Weeknotes #46: ain’t necessarily so

  • Reminded this week of one of the first recordings my choir, the Pink Singers, backing on Ain’t Necessarily So by Bronski Beat. It came up as part of an hour-long set of conversations with elder pinkies reflecting on their experiences of the 1980s on our weekly (zoom) rehearsal, prompted by It’s a Sin. Another reminder of the power of intergenerational queer spaces. We are standing on the shoulders of giants.
  • Starting to think about the shape of work for spring & summer as some long-term engagements conclude soon. Aiming for some restored balance, time for some learning, networking and thinking about how to grow my business a bit.
  • Continuing last week’s Mumbai theme, we really enjoyed The Lunchbox, a gentle story of romance and, again, class, centred around an accidental delivery of lunch to the wrong person by dabbawallas (I am assured that in reality, the dabbawallas never fail).
  • Yerma, on the other hand, is anything but gentle, but Billie Piper is incredible in it.
  • J has started some volunteering work and so at least one of us is out of the house on a regular basis for the first time in a while. Elvis the puggle’s separation anxiety has become pretty acute as a result, so looking at ways to resolve that.
  • Started to take in some small hills on a weekly basis to try and increase my FTP on the bike. The creep towards middle-aged-man-in-lycra is continuing.
  • Otherwise a relatively quiet week, thankfully.
  • Daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, oh my.
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Weeknotes #46: happy valentine’s day, boyo

  • My toes have been cold all week.
  • Mum and Dad both got their first covid vaccines on Thursday. Which warmed my heart. But not my toes.
  • My nephew William Foy turned 13. For various reasons, we aren’t in touch, which I find incredibly sad. I hope one day soon we can have some adventures again.
  • William was born at about the same time that J and I started dating, so I guess also happy 13th anniversary to us!
  • Drive and Listen allows you to experience the sights and local radio sounds of driving round a variety of global cities. A trip back to Mumbai was exactly what I needed.
  • And talking of Mumbai, was incredibly impressed by the humorous and difficult Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a play which explores the class system and bribery in the inner-city slums of India, on National Theatre at Home this weekend.
  • My friend Laura has written a second novel, Daughters of Night, after an incredible first, and I can’t wait to read it.
  • Pippa’s critique of It’s a Sin is important, highlighting the lack of depth to Jill’s character and how this speaks to a broader problem in representation of women, women of colour, and carers in LGBTQ drama (and beyond). I hope it reaches and reverberates in the chamber in Russell T Davies’ circle and the Channel 4 commissioning team. It’s certainly provoked some thoughtful debate in the choir Facebook group.

in the character of Jill, we don’t so much get a recognition of care work as an idealisation of it. Jill is always ready, willing and able to help out, even volunteering to clean up after the boys in her house. She never loses her temper and she never asks for anything in return. She barely even gets thanked for all of the work she does. All other characters are allowed to be flawed and selfish, but not Jill.

  • Le Fil’s Boyo is absolutely wonderful:
  • It’s valentine’s day. Celebrated by cycling to Epping Forest (which is entirely frozen) and accidentally cycled along Valentine Road on the way home. A sign.
  • I’ve taken a day off tomorrow. Good.
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Weeknotes #45: Honey doesn’t matter

  • Work calmed down a bit and for the first time it’s felt like what a normal week should be like, which in itself has been a wake up call. I need to seriously re-evaluate the sustainability of the volume and pace of the last 18 months. A reset is due, I think. Next month.
  • It’s a Sin has spawned some lovely playlists, including of course an official one but most importantly these incredible spin-offs by Duckie’s Readers Wifes that explore the slightly less trodden path through this era. Check them out here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
  • Re-finding this article about companies’ second acts this past week was timely. The pandemic up-ends so much. Out of chaos, opportunity. A re-evaluation of what’s needed. Reorientation.
  • Enjoyed rummaging through some old episodes of Song Exploder, including Robyn talking about Honey and Christine talking about Doesn’t Matter and these two episodes are delicious opposites: one discussing the carrying an idea for years before reaching fruition – the other talking about a song dreamed up in tears in one evening.
  • I’m listening to How To Be a Liberal while I cycle in the dark at the moment to try and understand, from scratch, a bit more about how we’ve ended up in societal situation in the UK where we’ve sort of forgotten to care about each other. So far, I’m pretty much no wiser. But I have learned a bit about Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill.
  • Both Elvis and I are eating slightly smaller portions until the winter spread has been banished. We’re both pretty cross about it tbh.
  • More snow! Just what we needed.
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Weeknotes #44: still, January

