Tag: weeknotes

Weeknotes #175: Seaview and shuffleboard

Warm days brought sea views, friends and movement.

Week commencing Monday, 25 May 2026

Panoramic view of a sandy beach at low tide on a sunny day in Seaview, Isle of Wight. Rocky gravel foreground leads to a wide expanse of sand dotted with seaweed and wooden posts, with calm blue water and boats visible in the distance. A lone figure stands beside a small dinghy. Residential properties and a sea wall frame the right side.
Bank holiday bliss at sun-drenched Seaview, Isle of Wight

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 6/7. (86%). Morning walks: 0/3. Office days: 1/4. Total steps: 54,340. 10.4 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Britain experienced its hottest day in May on record on the Bank Holiday, as temperatures reached 34.8°C. And it was hot all week. In my home office, the fan was needed when the room temperature exceeded 30°C.
  • Bank Holiday lunch in Seaview. By luck, the table had a direct view out to sea, and we could see all the boats moored by the sailing club and the RIBs shuttling people to and from their vessels. It was quite fascinating to watch the number of people, loaded up, being taken by RIB to their boats.
  • Wednesday, I decided to go to the gym. I only did an indoor walk, but it was a start. The gym was nice and air-conditioned, but it was also quite refreshing outside as the air cooled. I’d had the windows open upstairs, so we also had a lovely breeze through the house.
  • My memory message celebrating the 50th anniversary of the West Shropshire Talking Newspaper has been published. I must post it here when I get a moment.
  • A group of us played shuffleboard in a bar near the office. We didn’t play by the rules, even though they were set out on a board in front of us. We scored every puck; I think only the team with the puck closest to the far end of the board scores points for that round. It was fun.
  • Friday, people for dinner, snacks in the garden in the heat. I think they call them picky bits these days.
  • Saturday, I ended up going down rabbit holes trying to figure out if I could move all my emails and websites to European-hosted services. It turns out that it is more difficult than I imagined, and more expensive. Perhaps I’ll think about it some more.
  • Sunday, Next had a smaller version of the sofa we wanted to look at. The Crazy Coqs did Wicked and The Wizard of Oz, which, in turn, gave us 15% off for a drink afterwards.

Media

Weeknotes #174: no stress travel

Heatwave sunshine, island travel, good food, and calm disruption recovery.

Week commencing Monday, 18 May 2026

A dark green warning sign reading "Beware of traffic" with a yellow hazard triangle, mounted on a post amid long grass and dandelions at the edge of a gravel path. The path stretches into the distance through open meadows flanked by mature trees under a clear blue summer sky at Osborne House, Isle of Wight.
Rush Hour at Osborne House

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 6/7. (%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 57,681. 14.7 hours in meetings.

Life

  • At the start of the week, I noticed the sun, which was a good indication of what was to come by the end of the week. On Monday, I was frustrated that I wasn’t up early enough to get out for a walk and enjoy it, but by the end of the week,I was enjoying the heatwave.
  • Andy Burnham, the well-regarded Mayor of Greater Manchester, was, this week, confirmed as the Labour Party’s candidate for the Makerfield by-election, due to be held next month. Why would you want to go from something a lot of people think you’re good at to something nobody will like you for, no matter how good you are?
  • The Office for National Statistics confirmed that net migration to the UK fell to 171,000 in the 12 months to the end of December 2025. Despite the figures, research published on the same day found that most of the public believed migration had risen, with only 16% aware that it had, in fact, fallen.
  • Friday, I headed to the station for what was supposed to be a straightforward journey to the Isle of Wight: train to Waterloo, onward to Portsmouth Harbour, then the ferry. The train out of Raynes Park was slow through the early stops but picked up speed after Earlsfield, which seemed good.
  • Related, London Waterloo was not good. A tree had come down on the line somewhere near Walton-on-Thames, and the knock-on effect was considerable. Everything was delayed, nothing was clear, and the app eventually informed us that our tickets could be used tomorrow instead. We made a quick decision: forget tonight, go tomorrow, do something else this evening. No stress.
  • Hence, frozen margaritas in the evening sun on the South Bank. Lovely.
  • So, Saturday to the Isle of Wight. The beach was busy. We managed to get a table at The Dell, where we had a few drinks and watched the world – including a couple of cruise ships – go by.
  • Sunday, to Osborne House. Although we have visited the house in the last five years, it was subject to COVID restrictions back then, and this time, the upstairs apartments were open, which we’d not been able to see before.
  • The weekend highlight was dinner at the Smoking Lobster. We started with a delicious tomato salad and the monkfish bao buns. My sea bass main was seared skin-side, with just the right amount of flake on the fish side; PY’s tuna was cooked to perfection, pink in the middle.

