Weeknotes 279

Hello. It’s beautifully sunny and comfortably warm in London. Everything feels easier when it’s like this. 🚴🏻‍♂️☀️

Monday’s bank holiday — only two weeks after Easter Monday — was a balm for the soul. And we only have to wait two more weeks for the next one! As long as this continues I’m going to be absolutely fine.

I reached the theoretical limit of seven days at the gym this week, just to see if I could do it. Turns out I can do it but I don’t like it. Maybe three and a half is the magic number after all.

Despite a couple of months of steady linear progress, I suddenly haven’t lost any weight for the past two weeks, so, it;s impossible to say if going to the gym is bad or not,

This is either a direct result of exercising more frequently, because of [insert plausible sports science reason here], or completely unrelated to that, because of [insert equally plausible yet contradictory sports science reason here]. I assume the exercise is still good for me in some holistic, unquantifiable way.

On Thursday night I went to the Roundhouse to see Louis Cole perform nothing with Jules Buckley’s orchestra.

Musically it’s an excellent album. I didn’t enjoy the performance much because I was tired, the venue was full, and although the drums sounded great, it didn’t seem like Louis Cole’s voice had fully recovered from whatever illness has kept him away from performing since last year. Still, good to get out, apparently, innit?

As expected, Who Cares 2 was the best bit.

OLD MAN CORNER: In my capacity as someone who jealously guards their free time, I resent the game of being told “doors at 7pm” but it’s only when you get to the venue that you’re allowed to see a piece of A4 taped to the door saying the actual thing you’ve come to see starts at 9pm. Hostile and pointless. Where else in society do we accept this?

(I understand I can avoid the wasted time by guessing how much later to arrive, but the point is that I don’t want to.)

Fortunately I didn’t do anything else this week.

I finished Children of Ruin at last. It has the same “all is lost, except at the last minute it isn’t” structure as the first book, which was just less surprising this time around.

I’ve moved onto the third and final book. I hope it regains some pace and comes up with a different idea for the ending.

That book is Children of Memory and it’s a big improvement so far. All the speculative zoology’s been fun but I’m enjoying a story that’s mainly about tetrapods for once. The way it’s drawing together threads from the previous two books and expanding the scope of the story already makes the trilogy feel justified.

I’m still trundling through Tape 1 of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage in the hope that something is going to happen. Something has not yet happened. The “remember being a teenage girl in the American Midwest in the ’90s?” stuff seems authentic and heartfelt but doesn’t fully connect with my life experiences.

I’ve played a few hours of What the Clash? on and off. Like What the Golf? it’s a funny, charming and well-made game. I’d prefer it without multiplayer but at least it’s the Journey model of playing with anonymous randos who you’ll never see again and (crucially) can’t talk to you, so it’s not enough to spoil the fun.

The Last of Us is still great. I really like this version of Ellie & Dina’s relationship and it’s being performed extremely well.

I saw three more episodes of Andor which remains expensive-looking and pretty watchable, even though it’s spinning its wheels a bit and I’m too thick to understand what’s happening half the time.