Week 61

Monday 18 May 2020

• I did some work. Great times.

  The government has been doing things relevant to my interests. Their safer travel guidance for passengers briefly linked to my website, before someone decided there are more credible websites that aren’t run by one dude in his underpants somewhere. Then they laid some draft legislation before parliament, which is like I’m being subtweeted with vellum. (Although I know, because it’s still a draft, there’s no vellum involved yet.)

• I got disqualified from the cress growing competition, because I haven’t been checking Twitter enough. Well, it’s good to have it confirmed that I don’t look at that internet site too much, and, anyway, I don’t want to compete in any cress growing competition that would accept people like me as a competitor.

• Having been without a bicycle for two months, for reasons, I finally went to the bicycle shop. It’s a bad time to try to buy a bicycle, because more people than usual are buying bicycles for exercise, instead of using public transport, and to take advantage of there being fewer motor cars about – and good for them. It’s good to have a bicycle, and I look forward to having one again.

• There is a new series of Michael Lewis’s podcast Against the Rules. Lewis’s insistence on linking everything to the theme, the role of the coach in public life, or something, is annoying. The first episode contains the stunning revelation that financial institutions act in their own best interests and are generally swines – who knew?

  Lewis’s podcast contains an an advert (in which he weirdly says “backslash” when reading out the website address) for his pal Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast, which is itself a long advert for Lexus motor cars. For maximum Alan Partridge points, Gladwell even makes special mention of the breakfast buffet he had on his trip to Japan.

  Anyway, you can’t move for people observing that you can’t move for podcasts these days, so why on earth would you listen to either of those podcasts?

Some other things happened, but that’s enough things for this week. Keep your pecker up.