Weeknotes 280

The week began with an unbelievable thunderstorm. It rained harder and faster than I’ve ever seen here. Scary.

Despite draining at its usual impressive rate, the gutter couldn’t cope and began to overflow. Some men had to come round and seal it somehow to prevent my downstairs neighbours getting their outside wall drenched if this ever happens again.

Back to a more normal three days at the gym. I even lost a bit of weight, to either the consternation or smug satisfaction of sports scientists everywhere.

Yesterday I popped up to Yorkshire for Paul’s birthday party.

I got up at 6:30am, had breakfast at 7, left the house at 8, caught the train to Derby at 9, then caught the train to Leeds at 10:45.

At 12 I had a little sit in the sun at Leeds station.

At 12:30 I caught the train to Ilkley, met Paul (and Leo, briefly) at 1, then joined Paul for a nice lunch outside.

In the afternoon Chris, Leo & I converged on Paul’s house for the party itself, which was very fun.

I stayed overnight, had coffee and breakfast with Eleanor & Paul this morning, helped them tidy up a bit, then headed to the station to catch the 10:20 train to Leeds. There I caught the 11am train to Sheffield, which was absolutely packed because of other trains being cancelled. There wasn’t even standing room in the carriages themselves and I only just managed to sneak on by standing in the vestibule for an hour.

I arrived in Sheffield at 12, caught the London train at 12:50, got to St Pancras shortly after 3, then home before 4, and now it’s now.

A pleasant little jaunt, and I’m glad to have spent time with friends, but I’m absolutely wiped. Thank god I didn’t drink anything.

The latest The Last of Us was — you know the drill — really good. An extremely tense and visually impressive episode. We must be getting a full episode of ██ ████ next, then maybe an episode of ██ ██ ██ to wrap up the season? I still find it hard to guess exactly how they’re going to split it.

I’m enjoying Children of Memory quite a lot. It’s much closer to a good Star Trek episode than I was expecting.