despite having taken three days off the week before last, I remain very much at the end of my tether. I know this because I spend a lot of time muttering stuff under my breath and swearing when very minor things go wrong.
by Wednesday night I was texting pictures of the cheese in the fridge to the group chat after our Sainsbury’s order arrived. by Thursday morning we’d moved onto discussing bin collections. life is truly scintillating right now.
bought a turbo trainer a couple of weeks ago. tried to put my bike on it. only then realised - and I should’ve thought about this beforehand - that turbos work best for bikes with vertical dropouts, not my semi-horizontal ones, because lining up cassette and chain is…tricky. any excuse to buy another bike I guess.
like Chris, I’m also interested in the search results for ‘garden shelter lean to’. the tree surgeons came on Friday, so now not only is our garden much lighter, but we also have logs to dry out. and as if I’m going to spend £160 on a wood store.
feel like I spend most of my spare time at the moment, and occasionally time in working hours, doing wifi network admin. I miss the days of broken internet during working hours being someone else’s problem. and have you ever tried to get a robot vacuum cleaner to connect to a mesh network? a world of pain.
finished Broken April by Kadare, a book about people in the Albanian mountains living by a code called the Kanun, which involves generations-long blood feuds between families. I don’t think I understood the ending, but bravo to Daunt Books (my mum bought me a subscription for Christmas), who absolutely nailed the brief of “I want to read things about utopias and dystopias and also the Western Balkans”.
the dog has discovered how much she loves chasing squirrels; so much for the easiest dog ever. let the hard training yards begin.
we got a dog in December. she came over from a shelter in Bulgaria in a van with 19 of her other dog buddies, two months after her puppies all got adopted. from all the chats I’ve had since with other dog owners, we’ve lucked out: she’s calm, good with kids, doesn’t jump up at strangers, and is super loyal.
every morning when we get her out of her crate she is incredibly excited to see us both and it is the purest expression of unconditional love I’ve ever seen.
the routine is 3 walks / day, which exacerbates my previously stated feelings about lunch breaks. and it’s so difficult to pass a split bin bag! when she’s confused, scared or wants to go a different way to us, she freezes, so we spend a lot of time standing in the cold waiting for her to move. it’s getting better and I’m making my peace with it, but damn, hiding frustration from a dog is an emotional low.
Dishoom now have one of those dark kitchens in Hove, so there’s your last excuse gone for not moving to Brighton.
speaking of those lunchbreak thoughts, let me make it abundantly clear how little I appreciated people telling me how to make an omelette. I’m trying to dismantle capitalism and you’re telling me to crack open some eggs in butter. please.
I feel as flat as everyone else, and like all I do is work, walk the dog, drink and watch telly. grateful that the days are getting longer, and that I can start work at 10am every day to get some daylight in before work.
this week in particular it felt like most of my job is about influencing and steering; the slow pace layers of culture change and strategic direction. it’s great to now have a lead delivery manager in our little gang of three (DM, PM, design) focused on the accounts and data teams on GOV.UK. I’ve missed you Ruth!
bookshelves arrive Tuesday. once we’re not surrounded by boxes of books we’ll realise we don’t have any furniture, but that’s not the worst problem to have. C is planning the garden. I’m thinking about loft insulation. can you really imagine going back to an office 5 days a week?
this week marked five years since James died. someone called it the longest, shortest time; that about sums it up.
that doesn’t feel like a great note to end on, though it’s a good thing for me to think about. time to take the dog out.
we’ve moved, to Brighton right next to the South Downs, so now I strip wallpaper for fun. having enough space for us each to have an office is amazing, walks on the South Downs every morning are amazing, the sea poking its head up from all angles is amazing. I haven’t really ventured into Brighton which I half wonder is a fear of going back to the past, when I was a student here. or maybe it’s just that Sainsbury’s online and being neighbours with the local butcher means there’s no need to go anywhere.
I still miss south London too.
a difficult-ish week at work that reminded me of the importance of some kind of mix of 'strong opinions, lightly held’ and the importance of following your nose rather than the plan you had before. and how difficult leadership is when working remotely. and maybe just in general. but I think we ended the week in a better place to where we started it, so that’s something.
had a 1:1 with Jen who is my line manager for a couple of months while Stephen is doing some parenting and I am being head of design for GOV.UK (imagine that!). despite the “oh god line management with a friend” fear, it was good to be kicked into thinking a bit about my career and what I want to be doing for the first time in a while. cheers boss.
passing obsessions since we’ve moved have included compost, garage storage systems, garage doors, cork walls, wood burning stoves, office chairs, mountain bikes, elevation from sea front, the weirdness of induction hobs. it’ll probably be good when that expands to curtains, blinds and doorbells.
our neighbours think we will get a car within 6 months. I am determined not to. we’ve joined the car club though it’s 30 mins walk to the nearest one. but perhaps a smaller chainring for the bike, cos I reckon our hill rivals Swains Lane.
feel like having an office might reinvigorate my energy for work again. when I think about our flat in London it makes me feel a bit claustrophobic, in hindsight.
it was a lovely little flat though. not slagging u, Hillcrest!