After spinning so many plates last month, October had several being dropped. November looks like being a little calmer, which is a relief, but I’m longing for my Christmas break already. Among the month’s highlights were the Brighton launch of Rosy’s book I Love…, where I performed tarot readings, and the Hebden Bridge launch, where I was the support act.
It’s been a struggle to keep the writing on track against an unrelenting tide of work. I’ve had a few deadlines to chase, including the Advent Calendar and the Parish News. Once those are out the way, I’m going to change my approach to writing to feature fewer deadlines.
It’s been another month of minimal exercise, helped a little by Rosie the Puppy staying. I managed to keep my weight under control, ending October at exactly the same weight that I started it. Realistically, I won’t begin any new routines around exercise until some time in December, so for now it’s mostly damage limitation.
I read seven books, including a couple of re-reads. I remembered Terry Pratchett’s Reaper Man fondly; while the good bits remained excellent, much of the book’s humour was tiresome. I also re-read Code is Just and Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War, the latter a dystopian book group pick. Brainwyms was a horrific and shocking novel, at the very edge of what I think is acceptable – sometimes over that. I loved the White Pube book, Poor Artists, which described the challenges facing artists today, but ended on a hopeful note.
At the cinema, One Battle After Another didn’t really work for me. The Smashing Machine felt underwhelming, despite some great performances. Far more fun was Japanese time-travel comedy Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. House of Dynamite was unbearably tense. I caught up with Severance but this was perhaps the wrong pick for the first full week of office work since the pandemic. I also saw Dreaming of You: The Making of The Coral, an inspiring documentary about creativity. .
As part of Rosy’s Brighton book launch, I read tarot cards. It was a fun, challenging and draining activity, but I’m glad I did it. I’ve been struggling to learn tarot cards for 30 years, so setting a deadline worked well. It turns out reading tarot in a club is an intense experience, and the cards were often mischievous.
At the start of October, I spoke at the Leeds AWS group which was fun, but I wasn’t entirely happy with my preparation. Otherwise, work continued at a fast pace with too many meetings. I’ve not written any code in a while.
I’ve taken Mastodon, LinkedIn, and RSS off my phone to see whether that gives me more space to think. I’m considering uninstalling Whatsapp: I loathe everything Meta is doing to our world, but the network effects make leaving that network difficult.
Andy Goldsworthy is one of my favourite artists, and I was determined to see his retrospective in Edinburgh. I ended up doing this as a day trip which was crazy, but I’m glad I did.
- I have a good dentist, but even a minor check-up leaves me feeling shaky and exhausted. I guess I’ll always be that way.
- I watched a 12-minute Fred Dibnah documentary and, frankly, it made the Netflix movie Fall seem tame.
- I read an issue of Wyrd Science Magazine because the interviewed John Higgs and loved it so much that I bought all the back issues I could.
- I found an excellent list of the 40 saddest albums ever made.