Media

  • The final episode of Race Across the World. It makes me want to travel and see more of the world. They did 51 days’ travelling, which is impressive: 12,000 miles from Palermo, Sicily, to Hatgal, by Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia.

Weeknotes #173: Seoul European songs

A witty week of quizzes, Eurovision, playlists and Korean food.

Week commencing Monday, 11 May 2026

Menu cover for Six by Nico's Seoul-themed 10-course tasting menu, featuring bold white typography on a dark grey background with a vibrant collage illustration of Korean cultural imagery, including the South Korean flag, traditional armour, street food, and Korean signage reading "Gyeongdong Market".
Six by Nico’s Seoul tasting menu — ten courses, one city.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 4/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 39,620. 17.5 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Pub quiz Monday, and we came seventh. PY asked me if I thought all pub quizzes were like the one at The Alexandra. I said that I assumed most British pub quizzes are like ours: mainly social, only partly a trivia contest, and predominantly an excuse to spend two hours in a pub arguing over the name of an actor nobody can quite place.
  • I admit I only came up with the last bit of that line while writing my diary this week. It didn’t actually cross my lips when I was asked.
  • I watched the Eurovision semi-final live on Tuesday. Of the six songs I thought were the best, San Marino (featuring an appearance by Boy George) and Estonia failed to qualify. We had to watch Thursday’s on catch-up.
  • Related, this is the most ‘political’ contest I can remember. I find myself thinking back to chiding Sir Terry Wogan for losing his sense of humour. How quaint that all seems. How I wish that were still the most political thing about it. So, I wrote something about it.
  • Relatedly related, to a small party on Saturday to watch the songs. A lovely evening, and what seemed like a nail-biting finish. Bangaranga!
  • ChatGPT made me a playlist for the Isle of Wight Festival, uploaded it to Apple Music, and explained why it had selected the songs: “It is less a tasteful critic’s guide than a data-led greatest hits tour of the line-up.”
  • Thursday’s dinner was at Six by Nico for the ten-course Seoul tasting menu. Everything was great, but the main courses were fantastic. Black pollock in a Seoul Korean sauce with mussel, clam and ssamjang was outstanding, and the Korean fried chicken — which sounds straightforward enough — was superb. I would happily have eaten considerably more of it.

Media

  • Race Across the World, episodes six and seven. At one point, I welled up a bit. Almaty looked very impressive. Mongolia looks deserted.
  • There was a lot of chatter in the news about the prime minister and whether he would be challenged. I really liked reading former MP Tom Watson’s take on everything, especially his description of how journalists can get themselves worked up about shenanigans: “You can hear the tremor in journalists’ voices whenever a Prime Minister starts to wobble. Nick Robinson’s voice climbed two semitones this week, and accelerated into that special Today programme register reserved for wars, resignations and arrests.”

Weeknotes #172: tables, darts and democracy

Volunteering, politics, table tennis and Wembley brought a lively week.

Week commencing Monday, 4 May 2026

Graffiti handwritten in white marker on the dark background of a Starlight Express show sign at Wembley Park. The text reads: "you have reached the end of the line… This Train Terminates here". To the left, the original sign features colourful beams of light streaking diagonally against a deep blue, star-filled cosmic backdrop.
Cheeky graffiti marks the end of Starlight Express at Wembley.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 4/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 0/4. Total steps: 35,862. 14.8 hours in meetings.

