spidrak

Wow, 2020. What happened?

- Bumping into C just before the year started. We'd first met in youth theater about 10 years ago, and had a hell of a lot of catching up to do.
- The Mechanisms finally calling it a day. Thanks to C I ended up with tickets to both nights, and it was glorious. Such a concentration of awesome people in one place, both on-stage and off. In some ways, a shame it couldn't be extended into
- Many years of work deferring essential maintenance catching up with us, resulting in many stressful all-nighters trying to keep the network lights blinking.
- Antichrist, and a bloody brilliant all-nighter.
- Ripping and replacing the network core at our largest hospital. Successful, in so far as nobody was actually put at risk of harm, even if I wasn't confident of it at the time.
- Unknown Armies game, which I approached totally unspoiled. Gaming over Discord has been one of the few things that I'd actually like to keep from this year. The opportunity to Do Social on a weeknight evening when friends are more than about an hour's drive away has been great.
- COVID, obviously. I was in the very fortunate position of remaining fully employed throughout the year. More than fully employed, as evidenced by a work-induced near-breakdown in the second half of the year.
- Finally declaring the building works on my house finished, and moving the last of my possessions in.
- Mum selling her house, then discovering her new place wouldn't be ready for another 3 months. No problem, she promptly moved in with me and I doubt I'd have got through the lockdown with as much sanity intact if she hadn't.

Now I ought to be heading to a hut in the woods, where there should be singing, boardgames and stripping the willow at midnight while the Kitchen Ceilidh Band plays. But I'm not. Bloody COVID.

Jan 29 What is your skin care regimen?
Real Shaving Company shaving gel. Soap. Not at all fancy, but I really don't notice a huge difference in what products I use, my skin responds much more to how much I've slept lately.
Jan 30 What song are you listening to a lot right now? (Post a link?)
Not listening right now, but the most recent thing was Dawn, written by Dobrinka Tabokova, who I got into after hearing one of her pieces at the Proms last year
Jan 31 What superpower best suits your personality?
The power to sleep practically anywhere, which is a slightly crappy power, but one that I do actually possess.
Feb 01 What is your birthstone and flower?
No idea.
Feb 02 If you could redo today, what one thing would you do differently?
Biked over to the board game cafe, rather than getting a lift there. Would have been a lovely day for a ride, if I'd got my brain around to it in time.
Feb 03 What’s your favorite salad dressing?
Lemony things, generally. Sharp lemony things.
Feb 04 Is your home tidy right this minute?
Nope, it's a building site. I'm in the midst of replastering walls and making good floors, so it's not ideal to be living in, and I'm getting thoroughly fed up of this state of affairs.

I've fallen off doing these daily, but still, I'm enjoying the prompts and having so many means I don't feel too bad about making some very short posts and writing more when the fancy takes me.

So, trying for weekly instead - I can still try to write daily, but it's less faff editing the dates if I do fall behind, and I won't be spamming my journal/reading pages with a lot of low-effort posts.

Jan 13 What are your favorite pizza toppings?
For everyday pizzas, pepperoni. The best pizza I ever had was a really simple one, though - just tomato, mozzarella, basil and a really good stretchy wholemeal dough base done in a stone oven. It was somewhere near Finsbury Park, and the friends who introduced me to the place still live nearby. I should poke them to go climbing and eat pizza again...

Jan 14 Who was your very first best friend? Are you still in contact or communication with them?
He was called Ben, and he lived the next street over. We were the kids who preferred messing around with BASIC programming and computer games rather than football, back when that was definitely not cool. I remember my parents being unreasonably annoyed by him never walking along the middle of a hallway, and sliding along walls.
He moved to Australia for a few years while we were at primary school, and we kept in touch until he came back to the same secondary school. Then his family moved to somewhere near King's Lynn, and we lost touch. I know we must have met up at least once since then, because the last time we met he could drive (but I couldn't, so it must have been at least 12 years ago).

Jan 15 If you could pick a new first name, what would you choose?
I feel like my name suits me pretty well, which is fortunate. It's also sufficiently common that I'm not readily findable.

Jan 16 What is your favorite board game?
At the moment, Ascension, which is unusual for me. I tend to like co-op games with a narrative, things like Forbidden Island, Betrayal, Arkham Horror. Generally I don't play the same games often enough to get properly into deck-builders that reward familiarity, except for Dominion, because it's almost everywhere.

