Philip Pullman was always better than JK Rowling anyway
more on transactions, aka the two things I’d forgotten when I wrote about library fees last week: at With Associates, we ate lunch with each other quite often. Mathew had built the table to accommodate that. one person would say “Turkish?” and usually one or two people would go out to get lunch for the others. which meant we all owed each other money quite often. 54Bank (the studio we were in was called 54B) was Mathew’s solution for that. just a simple tally system on a web app, “Anna owes Mathew £6 for Turkish”. and over time, ideally it evens out, or you can call in your debts. I think when we closed I owed about £20 to various people, which was nothing on my unnamed but no less lovely colleague who owed Mathew over 100 quid.
upstairs at 54B Tim rented a desk. him and Henry used to have a token system - physical tokens - they had a limited number of physical tokens which were originally shared out evenly. hand over a token to the person buying lunch. when you run out of tokens you know it’s your turn to start buying lunch.
Taylor Swift is headlining Glastonbury. I haven’t been for years but it used to be my favourite festival. going to ask the three people I still know working in music if there are any tickets floating around cos MATE wouldn’t that be brilliant! a mere 15 years since my first Glastonbury, which involved an off-site party with the Magic Numbers where I bumped into a girl I fancied from school who’d just won Make Me A Supermodel on telly. being 17 was kind of brilliant sometimes.
last night C suggested I do a PhD in comparative pop music focusing on TSwift between 2014-2017 and while I’ve never thought of myself as a PhD person, it does sound tempting.
went to Paris for a meeting on Wednesday. you may have seen the news that most of Paris is on strike. I love the French fondness for industrial action - it’s so French! and their revolution was definitely more effective than ours - but spending 3.5h either waiting for or in taxis was not really my idea of a fun day out. at least the meeting went well.
started wondering about whether I should get a new New Yorker subscription next year. probably requires reducing my work hours so I actually have time to read it.
this week has been full on. I’m very ready to not go to work for a couple of weeks.
what was last Friday? should I write as if it was then or as if it’s now?
the people who write weeknotes during the Christmas holidays are my people. well done everyone.
went to see my mum and dad pre-Christmas, then from there to Italy to see C’s dad. Christmas day was 9 Italian adults and 4 Italian children and me. I tried my hardest to keep up, but I was glad to be sent to the sofa for a little post-lunch nap. immersion is exhausting!
every time I go there I feel like I’ve not made any progress with Italian because there is still so much I don’t understand. but of course I have, and the words I find myself noticing are more advanced every time (this time: essere (to be) and volere (to want) in the present conditional tense!). seriously though, I just want to be fluent!
I’m never going to northern Italy without walking boots again.
Italian food is, on a day to day basis, far better than English food. even supermarket fruit and veg aisles are an inspiration. but I did find myself missing roast potatoes on Christmas Day.
more food: while there, we made pasta (some pappardelle, and C made casoncelli), ragù, veal with fennel and shallots. Christmas Day was polenta and rabbit. so. Italian food is better than English food.
everyone on the internet seems to be talking about their years and the last decade and all I’ve managed is to work out who I was going out with in 2009 and that I was three months into my second year of university. so. yes, a lot has changed in 10 years.
haven’t decided when to go back to work yet. I have to go back to work?
we had a very gentle design team meeting this morning, not least because it was the design team Christmas party last night. passing a panettone around in a circle the morning after the night before felt like about the right level for me today.
finished Girl, Woman, Other and it was brilliant. best thing I’ve read all year. it’s out in paperback in March so bags yourself a copy then. did I mention I got it from the library? all the copies were out when I wanted to borrow it, so I paid a whopping 50p to reserve it, then got an email when it came back in stock. 50p! and I don’t have to find bookshelf space to store it when I’m finished!
next up is How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. another 50p to Lambeth libraries, another book not out in paperback until next year. honestly. libraries are so great.
speaking of that 50p: I’ve been thinking about how it feels like a joy / pleasure to pay it, rather than annoying or “books from the library should all be free” (let’s be clear, it’s a 50p reservation fee, not 50p to borrow the book: if the book was in stock, it’d still be free to borrow it). that’s partly because of how the payment system works. it’s not ‘pay 50p and then you can have the book’; you can pay that 50p whenever. no chasing, no judgement. pay 20p when you get the book out if you like, and another 30p another day three weeks later. it feels non-transactional. when I first thought about this I had examples of two other services that had a similar payment feeling, and now I’ve forgotten them. I think there’s something in this though: the way, place, time, reasons that payments are taken change the way that a service feels. payment at the point of use and free at the point of use are not the only models.
going to Paris for work for a day next week and I’m reasonably sure there won’t be time to visit Du Pain et Des Idées for pastries, which begs the question, why go to Paris?
a new DM started on the team this week. everything is a bit easier already. thank you Rich!
got wound up by seeing a totally inaccurate use of a reflexive pronoun in some work comms because it just did not need to be there. look at this sharp increase since the 1960s! I don’t know why this bothers me, except I kind of do: pretending to be formal and getting it wrong feels quite closely related to the kind of inauthentic lack of substance that riles me right up. I should be more forgiving, I know.
New Zealand are passing a new Public Service Act, which reads a bit like service communities getting codified by law: it “will lead to the establishment of interdepartmental boards, or “joint ventures”, comprised of chief executives from relevant government agencies. The boards will report to a single minister, and will have the power to collaboratively deal with high priority issues. They will have the ability to employ staff, enter into contracts, and administer appropriations, and public servants from across departments and agencies will be deployed when needed”. read alongside this from the Centre for Public Impact. well done New Zealand: please continue your progressive thinking on what governments should be, rather than only on what governments should do.