Life

  • More table tennis volunteering on Bank Holiday Monday. The competition moved into the knockout rounds, but the draw was announced late on Sunday night, so nobody was expecting a big influx of people supporting the teams playing. There were still four tables in play at all times, but there wasn’t a very big crowd, and neither of the positions I was given had much traffic.
  • Related, on my way on Monday, I saw a removal van at the Troubadour Theatre, which I assumed was there to pack up Starlight Express, as the show had finished the day before.
  • Wednesday, I attended a drinks event with some interesting people, but I really should’ve left after we’d had the drinks and not gone to the pub afterwards. We ended up across the road at Flight Club until midnight.
  • Polling day on Thursday brought some good news for PY, but early results pointed to a historic collapse in Labour’s support, so bad news for Keir.
  • On Friday, the scale of Labour’s losses became fully apparent. Across England, Labour lost nearly 1,500 local council seats but managed to hold on to my local council, Merton.
  • Saturday, back at Wembley. There was a new location, courtside, by the expensive seats. I wasn’t mad keen to spend time right down by the tables because one wrong move could throw somebody’s game, and that would have been bad.
  • Finals day opened with a bit of a show. We were in the arena for the rehearsals before the public was let in. There was a lot of pyrotechnics involved. It looked impressive when it was performed in front of what they said was a sell-out crowd. Certainly, the seats around us were very busy, which made the volunteering session go by quickly.
  • After the shift, we stayed until we were certain China’s women’s team had it in the bag.
  • On the way home, I noticed the graffiti on the Starlight Express signs. I thought it was quite moving.
  • Oh, and home for the men’s final. Thrilling game; China won. I can only imagine the noise in the arena. I was disappointed the BBC cut the feed before the medals.

Media

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

Weeknotes #170: theatre and towpaths

Sunny travels, theatre laughs, small gambles, and gentle everyday reflections.

Week commencing Monday, 20 April 2026

View from the Chainbridge, Llangollen, looking along the River Dee. Three kayakers navigate white-water rapids amongst rocky outcrops in the foreground. To the right, the white multi-storey Chainbridge Hotel sits alongside the riverbank, its tiered balconies and glass-fronted dining room overlooking the water. A stone arched bridge crosses the river in the middle distance, backed by a tree-covered hillside under a clear blue sky.
Kayakers brave the Dee as diners watch on, Llangollen.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 6/7. (86%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 37,451. 17.3 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Out of a job (kind of): Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple. “Here’s to the mild-mannered, responsible and rapacious ones”
  • Into a job: Sara Cox getting the slot she had been “waiting in the wings” for on Radio 2 Breakfast.
  • Quiz time. We took a gamble on the wipeout round, which didn’t pay off. That meant we were lower down the rankings than we should have been, but I think if you want to come in the top half of the standings, you absolutely have to take a bit of a risk on that round.
  • I’ve started photographing meals so that AI can work out my calories. I don’t think the numbers are accurate, but it’s much easier than logging everything.
  • Wednesday, to see Ancient Grease at The Vaults — an unofficial parody musical that mashes Grease with Ancient Greek mythology: sounds utterly ridiculous, and it is: Zeus and Hera doing the hand jive at Olympus Academy, the three Fates dressed in gold playing chaos merchants, and an evening’s worth of toga-related innuendo. No John Travolta, but some strong Australian accents!
  • I felt bad for the organisers of an internal work event this week; it would have been too much to rearrange due to transport strikes in London, so many seats remained empty.
  • Friday, I managed to secure an upgrade through the SeatFrog auction app, so I travelled to Wolverhampton with Avanti in Standard Premier. Gone are the days when you get a proper upgrade to first class for not a lot of money.
  • Saturday, from Shrewsbury to the Chainbridge Hotel in Llangollen. It was a beautiful sunny day for most of the journey, which is relatively straightforward until the very last stretch, where the road effectively becomes the canal towpath. I was entirely convinced we had taken a wrong turn until a small car park appeared at the end of it.

Media

  • Trying to stay up to date with Race Across the World. Don’t tell me.
  • A couple more episodes of series 1 of The Newsreader. I am enjoying it because I think they’ve captured the era very well.

Weeknotes #169: update my brush

Spring sunshine, seaside walks, better pubs, and small modern absurdities.