  • Not the most eventful of weeks. That’s probably a good thing at the moment.
  • Work continues with a small ethical quandary and, still, some rather long days.
  • Yesterday 1.2% of the adult population received their first vaccine shot. That is incredible. But this week the UK surpassed 100,000 deaths, which is utterly unforgivable.
  • How will people remember this time, when it’s all over?
  • I will remember Heather, a family friend who died this week at just 46, and my uncle’s mum who passed the week before.
  • I will remember thinking about all my friends in New Zealand and Taiwan who went back to life as normal from June 2020.
  • And breathe.
  • Mixing together a virtual choir recording of Snow Patrol’s Run using Logic Pro has been a surprisingly lovely escape, and I’m getting reasonably fast using the editor. 33 audio tracks and my computer is barely breaking a sweat. Back in the day, this would have been Crashy McCrashtown and/or submix galore.
  • Finished It’s a Sin. I’m still as emotional as I was about it in last week’s post. The last episode in particular. Why it got squeezed from an eight-parter to a 5-parter I’ll never understand.
  • Enjoyed Julie, a National Theatre remake of the 1888 play by August Strindberg. The themes of class and power are timeless and the acting is utterly brilliant but the script sticks out quite a lot in a number of places. I really enjoyed the staging too.
  • Also watched Valley of Love, starring Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu grieving in Death Valley. It’s beautiful and ridiculous and flawed and I would watch it again.
  • Accidentally watched the end of Independence Day again while eating some crisps. Sometimes empty calories are the best.
  • Slowly allowing some zoom socialising into life again – made better by trying to be more natural; chatting to friends while fixing a drink, doing something else, but still interacting. Continuous partial attention rather than full attention.
  • My bike is, I have suddenly realised, a wreck. While fitting some new mudguards, I realised that everything is rusting, the chain feels strained and the derailleurs are temperamental at best.
  • Booked it in for a service at the local place, whose website suggests they are fighting for survival because commuters have gone.
  • London Zone 1 really is on its knees.
  • Put the winter duvet on, two thirds of the way through winter, and realised just what I’d been missing.
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Weeknotes #43: together in electric snow

  • White stuff falling from the sky. A frisson of excitement.
  • A long week: lengthy, relentless work days.
  • Recently have been doing end-of-week reflections chats with an old FutureLearn colleague Matt. It’s been useful: just the act of succinctly reflecting on the work week with someone who knows me well is helping me immediately spot things to change / improve / be proud of. We’ve extended it out to a few others so we’ll see. It means more time in the Zoom mine, which I feel loathe to do, but there’s clearly benefit. On a more personal level it’s comforting to see familiar trusted faces and talk about our various strategies for keeping life interesting indoors.
  • BIDEN! Sentences! Sensible ideas! Bernie’s mittens!!! The internet becoming a 3% less stressful place!!!!
  • Frances took me on a magical mystery cycle to visit some Welsh landmarks across London, taking in the Iolo Morgannwg memorial on Primrose Hill, Welsh Harp reservoir by Brent Cross, the Capel Bedyddwyr Cymreig, Old Deer Park Welsh Rugby club in Kew, the London Welsh Centre, the house where Nye Bevan lived in Kensington, and more. It was such a delight to go on a local adventure. And at 65km a bit knackering for my little legs.
  • This apocalyptic shot of the skyline from 9am Primrose Hill though.
  • Started watching It’s a Sin, which is going to utterly ruin me. Can’t watch more than one in a sitting. I am Colin/Gladys from Wales.
  • It’s so much more than that. I grew up gay in the long shadow of the AIDS crisis without really fully understanding it. No facts, no information, no reflection, no empathy, just shame and section-28-ensured silence. Millions of deaths swept under the carpet.
  • And so timely because AIDS has killed so many more than Coronavirus (albeit this graph is from September last year).
  • Obviously this is the latest in a long list of books, films, documentaries on this subject but Russell T Davies has, in the first episodes of It’s a Sin, nailed the harrowing juxtaposition of the pure joy of discovering who you are, only to have it all snatched away from you, while the world frowns on, or worse, looks away.
  • A whole generation devastated.
  • Debating with a family member on the evidence behind Coronavirus / their hesitancy to get a vaccine really played on my mind this week and I realised the emotions of that are bundled up in all this.
  • Messy, heavy thoughts.
  • A year ago, I was looking forward to all manner of travel adventures. Hmm.
  • It’s a good job we also started watching Bridgerton (utterly necessary mind-clearing fluff) as a sort of ridiculous antidote to the theme of disease and slow-shifting societal attitudes.
  • In lighter news. The Pink Singers made another lockdown virtual choir video and it is utterly delightful and fun and well produced. On a serious note it’s showing how the choir arguably has increased its reach and charitable impact during lockdown despite not being able to rehearse together – so far the video has been viewed at least 28,000 times.
  • I’m comfort eating a fair bit this week and in light of the above I’m allowing it.
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Weeknotes #42: and then we waited

Steppe Up: Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) and Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) share a moment between dance moves in And Then We Danced.

