The photo doesn’t do justice to how big this cake was
On Saturday we celebrated the 10th birthday of Berkhamsted Cycle Club, with a specially-organised route for our weekly club ride, followed by cake and fizz at Church Farm Cafe in Aldbury.
I took up cycling a year before the club was formed. I thought about joining, but as I was then the dad of 7 and 5 year-olds who had a myriad of weekend activities to go to, it didn’t seem right to disappear every Saturday morning and leave it all to my wife. When my eldest boy turned 14 he started dabbling with road cycling, so we joined the club together. Three years later and getting out for a weekend club ride is now part of my routine. I’ve made some lovely friends and enjoyed some great rides.
Speeches from club chairs past and present
The celebration came at the end of a long week that was shaped by dates slipping on one of the big projects that I am running this year. A four-week delivery date delay for mechanical hardware has resulted in a two-week delay to when we will finish the main part of the work. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s the second time the date has moved and is a pain for our staff who need to rearrange their plans for hosting guests at our offices.
This was a week in which I:
Had my regular call with our information technology advisory firm. I also met with an Executive Partner at the firm, someone that I’m hoping to work with over the next few years to help me in my role.
Had an interior design meeting with one of our building contractors, reviewing colours and materials for acoustic panelling as well as other design elements. With something as subjective as colours, I’m glad that the responsibility for picking the final shades doesn’t sit with me.
Met with an external legal firm to give them an outline of a contract that we would like to get reviewed.
Met with our own internal legal and procurement teams to review terms, conditions and contracts for the software component of some new hardware we are installing in one of our offices.
Had an introductory meeting with an interior design and fit-out team that operate in a couple of countries where we have offices.
Caught up with one of our office managers to discuss renovations and improvements to their space. It’s a location that I haven’t visited in many years and is overdue some work from our team.
Resumed weekly meetings with the working group who will coordinate a move back to one of our offices following extensive mechanical and engineering work.
Had a demo of an audio/visual solution aimed at larger boardroom-style meeting rooms.
Held another interview for the vacancy in my team after our chosen candidate decided to take a different role. I’ve now started to worry about candidates trying to use AI chatbots during remote interviews, typing out questions as they are asked and reading back answers. I think we will need to move back to in-person interviews where possible. It’s even more frustrating when you think that the candidate is underperforming in the interview because they are using the tools.
Had meetings with the two recruitment vendors we are trying to source candidates from in order to give them more background on our company, our team, and the role.
Met with a colleague to walk them through the ‘random coffees’ spreadsheet tool that I developed in the pandemic. Attempting to explain how it works made me realise how many steps there are and how complex it is.
Said goodbye to one of my team members who has been with us for the past couple of years. We had a team lunch at Ping Pong. They have an inscrutable ordering process where you need to write down everyone’s requests on a single ridiculously long menu, but they did a great job of catering to our specific dietary and physical needs.
Took part in a two half-day workshop on the topic of ‘sustainable careers’. It was fascinating to hear career stories from colleagues from all across our part of the organisation, and brought up lots of memories for me.
Said hello to a new cleaner at home. Our previous cleaner was with us for many years and we’ve missed her since she stopped working.
Enjoyed the monthly WB-40 Album Club, hearing Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by Pavement for the first time. I was familiar with — and loved — the song Range Life as it was featured in the cover CD for Uncut magazine’s December 2004 issue (yes kids, before Spotify’s Discover Weekly, we used to get samples of music from magazines) but didn’t know any of the rest of the tracks. It’s definitely an album to listen to again. A quintessential Album Club evening when you think “I wonder why I haven’t listened to more of that band’s stuff?”
Media
Video
Watched The Hypnosis (2023), a weird Swedish film centred around a couple who are attending a Dragons Den/Shark Tank-style event to pitch an app. It made me laugh out loud, but the couple were somehow unconvincing as technology developers. And by the time the film finished, I had questions.
Books
Finally finished The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73 and was sad that it was over. Fortunately it looks as though I won’t need to wait very long before the next instalment is published.
Started reading (and ploughing through) Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer. A superbly readable exploration of what we do (or what to do?) with good art by bad people.
Next week: The final week before we finish a major project.
It took some weeks for me to finish this very large book. I was given this as a very thoughtful Christmas gift, but ended up buying and reading an ebook version of it as there was no way I was going to lug this around with me.
The authors started writing with the intention of creating a McCartney solo-specific version of Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, but found that they couldn’t avoid telling a story at the same time. The text of the book is punctuated by distinctive sections for each recording session, in a consistent format, informing us of what songs were worked on. They also include a little narrative to add some colour to the events:
An example recording session call-out.
This book was a great read. I’ve consumed so many Beatles-related books over the years, but there was still lots in here that I didn’t know. For a Beatles nut, I’m actually not that familiar with McCartney’s early solo discography. I’m a long-time fan of McCartney (1970) and Band on the Run (1973), but have only recently picked up Wild Life (1971) and am yet to explore Ram (1971) and Red Rose Speedway (1973). It’s been fun to read about a track and then listen to it on a streaming service, particularly when I wasn’t familiar with it. For the songs that I was familiar with, there were fascinating nuggets and insights. For example, I hadn’t realised that the high-pitched sound a few seconds into The Lovely Linda, the first track on Paul’s first solo album after the Beatles broke up, is the squeaking of a door that was accidentally captured and left in. This is the first example in his solo career of going with the flow when something happens:
Unlike other artists and producers inclined to erase extraneous noises or accidental instrumental strikes on individual tracks, Paul would leave them as they were recorded, allowing the potential to “explore the accident, not fix the mistake” as Seiwell put it. Though aiding the creative process, for Alan Parsons this posed a problem. “You try to keep the tracks clean and try to avoid having to pull down faders every time if there is a noise or a talking voice or something,” he explained. “Whereas McCartney was notorious for never allowing engineers to wipe anything, so it always made the mix take twice as long.”
