Weeknotes 325

I had the entire week off. Bliss.

I spent it taking care of various bits of business and exposing my addled brain to sunshine as much as possible. The weather was in general worse than last week but it still had its moments.

On Wednesday I’d intended to ride to Tooting to visit Next Door Baker but it turned cold, windy and even hailed at one point so I chickened out. My backup plan of having lunch at Black Cat was also scuppered by them being closed on Wednesdays.

In the afternoon I endured the Northern line to the Battersea office for work’s fiftieth anniversary celebration — not a natural holiday activity, I’ll admit, but it felt like a one-time opportunity given that I won’t be around for the hundredth. I didn’t stay for the concert but I enjoyed seeing my teammates.

On Thursday the glorious spring weather returned so I revived that backup plan and had a lovely relaxed ride to Black Cat.

On Friday I took the bus to Waterloo for a matinée of Project Hail Mary at the IMAX. It’s a great-looking film that desperately needed a better screenplay; the climactic sequence in particular was very impressive on a big screen but I didn’t feel anything about the characters or situations. I understand why they didn’t want to preserve the laborious problem-solving bits from the book, but without them what remains is just… miscellaneous events and tepid quips. Good puppet though.

The experience wasn’t enhanced by the overwhelming smell of body odour and the sound of the stranger next to me eating one piece of popcorn at a time with his mouth open for the first hour of the film.

The magic of cinema!

Three times at the gym.

I finished Shroud on Monday and enjoyed the ending. The first and last quarters of the book are good, it would just be improved by removing almost all of the middle half, which is an unappealing slog. If it’d been an account of real events I wouldn’t have minded plodding through it for educational purposes, but for something fictional it wasn’t entertaining enough to be worth it.

On Wednesday I resisted the temptation to start There Is No Antimemetics Division because Children of Strife was coming out on Thursday, so I spun my wheels by listening to a podcast instead.

I specifically went to the gym on Thursday rather than Friday to start Strife on release day. The first forty-five minutes was solid tell-don’t-show which doesn’t bode well, but it picked up a little after that.

I belatedly watched all of Chernobyl, whose excellent writing and performances put it right up there with the best TV I’ve ever seen (Lucy Mangan: three stars). It’s intentionally chaotic but all comes together in the superb final episode. Very good.

I also saw A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and enjoyed it. It’s light and fun and straightforward, neatly avoiding the problems that Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon run into when they take themselves too seriously. I’d definitely watch more.

Still, it’s hard for anything to compete with the drama of a wasp interrupting Simon Anthony solving a sudoku.

Daylight saving time innit? ☀️

Back to the usual routine tomorrow. The dread intensifies.