the week before last, I didn’t want to write a weeknote. last week, I just didn’t make the time for it. sorry to my 25 week streak.
we cleaned out / tided the shed. I’m simultaneously very happy about this and also a bit sad that “sorting out the shed” is no longer a thing to look forward to. questions remain outstanding over what I should do with one working and one broken Shimano 600 STI shifters/brake levers, not to mention the many spare downtube shifters I appear to have acquired in the past decade. I’ve got enough spare parts that I could build a real mongrel of a bike, although it would be a bike without a front wheel, brakes or a seatpost.
yesterday I took an hour for lunch and went out on my bike and down to Fowlds (inspired by Andy). had my first flat white in 7 weeks which was simultaneously lovely and also underwhelming. hope the first pint in the Gowlett is more momentous.
the other success story of the week is that I bought a tiny solar panel and bulb (off Amazon, sorry world). solar panel on roof of shed, bulb off a hook inside. there’s a whole world of solar panel lighting out there when you start looking. surely we can’t be far off my dream of a solar powered freezer (never say I don’t dream big).
we’ve started going for walks first thing, leaving the flat somewhere between 6.30-7am. either up to Dulwich - park or woods - or, this morning, to Brockwell Park. it’s good to get a headstart on the day, and getting back at 7.45 still feels like enough time to have a cup of tea and a sit before starting work. when did I become a willing participant in mornings?
work: continues. there was a point last week that I was like, ah, here I am, at the perfect point which intersects across all of my experience. that quickly folded into “I offer nothing unique on this project”, and now we’re back to an even keel again. what a rollercoaster! I’m getting big meeting fatigue, though, so this week I’m trying to just…get us all writing stuff down more. like the Jeff Bezos 6-page-memo thing. though, lols at having a week to write something at the pace we’re moving. nice idea, Jeff!
the only other thing of note is that I bought a new phone for the first time since February 2015. the iPhone SE is pretty much exactly the same form factor as my previous iPhone 6. I was deeply impressed with Apple’s onboarding / data transfer process - just keep the phones nearby each other, and everything will switch across, just a bit of extra auth required for banking apps - but unlocking a new phone to find it looks visually identical to the old one really exacerbated the feeling of slight underwhelm. no clean slates here! just a metal object, slightly different to your old metal object. I guess that’s the feeling when there’s the flip from smartphones being an object of novelty into being utility items. but at least Strava tracks my runs more accurately now.
fell off my bike on the way back from the shops on Friday morning. clipped a bin and came off sideways on a route I’ve done probably 150-200 times. there are bruises, no skin was broken, I only cried ten hours later after C got home and was nice to me.
arnica is helping.
started doing the Running Clinic’s 5k programme last week. jumped straight into the end of week 6. so until Friday my mind was entirely thinking about intervals and the next run. dead annoying to have to skip a couple of days!
C’s days at work are getting longer. I am not above saying that I find 12-14 hours home alone challenging. big love to the people who live on their own.
the long weekend was excellent, but can I remember what happened? like hell I can.
long chat with Iso this morning, partly around the ‘hero’ narrative for NHS workers. they’re not heroes, they’re skilled workers we should be grateful for and we should pay and reward properly. the moment people become heroes is the moment they can also become martyrs.
I think the only work news is that I’m staying on GOV.UK as lead designer indefinitely now and won’t be going back to international even after coronavirus stops making work a bit crazy. happy to carry on working with Stephen and the rest of the crew.
started thinking about this whole 'what does the world look like after coronavirus’, the narrative around “we can’t go back to the Before”. the trouble is, as far as I can tell anyway, the way things have been (and continue to be, let’s be real) structured is as a result of power, money, and comfort. so when I buy that coffee off someone who earns less than a proper London living wage, I’m doing that for my own comfort, and I’m still part of the exploitation. how do we reimagine power structures when it causes people discomfort to give up some of the comfort they have? I’m not entirely convinced that enough people are willing to do that. (I mean, one argument is that some people have more money than there is comfort to buy and won’t feel it anyway)
anyway, if we could reimagine the world, then thoughts around being less influenced by Europe / US - how do we get a media that properly references the whole world? I want to read about Argentina and Colombia and Nigeria and the Pacific Islands as much as I want to read about Germany and the US, please: equity of coverage hopefully leading to a bit of diversity of thought.
