w/e 2024-10-20

I returned from Essex on Tuesday, hoping that Monday’s visit to the hospital wasn’t Goodbye. Looking as OK-as-can-be-expected so far.

I was home to spend a few days with Mary before she headed off to Nepal. She’s currently in Kathmandu and then off to the mountains for three weeks of emergency-contact-only. It’s just me, here, wondering who I am, with only the huge black spider who lives behind the bathroom basin pedestal for company. 😬

---

§ Whenever a new album by Hurray for the Riff Raff comes out I see someone mention it and I listen to it a couple of times and like it and that’s it. The music almost feels too easy, coupled with some lyrics that are too hard, like virtuous and ethical, and I don’t quite feel it click for me.

But anyway, this time I’m trying not to think too much and am enjoying their latest The Past is Still Alive.

---

§ Before I returned, National Grid replaced or adjusted the “taps” on the box up an electricity pole in the next field, in order to keep the voltages within required levels. We could then get our new Zappi EV charger – which does not like over-high voltages – up and running.

Its app is the first time we’ve had any up-to-the-minute data about how much solar power our panels are generating, and what’s being exported to the grid (and, now, what’s charging the car). Although most of the time the app insists the charger can’t get online, even though the charger insists it’s connected. Computers, yet again.

In further modernisation we were due to have Octopus come and fit a smart electricity meter this week – despite their near-impossible process for getting an appointment – but that coincided with they day of rain that meant all roads to us were underwater. They’ve yet to get in touch to reschedule, as promised, of course.

---

§

I got new glasses this week. I used to get new frames every time I needed a new prescription, which was every few years when I was younger. But my eyes stopped changing so quickly, and I liked my previous frames so much that even when I got my first varifocal lenses about five years ago, I stuck with the same ones.

So these are my first new frames in about 12 years and I’m not yet convinced. The previous ones were more wraparound and, with their thin frame, I was barely aware of wearing them. These more conventional, thick, brown frames are very apparent – I feel like I’m looking through the eye-holes of a mask by comparison.

And when I catch myself in a mirror they also look like a mask, like I’m trying to be someone else. Someone older than I feel, and more confident than I’ve felt for a long time, even though I’ve worn similar frames before, years ago.

But (a) I do need a second pair of glasses in case one breaks, (b) they don’t make the older frames any more, and (c) I don’t want to end up in my 70s or whatever still wearing glasses that are obviously from the early 2000s. Need to keep moving. I expect I’ll get used to me again.

---

§ Some finishing of telly things this week.

I finished season three of Atlanta which I really enjoyed. It’s so rare to find a TV series where you have no idea what will be in the next episode, and it was always interesting.

We finished season four of Slow Horses which continues to be one of the best things. I feel like BBC thrillers should be this good but they’re so often, well, at least a bit rubbish.

Great criticism there. I’m like the child of Clive James and Nancy Banks-Smith.

And we’ve now watched both seasons of Pachinko which I’d heard very little about, only a couple of friends saying how good it was. And it was! Holding together multiple storylines spanning decades must be tricky but it worked, didn’t feel jarring, and I was equally interested in all of them.

An extra surprise was seeing the dramatisation of the 1923 earthquake that my grandfather was in Yokohama for. I’d heard his description of it but, even so, seeing it brought to high-budget life made it seem even more terrifying.

---

§ That’s all. I hope you’re holding it together.