Week commencing Monday, 23 February 2026
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 7/7. (95%). Morning walks: 3/4. Office days 1/5. Total steps: 59,055. 20 hours in meetings.
Life
- Good sign: there were daffodils on my Monday-morning walk. Does that make it spring yet?
- Bad sign: the third tax-bill revision. Every time I provide more information to claim they are overcharging me, it goes up. I’d be daft to try to fight it again.
- New audiobook: Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years by David Litt. So far, loving it.
- I wrote over 2,000 words for last year’s ‘Yearnotes’. Nobody else cares, but I like reading back my older Yearnotes.
- Pub on Wednesday to meet a former colleague. The place brought back memories. I used to go there in a previous job when colleagues and I did not want to be in either of the two bars directly next to the office. Given where it sits, surrounded by offices that have long since disappeared, it is impressive that it is still going and still very busy.
- Lessons I can’t seem to learn: I did need to get over the guilt that takes me to a pub and results in a missed train and a bus that gets me home at 1 a.m.
- Friday night: Orchids After Hours at Kew Gardens. The theme this year is the biodiversity and cultural heritage of China. There are a large number of native Chinese orchids on display, but I imagine it’s only a fraction of the 30,000 orchid species that one of the videos said have been discovered. Not sure I’d identify orchids without labels.
- Saturday: Guinness 0%, which I found indistinguishable from the regular pint, but it seems to take even longer to pour.
- Midnight is a new pop-opera by American singer Todrick Hall. An advanced workshop version is being performed at Sadler’s Wells East. Wow, it’s amazing, even though it needs to shed 30 minutes of running time.
Media
- Watched the final episode of Small Prophets. Surprisingly captivating and confusing in roughly equal measure.
- Also saw Banned in the 80s: Moments That Shook Music, a documentary revisiting the controversies that reshaped music during the 80s: Relax, I Want Your Sex, I Want to Break Free. Plenty of Mary Whitehouse references. Oh, the culture war!
- Episode three of Heated Rivalry. Yes, we’re not binge-watching it like the rest of the world. The focus shifts in this one, away from the main Shane and Ilya storyline, to follow hockey player Scott Hunter. Another life lesson: apparently, adding an extra banana to a smoothie makes you extra attractive.