Jan 17 What self-care things do you find helpful to ground yourself or “talk yourself down from the ledge” when you’re overwhelmed by your feelings or by stress?
VNV Nation reliably haul me from 'this is terrible' to 'this is terrible and I am Not Giving In'. I'm more tuned into what I shouldn't do, which is noodle on the internet reading the opinions of awful people. That's often my response to being a bit overwhelmed, and it's not very useful.

Jan 18 What is the most extreme weather you have ever experienced?
I've been in 1m visibility white-out on top of Helvellyn, which was a bit nervy given that I was the most confident map-reader in a group consisting of my Dad, his sister, my brother and two pretty poorly prepared guys we picked up on Sharp Edge. It's a flat, unsheltered plain with steep drops if you come off on the wrong bearing, and I was quite relieved to get down out of the snow with everyone safely.

That, and escaping the flood that engulfed Stoneleigh when I was there with family on a church camp. We were mopping a literal stream out of our tent, and left (against the advice of the organisers, who wanted people to stay and pray against the rain) just before police closed the roads.

Jan 19 Do you operate out of any particular faith system that informs your actions? Do you intentionally NOT have a faith system, and if so, what beliefs or ideas inform your actions?
I definitely wouldn't call myself Christian. The propositional reason, the one that I tell myself is why I'm still at this point, is that I can't believe in supernatural occurrences when there are better-fitting natural explanation for what was going on in Judea about 2000 years ago.

The way I got here, though, was from trying to make sense of what the church I grew up in thought about sex. They had the awful 'love the sinner, hate the sin' catchphrase, and it made me really interrogate what I thought was actually sinful. Attraction? This act? That act, but within marriage? (male-female only, this was the 1990's, I was at school and Section 28 was still very much a thing...)

I ended up concluding that sin was a meaningless concept, and that avoiding doing harm was much easier to judge.

These days I guess I've moved back towards valuing what that church does more, and they've very intentionally built a community that values solidarity, and looking after the worst off in this world. If I were to actually join them, though, it would feel very much like the Pratchett quote about falling angels, rising apes, and practicing to believe things that are important but not provably true. That feels somewhat dishonest and disrespectful, when actually participating in that community would mean letting people assume I believe literally as they do.

Jan 20 - When you go to a fancy coffee shop, what’s your go-to order?
Probably something I've not tried before, if it's unusually fancy. I'm not a great coffee connoisseur, but I do appreciate the difference between a fresh brew made by someone who knows what they're doing and the caffeinated brown stuff that props me up after insufficient sleep.

Jan 21 - What genre of books is your usual favourite when you read for pleasure?
Probably science/speculative fiction, but I do find myself reading all sorts of non-fiction stuff just because it's interesting and diverting. Things like historical proceedings at the Old Bailey or chemicals you should never work with.

Jan 7 - In the U.S., each state has a “state flower.” If you’re in the U.S., what is your state flower? If you live elsewhere, does your region or country have flower that represents it? (Post a picture?)
According to Wikipedia, we do have a county flower, and it's the cowslip. Huh. I'm sure we were told in school that it was a Tudor rose, as that's the emblem of the county council, cricket club and a whole bunch of other things. But no, apparently cowslip.
( images below cut )

Jan 6 - Tell about an “Aha!” moment you’ve had.
How about the one where I realised what an impression the Twelfth Night adaptation I was made to study aged 13/14 had on me? We have Ben Kingsley playing a concertina. And a lute. We have trad-goth Helena Bonham-Carter. We have a farcical plot, lots of wordplay and considerable cross-dressing.

I loved those things then, and I love them now, is what I'm saying. Which is appropriate, because it makes an excellent accompaniment to taking down Christmas decorations.

Jan 5 - What’s your favourite way to spend a Sunday morning?
Well, my revealed preference says 'lay in bed, noodle on phone, late breakfast' but I'll actually enjoy getting out in the country on my bike more when I do. Especially if combined with meeting up with friends, tea and/or cake.

