Day: 14 April 2024

Weeknotes #64: two hours in a theatrical loo

Home comfort, financial review, office camaraderie, tasty meals, fun events.

Week commencing Monday, 8 April 2024

Alex Lodge and Jessica Cervi performing Up Where We Belong
Alex Lodge and Jessica Cervi performing Up Where We Belong

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 3/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 39,179

Life

  • A week where my shoulder continued to give discomfort, I stayed at home for much of it. Friday brought news of the scan in a few weeks.
  • I had the first of what will become a series of financial pension reviews. Would my pensions work better for me if they were consolidated? This question remains to be answered.
  • Avanti West Coast has queried my Delay Repay request, stating they want more information. They keep asking for a copy of the ticket even though the machine at Shrewsbury ate it, and the website says a Collection Receipt is sufficient. Grumble.
  • I wish I had said I was going to Shrewsbury rather than asking. In the end, all was well, but for 24 hours, I was annoyed with myself.
  • Seeing people in the office is always lovely, but I had quite a gap in the afternoon where I had no meetings. I used the time to walk around and chat with people. It felt simultaneously productive and unproductive.
  • Lots of bowls of Vietnamese pho made from the chicken stock we got from last weekend’s roast. Endless nighttime loo visits.
  • Related, Boys on the Verge of Tears at The Soho Theatre: a one-act, almost two-hour performance with five actors playing all the parts, entirely set in a men’s toilet. Lots to think about.
  • Post-show French onion soup with Gruyère cheese croutons was everything I wanted: very thick and rich.
  • Three Sundays in a row: tonight, an 80s party night at The Crazy Coqs with a bunch of great songs.

Media

  • All Of Us Strangers: After watching it last week it’s been on my mind all week. Friday, I watched the excellent “Behind-The-Scenes Broadcast Special” on YouTube. It’s such an interesting film to think about. And it was filmed in the director’s childhood home, which makes it even more fascinating. The YouTube algorithm served up an interesting collection of clips featuring the film’s stars appearing on The Graham Norton Show.
  • Sunday night was the Olivier Awards on ITV. Lots of exciting musicals won, but Sunset Boulevard won the most awards. Tom Francis reprised Sunset Boulevard, starting outside the Royal Albert Hall and walking into the main auditorium (a version of how it was staged at The Savoy, even down to the cardboard Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s very impressive).
  • Apple Music has a new personalised play list: Heavy Rotation and I am loving it.

Guidance From Nannies

What’s wrong with a fat tax? A guiding state or a nanny state?

Thanks to the joys of SkyPlus, I caught up with a fascinating BBC programme that was originally aired a week or so ago.If … we don’t stop eating was part of a series that I wasn’t following, but I have to admit, I was attracted to this show thanks to a very large billboard advertising it (but, like everyone, advertising never works on me).

I hadn’t seen the others in the series, so I wasn’t prepared for the mix of talking-head, documentary footage and fiction.If .. we don’t stop eating, looked to 2020 in a Britain where obesity is the biggest killer in the country and is predicted to affect one in three people; there are no tested drug treatments, and any help from an over-worked NHS relies on your co-operation (failure to co-operate means that treatment is revoked).

It was very, very well done, thought-provoking, and, when it came to looking at what overeating does for us, it was a little unpleasant. And very worthwhile. It discussed medical and political solutions to this growing threat to Britain’s health. I particularly liked the analysis of the fat tax:

NARRATION:By the end of 2020 the Government’s efforts are rapidly going off-course. Consumers won’t be bullied, and the food industry plays on fears of an interfering nanny state. The idea of a fat tax is history.

And, helpfully, the BBC has a transcript online which allows me to tell you that it’s Tim Land, a Professor of Food Policy, who has one of the best lines in the programme, when responding to the suggestion that any fax tax will be played up as being the nanny state interfering in people’s lives:

TIM LANG: PROFESSOR OF FOOD POLICY: I say what’s wrong with nannies! Most of the people who criticise the nanny state have actually got nannies! Have you ever noticed that? Anyway, delete the word ‘nanny’ and call it ‘parent’ and we’re all suddenly in favour of it! Actually, I like guidance — what’s wrong with guidance? Let’s hear it for nannies!

Are those McDonald’s salads a sign of things to come?