Anna Goss

better drowned than duffers

[goss]

I wanted to feel like a grown-up

So I replatformed my blog onto an Eleventy static site. Here's the new RSS feed link.

Does that mean I'm posting again? Dunno, perhaps, let's see.

[goss]

cleveland arms, 35

went for a beer with Alice and suggested I might write a weeknote when I got home

we each had two pints of Neck Oil. it was £6.30 for one pint. I'm glad I don't go to the pub three or four nights a week any more

last night our next door neighbour said to me, "there's a house round the corner, they've taken the whole roof off. shall we go round with the cargo bike and see if we can get some wood?". so we did. I had a head torch. felt like a robber.

is it robbing if it's in a skip?

wrapped Pepsi up in a blanket in the cargo bike this evening, cos it was gloves weather for me, and she can't tell me if she's cold or not, can she?

every day I enjoy being part of the anti-growth coalition just a little bit more.

C bought me one of those Ooni pizza ovens for my birthday last week so now I can be anti-growth while I eat pizza in the back garden, fuelled by the wood from the house round the corner's roof. I wonder how many pizzas it takes, if you consider each pizza as one that isn't ordered from a takeaway, but also the cost of the pizza oven, to get to a place where it's actively damaging the economy?

suppose this is only true if I don't spend my money on other things. guess what: it's all going on buying different types of insulation.

[goss]

open fields, 34

noting as I look down the sidebar of iAWriter that Angus shaming me into writing week notes lasted three notes. it seems that shame isn't a great motivator.

for whatever reasons, the world has felt ridiculously heteronormative recently, whether in the films we've watched or the things going on around us. it's a hard do-not-relate, and as someone who has arrogantly never particularly engaged with LGBTQ+ communities and cultures, it leaves me feeling a little rock-and-hard-place. don't want that and those values: not sure where else to look. where's the art and the poetry and the sports sitting in the middle of the queer hipster x normcore venn? that's where I live!

might start writing about work stuff a little more than I have done in the past, because there are floating thoughts and bringing them all together feels like a good idea. I have soooo many tabs open.

Alice and I went for a walk and soon we'll go to the pub. imagine making friends as an adult!

today marks one year since Pepsi got found by the side of a road with her pups by a dog shelter in Bulgaria. next week will be six months since she arrived home with us. she's the chillest dog in the world and having been 100% a cat person, am now convinced that it's true: it's better with Pepsi.

there is a real simplicity to having a dog, especially in the mornings. wake up, get dog up, feed dog, leave the house. I like it.

spending most of my time this week thinking about drilling holes in things and going for walks with the dog; about data as a material to design with; about potential. and Checksies too, our lovely little side project that needs a bit of love.

C just sent out a weeknote. we haven't discussed this. SYNERGY.

vaccine tomorrow. just put the first Vaccines' album on in anticipation. all of my 20s music snobbery has evaporated.

[goss]

jj72 33

so many browser tabs. so many half started thoughts. so many "maybe I'll be more productive when I've....." moments. I think I could use a couple of days in an office. let's not talk about work, hey?

bought 5 more Hive thermostatic radiator valves; now when we try to boost the heating in one or both of our offices during the day, we can keep the rest of the house cool. gutted that our smart meter has broken and I can't see what impact this is going to make on our bills. hopefully it'll reduce, because we're not heating the whole house every time we want to be a bit warmer at work. but maybe it'll increase, because the radiators in our offices are always trying to be or get to 18 degrees, rather than us letting them get to 15-16 before we press the 'boost' button.

I wonder whether, had I learned the phrase 'balance the heating system' before yesterday, we could've done something jazzy like this using only the usual, non-smart thermostatic valves.

only the best content for my weeknotes crew.

if the stock market carries on this way, I'm going to retire by Christmas 2021. [the stock market will not carry on this way]

we got sent a brand new robot vacuum because of the network issues. it still doesn't connect to the mesh network. but we can just stick it in a room, press 'play', and it vacuums. in context, that's still quite something.

taking a week off next week. apparently bike fitters can still work in this lockdown, so I'm going to go and get one on Tuesday. I am sick of my knees feeling dreadful every time I get on two wheels. I miss feeling brilliant on a bike, instead of nervously waiting for the moment my body starts to creak.