Jan 4 - What one thing are you looking forward to in 2020?
It's hard narrowing it down to a single thing but if I'm allowed to be fairly general, work, actually. This year is going to see a bunch of network equipment I specced being rolled out, a complete overhaul of our routing protocols, first steps into automation. Lots to keep me busy. I've been hovering around the periphery of the tech industry for years, and having proper enterprise-scale problems to work on is interesting in all kinds of ways I hadn't expected.

Jan 3 - For every day of 2020, you will be required to wear a t-shirt with the same one word on it. What word will you choose?
I don't go in for clothes with words on them much, so this is surprisingly difficult. Probably either OULES (because it would be stash from a show) or 'hello'. What else is reasonable to broadcast to everyone who looks at you over a day?

Jan 2 - What would be the first sentence of your autobiography?
I was born at a bad time. Disaster at Bhopal and the miner's strike welcomed me into the world.

Jan 1 - What is one thing you’d like to accomplish in 2020?
Finish renovating into my house. It's been mine (well, mostly the bank's. but nominally mine) for over a year, and in all that time it's been variously without a bathroom, without downstairs floor coverings, without heating... I've been getting the jobs done around health stuff and work, but the New Year and a couple of other circumstances have conspired to give me a big push into finally getting my own space how I want it.

Wendy Cope on Desert Island Discs was talking about the importance of writing without giving thought to who might read what you've written. If the thought never makes moves from brain to text it never stands a chance of even being considered for publication (whatever publication means - even if that's only being posted publicly.)

Similarly, I've had a post simmering in the back of my brain for over a year about something I first heard of in a presentation about Hannah Arendt. My recollection does it little justice, but the summary is that we build who we are through our actions, and that these actions only count towards this self-building process when they interaction with another.

All this is to say that I spend a great deal of time thinking about and curating emotionsand opinions and tasks and ideas, but that all this counts for very little if they're not exposed to the outside world. Similarly, each time I come to this realisation I decide that the answer is to put my vast stock of the above into order, and present them beatifully polished for public consumption.

Nobody wants to consume my thoughts. They might want to play with them, argue with them, steal them or ignore them but without any of the above happening, I'll probably carry on with much the same thoughts for the next 30-odd years, or however long I have left on this earth.

It's my birthday, and Facebook has taken the opportunity to prod people into wishing me happy birthday. Most of the people who posted I would have liked to have seen, and if there had been a bit more certainty about my health situation I'd most likely have organised a party or joined them at a gathering of some sort. Much as I dislike the idea that I need to prodded into contacting friends, I really do. I hugely appreciate the number of people who contacted me when I got my recent health news, but it has been a struggle replying to more than one or two.

The day didn't start brilliantly. The plan was to go and collect a Christmas tree from IKEA with Mum, which hit two abrupt bumps in the shape of a van side-swiping us on the roundabout just opposite the store, and the fact that the Christmas trees sold out yesterday. With the main point of the trip gone, and a chunk of the morning lost to exchanging of insurance details and taking of photographs, we decided to call it lunchtime and got a coffee.

The afternoon we spent meandering around the displays, measuring up for items that might work in my house, once I finally move in. I had planned to go back to the house and get on with ripping up the flooring, but the lure of tea and fire was a bit too strong, and I ended up having a rest before heading to Peter and Ruth's for dinner.

We played Escape From Colditz, which was new to me, and I really like the mechanic of gameplay being cooperative.... up to a point. The POWs win if at least two of them escape, but there are as many teams of POWs as there are players, minus one for the player who takes the role of camp commandant. It looks like an obvious win for the commandant if the POW's don't work together, but if they're able to share information freely and discuss strategy then things swing pretty firmly in their favour. The game ended with us freeing two POWs, both through the main gate, one in a stolen car, the other using passes, keys and some good dice rolls.

Now that I'm back home and engaged with DW again, I really ought to make a bit of a post out of all the projects I have running at the moment - mostly car-, bike- and house-related until now. I'm trying to prepare myself for the days when I have to abandon physical activity for a while, but finding a sensible stopping point for as big a job as renovating an entire house is proving less than easy.

The last few months I've been living between three different jobs, filling my days with tutoring in Oxford, working in a box office in London and keeping the cricket club bar running in Irthlingborough.