It was amazing to hear that Henry McCullough got to appear on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon through the accident of Wings being booked in a neighbouring studio:
“They were next door making Dark Side of the Moon,” said Paul. “The engineers were quite interchangeable, so an engineer that’d work on their stuff would work on ours. And he did play us some of the Dark Side of the Moon stuff.” For an hour or so, during the weekend of January 19 and 20, Wings and Pink Floyd joined forces, on Pink Floyd’s turf, when the latter were recording voices that would be woven into the fabric of several songs.
…
And so it was that a hazy recollection of McCullough’s—“I don’t know, I was really drunk at the time!”—found its way into ‘Us and Them,’ a track on one of the most revered albums in the history of rock.
Despite its size, the book didn’t feel overly-long or too detailed. I found myself picking it up at any available moment and was disappointed when I reached the end. Fortunately there’s a sequel in the works that is due out in December this year, covering the period 1974–1980. Here’s how we leave things:
With a critically lauded, Gold-certified hit album on his hands, Paul found himself in a very different position at the end of 1973 than he’d been in at the end of 1969. Four years earlier, he was crawling from the wreckage of the Beatles, unsure of himself and his future. But he had also been nursed, coaxed, and sweet-talked by Linda into recognizing his strengths sufficiently to borrow a Studer four-track from EMI and set down some tunes, taking his first steps toward reinventing himself. But what he recorded then was a motley batch, assembled largely of belatedly finished songs from the Beatle days, revived and polished juvenilia from the late 1950s, and jams molded into instrumentals. He started with only two new songs; others had sprouted as he worked, including the enduring ‘Maybe I’m Amazed.’ But the music on Band on the Run was fresh—its oldest songs were written during the Red Rose Speedway sessions—and the album was fully conceived before the first session.
I’m excited to find out what the next book brings.
Yes, I’m absolutely going to do this right away. The kids are going to be stoked.
I love the formality of this sign at the entrance to the venue
On Saturday night we had a wonderful time celebrating my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. They had hired a room in a hotel, booked a DJ and a band, and invited friends and family from all over. I spent most of the evening saying hello to people — particularly those I hadn’t seen in a very long time — and don’t think I managed to get around the whole room by the time it all wrapped up.
Party time
It got me looking back at photos of mum and dad’s 25th anniversary party. I’m trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I’m now older than they were in the pictures; they seemed so much more grown up than I feel today. On that night in 1999 we had a really fun evening which finished with a few of us heading on to a local nightclub for drinking and dancing until the early hours. I never would have imagined that 25 years later I would be celebrating my own 20th anniversary and have two children who are both taller than me already.
50th and 25th. Time goes by so fast.
I know my mum and dad read these weeknotes. Love you both! Congratulations and I hope you had a wonderful evening. 😘
This was a week in which I:
Had a visit from a Virgin Media engineer to get us back online at home. The lightning strike had done much more damage than we first thought. As well as a dead TV and Internet router, we also lost our TiVo box and had to have all of the internal wiring replaced for our cable service.
Took delivery of a new TV. The old one was just outside of its five year warranty window. It cost about £400 to replace it with a like-for-like model, less than half of the £899 that we spent back in 2019.
Was disappointed to hear that a candidate we were looking to onboard into my team had decided to take a different job. One of the reasons cited was that the other role is fully remote; I wonder how much of a factor that will be in our search. Back to the drawing board.
Prepared for and ran the programme Steering Committee meeting, the first one for three weeks.
Conducted a thorough review of the costs for one of our real estate projects.
Reviewed costs for a construction project as part of a regular monthly valuation session, agreeing how much we should pay versus what we were being asked to pay.
Attended an ad-hoc Architecture Governance Authority meeting, jointly presenting on our planned office environmental monitoring platform.
Played a small part in helping get one of our new offices online, configuring two of our digital signage players to work with our 3,840 x 600 pixel monitors. The technical infrastructure team are making excellent progress, despite some of the equipment being damaged in transit.
Took part in our information risk steering group and non-financial risk review meetings.
Reviewed a colleague’s presentation that summarises some project work done to date and frames the next steps.
Enjoyed an informative Learning Hour meeting on PingCastle reports and how to use them to improve an organisation’s security profile.
Had a software demo of a SaaS platform for managing Health and Safety assessments and incidents.
Met with a new colleague in Johannesburg to welcome him into the team and give him an overview of my function.
Enjoyed the latest Teams Fireside Chat, this time led by Ron Pessner on the topic of Microsoft Loop. I use the product regularly, creating collaborative documents in-line in Teams chats where we need to quickly agree on some content together. Although the session wasn’t AI free, it made a lovely change that the focus was on the core features of the product and the discussion about Copilot was minimal.
Had to wrap up warm for Saturday morning’s bike ride. It was 5°C when I set out from my house, requiring bib tights and full-finger gloves. Things started to warm up the next day just in time for my now regular Sunday run. Just as I got back into town from my long loop, my wife called to ask whether I wanted to pop out for a coffee and a pastry, which made for a lovely unexpected end to the route.
Media
Video
Media consumption seemed to slow down this week, probably as a function of how busy the week was. We did manage to start and finish Beef on Netflix, a brilliant story that stems from a random road rage incident that veers off in all sorts of unexpected directions. We also started the new season of Slow Horses on AppleTV+, which continues to be excellent.
Next week: Saying hello to a new face, saying goodbye to an old one, and enjoying an online Album Club.
📷 Randomly stumbled across 6½ Avenue in Manhattan. I’d never heard of it before. All the drivers seemed to completely ignore the stop sign.
What does this even mean? What preparation do I need to do? Do I need to worry about the other half, or do they just live in the Southern Hemisphere and are instead getting ready for summer? 🤷♂️
Early on Sunday morning we had an incredible thunderstorm, with a lightning strike that fried the routers for a swathe of people in our street. It also killed at least two TVs, including ours. Thunderstorms typically don’t scare me, but when the sound hits your ears before you see the lightning, it is terrifying.
The strike before the one that did all of the damage.
Ended up awake with my eldest son paying us a visit as it woke him up. Incredibly, our youngest slept through it.
I’ve captured footage from the two closest strikes that hit us about a minute apart, each from two different angles. It’s the second one that does all the damage. Unfortunately, the camera that probably had the best view was temporarily taken offline by the second strike.