if the economy needs rebuilding and economic stimulus and all those things, could we rebuild it in a green way? build cities for pedestrians and bikes (so tempted to buy two of these and put them in the middle of our road early one morning to create my own car free street), tax breaks for investments in renewables, ummm other things that would help also welcome.
finally and related to the last point: just went for a walk around the grounds of Dulwich College, which have been opened up to the public for the time being. it’s huge! bigger than Dulwich Park! not to mention the attached golf course. how about we share that kind of land more often than just a once-in-a-lifetime (I hope) global pandemic, huh?
completely adore the Surly. cables are starting to stretch a bit already, but I’ll deal with that in a few weeks. only ridden it twice since the last weeknote - once with C on her way to work again, once today to go to the shops in Peckham - but I love it. can’t wait until it doesn’t feel slightly edgy to go out on a bike.
we pre-ordered a Colomba from General Store to pick up this morning, and decided to go to the butcher at the same time. going to the butcher was effing stupid, because everyone else also wanted to go there. after an hour we fell for the sunk cost fallacy and decided it wasn’t worth going home empty handed. so we stayed and got what we needed after two fucking hours, but the whole thing made me feel like I never want to go to a shop again. something about being outside for so long made me feel like I was more involved in this thing that is happening than I do when I don’t go out. felt both stupid and anxious. as per the other week: I think I prefer staying indoors.
C’s team are no longer on the wards but doing research on coronavirus at the Nightingale. it’s been a bit up in the air, but yesterday when I was at a standup early doors, she got a call and came in the room to say “right, induction’s at 11, I’m off to the Excel, bye”. bit of a whirlwind. given the circumstances, research at the Nightingale is far from the worst outcome.
work slowly ramped up as the week went on. didn’t ship anything as previously expected. did show a prototype that I already think is off to a bunch of people in other government departments. got an email from Jen that set off an awful lot of thinking, then decided off the back of some engagement-type feedback that the thinking was in the wrong direction. but hey, course correction is what we do, right? and course correction of three days of thinking and chats is a lot cheaper than course correction of building something. had a crazy useful hour of chats with Ignacia yesterday morning: I think the thing I love about being on GOV.UK is being back working with other designers every day again. sorry, other people. I like you too.
had my last therapy session yesterday morning. I ran out of things to say somewhere around when working from home started. self actualisation doesn’t feel very important at the moment: I mostly just think about food, work, and which bit of the flat might need cleaning next, and how many days it’s been since I’ve gone out and whether I should do that soon. maybe I’ll go back at some point, but for now, figuring things out about myself feels…unnecessary.
after I tweeted about the Gowlett, group chat midweek turned into “top 5 moments in the Gowlett”. special shout outs for all the quick pints that turned into not going to yoga / spin / the gym, for all the “one for the road” on the way home from elsewhere that turned into three, for all the pints on heads photos from five years ago, for all the quick pints that turned into a full evening complete with pizza, for that first time after it reopened and was only taking cash, for all the birthday parties, for our first date nearly 5 years ago. yeah, I miss the pub.
I was very, very into Barking by Ramz when it came out. have been slowly doing a rewrite, spurred by replacing “AJT” with “OGDs”, which is the shorthand for ‘other government departments’ that seems to get used everywhere. I’ve got this far: “just like OGDs, no wonder they hate on me, cos I’m making Ps [pixels] and you see this code, yeah I ship it for free”. the million dollar question is what to replace the word 'Barking’ with. yeah, I’m good, busy, how about you?