Week commencing Monday, 13 April 2026

A hand holding a chilled glass of lager in bright sunshine outside The Fisherman’s Cottage pub in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, with fishing boats, the sea, and a clear blue sky in the background.
Lager and sunshine at the seaside

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 6/7. (90%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 63,071. 14.8 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Thanks to Stonewall campaigning, the law is changing to equalise the treatment of hate crimes for LGBTQ+ people, making them aggravated offences.
  • Related, although anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are recognised in law, hate crimes based on race and/or religion can carry higher maximum penalties because they are classified as aggravated offences. When a crime is considered an ‘aggravated offence’, the victim has longer to access justice, and the perpetrator will receive a stronger sentence.
  • Of all the things to happen in the modern world (1), I never really expected it would be my toothbrush that wouldn’t work until it had some software updated.
  • The Church in Wales’ governing body has approved a bill making blessings of same-sex marriages permanent.
  • Of all the things to happen in the modern world (2), it was inevitable that somebody would make a convincing AI radio presenter. I think a Top 40 countdown was an obvious place to start; the ‘chat’ is already formulaic. “Nexus James” is your AI host. I wonder how many options were presented before a human picked that one?
  • Related, within the first three songs I heard, I could already hear repeated production elements on Olivia Dean’s two songs in the top five. They need to work on that. Regardless, it has more depth than any Top 40 playlist on a music service.
  • Since our regular after-work place closed, we have a new go-to pub that we visited on Thursday. It’s a proper pub, it feels better, and it is less expensive. It has a range of areas where people can book a table. The covered bit at the back is only marginally open to the elements, but it seems to be the first part of the pub that closes at 11 p.m. Which is great news, because previously we have been in the pub when they have not called last orders until midnight or even 1 a.m., and both of those mean we all miss our transport home.
  • A beautiful day on Saturday saw a trip to Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, and then a walk to Yarmouth.
  • Sunday, lunch by the sea in Shanklin and ice creams by Ryde Marina. Maybe summer is here?

Media

Weeknotes #168: 17 years to fix

Busy travel, volunteering, and finally fixing a long-standing website issue.

Week commencing Monday, 6 April, 2026

Exterior of The Crabtree pub on a rainy day, showing a red brick building with a covered outdoor terrace, decorative iron columns, rattan garden furniture, and signage reading 'Craft Beer, Food, Coffee, Ales'.
Rain or Shine, It’s Roast Dinner Time

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 5/7. (81%). Morning walks: 0/3. Office days: 1/4. Total steps: 55,303. 10 hours in meetings.

Life

  • The engineering works meant that trains returning from Shrewsbury were very busy. I am glad that I got to Moor Street early, as that enabled me to secure a seat. I would not have been able to sit in the aisle all the way to London, as some people did.
  • Tuesday, an after-work dash to the Co-op for a pizza for dinner because I had my first volunteer training session for the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships Finals, which come to London later this month.
  • Then, on Saturday, to the Copper Box Arena in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for more volunteer training. We got a tour of the venue with some of the championship organisers; it was impressive how much detail they had already worked through—where walls would go up, how people would move around—and it was fascinating to hear.
  • Almost five years ago, in my second-ever weeknote, I wrote that I had a website that broke my rules about sustainable URL schemas. Somewhere around 2009, I’d upgraded musak.org and, in the process, broken most of the links within the site. I fixed this 17-year-old task on Friday, with guidance from ChatGPT. The task was simply waiting for the right moment to be resolved, and that moment needed AI to balance effort and output.
  • Related, this dead link, http://www.musak.org/entries/2003/07/another_russian_birthday.shtml, will now resolve to the right place.
  • My dentist now recommends Netflix shows as part of the service. Will I ever watch Younger or Jane the Virgin?
  • Sunday, for a “trio of meats” lunch: gammon, turkey and beef, Yorkshire pudding with stuffing. Delicious.

Media

  • The new Race Across the World has started, but it’s too early to have picked my winners.
  • I watched the first episode of The Newsreader, a critically acclaimed Australian drama set in a commercial television newsroom. It took me a while to get into the rhythm, but the major news event of the first episode is the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986. Using that real event as its backdrop made the tension feel believable.
  • On Channel 5, Jane McDonald went to Nashville across two evenings, where she dives into the world of country music—without the cruise ship, for once. Part of the premise is that she’s in a Nashville studio recording tracks for her new album, Living the Dream, claiming she’s always been a bit country because her songs tell stories. It’s arguably one long advert for the album, but fun.

Weeknotes #167: Shrewsbury and Easter

Easter travels, good food, nostalgia, and small wins along the way.