It’s been a reasonably good week.

  • Now 100% certain last week’s lurgy wasn’t covid through testing. Thanks, coronavirus home testing kit team!
  • I self isolated for 10 days from first symptoms anyway. It wasn’t much different to not self isolating, given the level of restrictions at the moment.
  • Really missed cycling, though, and very glad to have started that again this weekend.
  • Work continued throughout – starting a couple of smaller new engagements alongside the juggernaut at the moment feels quite exciting and energising. It’s all go on all fronts, but the break in December really helped get my energy levels back up again. I’ve been collating a few reads on product management in a crisis – more on that in coming weeks .
  • To wind down I have been spending a little time with Logic Pro mixing together a rough guide vox of an eight-part arrangement for Pink Singers. It’s been great to pick up an audio project again. DAW software is so much more legible than when I was last using it in earnest 15-20 years ago.
  • Felix did a really wonderful tutored cocktail tasting class for a few people last Thursday.
  • Treated myself to a Fitbit to help me track my heart rate during exercise. I forgot that it can be quite handy to have the time on your wrist. The heart rate monitor seems pretty good too – and a good measure of when I was sick (elevated resting pulse of 75) vs not (normal resting pulse of about 61).
  • My favourite frying pan developed a hole through overuse. The whole kitchen is getting a bit worn out. But getting a new frying / sauté pan is surprisingly stressful when you can’t go to a shop and properly nerd out over it.
  • On the subject of food, splashing out on Hide at Home for J’s birthday and ordering good-value but exceptional curry directly from Darjeeling Express knocked the socks off the normal deliveroo fare and got me excited about going out for dinner again, whenever that is.
  • Definitely put on weight over Christmas/New Year. What a surprise.
  • Watched a couple of quite nice queer films this weekend: the weirdly humorous Love and Death on Long Island with John Hurt and Jason Priestly, and the utterly beautiful Georgian coming-of-age first love film And Then We Danced.
  • News of lots of medics I know, and older folks, getting vaccines, makes me very happy indeed.
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Weeknotes #41: fireworks and swearing

Happy sweary new year.

  • This video of an hour’s worth of fireworks going off in one go sums up the first week of the year quite well.
  • Work went a bit upside down because I got sick, althoigh thankfully almost certain it wasn’t covid. Phew.
  • Work then spilled significantly into the weekend.
  • News from medic friends puts my tiny struggles into context: “We’re removing breathing machines from patients and letting them die, cleaning the machine and then hooking it back up to a patient in literally the next bed because we think they have a better chance of surviving
  • Jesus fucking Christ.
  • Christina Pagel is the only sane person worth following on twitter if you’re grappling with the maddeningly tiny venn between epidemiology and UK public health policy.
  • For light relief from a) Trump and b) the pandemic, we found ourselves watching Totally Under Control, an in-depth documentary on the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic in the USA in Spring and Summer 2020. It was not escapism, but it is excellent.
  • Watching platform-level moderation in action is both somewhat reassuring (in this instance) but also bewildering. Uneasy few weeks ahead.
  • Finished Star Trek Discovery S3. The scenes with the turbolift floating in a hitherto-unseen oxygenated intel-proceessor-advert themed cavern gave me all kinds of sceptical questions about plausibility. The rest of it was totes fine, obviously.
  • Finished A Farewell to Arms. Honestly, a lot of chat about eating and omitted sex in amongst the utter random pointlessness of war. On reflection, not the best thing to pick up during a lockdown.
  • Everyone’s been enjoying Itsu frozen dumplings at home for ages without telling me. Well, I’m in on the secret now you salty bastards.
  • Swearing is helping.
  • As is this amazing Swedish disco track from Madleen Kane. Turn it up loud. You’re welcome.
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Weeknotes #40: false dawns

Sneaking the last week/month note in before the end of 2020.

  • I have had almost three weeks off work. I feel lucky and rested and almost ready to get back into things.
  • During that time, I have watched about three films. Sadly none were worth writing home / here about, although Meryl Streep did steal the show in The Prom with It’s Not About Me.
  • I recently invested in some Aftershokz bone-conduction headphones so I can listen to things while cycling without losing the sense of what’s going on around me. I think they are one of my favourite purchases of all time. I’ve plunged back into Audible and am racing through a few books, and listened to a fair few episodes of Song Exploder which brings a lot of joy and inspiration each time, in particular the Laura Marling and Billie Eilish episodes.
  • Felix’s cocktail creations from Manhattans project have been a Saturday night treat. And sometimes Fridays too.
  • Christmas was, as for all of us, totally odd. Gingerly popping a bag of presents and a ready-to-roast stuffed leg of turkey over a garden wall is not how we’d choose to do things, but, pandemic. The turkey was delicious at least. Thanks Jamie. Didn’t even make twizzlers with the leftovers which feels like a shame in retrospect. Additional drama sprinkles were provided by both the dishwasher and washing machine breaking, but we remain lucky enough to have both. And we’re still covid free despite everyone seeming to have it right now.
  • Alongside the festivities and downtime: some gentle work on equal opportunities policy research and writing with the Pink Singers, a bit of getting the house in order before a very full first quarter of 2021.
  • Brexit was still a really bad idea, and I am not looking forward to seeing its impact play out like a slow puncture over the next few years.
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Weeknotes #39: inside upside

