Week commencing Monday, 19 February 2024
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 54,470
Life
- When the day starts with “Have you got 2 minutes?” You can tell something is up, and I was only having my first coffee of the day. It wasn’t the best news, but it was resolvable.
- It was good that a call with a financial advisor from the bank turned out to be less “hard sell” and more practical advice. I wish I had the money to implement the suggestions.
- A message from James, who says BT has sold the iconic Tower to be turned into a hotel. I joked that I hoped it would have good WiFi! I think that line could’ve gone down better. The Tower’s not an official secret anymore.
- I had drinks with Esteban on Wednesday evening. We concluded at a decent hour so I could get home and to bed in preparation for the office the next day. Instead, I had indigestion and didn’t sleep: getting up was cruel.
- Thursday to The Island. We were greeted upon arrival by another round of water coming in through the ceiling and an inability to raise anybody from the upstairs flat. It resolved itself the next day, but the sound of dripping into a bucket added to my inability to sleep.
- We discovered live music at The Star on Friday night but missed the cider and sausage festival. We made up for it by returning on Saturday night, when there was another band, and we consumed cider and sausages. 
- Walking by the sea, as we did on Saturday, reminds me why I like this place. We saw lots of rainbows.
- Sunday’s return involved a rail replacement bus service from Worcester Park. It worked better than the other times we’ve had to do it, but being pointed in one direction and then made to walk back to where we started because the various bus drivers couldn’t agree on where we should stand soured the experience. When we went out later, we ended up with the same driver on the same coach heading to Wimbledon.
- On Sunday night, we had very different live music, with the sounds of Carole King and James Taylor, as we returned to The Crazy Coqs for more cabaret-style entertainment. Again, it was brilliantly done; the house was packed, and everyone was very much up for the music.
Media
- Finished Christian Wolmar’s history of British Rail (the nationalised years up to privatisation). He makes a good case that, over the life of BR – especially from the end of the Beeching cuts to privatisation – the organisation was a lean, well-run public service and that the sell-off that was to come didn’t really improve on the business in the last years of its existence in public ownership. Worth reading to put that part of BR’s history into perspective.