One thing the lightning did highlight is the need for us to sweep the cobwebs away from the front of our house.
The earliest I can get an appointment with an engineer from our Internet Service Provider is next Saturday. So I’m now assuming that I’m going to be in the office all week next week.
This was a week in which I:
Suffered from jet lag following the previous week’s trip to New York. My eyes were falling out of my head on Monday and it was difficult to catch up with sleep as the week went on.
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Spent a lot of the week reviewing and discussing the detailed cost breakdown of one of our projects. It’s going to be top priority for next week too.
Met with vendors to discuss acoustic panelling, decorating and signage in one of our offices.
Agreed how we would move forward with the proposed cost model for one of our shared spaces.
Reviewed the draft technical architecture for the new smart environmental sensors that will be installed in one of our offices, ahead of next week’s architecture governance authority meeting.
Continued with interviews for the role in my team. I’m hopeful that we will conclude the process next week.
Joined the interim design meeting for the shared space in one of our offices. When we start getting into fabrics and textures and there are already half a dozen different views and opinions in the room, I tend to conserve my energy and let everyone else make the choices.
Agreed on a solution for getting TV feeds onto the screens in a new office.
Reviewed the pricing of Microsoft Copilot and Teams Premium. As much as I think there is way too much hype about — and inappropriate uses of — AI, there is definitely some value in the technology. We are going to look and see if we can find some of it.
Completed our final review of our annual operational risk self-assessment.
Caught up with our audio/visual design vendor for the first time in a few weeks.
Had lunch with a colleague and friend who has been out of the office for an extended period. It’s great to see him and start to work with him again.
Attended our weekly Learning Hour meeting, with our host presenting on the topic of being a drone pilot in the UK.
Got struck in the face by a MacBook Air. A colleague and I had a one-on-one meeting; as we got up from our seats, he fumbled his laptop and it ended up skidding into my head, just above my right eye. The rim of a MacBook’s screen is sharp. It was painful — there was blood and bruising — but my pain was at least equalled by how mortified he looked.
Am still regretting being missold two pairs of shoes six years ago. The fact that they are so uncomfortable, and were completely unused during the period of the pandemic where I worked from home, means that they are still going strong.
Deleted my Telegram account. The news coverage of Pavel Durov’s arrest has been an education in how the platform works versus those that are end-to-end encrypted. I don’t need it in my life, so it’s time to say goodbye.
Had another enjoyable Album Club evening, with brilliant hosting. I wasn’t keen on the album, but that’s okay.
Added Gabriel Birnbaum’s latest album to Discogs. I’d lazily waited a few weeks to see if anyone did the hard work of adding it before I stepped in and did it myself.
Enjoyed my first outdoor bike ride with the club for a few weeks. It was lovely to get out riding again. The weather has turned just enough so that I doubted my clothing choice for the first five minutes, but it soon warmed up once we got going. I’m going to try and keep my running going as well. I ran in the rain on Sunday and it was actually good not to be melting to death when I finished.
Had a look at potential new carpets for the stairs in our house. The current carpet was laid almost 20 years ago and is starting to look threadbare.
Media
Podcasts
WB-40’s episode on rebooting hiring came at a good time, as I’ve been interviewing for a role in my team. “Recruiting for the human skills” struck a chord with me.
Articles
I had never considered that ‘estimated reading time’ could be ableist. I don’t disagree with any of the points made, but I know that for me — an able bodied reader, typically reading via one or two different ebook or ‘read later’ apps — it has been very useful to see this before diving in to read something. Maybe I’d get used to a different measure such as number of words?
Finished watching Lady In The Lake. It took us three episodes to get into it; just as we started to enjoy it, the show went overboard with one crazy long dream sequence too many. I’d worked out the plot twist before the final episode and the end was quite unsatisfying.
📷 Had a lovely meal out for my mum’s 70th birthday last night, along with my dad and my brothers. I had to compare it to a photo taken on our family holiday almost exactly 30 years before. My two boys are now exactly the same ages that my brothers and I were in 1994.
This week I returned to New York in order to check in on one of my projects. I love spending time there. It feels like a home away from home.
The trip started brilliantly. Our corporate policy allows me to book a business class ticket both ways. But paying an additional £2k for a bigger seat and a better selection of food on the way out — a seven hour daytime trip — always feels way too indulgent. So I had booked myself into Premium Economy. When I handed my boarding pass over to the airline staff member at the gate, they exclaimed “Ooh, you’ve had a seat change.” My card was quickly ripped up and I was handed a new one, which clearly sat me at the front of the plane. I can’t remember ever having had a business class upgrade on a long-haul flight since I travelled as a kid with my dad, who worked for the airline.
Things went from good to great when I found that the in-flight Wi-Fi on the brand new plane allowed me to stream Sky Sports. I paid £18.99 for a full flight Wi-Fi package and settled in to watch the Formula One. The stream held up brilliantly, with only a few blurry moments and the odd cut-out. I was living the dream.
Ready to go, both the flight and the race
Topping even that, late on this Sunday afternoon, I found myself being the first person in the JFK airport immigration hall. Getting through immigration, a process that has previously taken me as much as four hours, was done in all of two minutes. As I waited for the cases to arrive in the baggage hall, I decided that if mine was the first to appear on the belt, I was going to go straight to buy a lottery ticket.
The hotel I stayed at was a little strange. New York hotel rooms are invariably dated and this was no exception. It was run with a skeleton crew, with entrance to the hotel and the room controlled by a six digit code instead of a key card. The receptionist informed me that I was “entitled to” one room clean and towel change during my stay, with additional visits charged at $40 each. Looking out of the window of the room at the construction site next door, I felt as though my luck had run out. But it turned out fine. The room had plenty of towels, the shower was great, the Wi-Fi was simple and I wasn’t disturbed by anyone or anything during my stay.
Demolition. Fortunately it only started long after I was already up and about.
My hotel was half a block away from Trump Tower. The base of the building is surrounded by concrete blocks, with 56th street completely blocked off to traffic. It must be horrible for people who have purchased apartments in the building, which presumably are now worth much less than they once were.
