Weeknotes 3

I’m feeling a lot better. I haven’t lost as much weight as I’d hoped I would by the end of January, but the rest and exercise has meaningfully affected my mood and energy level, and my shoulder now barely hurts during normal activities. This all makes a big difference so I’m glad I prioritised it over more quotidian concerns like what to do with my life etc.

I’ve had more coffees and lunches with friends which continue to be very good for my state of mind.

In the last week or so I’ve had appointments with my GP and a physiotherapist. Total paid: £0. The NHS is brilliant.

Paul gave me some of his starter on Tuesday so I then felt obliged to try to make sourdough for the first time. I did my best to follow the Tartine recipe but it didn’t go very well.

Things were okay until the 4-hour bulk fermentation, which produced a horrible gluey dough that stuck fast to my worktop and resisted all attempts at shaping.

I barely managed to scoop it into two rough cowpats, sweating and swearing as it stuck to my hands. I lost all faith at this point and was on the brink of petulantly binning it but decided to finish the recipe anyway for the sake of completeness.

And I’m glad I did, because although the final loaves were visually unattractive, they still had a great flavour and a lovely chewy crust.

I’ve now bought a dough scraper so I’ll probably try again sometime and see if I can improve the results. Although I don’t actually know what I did wrong, writing about bread on the internet is a good way to find out.

I didn’t make an Instagram story of the breadmaking because a) I couldn’t work out how to do any of it one-handed and b) I had no idea what I was doing and ultimately got quite cross with myself so it wouldn’t have made for wholesome viewing. Maybe next time.

In an unintentionally House-themed double bill we watched Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, which turned out to be really fun with some hugely enjoyable performances, and then Hugh Laurie in Avenue 5, which was so unfunny and lifeless that it made me feel sad the next day.

We also watched Parasite which was excellent. Recommended.

We saw Ad Astra last week but I didn’t mention it then because I forgot about it. I suppose that’s my review.

I’ve been stuck with two earworms this week: How to Get What You Want by Elise Trouw (via her Weird Fishes / Arpeggi mashup), and Do My Thing by Erika de Casier (via Nat), the video for which is almost unbearably charming.

Speaking of Radiohead: I spent an enjoyable and nostalgic few hours rummaging through the new Radiohead Public Library. I was reminded how much I admire Adam Buxton’s scrappy video for Jigsaw Falling into Place:

I had previously experimented with cameras attached to bicycle helmets and I thought it would be perfect for this. We put them on each member of the band, did two takes, and it worked brilliantly. It was one of my proudest moments.

Picard is not yet great on the basis of its first episode, but it’s so much better than Discovery that it gives me some hope and I felt happy while watching it. By far its greatest strength is that Patrick Stewart is a fantastic and watchable actor, although I doubt his performance in this show will reach the standard of his quadruple take.

I liked the scene where he goes into Nathan Drake’s attic and finds all the memorabilia from his past adventures.

I’m enjoying the second season of Sex Education. I do like the visual style but at one point I became so distracted by the chromatic aberration that I had to look up whether it was caused by real lenses or added in post-production. According to its director of photography it’s the latter:

Although we opted for [conventional lenses], when we made this decision, I offered up the idea of combining this with a post-produced effect to create a more vintage look at a level that was both not distracting, but also entirely controllable. […] Tom Urbye at The Look stepped in and did a great job of repurposing a tool on his system designed to correct aberration and distortion. He basically reversed it so it added these artefacts rather than removing them. This allowed us to completely control the ‘vintage’ look, unlike when you actually shoot with vintage lenses and have no control over distortion, aberration and softness.

I have, more or less accidentally, begun to have a few tentative conversations about work. Nothing concrete yet but after a month of putting it out of my mind it’s good to break the seal.

I cancelled Apple TV+.