Week commencing Monday, 30th March 2026

Birmingham Moor Street railway station, a red-brick building with arched windows and period details, seen on a bright day with people walking past and gathering near the entrance; the station served as a key part of Easter weekend travel.
Moor Street: essential stop on Easter weekend journey

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 3/7. (52%). Morning walks: 0/3. Office days: 1/4. Total steps: 39,476. 13.4 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Middling at the pub quiz this month. Let’s move on.
  • Recording a message for the West Shropshire Talking Newspaper took me a lot longer than I anticipated because every room echoed too much.
  • After-work beers were nice on Thursday, but it was also nice that they finished early and I could get home to pack.
  • If you don’t ask, and because I did, they let me on an earlier train than the one I’d booked on Good Friday. Engineering works meant I had to go via Birmingham Moor Street station.
  • Friday, Saturday, and Sunday lunches were all in restaurants around Shrewsbury. All different and all very good.
  • I found things in the loft that I had not looked at for more than thirty years. Fascinating.
  • On Easter Sunday, an egg hunt around the garden, and then the Easter trail around Attingham Park.
  • Exciting: Artemis II launched successfully, sending astronauts on a crewed flyby of the Moon for the first time in decades.

Media

Weeknotes #166: theatre, then theatre

Busy weekend of theatre, music, and cultural outings across London

Week commencing Monday, 23rd March 2026

Performers in elaborate armoured costumes on roller skates during a live performance of Starlight Express at Wembley, London. Four characters are visible in close-up, each dressed in distinctive colour-coded outfits: one in iridescent blue, one in metallic green with matching shoulder armour, one in purple with striped detailing and a purple afro, and one in gold and yellow with a yellow mohawk. A crowd of audience members watches closely from behind a low barrier, several holding up phones to photograph the action. The stage floor features a curved track with geometric markings.
Four costumed skaters at Starlight Express, Wembley.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 51,141. 16 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Third time to the Starlight Auditorium: the biggest change from the previous visits was the audience. With the show closing on 3 May, many fans are clearly doing what we did and coming back for one more go. This was the busiest and most enthusiastic crowd we have been part of there.
  • The cassette digitisation project continues. The little tape machine records directly onto a USB drive, which is convenient. The alternative, recording directly to the computer, requires a special cable, which arrived but does not work with my cassette player.
  • Friday, I saw an advertisement for Duran Duran at BST Hyde Park, headlining the Great Oak Stage on 5 July with the Scissor Sisters as special guests. Another thing booked.
  • Saturday, brunch at OXBO Bankside offered a lot of food choices. Later, the Backstage restaurant at the Old Vic, the theatre’s new annex that opened a few months ago, had fewer choices. Both were delicious.
  • Then to Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola’s Tony Award-winning dark comedy, which reimagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a miserable, alcohol-dependent would-be cabaret star in the weeks before her husband’s assassination. I know it gets strong reviews, but I did not really take to it. The overall conceit is interesting, but the execution is the broadest, most unrelenting kind of farce — not a trace of subtlety anywhere.
  • Sunday, BFI Flare: Madfabulous follows the true story of the flamboyant and rebellious life of Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, as he squanders his massive fortune on lavish theatrical productions and gender-defying fashion. Mad and fabulous.
  • Then a visit to the Handel Hendrix House. The museum brings together the former homes of George Frideric Handel, who lived at 25 Brook Street from 1723 until his death in 1759, and Jimi Hendrix, who occupied a flat next door in 1968 and 1969. Two buildings and about two centuries of musical history are separated by a wall (which has been knocked through to create the museum).
  • The weekend ended with a visit to The Crazy Coqs for The Bells and the Barricades, an evening of songs from Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other French-themed musicals.

Media

  • Obviously more Game Changers Radio this week. Kyle filed a claim in the Australian Federal Court, arguing that his termination is invalid. And the episodes kept coming.
  • We started watching Loot on Apple TV+, the Maya Rudolph comedy about a newly divorced billionaire who finds herself running the charitable foundation she had apparently forgotten she founded. Early days, but it seems decent enough.

Weeknotes #165: brands and barricades

A week of culture, nostalgia, discoveries, and quietly satisfying moments.

