Week notes: week notes

Week notes are a thing I do now. I have enjoyed reading the week notes of a small number of strangers on the internet, mostly published on their own IndieWeb sites, and why shouldn’t I join in?

Last week, the process of reflection made me realise I’d managed to do a pleasing amount of work – a valuable process. This week, I appear to have done less – which is healthy too. I have done some other things.

I took some photographs. They were better than last week’s. Great!

I picked up some rubbish from off of the sides of some roads. Like, I’m fond of saying, a pound shop David Sedaris, or Ian McMillan. Those BBC radio stalwarts use special equipment – “grabbers” – but I’m not that serious yet. I do recommend rubber gloves¹, and a basket to which is attached a bicycle, and a plastic bag clipped on with clothes pegs. Sunday was a particular purple patch: the strangest item for a few days (a ¾ full box of croissants) dumped near a ford, and then I finally captured my white whale (a lager tin that had taunted me for weeks, embedded in a hedge) using a large twig.

It reminds me a bit of the postmodern Stone Clearing With Richard Herring, which is not my cultural highlight of the week, but remains a podcast in the list of podcasts I listen to. Gathering litter is only slightly more worthwhile than Herring’s hobby of the ancient art of moving stones from a field to its perimeter. Rampant capitalism and air pollution are more serious than fly-tipped food and drink packaging.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’ve been encouraged by the Daily Mail–backed “Great British Spring Clean” campaign, which is at least not as bad as 2016’s “Clean for The Queen” (ugh).

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