The base of Trump Tower, surrounded by concrete blocks and police.
This was my final visit to our current office before we move out. It was time to say goodbye to this wonderful view that greets everyone who makes a visit to our office kitchen.
Empire State view.
Wandering around a city where I used to live is sometimes tinged with melancholy. I took a trip down to Chelsea, swung past my old apartment block and wandered down 9th Avenue, remembering how my wife and I used to go for a walk at the weekend, popping into shops and trying whatever food took our fancy. These days, there’s so much pressure to get stuff done with whatever time we have. But 20 years ago, this felt like a great use of time. And I think it was.
This was a week in which I:
Worked on Monday, despite it being a public holiday in the UK. Taking a long-haul trip for less than a week doesn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to miss out on spending a day with the team in the office.
Found that I had forgotten to pack my belt. Inevitably, there’s always something that I forget when going on a trip. I just hope that what I forget isn’t essential. Fortunately, belts are pretty easy to come by in midtown Manhattan. It’s great to work so close to 5th Avenue.
Took the first delivery of the lovely new furniture for our office. It took the team the best part of four hours to unload two large trucks and to get the furniture up to our floor. This kind of work can only happen outside of office hours, so we didn’t leave until around 10pm.
Reviewed the comprehensive, detailed post-construction snagging report for the new office, and found a couple of items that hadn’t made it to the list.
Discussed and agreed the office entrance signage with the manufacturer, construction and landlord teams.
Made some decisions on the installation of audio/visual equipment, where they hadn’t been specified in our design documents.
Explored options for displaying TV channels on our Yodeck digital signage players in our new office.
Had a brief meeting to review the latest costs for another office upgrade. Set up a more detailed review for next week.
Met with the construction company assigned to one of our offices to agree an approach to improving our meeting rooms and adding some internal illuminated signage.
Agreed how we will proceed with the logistical plans to open an office in a new country now that things are moving again.
Completed the review of our annual operational risk self-assessment.
Had an introductory meeting with the executive partner at our technology industry analyst vendor.
Interviewed candidates for a vacancy in my team. One of the candidates appeared to be blatantly using a web search or generative AI tool to key in our difficult questions and read off an answer. He wasn’t even using any tools to make it look like we had his full attention. I wonder whether we’ll soon need to move back to in-person interviews as the default?
Had some catch-up calls with the vendors that are finding candidates for the role.
Had some lovely drinks and lunch out with my colleagues in the New York team. Had the splendid discovery that one of my colleagues is a bit of an audiophile and a typography geek.
Enjoyed some morning runs around Central Park. On a couple of mornings I decided to tackle the full road circuit, something I hadn’t done for a while. I was pretty pleased with my time, setting my fastest 5km and second fastest 10km, especially as the Harlem end of the route is a little hilly.
A Monday morning run around Central Park
Enjoyed eating out, revisiting Cafe Luce for a well-cooked bowl of pasta, Bill’s Bar & Burger for a traditional Friday afternoon lunch, Simo Midtown for personal pizzas (“hold the cheese”), Westville Chelsea for a wholesome homemade veggie burger, Springbone and Naya for healthy bowls and wakey fuel from Black Fox Coffee. It helped that my hotel didn’t have a kitchen, so I had to get out and find somewhere to eat every evening. Good Time IPA is a superb alcohol-free beer that I haven’t found anywhere outside of NYC, and the vegan Van Leeuwen ice cream flavours are too tempting to ignore.
Indulgent. But so good.
Spent the weekend with my body clock being all over the place. Despite ‘sleeping’ all the way home on the plane, I felt completely frazzled on Saturday and have carried it through into the start of the next week.
Media
Podcasts
A few friends have encouraged me to sign up to Bluesky. I had resisted as I thought that it was yet another siloed platform, but it turns out that it’s actually a federated network. It was interesting to hear this interview with Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky.
Articles
Had a conversation with a friend about social media and the recent far-right riots in the UK. I hadn’t seen that a 2020 speech by Humza Yousaf in the Scottish Parliament, in 2020 at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, had been clipped and was being shared with the narrative that he was racist. Reading the whole speech, it is actually exactly the opposite — it’s anti-racist. From Wikipedia’s entry on Ibram X Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist:
Kendi argues that the opposite of racist is anti-racist rather than simply non-racist, and that there is no middle ground in the struggle against racism; one is either actively confronting racial inequality or allowing it to exist through action or inaction. He defines racism as any policy that creates inequitable outcomes between people of different skin colors; for instance, affirmative action in college admissions is anti-racist in that is designed to remedy past racial discrimination, while inaction on climate change is racist because of the disproportionately severe impacts of climate change in the predominantly non-white Global South.
I’m not climbing on the Oasis reunion bus. I saw them headline at Reading Festival in 2000 and was so bored by their performance that I returned to my tent early to get ahead of the crowds. But I found this assessment of their latest anniversary reissue of Definitely Maybe to be an interesting read.
Video
Watched a couple of movies this week, trying to take advantage of my recent resubscription to MUBI.
This Closeness (2023) had an interesting storyline of a couple renting a room in an Airbnb for a long weekend. The whole movie is filmed within the apartment, with what’s going on in outside brought into the narrative by the dialogue between the protagonists and the odd additional character. It didn’t feel entirely believable.
Holidays go too fast. But so do weekends. And regular working weeks. All of it. Everything’s getting faster with every passing year.
I spent most of this week feeling worn out. Vocalising how worn out I was (not that I needed to — I’m sure I looked tired) made me feel a little guilty. I guessed that my colleagues would be thinking “But you’ve just had a week off! How can you be tired?”, although they didn’t say it. I know that a week isn’t really sufficient to detach and unwind from work, but there’s too much going on to take more time out right now. By mid-November, all of this year’s big, time-sensitive milestones will be behind me, so I’m aiming to take some more time away from the keyboard at that point.
Our street WhatsApp Group has been incensed by the news that one of our neighbour’s cats has been shot with an air rifle. It’s the same gorgeous fellow that comes over to visit, and even sometimes makes himself at home in my office. Here he is, checking us out through our patio door, early the same day that he got shot. How could anyone do this to him?