  • That election happened, and hope dared to return to my menu of psychological states.
  • While the results were playing out, though, there were a few feverish days of mild peril. CNN magic wall obsession led to a sensation of feeling sick to the stomach, and a new overfamiliarity with Lake Erie. I need to really step away from things over which I have no control.
  • I even developed a mild, short-lived obsession with the marvel that is Kate Bolduan’s hair (so shiny, so reliable, even on four hours’ sleep)
  • Talking of hair, I finally got a haircut after ten months, in a tiny window of opportunity before lockdown2. I don’t miss having shoulder-length rat hair.
  • Beyond the election, I have managed to squeeze in some virtual and in-person ‘recreational’ chats with long-lost work colleagues which has been surprisingly soothing. What an array of wonderfully smart and thoughtful people I’ve been lucky enough to work with over the last decade.
  • I’ve kept the cycling up, although not being a morning person this invariably means a lot of cycling around Regents’ Park outer circle in the dark. There’s little traffic now, and the darkness feels strangely calming. Sometimes I have company, which makes the time pass faster.
  • Watched The Queen’s Gambit, which was everything I needed and a bit more. Beautiful inside and out. Triggering themes for me too, though.
  • Also Prick Up Your Ears, a really quite apt queer lockdown film to watch, which had until now completely passed me by.
  • Made a music video with the Barberfellas, somehow, in the midst of all this. Gary Barlow eat your heart out. Not bad for a song we’ve not been able to work on much. Key change needs some love. Very thankful to St Anne’s Church in Soho for finding us a way to rehearse covid-safely during September and October.
  • Finally learned Reverie to a point where it’s relatively fluent.
  • Not sure if it’s entirely lockdown related, but I’ve been generally feeling a bit boxed in.
  • My student discount finally expired, which is a timely reminder to write up some MBA reflections before they depart my brain completely.
  • But now: turning the computer off seems like a sensible idea.

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Weeknotes #38: lockdown redux

Now that London is firmly Tier 2 (stage 2? level 2? what is our frame of reference now?), I’m taking stock of how to get through the next few months. With work continuing to fill all the light hours (and some dark ones), the focus otherwise has been on self-preservation in a few ways.

Cultural: Pippin at the Eagle garden theatre in Vauxhall was energetically performed, even if the musical itself is a hideous mess. An outdoor triumph, preceded by a bonus covid-safe espresso martini beneath some light fittings that a friend once got barred for pulling down during some 3am dancing about twelve years ago. Anyway, I’ll be back seeing everything they put on over the winter.

Familial: attended a wedding, which truly was four hours of relative normality with fourteen other people, a lot of smiles and some delicious food and fizz.

Corporeal: several recent proddings have revealed that the plantar fasciitis that I’ve been wearing insoles for since 2017 has now morphed into PTTD. On the other hand, my research brought me to my favourite diagram of the week, of a skeleton doing calf raises. Appropriate for a middle-aged, socially distant halloween.

Outdoor: lowering the blood pressure with weekend cycle trips has been such a joy this year that I’m buying proper winter cycling gear and starting to tentatively side-eye proper bikes and kit. Is this it? Is this the first mid-life crisis manifesting?

Sofa-bound: loads of tele. Finished series one of I’m Not OK With This and I’m a bit fed up of forty-something white guys making reminiscent coming-of-age stories about their high school experiences in 1986. Selfishly, I’ll be delighted (horrified) when there’s some sort of edgy nineties equivalent sponsored by Lynx Africa that speaks to me. On the other hand I’m really glad Discovery is back. I wish there had been sci-fi queers when I was younger. Would’ve saved all kinds of heartache. And it’s much more hopeful than the Netflix revival of Boys In The Band which is well-made and beautifully 60s but, by design, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Otherwise, Life of Crime was leftfield entertaining and absolutely oozes seventies, while Holy Motors (bit late to the fete on this) is utterly bizarre but mesmerising.

Finally I can recommend not scrolling back through WhatsApp to see what you were chatting about in March.

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