A short note after a very short week. Had a holiday to celebrate a couple of Big Life Events, which was wonderful. Work Had an at-work away day. Husna, Grace and Holly ran it. Away days can be tricky at the best of times, and especially online and on a limited…

I haven’t seen In the Mood for Love for 20 years, but had a long phone chat with my younger sister about it this week. Maggie Cheung’s outfits and pain, the deep, withholding loneliness of the script, the lingering camerawork, almost too on the nose but still works, the confidence…

Bumper issue because I couldn’t press “publish” last week. I’ve been thinking about the unnecessary, inaccurate, anecdote, and what it says about the teller. I went through a deep Desert Island discs phase last summer, trying to understand more about UK culture. The most recent attempt of many. They’ve ranged…

Welcome back to the sweet, sweet office! Starting off 2021 with new lockdowns, new riots and new reasons to google “fascism, definition of”. Going back to work, from home, when I’d basically been in the same home for two weeks not-working is a strange thing. I could only get my…

I’m bad at good habits — other than American standards of dental care — so I almost skipped this week’s weeknotes. I got a Christmas tree, though, so the winter solstice is saved. But here we are. I discovered a new, useful term this week: “hope labour”. According to the…

Are you looking for a grown-up advent calendar? Amy has curated and edited (this matters, later) a list of 24 short essays about things people thought about a lot in 2020. Lovely design by Sonia, too. I had one in it the other day, about ambition and aging and Caroline…

My headphones are broken! While that wouldn’t have been a problem a year ago, it is now. (Working from home, sonic spaces, etc.) I’ve ordered new ones, but they’re lost in Black Friday postal disasters, somewhere. Or stolen. My current headphones only work if I sit very still and wrap…

So here’s the thing: I listened to an interview with Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and she said that when she was stuck with writing, she starts typing “So here’s the thing” and then the rest follows. (If you don’t know who she is: she writes really good celebrity profiles for GQ.) …

Didn’t know about Parkinson’s Law, that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”, but I know it in my bones. Thanks to Russell for introducing me to the author of the bikeshedding theory, C. Northcote Parkinson which led to this vital discovery. Solid Wikipedia page…