For the first time since I was an undergraduate I'm back doing an OULES show. It's a wonderful feeling being involved in a show again, tempered only by the fact I'm not quite able to be as social as I once was living full-time in Oxford.

In complete contravention of all the quality of life research I know, I'm commuting all over, mostly by car. Travelling between the multiple jobs I'm keeping up with has me driving to the outskirts of whichever place I'm currently working, and cycling between work and wherever I'm staying, living out of a suitcase for large portions of the week.

I spend a lot of time biking in and out of central London on the Grand Union canal, which has revived my dream of someday living aboard a boat and traveling the country. It's tempting, and I might have the opportunity to buy a very cheap project boat in the next year or so, but I'm wary - I've heard too many stories about holes in the water that just swallow money, and cause stress.

To finish the post I made earlier about Berlin, I paid a visit to c-base one evening. I had directions which amounted to 'cross this bridge, take the second left, walk through a series of archways until you can't go any further, then you're there'. Even though I could just as easily have looked up the location and let my phone guide me, the experience of following directions and not knowing for certain that I'd arrive until I actually did just added to the atmosphere of the place when I got there. Again, through dark, private-looking courtyards, past some incredible art nouveau tiles made by a company called Golem, and behind an industrial-looking door, was a corridor/tunnel dimly illuminated by blinkenlights and a touchscreen inviting you to be scanned in. Inside, the walls were covered in electronics, projected graphics demos, and hundreds of lights and switches. For the first half hour or so I just wandered around, taking it all in and listening to snatches of conversation. Then I bought a schwarzbier, and stood watching a game of Go between two long-haired guys who wouldn't have looked out of place at Intrusion. I've not played for a few years, so much of the game I struggled to follow, until a lock-picking event started up at the next table along. I moved over, said hello, and had a go at opening a couple of locks with rakes, picks and tension wrenches. Trying to discuss picking techniques without any lock-specific vocabulary was a little tricky, but with some help, I managed to reliably get one lock opening with a rake, and another, unrakeable one picked open once. There was also a door and frame on wheels, for practice on installed locks, although I didn't attempt that.

Earlier in the evening, I had been to look for a VolksKuchen, which I'd heard of from Ross and the internet as a communal kitchen, probably full of crusty/hippy-type people, where I could get something to eat, and a chance to meet people and chat a bit in German. I turned up at a warehouse in Storkower Strasse and wandered about, looking for any sort of activity, which I eventually found behind a closed door - an improptu bar, with the plumbing obviously hacked-up so that there was a bucket underneath where the waste should be. The guy who opened the door was obviously confused by why I was there, and my attempts to explain didn't get very far until he found somebody else, who realised what I was asking, and told me that nobody was organising it, but I was welcome to stay and have a beer.

It's almost Monday, so I'm going to weigh in with two things I'm proud of doing today - firstly, emotionally fraught email, which I talked to Peter about and replied to before the weekend was over. Secondly, making the critical step in doing my oil change of admitting that the filter hosting couldn't be removed by normal means, and having the confidence to destroy it with hammer, cold chisel and grips. Engine block undamaged, new part due by Tuesday, masculinity thoroughly performed. The toughest and most important part of the job was having the courage to just give it a go and accept the consequences if it went wrong.

The prospect of having cavity wall insulation done has meant some very quick reorganising of the garage and bedrooms, so that the contractors can reach every pay off the walls to drill holes. Thankfully all the areas which are inaccessible from outside are in need of redecoration inside, so they can drill through from inside to indicate the sections above the garages and conservatory. With the sliding of items away from walls has come a pretty comprehensive tidy of those items, so it's now looking much less cluttered, and I might soon have space to get a beer brewing for the first time since Dad.

Clearing out is very much a theme at the moment - I'm due to go over to Irchester to help Fiona once she's ready and back down south, and I tipped several very wet smelly sofas and chairs for Isla and Darren, although his haste in forcing them into my car has torn a bit of trim. Not a disaster, but it's another thing on the long list of car jobs, and looks like being difficult to glue. I am grateful to have had the car though, both for helping them, ferrying to and from Windmill Rd and for the fact that I was able to help Mum out when she broke down today on the way to work. Car dependency is a fact of life living here, but by doing multiple jobs in each run and offering it out to anybody else who needs lifts or freight I'm trying to reduce it, at least.