Weeknotes 331

Another four-day week. I spent the bank holiday Monday blissfully doing nothing. Now I just have to hang in there until the next one at the end of the month.

Three times at the gym. Down another kilo this week. I’ll take it.

I’m ready for Children of Strife to be over, but at this pace it’ll take another week and a bit.

Back to Battersea on Thursday for training session two of three, on my bike this time.

The map said thirty-five minutes but it took closer to forty-five in the pre-9am traffic. There’s lots of roadworks on Nine Elms Lane at the moment which made the last mile complicated, and I could’ve saved myself ten more minutes of faff at the end by looking up how to find the underground bike parking in advance instead of riding around like a wally trying to decode their cryptic wayfinding.

But I arrived on time and it was a pleasant enough ride which didn’t tire me out, so it feels like a completely practical option for any future journeys there.

While I appreciate the mere existence of its cycling infrastructure, I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy navigating Vauxhall Cross on a bike.

Zoë Garbett won the Hackney mayoral election, so that’s good news. Alas the situation further afield is more depressing.

This week’s For All Mankind provided a genuine taste of excitement in space at last, for which I’m grateful. It still feels like they’re strictly rationing it and relying heavily upon the unlimited supply of political drama and interpersonal guff between uninteresting new characters to make up the difference. I really could’ve done without the flash mob (not a joke).

I have, very belatedly, started watching the first season of The Pitt, which unsurprisingly is really good.

I began yesterday and am already almost at the halfway point. I don’t find the combination of stressful workplace situations and intermittently meaty body horror particularly relaxing, but it’s so well-written and well-performed that I’m totally hooked anyway.

I suppose it’s the sheer intensity of multitasking that frightens me the most.

I also rewatched Sneakers which is a great comfort watch. Absolutely absurd and probably half an hour too long, but it’s a fun heist movie with a lighthearted and wholesome take on the evils of information technology.

I’m dangerously close to running out of The Unmade Podcast bonus episodes. I don’t have a backup plan yet.

More Boards of Canada has trickled out in advance of the new album. It’s just what I’d hoped for — sinister, crunchy, microtonal, already a banger. It gives me goosebumps so I amused myself by replaying it and watching the hair erector muscles on my arm do their thing.

We have to make our own entertainment these days.