Week commencing Monday, 16 March 2026

A museum display showing the evolution of HP Sauce packaging, featuring a vintage advertising card and five bottles spanning from the 1910s to 1990. The earliest bottles carry the "Garton's H.P. Sauce" label from the Midland Vinegar Company, with dense Victorian-era typography describing the sauce as a blend of oriental fruits, spices and pure malt vinegar. Later bottles show the progressive simplification of the label design, retaining the iconic Houses of Parliament illustration throughout. A printed card to the left notes that the sauce was first made by Frederick Garton of Nottingham in the 1870s, and that the recipe was sold to the Midland Vinegar Company in 1903. On display at the Museum of Brands, London.
HP Sauce bottles from the 1910s to 1990, Museum of Brands.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7 (71%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 48,912. 21.5 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Diamond Geezer’s been to Shrewsbury, and likes it. Man of taste. I learned that there was supposed to be a roof garden and restaurant on top of the market hall.
  • I watched one of those videos where someone has used AI to place famous people next to their younger selves. There is a great one for Duran Duran, except they used the wrong Roger Taylor. Oops.
  • Monday, finally, to the barricades! We saw Les Misérables. I’m glad I finally went. It’s a great show, and I can’t quite account for why it took me this long, nor why I got a bit emotional at the end. I bet anybody reading this has seen it.
  • Thursday afternoon’s work outing was to the Museum of Brands. I have always meant to go and never quite got around to it — which made it slightly amusing that PY and I already have tickets booked for next Sunday.
  • What struck me most was how many brands simply endured: HP Sauce and Daddies Sauce, both still on shelves today; Ty-Phoo Tea, still familiar; Coleman’s Mustard, Cadbury’s, etc., etc.
  • Friday evening, I updated my blog-checking software, built using AI. Should I find it reassuring that it continues to find spelling errors in past weeknotes?
  • For the second Saturday in a row, we were at the Design Museum — this time for Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s, the exhibition about Blitz, the Covent Garden club in a wine bar that ran on Tuesday nights between 1979 and 1980 and, in doing so, generated the entire New Romantic movement. Perhaps a bit too fashion-focused for my liking.
  • At one point, a large screen showed footage of Spandau Ballet performing at the club — playing To Cut a Long Story Short, which was the first record I ever bought myself.
  • Sunday’s second visit of the week to the Museum of Brands taught me that the phrase “keen as mustard” actually predates the brand; it was the popularity of Keen’s Mustard in the 18th and 19th centuries that is thought to have cemented the idiom in everyday English usage, rather than the other way around.
  • I found myself puzzling over a box of “toilet pins” until I looked it up: they are dressmaking pins used for sewing or securing garments during fitting, and the word “toilet” here is from the French toilette, meaning personal grooming or dressing, with no connection to the room. Perfectly ordinary, once you know.
  • Sunday evening to the BFI on the South Bank, and a screening as part of BFI Flare, the LGBTQ+ film festival. The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel, a documentary portrait of Tony Powell, a former Norwich City defender and 1979 Player of the Year, who effectively vanished after his playing career ended. It turns out he moved to West Hollywood rather than face the consequences of coming out as gay at the height of his career. The documentary is more moving than I think the filmmakers originally set out to make. Recommended.

Media

  • Episodes of the podcast, Game Changers Radio, keep coming as ARN, the radio network, officially terminated Kyle’s contract and cancelled the show, tearing up the record-breaking 10-year deal (valued at a reported $100 million each) that both hosts had signed in late 2023 to run through 2034. So far away. So gripping.
  • Friday evening was spent with old episodes of Yes, Prime Minister, and I still laughed.
  • The final two episodes of Heated Rivalry. Now I understand all the references to The Cottage. The series is positive in a way that sets it apart from many gay love stories, which is genuinely refreshing. It does teeter on being too nice at times. The ending, predictably, is set up for a second series.

Weeknotes #164: quiz, zaalouk, Wes & Ryan

Quiz triumph, inventive cooking, Anderson artistry, and astonishing IMAX cinema moments.

Week commencing Monday, 9 March 2026

Film poster for Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, displayed in the foyer of the BFI IMAX. The poster shows a man in an orange spacesuit against a dramatic backdrop of a blazing sun and a green planet, with the film's title and release date: "In Cinemas March 19."
Houston, We Have a Ryan Gosling

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 5/7. (81%). Morning walks: 0/4. Office days: 1/5. Total steps: 56,584. 13.8 hours in meetings.

