this is another weeknote written from an airport. Zagreb airport is excellent.
stayed in both a 4* and a 3* hotel this week. the 4* hotel had a pool, but also my room was a bit dark, 25 degrees and couldn’t be made cooler, and confusing shower controls. the 3* hotel did not have a pool or a spa, but did have good lighting and daylight, was only 21 degrees aka a temperature you can sleep in, and exceptionally clear shower controls. a reminder that stars are given pretty much on the basis of the features of a hotel, not necessarily the quality of experience.
took too many books with me this week.
might’ve sussed out why I might owe some tax. still not sure if I actually owe any tax. tune in next week for more!
downloaded Reeder for both mobile and desktop to bring together my RSS and Instapaper in one place. it’s pleasing, and one step on for my 2020 personal stack improvements.
really, really, deeply hoping for at least a month at home.
the artists formerly known as Poplar have come out of hiding and renamed to Breakroom. it’s basically Glassdoor for frontline jobs. more transparency for non white collar workers is a good thing. given they’re building a product that appears to be, essentially, about empowerment, I wonder if a new category could get added…‘This employer is supportive of workers joining a trade union’
I haven’t yet worked out the boundaries for working in the open in my current role, so while there is loads I could write about my working week, I am only going to say that political structures of countries can make it really hard to deliver good digital stuff. any hand wringing done about the political system in the UK is obviously not in vain (I’m not a proponent of the “eat your greens, they’re starving in Africa” argument), but damn, we are in many ways very lucky - and we have a lot to learn from those who have more political barriers in place.
have now watched the Taylor Swift documentary. probably not for the last time.
went on holiday to Sri Lanka. we met some elephants and saw loads of birds (the type with feathers).
for the first time ever I took the exact right number of books on holiday. I was three quarters through the last one as the plane landed. finished it yesterday on the way to work. pretty sure this is the first time anyone in the world has achieved this feat.
one of the things I read was ‘Ceylon’ by Leonard Woolf, which is an account of his 7 years there as a civil servant straight after leaving university - from 1904 to 1911. he was given a year off after the seven years, came back to London, married Virginia Stephen and decided not to go back to Ceylon. deeply fascinating to read not only about the place but his reflections on the British arrogance of imperialism and being a civil servant. not from the book but from another interview: “the more I was there the more convinced I became that it was wrong. And that we were behaving in a wrong way.”
I’m going to pick out a few bits from the book and put them in a note somewhere.
Ben wrote about clocks on public buildings. since about 2013 I’ve been having a recurring thought when cycling: “the campaign for more public clocks on buildings”. there is a clock on the north side of London Bridge, above the old House of Fraser, but it’s never accurate and has freaked me out a few times. there’s another outside the big Natwest building on Bishopsgate, a digital one, that also gives you the temperature: excellent for benchmarking the day’s cycling outfit with the temperature.
going up hills, I always think, “change DOWN, James BROWN”. no idea any more which song I adapted this from.
so there’s a couple of thoughts I have when I’m on my bike.
back to an airport on Sunday morning. I am sick of going to airports and would like to spend some time at home.
HMRC have decided I owe them some money from more than three tax years ago. it has put me in a terrible mood.
turns out gallivanting round London when you’re still a bit jetlagged is actually exhausting.
went to Daunt Books for an event with Hisham Matar on Wednesday night. the first time I went to Daunt I was a child and it was my schoolfriend’s mum’s book launch (yes, she worked for the BBC, yes, I grew up in north London). I remember gawping at the gallery and thinking I was in some kind of bookshop heaven. still feels the same way now, to be honest. more of that kind of thing this year!
a few years after Columbia Records’ copyright expired, GoodBooks have started putting Control on Spotify. dripfeeding a song a month, so it’ll all be there by the end of the year. still very proud of the record, the band and the few years of my life when I managed them. did I mention that I discovered I have a page on Discogs?
this week I mostly prioritised a rapid turnaround of my expenses.