• Two weeknotes in a week. Tweeknotes.
  • It’s been a whirlwind of a week with new job opportunities, consulting enquiries, and the fluster that comes with it. It’s also been a week of ridiculous personal scheduling:
  • Inset day on Monday
  • Covid tests on Tuesday
  • Missed bus on Wednesday
  • Hospital visit on Thursday
  • It’s like a really shit Craig David song. So it’s nice, today, to just not be rushing around and just pause.
  • Speaking of pausing, I wrote about it this week in my newsletter for Type Specimens. There are two arbitrary deadlines in Europe: summer and Christmas. The summer deadline is a slow wind down to putting things off as the heat builds on the continent. ‘We’ve got to get this done’ is quickly replaced with ‘this can wait until September’. From Mid-June to September, it’s a nice, slow unwinding. In the UK it’s like this, but slightly different. There isn’t the traditional ‘we take August off’ summer holiday here because the weather is always so rubbish. Instead, we bumble along. Not committing to anything. Trying to take a week off if we can. Stuck in a ‘how do we amuse the kids over the summer holidays when we have to work’ annual cycle of guilt. Well, that’s me anyway.
  • I continue to train on my bike. Five to eight hours a week. But not for much purpose at the moment other than trying to keep in shape. I do have an organised sportive in Wales booked in for September, but who knows what state the country will be in then. In the meantime, I plod along.
  • Got my hair cut. Which is weird to say as it’s my fourth haircut by a professional in 17 years. I tried a new Turkish barber in a town nearby. He took ages, so it’s a really good cut. A bit short, but that’s better than not enough. He also set fire to my ears which was unexpected.
  • The barber also didn’t talk to me. I’d thought that maybe I’d like some chit-chat, being out of these four walls and all. But, it was nice to just sit there in silence and watch him work. I could’ve sat in that chair all day. Without the fire bit – that was weird.
  • Another Groundhog Day of a weekend coming up: cleaning the house, walking the dog, riding the bike, cooking, washing… a treadmill of domestic bliss. Although, we are going around to our first outdoor bbq at a friend’s house on Saturday which is going to be lovely, I’m sure. Hoping the rain will hold off.