Life

  • I wonder if I will live to see the proposed Heathrow Southern Rail. One day, I may step onto a Heathrow-bound train from Clapham Junction. The idea is back in the news again.
  • Monday, we did the quiz as a threesome and fared much better than we thought we would. Tonight it was Edison Lighthouse’s Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) that I pulled from the back of my brain.
  • I am using a free trial of the food app Mob. Wednesday’s aubergine & chickpea zaalouk was delicious, but Thursday’s za’atar chicken, olive rice & whipped feta tasted like something from a restaurant. I am very impressed.
  • A generous and very unexpected gift from PY’s boss on Thursday. I shall enjoy learning to cook something new.
  • Friday afternoon, I listened to an AI-generated audio file about my 2025 diary, where the machine-generated hosts talked about whether they were human or not. I cannot describe how bizarre I find this. And fascinating.
  • Also, these AI-generated nobodies criticise my claim that “Licence to Kill” is the greatest Bond theme. Really? Of course it is. Who do they think they are?
  • Saturday started at the Design Museum for Wes Anderson: The Archives, the first retrospective devoted to his films, drawing on three decades of his personal archives. There is a display case containing a lot of notebooks!
  • Relatedly, the candy-pink model of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the original puppets from Fantastic Mr Fox were on show. There were some fantastic graphics from The French Dispatch and more Asteroid City material, including the vending machines, which we had seen in a previous exhibition devoted to that film. The amount of detail in Anderson’s work that passes by in a moment on screen is quite something when you see how much goes into it.
  • Also on Saturday, to the BFI IMAX to see a preview of Project Hail Mary, the new space-adventure film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and starring Ryan Gosling. The directors appear briefly on screen to introduce the film and explain that it was specifically optimised for IMAX, using the 1.43:1 aspect ratio to fill the full height of the screen. Utterly remarkable. It reminded me how extraordinary cinema can be when you see a film the way it was meant to be seen.

Media

  • Finished Blue Lights, series 2. Now we can really catch up with the latest series.
  • Discovered more detective stuff: Ellis on Channel 5. Watched the first two episodes of the current series as they were broadcast, then went back to the first season and watched one of those.
  • I am very glad we have reopened the doors to Ted Lasso this week. A couple of series to catch up on.

Weeknotes #163: island haze weekend

Curved monitors, good food, island haze, and reassuring London reality.

Week commencing Monday, 2 March 2026

Two photos taken on a misty day on the Isle of Wight. Left: a blue cycling route sign pointing towards Ryde, mounted on a post along a tree-lined gravel path in winter. Right: two people walking dogs along a wide, sandy beach with a calm grey sea fading into thick mist.
Mist, sand, and cycling signs

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 5/7. (66%). Morning walks: 1/4. Office days 1/5. Total steps: 45,134. 18.8 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Monday, a drone attributed to Iran struck an RAF base in Cyprus. Not a good start to the week.
  • Nearer home, the world thinks London is collapsing. Spoiler: it’s not. Really, all is good.
  • So, a nicer story from France: Inside France’s first LGBTQIA+ senior living residence.
  • My new monitor arrived. It’s large and curved. It replaces two separate monitors, which means that, technically, I have less screen space than before. It’s taking some getting used to.
  • The best bit was surprising PY with a new monitor set up in the other room.
  • My Uber arrived, and at nearly two in the morning I was home after a 20-minute journey that cost £29.93. Cheaper than I remembered from last time, though the hour made it a fairly expensive way to end a Thursday.
  • Friday, the aubergine chilli miso, paired with special fried rice, was excellent — the depth of the miso with the softness of the aubergine made for a really good combination of flavour and texture.
  • Saturday on The Island, BBC Two had given over the evening to One-Hit Wonders at the BBC. Three volumes, which seem like a lot when written down, but there are a lot of one-hit wonders.
  • Also on The Island, the sky was overcast, and the Solent had all but disappeared into a thick grey haze; Portsmouth, usually visible, had vanished.

