  And as my baking capacities are limited, I stick to what I know.  Muffins.  Blueberry.  Raspberry.  Banana.  They are my joys.  Warm, light.  Comforting.

But today the recipes – noted down carefully on an old envelope – were no longer where I’d left them.  I seem to recall tidying.  I should never tidy…

So if anyone has good muffin recipes, I’d appreciate receiving them.   I anticipate many stressful times to come.  Not least in the tennis season.  I will not survive without my muffins. Gutted some more.

This afternoon, I thus sat down to read Virgil’s Doomed love.  Described by Penguin Books as love (that) can be hopeless.  It seemed appropriate.

And somehow it was. A bloody, gutsy battle. Emotional, heart-rending.  Exhausting.  Just the right tone to lift my mood.  

The love story was pitiful, though.  Two people launching forth full pelt into a love affair that was doomed to fail from the start.  All because of the bitter and twisted games of those in power.  The profound sorrow at being pulled apart. The pain, the agony indeed. The total incomprehension. 

The scene where Dido confronts Aeneas could have been describing a lovers' scene anywhere, at any time. He loves her. But he feels impelled to obey the gods. “So he would try to find the right approach and the least painful moment to speak, and discover a tactful way out of their predicament.” He fails in this bid.

Consequently, Dido is violently overcome in an emotional speech, begging him to reconsider.  But focussed on his mission from the gods, he “strained to master the agony within him.” An agony he never reveals to the woman who is the cause of such deep emotions.  Indeed, he “longed to allay her grief and dispel her sufferings with kind words. Yet he remained obedient to the divine command.” 

And so it is Dido who openly agonises in her great misery and plots her end.  Never knowing that Aeneas is “shaken to the depths by the strength of his love" for her.

Communication between the sexes as good as ever, huh.  Who needs chick lit when you have such passion and intrigue and tragedy?  Although maybe I need less tragedy in my life? Maybe that's where I'm going wrong...