Monday
Freya had an inset day, Han and I couldn’t figure out the logic of having an inset day on the Monday of the last week of term. On Sunday night as we sat down to watch the Euro’s final with the kids it dawned on us. Well played Mr West, well played!
I was looking after Freya’s friend Martha too, I had planned to drive up to Bude to meet Darwin and go surfing (well mainly pushing the girls on their boards) It was a 3 hour round trip for around 40 minutes of surfing in the rain, but it was fun nonetheless and good to catchup with Darwin. The van survived with no problems!
Tuesday
My old mate Matt was down with his family so I jumped on a train and met up with them in Exeter. It was great to catchup with him and Sarah and get to know Sam, their eldest, a bit more. I hadn’t seen Sam since he was around 6/7ish, he’s now 17, only a year younger than when Matt and I met at Uni. Very weird!
Wednesday
Went for a bike ride, decided to ride to Princetown in the middle of the moor. It was warm, but I made it. Peak hill is still an absolute bastard to ride up. I love my gravel bike but I’m still not sure about the gearing. It has a SRAM Force 11 groupset which means no front derailleur, great for maintenance, but limits the amount of gears. For a tubby middle aged man cycling on Dartmoor this can make it feel like a chore. I might change it for a different groupset one day.
Thursday
Phoebe’s birthday!
Whilst she was at school it was mostly a life admin day, mainly doing prep for SDinGov talk. Had a brief chat with Jukesie, who’s suddenly become available, I’m sure he’ll have no problem getting his next gig, I really admire how he has already, openly said what he’s looking for in his next job. I’m really curious about how effective this approach will be.
Heard some more about my next role, still a bit early to talk about it, nothing signed, but meetings going in calendars, which is positive.
Phoebe had a regular heart appointment, it was an hour late, but her heart is still in good condition, which was a relief!
In the evening we had a swim, and ate pizza in the sun, good times.
Friday
It was very weird to watch the world implode due to CrowdStrike and not be affected at all because I’m not working and nothing I was doing that day was affected. As always the socials were full of bad takes and finger pointing, and once again I was reminded of John Alllspaw and Paul Hammonds seminal 10 deploys a day at flickr talk, especially these slides:
School finished early, Freya had a friend round and went for a swim. In the evening we had a movie night, Freya watched Hotel Transylvania (again) and Phoebe watched Axel F after Freya had gone to bed. Enjoyed it more than I expected, hit all the notes of the original films and Eddie Murphy is still a charismatic frontman.
Reading
Caesar has finally crossed the eponymous Rubicon and taken control of Rome. You can’t help read it and wonder about the parallels with American democracy at the moment.