Week commencing Monday, 3 November 2025
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 6/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 38,773
Life
- The average age of the performers at the excellent gigs I went to this week was 68.
- Monday, to the Royal Albert Hall to see the last date in Suzanne Vega’s tour promoting the album Flying with Angels. It was a fantastic gig with a very appreciative audience.
- Related, I looked it up and was surprised to discover that Luka only peaked at number twenty-three on the UK charts. It’s so ingrained in my memory that I assumed it charted higher. I wonder if twenty-three would be considered a hit these days?
- Friday, Toyah was the support act and was brilliant. I loved the autobiographical stories between songs. Also, she opened with my favourite: Good Morning Universe.
- She was supporting Adam Ant in Hammersmith. I can see where Johnny Depp stole the look. All the hits, ending with Stand & Deliver.
- October: a month of live theatre, reviewed.
- An email from John Lewis, with the subject line, “Watch our new Christmas ad before anyone else.” It links to a web page saying I need to watch it in their app on my phone. So I went to YouTube and there it was on John Lewis’s own channel for everyone to see. The ad’s OK. Great song. But the drive-me-to-the-app nonsense is marketing madness.
- Inspires belief in the confidentiality of it all: “To complete your confidential ten-minute survey, please enter your work email address below.”
- I feel the boat may have left the port: “Sky, BBC and ITN call on Starmer to ‘stamp out’ Big Tech’s ‘anticompetitive behaviour’.”
- Ssshh! I feel the cat may be out of the bag: Apple’s new Siri will secretly use Google Gemini models behind the scenes. No secret — everybody’s reporting it.
Media
- Tuesday marked twenty-two years since Channel 4’s Brookside bowed out. Hollyoaks became their main soap. I discovered that, as part of Hollyoaks’ 30th celebrations, Brookside Close was revisited in a couple of episodes. I watched the first crossover episode. I had no idea about the storyline, but it was good to see Sheila, Bobby, Barry, Billy, Sinbad and Tinhead all back on screen — and that little bit of the theme tune. Nicely nostalgic.
- I came late to this series of Bake Off, but I enjoyed the final and am reminded that nice people make interesting telly.
- They were nice, even though they were Celebrity Traitors. We’d caught up in time to watch the final on the day of transmission. Superb.