This Ray Davies live version is superb:
This is the age of machinery
A mechanical nightmare
The wonderful world of technology
Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare
This Ray Davies live version is superb:
This is the age of machinery
A mechanical nightmare
The wonderful world of technology
Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare
After our family dinner last Saturday night, my wife said that she thought she had something in her eye that she couldnāt shift. I had a look but couldnāt see anything. It was casting a bit of a shadow at the bottom of her vision. As a precaution, she made an appointment with the optician and went along on Monday afternoon.
Our worst fears were confirmed. The ophthalmologist told her that her retina had started to become detached and that she needed urgent attention. They handed her a referral letter and told her to head straight to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage without delay. We werenāt sure what would happen next, so I left my office in London to get the train there too, just in case she had any kind of procedure which meant that she couldnāt drive home again. A train and taxi ride later, we bumped into each other at the hospital reception; a grumpy receptionist told her to come back the next evening, without any kind of examination and despite protestations that she had an urgent problem. It was stressful ā everything we read had told us that it was a race against time to get it fixed. So we made a plan to jump into the car early the next morning and head over to the Ophthalmology department at Stoke Mandeville hospital.
The experience at Stoke Mandeville was amazing. We didnāt need to wait long before she was examined and the diagnosis confirmed. They booked her in for surgery first thing the next day. She was now under instructions to go home and rest, minimising movement for the rest of the day to prevent it from getting worse. When we got home we called a couple of private consultants to see if she could be seen any faster, but everyone advised us that waiting until the next day was the best we could do.
We were back at the hospital even earlier on Wednesday, ready for the operation. Itās not a difficult decision to make between losing your sight in one eye and having a medical procedure, but my wife amazed me how she took it all in her stride. The work is all done under local anaesthetic, so you are completely aware of whatās happening as its done. They start with a vitrectomy, where they remove all of the jelly-like vitreous humour from the centre of the eyeball. They then repair the damaged retina with a laser and freezing treatment, before filling the eyeball with a gas to keep the repaired retina in place. The gas means that you canāt do anything that involves any kind of change of pressure. It sounds dreadful. It was all over in an hour or so.
She was told to keep her head facing downwards towards her lap for ten hours, and afterwards to make sure that she get as much rest as possible and sleeps on one particular side, so that the gas bubble continues to push against the repaired part of the retina. Tablets to relieve the swelling and pressure were accompanied by three types of eye drops which need to be administered four times a day. Currently she has no vision out of that eye and will only know how well the repair has gone in the next two to four weeks. Over time, the gas bubble dissipates and is replaced naturally by fluid again. We have our fingers crossed. Unfortunately, most people that have a vitrectomy are guaranteed to develop a cataract within a few years after surgery and nobody knows why.
Why it happened is a mystery. Apparently it is more common for people that are short-sighted, but it seems quite random. I am so grateful that my wife got the urgent attention she needed and for the fantastic care that she has been given at the hospital. My colleagues have been amazing, offering lots of support and empathy where Iāve had to duck out of scheduled meetings at short notice. I feel very privileged to be in a position where something like this can happen and I am empowered to prioritise caring for my family over everything else. Our friends have been so lovely, with a steady stream of flowers and hampers arriving at our door.
Most of all I am so glad that my wife is now on the mend. Itās been an emotional week.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Presenting to the whole office, and running a full governing board meeting for the first time in a while.
š· Zero information.
I walk past this office block on my way to work. Thereās always such sad beauty in seemingly abandoned buildings. I wonder what it was like when it was shiny and new.
Even by recent standards, this was an extremely busy week. Not stressful per se, just so much crammed into it so that it felt like an endurance event. Experience told me that a planned train strike for Thursday may mean that the service might could also be a little suspect on Wednesday and Friday, so I front-loaded my time in the office to the first two days. The days were super long.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Hoping for a quieter, head-down kind of week.
