Weeknotes 137

On Monday I rode over to Broadway Market and met Tekin for lunch. We ate on a bench in London Fields, surrounded by parched yellow grass, brown leaves crunching underfoot.

On Tuesday morning I had breakfast with a group of friends at an Old Street café, in a faint echo of Sheps past. Will this happen again? I don’t know.

In the afternoon it rained and I got absolutely soaked cycling to Seven Dials to have lunch with Aleks and Nicky.

On Wednesday it rained harder.

On Thursday I rode from Peckham to Kings Cross to meet Chris for lunch. The bike lanes were slick with drifts of damp leaves clogging the gutters and drains. As I turned onto Grays Inn Road my back wheel slid out from underneath me and I hit the ground and skidded to a stop.

There was no serious damage but I did lose some of the skin on my right arm, which is what keeps the arm guts in. On the ride back afterwards I stopped at a pharmacy near St Paul’s to buy some sterile wipes and adhesive bandages, then sat at a bus stop to patch myself up. The people waiting for a bus decided to stand.

On Friday I had lunch with Phil in Hackney Central. There were no incidents.

On Saturday I rode across Walthamstow Marshes — unwisely, because the loose stone track along the east bank of the River Lea is not particularly suitable for cycling — to get to Reema’s birthday party. I had a fun evening and stuck to the normal roads on the way home.

I’m frustratingly sore after coming off my bike but overall I’m grateful to have spent time with real people and regained some of the feeling of living in London again.

On the other hand: lots of comfort eating this week, with predictable bodily consequences. Oh well. Brain eats first.

I enjoyed the dramatic conclusion of season three of For All Mankind, and again I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I tried watching the first episode of that Industrial Light & Magic documentary. It was sort of interesting but there wasn’t a single woman in it which felt incredibly weird.

Homeland season five is watchable so far. With so many of its original elements stripped away, it’s turned into one of those more generic thrillers where the viewer doesn’t understand what’s happening until more information is revealed later. The show had largely avoided that structure until now so it’s a bit disconcerting to see it all of a sudden, but it’s still entertaining enough to hold my attention.

In the abstract I’d like to stream the second half of Stray, but in reality I’m never in the mood. At this rate I’ll be eternally stuck at the end of the first half.

I realised this week that the thought of playing any more God of War fills me with dread, so I suppose I won’t be getting Ragnarök in November unless the fomo becomes absolutely unbearable.

I’m writing lots of purely recreational code at the moment. It’s a pleasure and a relief to feel that part of my brain lighting up again.

I don’t really get bored and have an apparently unlimited capacity for doing nothing. Is this anything? How do I monetise this?