Weeknotes #225 — Secret flip-flops

Put a patch of grass next to a pub in the summertime and watch it fill up with people.

Hot. So hot that I’ve had to give up on my 40 minute morning walk from the station to the office in favour of the tube.¹ I love getting the exercise, but I can’t face being a sweaty mess when I get to work.

On Monday I missed an ‘end of days’ level deluge in Berkhamsted which flooded the streets and shops. By the time I got back from London it had largely dried up, but the humidity made it smell and feel like Singapore in the late afternoon.

In the summer, it’s lovely to work at home in shorts and flip-flops (that nobody can see on video calls), but the lack of air conditioning can make it uncomfortable as the afternoon heats up. I’m grateful that I have a balance between the two places to work.

This was a week in which I:

• Felt like a space cadet on Monday morning, struggling to get myself into gear. I’m guessing it was from the cycling over the weekend — both days were very sweaty and I’m not sure if I managed to get all of the electrolytes back into my system. I’m not quite Roger Daltrey (in more ways than one) but I remember him writing about this in his book:

• Continued the roadshow on Large Language Models and Generative AI, presenting to two more teams as well as our CEO.
• Worked with our Compliance team to respond to an industry survey on AI.
• Met with a prospective vendor to check in on the status of a proposed piece of work. Cold-called an internal contact that is already working with them to find out more about how things have been working. They couldn’t have been more helpful. It’s so great to work for a company where people are happy to pick up the phone and assist you. Prima donnas are very hard to come by; it really makes a big difference.
• Enjoyed some more one-to-one enrolments of staff onto our password management platform. It’s such a delight when someone ‘gets it’ and becomes enthusiastic about how it will make their lives easier. Hybrid working makes scheduling and keeping these enrolment appointments much more difficult, but we’re still making good progress.
• Met with a colleague to agree the next steps for an initiative to change how we manage unstructured data. I’ve put some draft slides together for a kick-off in the next week or two.
• Spent time looking at how to move us towards a department roadmap again.
• Joined a couple of meetings to prepare for an all-day workshop next week.
• Hosted our weekly Learning Hour with a guest speaker, a colleague who is focused on building out an internal AI platform.
• Got on top of my main work to-do list. Writing down my process inspired me to plough through it, closing out old items and getting the others to where they need to be.
• Met with the school IT service provider to talk through the results of their hardware survey and agree next steps.
• Had a check-in meeting with our District School Effectiveness Adviser and our Chair of Governors.
• Attended the latest Hertfordshire Headteacher Update webinar.
• Cheered my eldest son finishing his last GCSE exam. He’s got himself a job over the summer which will be great experience for him, and also put some money in his pocket.
• Enjoyed a fast Saturday morning cycling club ride in an excellent group of ten riders. Hilly terrain where I had to work hard to keep up. One downhill was interrupted by a fallen tree. We also had a mildly terrifying moment when we found a patch of road completely covered in gravel from the recent rains, with no time to slow down or stop. I held on and hoped that I would roll straight over it.

Navigating the fallen tree.

• Had a fun Saturday night at a friend’s place, taking it in turns to play music that we love, riffing off of each others’ tunes. We’ve had these evenings on and off over the past thirty years, but these days I don’t need to cycle over to his house with a rucksack full of CDs. Like last time, I’ll try and put together the tracks we played into a post.
• Booked tickets to many, many gigs. Between how and the end of September I’m going to see Julie Byrne (including Katie Von Schleicher), PJ Harvey, Grant Lee Phillips, Marika Hackman and the Smoke Fairies. I seem to spend my all of my pocket money on gig tickets and physical music at the moment. And I love it.

Next week: A week of early morning meetings, and — count them — two album club evenings.