Louie at our back door. He’s as lovely as he looks.
Someone in the neighbourhood must have a clue as to who has an air rifle. Posters have gone up in nearby streets but I’m guessing that the perpetrator won’t be found.
Poor Louie. Who would do something like this?
This was a week in which I:
Resolved to try and cut down on snacking post-holiday so that the tiny middle-aged spread that I’ve been cultivating through eating all of the thingsdoesn’t get out of hand. I’m giving myself two out of five stars for the week. Will keep trying.
Not unrelated, decided to chance walking to my office from Euston on Monday morning. It turns out that 15°C is too warm by the end of the walk, even when it’s cloudy.
Paid the latest irregular instalment of the ‘idiot tax’ through leaving my umbrella on the train again. I must have lost ten umbrellas in this way over the years. I realised just as I was leaving Euston station and decided to run back to try and recover it. By the time I’d got back to where I had been sitting, it had already disappeared. Given the rain forecast for later on in the week, it’s times like these that I appreciate us having an Amazon Prime account with same-day delivery. But I could have done without the reminder of how many times I’d been in this situation.
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Caught up with all of the new emails and Teams messages from the past week.
Wrote my section of our quarterly report to the board, and edited the rest of the document.
Chaired the latest programme Steering Committee. What I thought was going to be a relatively quiet period is proving to be much busier, in a good way.
Met with a working group to try and shape the remaining scope for one of our projects. The work sits at a cross-section of technology, facilities/real estate and aesthetics, which means that a wide variety of colleagues and vendors need to be brought together to scope, price and plan the work.
Visited one of our sites which is in the middle of the mechanical and engineering phase of the work we are doing. Took some photos and shared them in a Teams post to all of the staff in our part of the organisation. I’m not sure how exciting it is for people, but it’s not every day that they will get to see their office ‘naked’ with all of the infrastructure exposed.
Met with the vendor for the smart sensors that we are installing in one of our offices to discuss the next steps for the IT side of the setup.
Had the final weekly construction meeting for another of our offices, which has now hit the ‘substantial completion’ milestone.
Worked with our Infrastructure and Operations team to resolve an issue with the placement of a cabinet for the audio processing equipment in a new office.
Agreed the scope of our plans for opening a new office. The work has been brought forward a few months but the plans have been simplified, so it shouldn’t be a problem to fit it in.
Reviewed CVs for a role within my team and started to set up some interviews.
Met with our Operational Risk team to continue the review our annual self-assessment.
Booked some business travel for later this year.
Had a brief check-in with our sister company who are also involved in an upcoming office move.
Reported an AgilePlace defect to Planview which broke a couple of our Kanban boards. They’re making lots of aesthetic changes to the application at the moment. Despite their regular and detailed engagement with the user community, I’m not convinced that all of the changes are going in the right direction.
Attended a What’s New in AgilePlace webinar. Their 13-Minute Thursdays is a great format which always covers a lot of ground in a short space of time.
Moved into the main seat with our technology industry analyst vendor, giving me access to an executive partner.
Had a great conversation about organising information and using atomic notes, collecting and connecting ideas as they come up. I’m now using Obsidian as my main note-taking and information organising app, but I know that I’m not yet taking full advantage of what’s possible.
Enjoyed listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Ghosteen for the first time at the WB-40 album club. I’ve now heard a couple of Nick Cave albums through these clubs and I understand why people like his work. I’m not fully on-board yet.
Had an opportunity to get out on my bike on Saturday morning for the first time in a few weeks, but decided to stay in due to the forecast of all-day rain. Perhaps I’d be more of an all-weather rider if I didn’t have the ability to jump on the indoor bike trainer.
Your Undivided Attention have an excellent check-in on the state of AI. It’s 18 months since they released their talk on The A.I. Dilemma, which had a profound impact on me. My views about AI — specifically Generative AI — has become less panicked since then. But I still feel myself looking on whilst everyone races to add the technology into literally everything, without anywhere near as much thought about what the downsides might be.
It was interesting to hear Paul Ford land on the same conclusion that I’ve read from Baldur Bjarnason in that generative AI is good for ‘translation’ tasks, moving between one ’language’ and another:
Paul: I can translate a plain-language statement into a big SQL query that then asks a database for something and gives me a result. I can take my language and I can say, “Can you please translate this into the language of a middle-school essay?” That is less about it being a thing that is reacting to you when you ask it questions, and more about moving from like one mental domain to another. And the reason I’m saying this is I’m starting to think about how to be more creative and thoughtful with these tools.
Was shocked to hear that Alex Andreou has left the Oh God, What Now? podcast line-up. It was announced by Dorian Lynskey in such a casual way, a footnote to the fact that there will be a change to the line-up of an upcoming live event. I’ve listened to the podcast since the early days of Remaniacs, with the weekly shows (and odd ‘emergency’ episodes) being a wonderful balm for the Brexit madness of the times. I listened to the spin-off podcast The Bunker for a couple of years, but found that it was just too much to consume it all every week. With Naomi Smith and Ian Dunt having left already, it was only Alex, Dorian, Ros Taylor and Andrew Harrison that remained from the original crew. I’ve been slowly falling out of love with the podcast for a while and think it might be time to switch over to Quiet Riot, hosted by Naomi and Alex. I’ll see how it goes.
I love this, from an article shared with me by a friend as we discussed the inside voice that we hear (or don’t hear) as we read:
‘Or as American philosopher William James put it in 1890: “The attempt at introspective analysis… is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.’
Video
We started — and then gave up on — Loot. There was just not enough of a purpose to keep watching.
Somehow found myself watching The Many Faces of Les Dawson, a documentary from 2011. He seemed like a thoroughly great guy. I don’t think I properly appreciated him when I was a kid.
Daley Thompson: Olympic Superstar is another excellent sporting documentary from the BBC. An incredible athlete from a difficult background with his own flaws. The t-shirt he wore after winning the decathlon at the 1984 Olympics is completely shocking when viewed through a 2024 lens.
Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me was excellent, but left me wondering how long the new government will let the current situation continue. The solution to the spread of bovine TB looks like it has next to nothing to do with badgers, and everything to do with unreliable testing and spreading contaminated faeces all over the place.
Finally got around to re-watching Threads (1984), a few months after I finished reading Attack Warning Red! How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War. I knew that the film is extremely bleak, but I’d forgotten just how brutally graphic it is. Watching the second part of the film on my iPad in a public place, I found myself having to switch it off as it wasn’t suitable for anyone who happened to be passing.
Audio
Loved intently listening to Free’s Fire And Water played very loud as I found myself with an hour to spare near the swimming pool last week.
A friend and I reminisced about how good Hits 6 was. I remember being on holiday in 1987 and the double cassette accompanying us everywhere.
Continued with The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73. I’m up to the release of Wild Life, a lovely album that I discovered relatively recently. It’s been cool to listen along to the music as I’ve been reading the book.
Next week: Checking in on a major project.
📷 Zakynthos cafe vista.
🎶 Very excited to hear the new Magdalena Bay album, Imaginal Disk, which was released on Friday. Their debut album, Mercurial World, is one of my favourite things I’ve heard over the past few years.
This week was spent on holiday in Zakynthos, Greece, with four of our oldest friends and their families. We’ve been on manybrilliantholidays together over the past few years and we were excited to do it all again.
It started with an alarm at 2:45am on Saturday morning, waking us up in time for our taxi to the airport. Most of the group had managed a few hours of sleep, with one person not bothering to go to bed.
Our orange Cooper Black-adorned chariot awaits
Once we got on board the plane, we shuffled our 12 seats so that the children could sit together. I ended up in the middle of a block of three seats. A woman in a purple tracksuit was one of the last people to board, making her way to the vacant seat next to me and sitting down with a bump. She lowered her table, pulled out a bottle of Budweiser and started glugging it, before letting out a mild groan and scrabbling around in the seat pocket to find the vomit bag. It was barely 6:30am. As the cabin crew wandered down the aisle to check our seatbelts they saw the beer and asked the woman to put it away. She responded with a slurred, unfocused “ok”. Shortly after, a more senior member of the cabin crew popped by to tell her that she couldn’t travel as she had consumed too much alcohol and wasn’t safe to fly. The woman refused to get off the plane and started swearing at the staff, so the police were called to remove her. Despite being at an airport where I assume police are plentiful, it took a while for three officers to reach us and get on board. It was fascinating to watch them being firm but fair with her in trying to persuade her to leave; they were empathetic but didn’t tolerate abuse. Eventually she saw that there was only going to be one way out and decided to get up and leave. We were delayed, but I was so grateful that I wouldn’t be spending the next three or four hours wondering whether I was going to be puked on.
Zakynthos was hot, with blue sunny skies for the whole week. It’s difficult to tell exactly how hot, as our different weather apps gave very different readings and we didn’t see an old school thermometer anywhere. For most of the week, Apple Weather was telling us that the warmest part of the day was about 31°C whereas BBC Weather suggested it was at least 38°C. Based on how it felt — if we sat doing nothing it felt as though we were slowly melting — I’m inclined to believe the latter.
We stayed at the Villa Ionio Beach House, a restaurant that was recently converted into a seven-bedroom villa with a pool. Situated in Vasilikos on the east of the island, it was perfect for us. The rooms were kept cool with air conditioning and the communal space by the pool never felt crowded, even when all 12 of us were out there. A restaurant and bar were a few steps below us and the beach was a few steps beyond that. We had a small supermarket ten minutes away by foot as well as many different Greek restaurants scattered all around. It was lovely to have a holiday where we didn’t need to hire a car.
Villa Ionio Beach House, Vasilikos, Zakynthos
Someone brought along a Soundcore 3 speaker for the trip which performed superbly. We had a constant stream of music as we sat around the pool. As well as lots of greaIt was lovely to have the time to sit and listen
The view to the north-west from our villa…
…and the view to the south-east.
The pool was perfect for late night inflatable doughnut racing
View from the restaurant/cafe/bar beneath the villa
A beach free from pollution, unlike those back home
On the first morning I got up early to head out with my eldest son for a 10km run. I asked Strava to plot us a route, just as I had done many times before in many different places. My understanding is that Strava routes are based on the popularity of the roads taken by runners that have been there before us, so I had no hesitation in following the directions. The confidence we felt started to evaporate as soon as the route told us to leave the road and head through a field. Halfway across the field we were met by a ditch, wide enough to require us to take a run up in order to jump it. A few kilometres later, we found ourselves blocked by a locked gate with no easy way around it.
We stumbled across this neighbouring bay on our run
We backtracked and tried to take a different route to get us where we wanted to go. At home this faffing around would be no problem, but I had started to struggle in the heat. When we came across our second locked gate, we decided to call it a day. But then trouble hit. For some reason I couldn’t quite work out our return route. After stopping for the fifth or sixth time to look at the map, I realised my clothes were completely soaked with sweat and I had shivers and goosebumps, which didn’t seem right given how hot it was. So we ended up heading towards the sea to try and run along the beach, taking the shortest — and surest — path home.
A monstrosity of a route
Across the week I got out for a few more runs, but limited them to a much more manageable 5–8km, which was more than enough in the heat.
The pool area of the villa had an outdoor feature of some glass windows that look like they have been recovered from another building, which you can see in the distance in the main photo on their website. They seemed to be problematic for the local birds, who kept flying into them. The first time it happened I was sitting on my own on the porch, tapping out some weeknotes, when there was a massive thud on the glass. I wasn’t sure whether the bird was going to live or die; it just sat there, opening and closing its beak. I tried to help it with a little water in the lid from a plastic bottle, but it wasn’t interested. After half an hour or so, it suddenly gathered itself and flew off into the trees.
