w/e 2020-09-13
After today’s driving from the North Sea to almost the Welsh border we are back home, with the silence of the countryside broken only by the merry sound of gunfire from the local army camp. We’ve unpacked, re-filled the bird feeders, picked yet more lettuce, picked up even more windfall apples, and removed from the lawn several “gifts” left by the neighbour’s dog.
This week I managed to feel a bit less stressed about all the moving-home-organising, partly because we’ve started ticking off some of the tasks required. I also wrote a list of things to do which I knew was what one should do to stop the endless whirling panic in one’s head, but which I had to be told to actually do. I’m using Things’ Projects feature for the first time – most of my work and hobby to-dos are in GitHub Issues, so my use of Things is quite rudimentary. As expected, it’s still nice.
As well as a pleasant day trip to Dedham to sit by the river and eat a scotch egg we spent a good few days sitting by the sea reading. Very good. Agnès Poirier’s Left Bank is great so far. Once everyone’s children went back to school to share their virals the beach became much quieter and a still-warm but now quiet beach is the best beach.
It was even easy to forget there was a killer virus at large and I was quite relaxed about it, given there was plenty of space to cope with the few other people. And then I went to pick up a takeaway from a local restaurant which was full of people sitting close together, table by table, with the staff in masks, visors and gloves, and that did not look like a good night out to me.
§ I enjoyed watching I Hate Suzie, mainly because of Billie Piper who is always very watchable. She seems so much more alive and quick to change than most of the people around her. Also the dialogue was sometimes rapid and messy, particularly when she visited her family, which I like.
§ This week I watched quite a few of those guys reacting to hearing well-known songs for the first time. Possibly like you, I watched the In The Air Tonight one a while back and have only now watched a few more. It’s nice seeing people be really enthusiastic about things new to them. I watch along trying to imagine hearing the songs for the first time which is pointless because the ones I watch are the ones with music I know well so that doesn’t really work. Anyway. Some of my favourite reactions: Creep, Purple Rain, Bohemian Rhapsody, September, Rocket Man and U Can’t Touch This.
§ There was some good blogging about blogging this week. Giles Turnbull wrote about how to write good weeknotes as a company. Mike Johnston wrote about all the blogs that no longer exist and how hard it is to scrape a living from blogging now.
And Matt Webb wrote about his fifteen rules for blogging in which I love the emphasis on just getting it done, not being too precious. I think over the years, as people moved their off-the-cuff writing to social media, a tendency has developed to think that a blog post must be polished and bulletproof. As I realised when looking at blog posts from 2000 posts back then were often as casual as tweets today. So, just blog something.
§ It’s late and I think that’s everything.