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Missed a week last week – partly due to laziness, partly due to things in life being pretty quiet. I’ve mostly been working – more than I’d like to – it’s been hard to strike the balance I had in Canada when I was working from an office, cycling to work, being done for the day at 5pm. Now i’m working remotely again in London, 8 hours away, my days seem a lot longer, and often a lot more repetitive.
The winter in the UK can be like that for everyone I suppose – working from home just amplifies some of those feelings. It is March now, and for the first time yesterday (Sunday 1st) things felt like Spring.
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On my day off on Monday the previous week I saw Steve McQueen’s solo show at the Tate Modern which was excellent. A really good mix of large ambient pieces you could drift in and out of in the main hall, and some longer films which were worth sitting with for a while.
I went and saw 1917 the same evening which I enjoyed but it could probably have been just as effective had all the dialogue been removed.
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I’ve almost finished gathering all the parts to build up my Velo Orange Mini Velo. I have no idea what this thing will be like to ride – hopefully fun. If nothing else looking at bike parts on the internet has given me a hobby for the many dark evenings of the last couple of months.
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I went to The Eagle on Thursday which is – and may always be – my favourite food pub in London. The steak sandwich was a good as ever. That sandwich, plus the company (Tom and Shim), always make me nostalgic for the years (2013-15~) spent working at Mint around the corner on Exmouth Market and the many long lunches we shared there.
five
Started reading The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, on Tom’s recommendation. Every time I glance at the cover I think it’s a David Foster-Wallace book. But the content is rather different. I’m twenty pages in and it feels like a book everyone should read right now.
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Things i’ve been watching: I rewatched True Detective (Season 1) over the course of a week for no particular reason. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I find it quite moving. I followed this with No Country For Old Men this week, which I don’t think i’d seen since it came out. I appreciated it a lot more now, in ways I doubt I would have back in 2007 when I couldn’t see far beyond the terror of Javier Bardem’s haircut.
I’ve finally got into Curb Your Enthusiasm, starting with Season 10 and going back to Season 1 – which makes you very aware what 20 years can do to a person – or not – when they are living in LA. I’ve been rewatching Russian Doll in-between episodes of that. Also, i’ve persevered with The Outsider but it’s starting to drag and I really would like Ben Mendelsohn to smile for three seconds.
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I bought a guitar – a secondhand Cort Mini – which i’d been eyeing for a while. It’s half size and leans neatly against my desk when I work and when I get frustrated or distracted, which, at the moment, is around every 15 minutes, I pick it up and try and play Wilco or Pavement chords on it and things feel a little bit better.
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Started a podcast about Long Haul Truckers – “On The Road“, which combines many of my favorite things – but mostly a fascination with long American roads and all that they evoke – into one very listenable show.
nine
I want to book a holiday for the end of my current project. Right now it’s unclear if that’s a good idea. The big supermarket near me in Whitechapel has sold out of ibuprofen, there wasn’t much soap either. I woke up to a message on Saturday on morning – my company have cancelled all work travel are encouraging everyone in the office to work from home, even in Vancouver. There’s a fine line between taking precautions and losing your shit and panic buying cans of soup, but obviously the virus is concerning. The trip I was planning with my dad to Tokyo is definitely on hold for now.
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I remember one night last week, after a stressful video call with a person in San Francisco, I walked out of my flat to go to the small supermarket near me on Mare St. This is my usual after work routine. I listen to The Daily and let the stories of crumbling democracy and hysterical US politics put my day of pushing different sized rectangles around a screen into context.
From the end of Sheep Lane, a nondescript road adjacent to my house full of potholes and the back entrance to a bus depot, you can get a view of the of the city – the area around Bank – lit up at night. For the first time – maybe ever since living here – I stopped and looked at it for a little bit. I’m not sure what caused me to pay attention this day, but it struck me how rarely I actually look at London that way or think about the fact I live very close to the center of this huge absurd metropolis. Then I kept walking to Sainsbury’s.
eleven
Quote of the week (another gem from writing class): “Essentially we all live in the same country… called capitalism” – Bong Joon Ho.
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Photo: My desk, February 2020
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