finally admitted to myself that perhaps my inflexible biomechanics are part of the picture here, so like All The Toms, I have started stretching more. Apple Fitness+ seems to take away the inertia of choice, because filtering for length of session is so easy. one more SaaS product enters the picture. at first I was wondering how long I'd have to do daily yoga for before it makes a difference, but that's not the right mindset: really I think I need to admit that if I don't stretch properly 3-5 times a week for the rest of my life, at some point it's gonna hurt.

just as things (heating, robots) were starting to feel like they were working around here, the council have stopped collecting our garden waste. they came this morning, picked up everyone else's on the street, looked at ours, and skipped it (says our lovely neighbour). mmm, more bureaucracy to interact with. I love it.

new sofa arrived. unlike bureaucracy, I genuinely love it.

slowly, reluctantly, disappointingly beginning to consider whether it would be easier or better to get a car. urgh.

[goss]

the hound on the underground, 32

despite having taken three days off the week before last, I remain very much at the end of my tether. I know this because I spend a lot of time muttering stuff under my breath and swearing when very minor things go wrong.

by Wednesday night I was texting pictures of the cheese in the fridge to the group chat after our Sainsbury's order arrived. by Thursday morning we'd moved onto discussing bin collections. life is truly scintillating right now.

bought a turbo trainer a couple of weeks ago. tried to put my bike on it. only then realised - and I should've thought about this beforehand - that turbos work best for bikes with vertical dropouts, not my semi-horizontal ones, because lining up cassette and chain is...tricky. any excuse to buy another bike I guess.

like Chris, I'm also interested in the search results for 'garden shelter lean to'. the tree surgeons came on Friday, so now not only is our garden much lighter, but we also have logs to dry out. and as if I'm going to spend £160 on a wood store.

feel like I spend most of my spare time at the moment, and occasionally time in working hours, doing wifi network admin. I miss the days of broken internet during working hours being someone else's problem. and have you ever tried to get a robot vacuum cleaner to connect to a mesh network? a world of pain.

finished Broken April by Kadare, a book about people in the Albanian mountains living by a code called the Kanun, which involves generations-long blood feuds between families. I don't think I understood the ending, but bravo to Daunt Books (my mum bought me a subscription for Christmas), who absolutely nailed the brief of “I want to read things about utopias and dystopias and also the Western Balkans”.

the dog has discovered how much she loves chasing squirrels; so much for the easiest dog ever. let the hard training yards begin.

[goss]

Pepsi-cola 31

Angus shamed me into writing again. what you saying, Chris, Hurrell?

we got a dog in December. she came over from a shelter in Bulgaria in a van with 19 of her other dog buddies, two months after her puppies all got adopted. from all the chats I've had since with other dog owners, we've lucked out: she's calm, good with kids, doesn't jump up at strangers, and is super loyal.

every morning when we get her out of her crate she is incredibly excited to see us both and it is the purest expression of unconditional love I've ever seen.

the routine is 3 walks / day, which exacerbates my previously stated feelings about lunch breaks. and it's so difficult to pass a split bin bag! when she's confused, scared or wants to go a different way to us, she freezes, so we spend a lot of time standing in the cold waiting for her to move. it's getting better and I'm making my peace with it, but damn, hiding frustration from a dog is an emotional low.

Dishoom now have one of those dark kitchens in Hove, so there's your last excuse gone for not moving to Brighton.

speaking of those lunchbreak thoughts, let me make it abundantly clear how little I appreciated people telling me how to make an omelette. I'm trying to dismantle capitalism and you're telling me to crack open some eggs in butter. please.

I feel as flat as everyone else, and like all I do is work, walk the dog, drink and watch telly. grateful that the days are getting longer, and that I can start work at 10am every day to get some daylight in before work.

this week in particular it felt like most of my job is about influencing and steering; the slow pace layers of culture change and strategic direction. it's great to now have a lead delivery manager in our little gang of three (DM, PM, design) focused on the accounts and data teams on GOV.UK. I've missed you Ruth!

bookshelves arrive Tuesday. once we're not surrounded by boxes of books we'll realise we don't have any furniture, but that's not the worst problem to have. C is planning the garden. I'm thinking about loft insulation. can you really imagine going back to an office 5 days a week?

this week marked five years since James died. someone called it the longest, shortest time; that about sums it up.

that doesn't feel like a great note to end on, though it's a good thing for me to think about. time to take the dog out.