A stunned bird, completely disinterested in my attempt to offer it some light refreshment
We ate well, and a lot. On a couple of evenings we stayed in for some simple pasta, pitta bread, halloumi and salad but for the rest of the time we dined out for lunch, dinner and the occasional breakfast. The nearby restaurants — Ionio Beach Bar & Restaurant, Vasilikos Garden, Giovanni and Kostas Brother — were lovely and all had very similar food. Bowls of tahini, bread, baked or fried aubergine and courgettes, feta pies, feta covered in honey, baked feta, feta many other ways, Greek salads, spaghetti, more feta, plus all kinds of meat. One evening we ventured to Nikos Beach Bar, which was beautifully set in the neighbouring bay, but it wasn’t worth the extortionate ten minute €50 taxi ride to get there, and another €50 to get back. Sit and Share was excellent for a cooked breakfast, with the kids enjoying chocolate-drenched pancakes. On our last night we went to Skartsofoli which was probably the best food we ate, but also the most expensive. Typically a dinner for 12 of us cost around €230 and included generous starters and main courses, lots of bottled water, a little wine, and a few other drinks too.
Looking out over the Mediterranean from the Palm restaurant in Vasilikos
A more unusual take on a Greek salad at the Palm restaurant
Before we started the trip, one of our friends pointed us at the Splid app, which proved to be brilliant. We all downloaded the app, set up a ‘group’ for our trip and added three ‘persons’, each one representing one of the families on the trip. Every time we paid for something on behalf of the group — meals out, groceries from the supermarket, sunbeds — we added it to the app, logging how much it cost (and in what currency), who benefitted from it and who paid. It kept track throughout the trip and then at the end told us how to settle up so that we had all paid the same amount in an equitable way. I think I’ll be using it for any group travel in the future. It’s incredible that it’s free.
Roadside advert for Kostas’ Brother Tavern
Delicious salad with dried figs
Sit and Share, a welcoming spot for breakfast or brunch
The Amigo Beach Bar, a few metres along the beach from our villa
Looking out across the sea from the villa you would always spot at least two or three activities happening at once — parasailing, riding on a banana boat or ‘bouncy sea sofa’ thing, or riding a jet ski. They all set off from a spot ten minutes’ walk away along the beach.
Water sports launch spot, with a floating jetty that cooked my bare feet in about ten seconds
I’d never seen a Flyfish before. You either sit on the inflatable parts or lie down in between them and then cling on for dear life as a boat tows you along, with the inflatable leaping into the air. Our boys thought it was amazing.
Nervously anticipating the Flying Fish
On a couple of days we booked some private trips through Nefis Travel. The first one started in the late afternoon, taking us by minibus to a beach where we left our shoes and waded out in the shallow water to a glass-bottomed boat. Zakynthos is famous for its sea turtle population and it only took a few minutes before we spotted one, coming up for air before diving down again a couple of times, before considerately swimming directly under our boat. They are indescribably beautiful to see in real life.
Sea turtle swimming under our boat. (Photo: Katie Doran)
Coming up for air. (Photo: Mat Harden)
On the beach closest to our villa we found one or two simple wooden protection cages for the turtle nests. People seemed to be respectful of the nests and gave them a wide berth.
Our boat stopped at Marathonisi, an island full of turtles that is itself shaped like a turtle. Tourists can hop off their boats and swim in the busy water or grab a drink, ice cream or hot dog from the floating vendor boats. It felt very crowded and a little inappropriate to be so close to the nesting ground of an endangered species, particularly when the children found that the snorkelling area was filled with litter.
Getting off the boat to join the other tourists on Marathonisi Island
I’d never seen a floating concession stand before
Loggerhead turtle nesting ground on Marathonisi Island. This was two paces up the beach from where our boat landed.
After a little time on the island, we got back on the boat to speed around some nearby caves, swim in the water and watch the sunset, which was beautiful. The limestone rock that makes up the cliffs around Zakynthos is stunning, with clear layers of sediment visible in every cross-section.
Heading off to explore the caves
Limestone cliff faces
More limestone cliff faces
Sunset over the Mediterranean
Later in the week we took another minibus and boat trip, this time to take in the other ‘must see’ parts of the island. Our first stop was the small and busy Northern Xigia Beach, reached by some steep steps and a slope. It is famous for the water being fed from sulphurous springs in a nearby cave which apparently are also rich with natural collagen.
Northern Xigia Beach as seen from the cafe. You can see the discoloured water emanating from the caves.
Despite only having a handful of sunbeds and umbrellas, the beach was staffed by someone who radioed food and drink orders to the cafe at the top of the cliff. They then used an ingenious method to get the order down to the beach.
The brilliant mechanism to transport food and drinks from the clifftop cafe down to the beach
After an hour or so and a stop for lunch, we went on our way to find our boat.
Waiting for my ship to come in
Nearly all of the children thought that this part of the trip was their favourite. We hopped on board and then powered our way across the sea, landing with a series of massive thuds as we hopped one wave crest after another. Our captain was a skilled driver, taking the boat through ridiculous turns as we sped past rocky outcrops and coves. It was like being on a fairground ride without any rails.
We sped on to the cove containing the wreck of the Panagiotis, a ship that was beached and abandoned in a storm on 2 October 1980. People are no longer allowed onto the beach, giving the ship a little more life as a major tourist attraction. Compared to the images that I had seen online, the ship was in an advanced state of decay. Our tour guide told us that his father had worked for the coastguard at the time of the sinking and confirmed stories that the ship was carrying a vast amount of cigarettes, most of which were taken by the people that arrived first on the scene. Apparently, cigarette sales were down on the island for quite some time after the wreck took place.
The wreck of the Panagiotis
The colour of the water around the coves in this area was stunning. The eroded limestone cliffs produce a fine white sand which turns the sea a brilliant blue. It was incredible to look at, and to swim in. Fish darted all around.
The colour of the water made everything slightly surreal
Looking out to sea
Exploring a nearby cave; the water looked like an illuminated swimming pool
Powering our way through coves and arches
In the middle of the week, my fabulous wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Our August wedding date means that we’ve been making a habit of celebrating on various summer holidays over the years. It was lovely to be with our family and friends for the evening.
20 years later
Goodbye Zakynthos
And just like that, it was all over so quickly. Thankfully our trip home was uneventful and didn’t require any police intervention. England seems to have suddenly turned autumnal while we’ve been away. I’m not quite ready to put the flip-flops and shorts away yet.
