Week 01

January 05, 2020

Let’s try weeknotes again, this time without using the increasingly hostile Medium.

This Week

First half of the week was the null zone, didn’t do much apart from eat, drink, watch films and walk the dog, which is as it should be. Had 16 people over for New Year which was great - as we had 17 over for pre-Christmas Sunday lunch I think we finally made the most of having a large house this holiday, it was always one of the key reasons for moving out of London in the first place so it’s good it actually happens now.

Holiday period was kind of weird as it’s the first time we didn’t really have to drive anywhere - everyone came to us. Would’ve been better if I didn’t get a stomach bug on Boxing Day but 🤷

Went into London on Friday with the girls as we’d not been into town for ages, had a look round the Science Museum and a nice lunch. Struck me that as the girls were born there they are proper Londoners which hadn’t really occurred to me before.

This thought connected up with wondering what I did in the twenty-teens and I realised that the 2010-2020 is very much my children's childhood. 2020-2030 is the teenage years, lets hope we can navigate those rough seas.

What did I learn in 2019?

A few things:

• I am really bad at not having a job (or should I say, an income.) It freaks me out so much that I don’t enjoy the time off at all, even though I had plenty of money to tide me over. Next time I have that bright idea I’ll line one up then take the time off, lesson learnt.
• ‘Not having enough time’ to do something is the biggest lie I tell myself about my personal projects - if I have a whole week unencumbered I’ll probably still not do it. Hopefully I can work out some of the reasons why in 2020.
• I am a dog person, who knew?

Likes

• Watchmen - think Chernobyl pipped it for best of the year but it was pretty close
• Ford vs Ferrari- was not expecting this to be as good as it was, the end is a killer, brought tears of anger/sadness to my eyes, Josh Lucas easily takes the crown for best villain of the year, no contest between him and Thanos.
• Big Thief - have had both this years albums on heavy rotation, they really are something special
• Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self Delusion - Jia Tolentino’s book of essays is full of what is often promised but rarely delivered, insight into where we are right now
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - a.k.a. the movie that killed fandom. I liked it, not earth shattering but a fun ride, definitely some bits which raised my eyebrow but I have literally no idea what people are so mad about, just like I didn’t have any idea what they were mad about The Last Jedi. As the great poet Taylor Swift would say, you need to calm down.
• Hickman's X-Men Reboot - re-read this over the holiday and now that it's all finished I think House of X/Powers of X have done a really good job of re-energising the X-Men line of comics. It's looking pretty solid at the moment, let's hope it doesn't collapse under it's own weight like some of his other 'big concept' storylines.

Yay, I did week one, so that's something, hope you get something done this week too.