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.
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.
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