Next week: Back to work.
📷 I think this Greek ice cream might be overplaying its hand.
This week felt very intense. I have a bit of a break from work coming up, which is either particularly well-timed or the very fact that it’s on the horizon means that I’ve started to feel a bit worn out.
It was a week of late nights, not helped by problems with the trains. I haven’t missed the drama that happens when the service fails. A broken rail near Berkhamsted meant that the only route home was via the Met Line to Chesham and then going via taxi, for a total commuting cost of £55 for the day.
Monday was the first day of us working from a temporary space while our office undergoes some essential maintenance. The team had prepared brilliantly, with network connections, desk moves, meeting room fit-outs, etc., but you never quite know how things are going to go until day one hits. Judging by the first week, it’s been a huge success.
Friday was a public holiday in South Africa — Women’s Day. South African holidays always seem to have such understated names for such important historical events. In this case, the holiday “commemorates the 1956 march of approximately 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the country’s pass laws that required South Africans defined as ‘black’ under The Population Registration Act to carry an internal passport, known as a passbook, that served to maintain population segregation, control urbanisation, and manage migrant labour during the apartheid era.” Lots of people were out so I decided to take the afternoon off to wind down and get the pre-holiday ironing done.
This was a week in which I:
Had the regular programme and project meetings.
Resolved a couple of small issues with the fit-out of a new office. Phone calls always work better than emails for keeping things from blowing out of proportion.
Met with colleagues from a partner firm to review the latest external cost estimates for one of our main projects. We also reviewed the standard JCT Minor Works contract and agreed next steps to get it into a working draft.
Started to hand over a project for some additional office improvement works to a member of my team.
Met with colleagues from a sister company to review our proposed financial operating model for a shared facility in one of our offices.
Attended a meeting to agree our approach to signage and artwork at the entrance to a new office. Everyone is in agreement on the direction we should go in.
Reviewed a draft of our annual operational risk self assessment submission.
Joined a drinks reception in one of our new temporary meeting rooms for a colleague who is getting married. It feels like ages since there was a personal celebratory event at work.
Linford is a brilliant documentary. Back when he was at his peak, I was a schoolboy delivering newspapers that were regularly filled with his achievements on the back pages. It was difficult to watch how much the mockery and ‘humour’ affected him, as well as the devastating — but weird — drug test failure after he had retired.
A central point of the book is that countries that are neither full democracies nor full autocracies as defined by the ‘polity score’ — known as ‘anocracies’ — are the most likely to experience instability and/or armed conflict. There is danger as a country moves through the anocracy zone, whether that is a country that has declined from being a full democracy, or a country that is moving at speed towards full democracy.
Once a country is in the anocracy zone, the biggest warning sign of a civil war is the appearance of a faction, a political group based on ethnic, religious or racial identity rather than ideology. Civil war is even more likely in countries divided into two dominant groups, where one group represents 40–60% of the population. The group that once held power and feels it slipping away is likely to be the one that starts the violence.
People may tolerate years of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. They may accept shoddy schools, poor hospitals, and neglected infrastructure. But there is one thing they will not tolerate: losing status in a place they believe is theirs. In the twenty-first century, the most dangerous factions are once-dominant groups facing decline.
In recent years, social media has accelerated this process. The proportion of Americans getting some of their news from social media has increased from 23% in 2013 to over 70% today. The platforms promote “a sense of perpetual crisis”. The riots in the UK over this past week are fresh in my mind as I re-read this:
Disinformation spread by extremists discredits peaceful protesters, convinces citizens that counterattacks by opposition groups are likely, and creates a sense—often a false sense—that moderates within their own movement are not doing enough to protect the population, or are ineffective and weak compared to the opposition. It’s at this point that violence breaks out: when citizens become convinced that there is no hope of fixing their problems through conventional means.
I’m not sure that this is exactly what is happening right now in the UK — so far the riots don’t seem to have spread to moderate people — but I can see how it might happen.
Walter weaves the ten stages of genocide into her narrative. According to Wikipedia, stage 4 is ‘dehumanisation’, where “One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases.” The ongoing narrative about refugees and asylum seekers in the UK’s most popular newspapers promotes this way of thinking, and has been so painful to see.
“THE ‘SWARM’ ON OUR STREETS” is a disgusting headline. The Daily Mail has been pushing this agenda for as long as I can remember. It may be impossible to draw a direct line between these front pages and the riots that have been happening in the UK over the past week, but they can’t help.
The author also mentions Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), an organisation that publishes fascinating reports and datasets on how countries around the world are democratising or autocratizing. The recent reports are jarring.
V-Dem, the Swedish research institute, collects detailed data on the different types of democracies around the world and then rates them on a 100-point scale with 100 being the most democratic and 0 being the least. According to the institute, Spain has suffered one of the worst declines in Western Europe, followed by Greece, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Austria. Nordic countries, the most liberal in the world, have also dropped since 2010: Denmark, the number one ranked democracy for most of the past hundred years, has been downgraded 10 points on V-Dem’s scale; Sweden has been downgraded 35. The swift rate of democratic decay around the world has been so rapid that V-Dem issued its first “Autocratization Alert” in 2020.
The book explains that the most effective way for a country to avoid violence and civil war is to strengthen the quality of its governance, and make people feel that the systems and institutions are working. People need to value their democracy and believe that it is effective. Doing this is “significantly more important” to avoid conflict than improving the economy.
“…three features stood out: “the rule of law” (the equal and impartial application of legal procedure); “voice and accountability” (the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media); and “government effectiveness” (the quality of public services and the quality and independence of the civil service). These three features reflect the degree to which a government serves its people and the degree to which its political institutions are strong, legitimate, and accountable. Improvements in governance tend to reduce the subsequent risk of war.”
The book is a quick read on a tough subject, giving an excellent overview of the resources and evidence available.
So much meme gold in such a short video. Sad to hear that Jack Karlson has passed away.
If you turn up to an online meeting with your ‘AI assistant’ and we haven’t had a chat about you bringing it along, I’m going to kick it out of the call. Doing this is not okay.
