Weeknotes 353

Three gyms, including an out-of-sequence one on Saturday afternoon, because I was away on Friday.

I took Friday off work and got the train to Cambridge for an overnight jolly. I had vegan fish & chips for lunch at The Architect, a delicious but chaotically-served dinner at Novi, a beer in The Eagle, then on Saturday I had coffee & lunch at Indigo which appears to have miraculously survived COVID (unlike my other favourite, Rainbow Café, which didn’t even make it that far).

Between eating and drinking I spent many happy hours mooching around the town’s exceptional bookshops — I came home with a copy of The Joy of Abstraction from the Cambridge University Press shop — and just generally looking at buildings, remembering things and being wistful.

Being back in Cambridge after twenty years away brought up many complicated feelings for me. In summary I think I’m both happy about the part of my life I spent there and sad about the intervening time passing, i.e. nostalgia. I do love it and in some ways feel more at home there than anywhere else, so I’d like to visit more often.

The Celebrity Traitors continues to entertain despite the dearth of percentages. I was right about Hannah Fry.

I saw Hokum and thought it was a pretty fun film to watch as the nights draw in. A silly but effective delivery mechanism for spooky vibes.

I also watched It Ends (alternative title ideas: No Exit 8; Cube in a Car) which I thought was great. It’s a simple idea executed well, and truly impressive work for only $80k. Despite the simplicity it doesn’t feel cheap at all.

I’ve started playing Order of the Sinking Star. I’m enjoying the puzzles a lot so far, so it’s basically good and (at this early stage at least) I recommend it if you like that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, like Braid and The Witness before it, the otherwise satisfying gameplay is actively made less enjoyable by Jonathan Blow’s “I’m 14 and this is deep” approach to both writing and narrative. It also happens to be buggy — occasionally the voice lines don’t play, the subtitles are frequently out of sync with the audio, and the frame rate drops unacceptably at times — and those issues will probably be fixed in a patch, but I don’t think there’s any way to patch out the pomposity and self-indulgence.

Oh well. It’s a shame. I’ll keep enjoying it as long as the puzzles stay interesting, and I’ll do my best to stop the obtuse, overwrought, overbearing writing from spoiling my fun.

I bought a pair of Sonos Ace Ultra headphones to cheer myself up. I don’t know anything about headphones but I’m really impressed with them so far. They sound great as far as I can tell, the noise cancellation is excellent, and they have the one crucial feature I need: no matter what’s playing on my TV, I can put them on and immediately listen to that. So no more Bluetooth dongles, no pairing anything with anything, just an effortless way to quickly shut out the world and hear whatever I’m seeing. Perfect.

My local little Sainsbury’s has starting selling the extra fiery ginger beer I like for 40p, matching the price I’d only previously seen in the big Whitechapel Sainsbury’s. It’s no longer ginger beer weather so I’ve declined to clear them out of their entire stock of it, but I did buy six cans on principle alone.

I got my shit together enough to send all my paperwork to my accountant so they can prepare my tax return, but not enough to review & approve their work so they can actually submit it. One step at a time.

Today I paid for and received a COVID vaccination. That might turn out to be unnecessary but it’s made me so miserable in previous years that I’d like to do everything possible to avoid it this winter.

Forgot to say last week: first baked potato of the season on Saturday night. Absolutely love it.

RIP Margaret Hamilton.