Dot matrix information signs have recently been replaced with full colour ones at the station. Just because something is high resolution doesnāt mean you should just cram more things on there. The sign is barely readable unless youāre directly under it.
Here in the UK, temperatures plummeted again and we found ourselves living through frozen mornings and snow showers. The week was very busy; I ended up having to spend some of Saturday catching up with some of the tasks that I hadnāt had time to complete by Friday. Next week looks just as hectic.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: A train strike, a school governor meeting, some school governor training, a presentation and a comedy night.
š¶ Itās Album Club time.
š Thereās being curious and fascinated with the natural world, and then thereās this.
A four-day week as I took Friday off for my wifeās birthday. Work is ramping up. For the first time in a while I found myself picking my laptop up again in the evenings, trying to wrestle a few things forward.
On the one day I worked from home my two boys both had the day off school due to a teacher strike. There are more to come later in the month.
March has started with a cold snap, with snow forecast for next week. Iām back to wearing multiple jumpers around the house as we try to keep the thermostat down.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Back to five days again. Delivering the Donāt Get Hackedpresentation to two of our offices, and joining two album clubs.
š¶ Wilder Makerās Drunk Driver just turned up on a playlist. I canāt express how much I love this song.
Iāve been pondering: does the fact that Twitter is still functioning set expectations for business executives, who will think itās fine to slash a technology budget and still expect core services to remain? Will they be asking āwhat were all these IT staff doing all dayā?
We know that the service is creaking and has some major problems, but the headline is that Musk slashed the workforce from 7,500 to 1,800 and it is still chugging along months later.
Iām enjoying myself. Work is really busy, but itās fun. There is never enough time to do everything, but every day has seen progress with the initiatives that I am running with. It feels good.
Quote of the week comes from a colleague who sagely commented that āThere is no ābusiness and technologyā, only the technology of business.ā Every time I see āthe businessā and IT separated in a written artefact, or the phrase is dropped into conversation, I think about what I read in Mark Schwartzās A Seat at the Table. Working to get rid of the old way of thinking is going to take many years.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: In the office for most of the week, with a day off on Friday.
š· Bought this mat online and got it out of the box today. Iām pretty sure the warning wasnāt on the website. š³
š· āUnlike the rest of you animals…ā
A week stuffed to the brim with meetings. Iāve not been sleeping well, waking up in the middle of the night each night to check the time, mildly panicking that Iāve overslept. Iām not sure why.
The bike that I bought back in 2013, which had recently been relegated to indoor training only, finally died. It left me with no means of riding indoors. So on Friday morning I dragged myself out of bed to go for a run. Iāve ordered an indoor bike trainer but have no idea when it will be delivered; I may be running for a while yet.
This was a week in which I:
Next week: Another packed calendar with a surprisingly free Thursday (that I probably need to block out before more meetings end up there).
Signed up for the Leesman webinar on the future of knowledge work and hybrid working on 21 March.
š Finished reading The Pianist by WÅadysÅaw Szpilman. An incredible memoir of a Jewish man who somehow survives years in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War 2. I saw the film years ago; his encounter with Wilm Hosenfeld, a merciful German soldier who keeps him alive through his kindness, is a relatively small part of the book. Extracts from Hosenfeldās diaries and an additional epilogue add significant context to the story:
āYou can’t help wondering again and again how there can possibly be such riff-raff among our own people. Have the criminals and lunatics been let out of the prisons and asylums and sent here to act as bloodhounds? No, it’s people of some prominence in the State who have taught their otherwise harmless countrymen to act like this. Evil and brutality lurk in the human heart. If they are allowed to develop freely they flourish, putting out dreadful offshoots, the kind of ideas necessary if the Jews and the Poles are to be murdered like this.ā ā Wilm Hosenfeld
š“āāļø Getting a flat tyre on an indoor turbo trainer is rare, but it happens. This morning is the first time Iāve ever snapped a derailleur hanger though. Ride over. š¢
š· This is a cat that does not often sit on laps. I couldnāt resist taking a snap.