Media

  • Go watch A Friend of Dorothy, an Oscar-nominated short film starring Miriam Margolyes and Stephen Fry. Twenty minutes of loveliness.
  • This week, another episode of Heated Rivalry. I found this one a little odd: everything that happened at the end of the last episode seemed to have been set aside entirely.
  • We picked up Blue Lights again. We do tend to spread series out rather than rushing through them. It is a bit like how television used to be, when you had no choice.
  • I only heard the Kyle and Jackie O Show briefly when I was in Australia a decade ago. As Australia’s highest-rated FM breakfast show implodes, I am hooked to Game Changers Radio.

Weeknotes #162: Guinness, gardens and guilt

Daffodils, culture, nostalgia, and small victories over self-doubt

Week commencing Monday, 23 February 2026

Vibrant pink orchids clustered densely in dramatic low lighting at Orchids After Hours, Kew Gardens, with glossy green leaves and moss visible between the stems.
Orchids glowing after dark at Kew Gardens.

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.

Weeknotes #161: Concorde, curling, and crypts

Morning walks, culture, books, parties, theatre, and perspective.

Week commencing Monday, 16 February 2026

Interior of St Martin-in-the-Fields church filled with blue, green, and violet light projections during the Luxmuralis “Space” light and sound show, highlighting the ornate vaulted ceiling, chandeliers, classical columns, and a seated audience below.
Cosmic light washes over St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 7/7. (100%). Morning walks: 3/4. Office days 1/5. Total steps: 81,336. 15.8 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Oh, look, back to the morning walks. How long will I last? It really is better to be outdoors first thing.
  • As a long-time fan of radio, I’ve wondered how we’ve got to a point, almost 30 years after DAB’s introduction, where FM is still a thing. The government is consulting again. Reddit is, of course, saying, ‘but what about in an emergency’, which is really a rather bogus argument, as James Cridland once pointed out.
  • Relatedly, on that same Reddit thread, somebody talked about building a crystal radio: “There’s probably something to be said for having a communication medium that you can receive on bits of household scrap.” And that tells me that we all live in a bubble where our own experiences are deemed the norm.
  • I finished a book. It was Jonathan Glancey’s Concorde, The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner. I started this in lockdown, so it’s been five years of reading. I faltered in the early stages because it was quite technical in its history of supersonic flight, but I found it easier once Concorde arrived. It ends with the author’s downbeat take on the bland planes in our skies today and a lament that, in the UK, the infrastructure that helped create Concorde is no more.
  • Thursday, to St Martin-in-the-Fields for Space by Luxmuralis, a light and sound show. It begins outside the church before moving into the Crypt, and then up into the main body of the church for a fifteen-minute piece set to music that traces the creation story, the Big Bang, and ends with an image of Earth seen from space beneath a galaxy of stars. I enjoyed it. We sat through the light show twice.
  • To L’s postponed Christmas party on Saturday night. Great to catch up with people we only see once a year, and the curling was on in the background — it turned out that quite a few of us had been following it. Team GB’s men had made it to the final, though it wasn’t to be gold for them.
  • Best not to check about the crazy man at the bus stop on the way home. Quite relieved there was security on the bus.
  • To the Theatre Royal Drury Lane for To Maury With Love, a one-off celebration of the composer Maury Yeston’s eightieth birthday. There was a full orchestra on stage, and the music, however unfamiliar, was lovely.
  • Yeston wrote a Phantom musical based on the same source material that Lloyd Webber adapted. The interesting backstory is that Lloyd Webber’s version became a phenomenon in part because the novel was already in the public domain in Britain in 1986 but not yet in the United States, where the rights holder had originally approached Yeston to work on it. Yeston has called his Phantom “the greatest hit never to be produced on Broadway”. I guess you have to have an ego.

Media

  • My YouTube week: I watched the final DownieLive episode of the train journey from Europe to Asia, which sent me off to watch the stunning luxury train journey in Vietnam and the impressive ways you can use a Swiss rail pass. The lot is going on my bucket list.
  • More Olympics: the Women’s Freeski Big Air final from the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Livigno Snow Park. The commentators’ enthusiasm helped make it a fantastic watch.
  • Really enjoying Small Prophets, Mackenzie Crook’s BBC Two series about a man who turns to alchemy and homunculi in search of answers after his girlfriend disappears.