had my last Italian lesson before my teacher goes and has a baby and takes a bit of time off. unprompted, she told me that I am her best student. well maybe tied with someone else but they do loads of homework. obviously I was delighted, and then I suddenly worried that I should be doing way more Italian homework than I am. story of my life.
when the news broke about Spurs firing Poch and recruiting Mourinho, my godson posted an Instagram story about Spurs being a ‘terrible club’. we’ve not spent loads of time together in the past five years (geography innit) but I like to think me taking him to Arsenal once or twice a season has directly contributed to this mindset and frankly I am proud that I’ve helped him become the upstanding young man he is today.
met some Danes this week. they were thoughtful and interested and they all laughed at my jokes. what if we all moved to Denmark, huh?
after a bit of a rough day on Tuesday / let’s be honest maybe a rough few weeks, I messaged Ste, our head of design, to see if he was around for a pint 'soon’, because I felt like a chat with him might help me feel a bit better. his reply: “sure, what about now? see you downstairs in 5 minutes?”. and that is how Stephen and I ended up in the pub at 11.30am on Tuesday. no just kidding, it was 5pm. anyway. fast response + making time at that exact moment = leaders, take note. thanks Ste <3
on Wednesday we ran a user-centred design careers evening for people who are underrepresented in technology. we pulled it together fast (well, Clara did). I did a talk at the end, which was my usual 'take a boring thing like pensions or recruitment and try to explain it in human’. people seemed to appreciate it. I’m keenly aware that this translation of complicated to simple wouldn’t be a necessary thing to do if we made it easy in the first place.
it was very, very lovely to be in the Pilcrow last Friday and see some of my Co-op Digital friends. what a familiar place. the Pilcrow might actually be the pub I’ve spent the most time in ever?! (tight competition with the EDT and the Gowlett I imagine)
the design team went to the Design of the Year exhibition this morning. while I was looking at one of the entries, a man came along with a drill and an orange tag saying 'overall winner’, and proceeded to drill it onto the label.
the Design Museum lockers are £1, coins only, non-refundable. who left their ticket in their coat pocket and had to pay two pounds for the privilege of using a cloakroom? yes, me. first I had to go to west London, then I had to pay an extra quid for the privilege. there’s a reason I try not to go west of Vauxhall, and I’d do well to remember it.
just went to check just how far west Vauxhall is compared to north of the river, and have now created ideal boundaries for myself on Google Maps. no further west than Vauxhall Bridge Road / Park Lane, in an ideal world. I’m more lenient in other parts of the city. what can I say man, north London’s home.
I’m in Manchester today helping another department out with recruitment. it’s nice learning about what other bits of government are doing. I also figured I could take the afternoon off as holiday to see some of my mates from the Co-op. an unforseen bonus of this trip though is that I could swap some Top Quality Virgin Trains Bants with Andrew. a year of sharing a 200 mile commute really sets up a friendship for success.
enjoyed this piece by Jessica Harllee who reflected on good challenges vs bad challenges on leaving Etsy. it’s dead easy to stay in situations because it feels like a failure to leave them, so thinking about good challenging x bad challenging seems like a good idea. it’s OK to decide something isn’t good for you and to want to do less of it. mistakes happen ¯_(ツ)_/¯
there was a moment midweek that I had my headphones on listening to a Paul Woolford remix of Higher Love by Whitney while I was at a board, alone, sorting post-it notes into themes. I felt happier than I had done in a long time [in a purely work context]. put down your screens!
the counter to my happy post-it sorting rave was the evening that I got home so frustrated by everything that I sat down and drew some pissed off graphs in my notebook. graphs! who knew they were a way to express feelings. only line graphs for now, but happily Jeremy gave me back my copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information so maybe my emotive graphs can get a bit more sophisticated soon. The Visual Display of Qualitative Information amirite??
in Italian on Wednesday I learned about different words for different illnesses. yesterday I developed mal di gola (a sore throat), and I still have it today. I imagine I’ll have a proper raffreddore (cold) before long and may need some pastiglie (pastilles) or perhaps lo sciroppo (cough syrup) to make myself feel better.
didn’t go to either the cross-gov design meetup or Meaning Conference yesterday. 100% rookie error.
thanks Nat and Phil for the weeknote shout outs! I’m enjoying some of the just-for-RSS content of this strange weeknote revival in what I think of as my ‘internet scene’, and look forward to joining it soon. miss u Google Reader.
finished Wilding by Isabella Tree this week. it’s a book about how she and her husband gave up intensive agriculture at their farm at Knepp in Sussex and let nature take over their land, to try to recreate an environment long gone from the English countryside. now I’m obsessed with incorrect baselining (who says nightingales want to live in woodland? maybe it’s that woodland is all we have to give them and actually they prefer scrubland!) and what built systems can learn from ecological ones (if anyone has any more reading on this, lmk, I’m here for it). looking out the window on the train to Manchester and there’s flooding everywhere on farmland, and I’m like, yo, maybe y'all need beavers or more scrubland or to let your fallen oaks stay on the ground to build beetle populations. (obviously I’ve got no idea what the land needs. sorry farmers for trying to woke-splain you, I’m just excited by learning about a new thing.)
I’ll be returning Wilding to the library tomorrow (it cost me 50p to bring it in from another library, aka A BARGAIN aka use your local library, people! they’re so good!) and picking back up The Mushroom at the End of the World, which is about “capitalist destruction and collaborative survival”, all via the lens of matsutake mushroom picking. Catherine read it months ago, I am very lucky to have a live-in thought leader <3
at one point this week I had a bit of a breakdown which involved sentences like “I don’t want to be responsible anymore!”. maybe it’s something to do with how much time I’ve spent on the expenses system. no, in reality, I am rational and responsible 94% of the time and I am slowly learning how to be selfish. it’s been tumultuous! no one ever told me that 32 is like 13, but older. is this a thing?
this week has felt exceptionally long, and I’ve been into the coffee shop across from the office enough times that they now only make me flat whites with oat milk, even when I want to go rogue and go cow’s milk. I didn’t mean to turn into a regular, I’ve never been a regular in a coffee shop before and I think I want anonymity again.
a few times this week I’ve felt that half an hour for a 1:1 meeting is much too short, but 40 minutes would probably have felt alright. why do we divide days up like this? would this still be a problem if we used Decimal Time?
we did a With Links on Time quite early on, in With Links’ second iteration. I still think about Mathew’s link quite often: Swatch Internet Time. assume Swatch were inspired by the French Revolution, and not sure why a company thought they’d succeed where the people who overturned the French monarchy failed. but ambition is important, right? be selfish, Swatch! don’t hide behind premonitions of failure, you deserve more!
on Tuesday I went to my first yoga class in months, and it was restorative yoga: did you know that means lying under a blanket in different positions? exceptionally relaxing but I can’t claim it contributed to my WHO-guidelined 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week.
also this week I had lunch with my best friend, who works about 15 minutes from our office. we are going to start having lunch once a week. I’m not sure why we didn’t do that before, but I’m delighted nonetheless.
9am is a very civilised time for a pre-work breakfast meeting near the office. I am accepting invitations.