Weeknotes #171: same hello for everyone

Nostalgia, volunteering, food experiments, and sociable moments shape the week.

Week commencing Monday, 27 April 2026

Two photos from the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals, London 2026, held at Wembley Arena. Left: Two players compete on a blue table; a player in a red shirt prepares to serve whilst their opponent in an England navy kit stands ready at the far end, with photographers and ITTF centenary branding visible in the background. Right: The exterior of Wembley Arena on an overcast day, dressed with large ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals London 2026 banners and a white hospitality marquee in the foreground.
World-class table tennis lands at Wembley

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (62%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 46,862. 17 hours in meetings.

Life

  • I tried batch cooking on Monday. Unfortunately, my timings all went wonky. We ended up eating a pasta dish while some aubergine slices were cooking in the oven, and I spent most of the evening doing Tuesday’s dinner.
  • It’s a nogalia-fest this week. In Shrewsbury last weekend, I found a plastic bag marked ‘radio autograph cards’ containing about 100 DJ promotional cards from various radio stations in the 1980s, many from broadcasters I would never have heard. I thought they were an interesting time capsule, so I wrote about them.
  • Then there’s the Television and Radio 1983 book: a snapshot of an era when the UK had just launched a fourth television channel and breakfast telly was heralded as the next exciting development.
  • Relatedly, the book mentions a television relay near Tintagel in Cornwall that was built using wind, solar, and batteries as an experiment, which struck me as a green agenda way ahead of its time.
  • Thursday, I avoided one work-related drink to attend another: the usual mixture of putting the world to rights and losing track of how many pints of lager had gone by.
  • It’s 100 years since a table tennis federation was formed. On Saturday, it was my first volunteer shift at ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals, London 2026 at Wembley. I was initially positioned far in the corner, near the practice courts, with a lady who knew all about the Chinese team, the world leaders in the sport, and was very excited whenever she saw one of their players. In fact, most of the crowd around me was.
  • Dinner with friends on Saturday night meant I was happy for the slightly later start for volunteers on Sunday. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t know any of the big stars who are getting all the fan attention, so if they came to sit where I was on the door, everybody got the same “hello”.

Media