[goss]

balkan chic, 30

back on this 'self reflection' bullshit.

we've moved, to Brighton right next to the South Downs, so now I strip wallpaper for fun. having enough space for us each to have an office is amazing, walks on the South Downs every morning are amazing, the sea poking its head up from all angles is amazing. I haven't really ventured into Brighton which I half wonder is a fear of going back to the past, when I was a student here. or maybe it's just that Sainsbury's online and being neighbours with the local butcher means there's no need to go anywhere.

I still miss south London too.

a difficult-ish week at work that reminded me of the importance of some kind of mix of 'strong opinions, lightly held' and the importance of following your nose rather than the plan you had before. and how difficult leadership is when working remotely. and maybe just in general. but I think we ended the week in a better place to where we started it, so that's something.

had a 1:1 with Jen who is my line manager for a couple of months while Stephen is doing some parenting and I am being head of design for GOV.UK (imagine that!). despite the "oh god line management with a friend" fear, it was good to be kicked into thinking a bit about my career and what I want to be doing for the first time in a while. cheers boss.

passing obsessions since we've moved have included compost, garage storage systems, garage doors, cork walls, wood burning stoves, office chairs, mountain bikes, elevation from sea front, the weirdness of induction hobs. it'll probably be good when that expands to curtains, blinds and doorbells.

our neighbours think we will get a car within 6 months. I am determined not to. we've joined the car club though it's 30 mins walk to the nearest one. but perhaps a smaller chainring for the bike, cos I reckon our hill rivals Swains Lane.

feel like having an office might reinvigorate my energy for work again. when I think about our flat in London it makes me feel a bit claustrophobic, in hindsight.

it was a lovely little flat though. not slagging u, Hillcrest!

[goss]

London is

picking up conkers in the grounds of St Luke's 'mental hospital' on the way to school

the flying fox at Highgate Woods playground

rolling down the hill at Kenwood

a bit of snot flying out of my nose onto the parachute at a school sports day

cycling on the pavement to go home from school and getting shouted at "bikes are for the road", I am 8 with my big brother, 10

catching the W7 to Highbury wearing my lucky green trousers

a Crunchie before a 3pm Saturday kickoff

Ian Wright scoring his 179th at Highbury

painting plates at the Art4Fun cafe on Fortis Green

the 134 to Tufnell Park

£2 day travelcards

Shepherds Bush Empire

Camden Lock on Sunday afternoons

no entry to Camden tube station on Sundays between 2-5pm

Jack Straws Castle

the pedestrian bit of the hill up from Hampstead tube

the tube from school to HMV Hampstead High Street

Caffe Nero Golders Green

the H2 from Marketplace up Northway

handing out poems at the Stop the War march

rounders on the Heath extension

sitting in the back of the car coming home with my parents from the Barbican, Westminster Central Hall, Cadogan Hall

coca-cola and a kitkat behind the teahouse

the chips at the Steeles in Belsize Park

full English at Camomile on Englands Lane

White Heat on Tuesday nights

the Buffalo Bar

weekly chicken soup for Shabbat

changing District line train at Earls Court

bottles of Peroni at Trisha's

the Strongrooms

the sofa at RAK Studios

upstairs at the Betsey Trotwood

downstairs at the Betsey Trotwood

plates of spaghetti at the Stockpot

plates of spaghetti at West End Kitchen

coffee with James at Maurizio's on East Finchley High Road

standing at the back of Hoxton Bar & Kitchen

breakfast at the Wolseley

the soft carpet underfoot at the Festival Hall

walking down Bond Street feeling like I own it

the Dublin Castle

hungover in Sainsbury's at Mornington Crescent

the Magic Numbers

the escalator at Angel tube

the ICA

elevenses at St John

dancing to Tangled Up in Blue at the end of a night at Tatty Bogles

my first sushi on Kingly Street

nipping in to Liberty to use the loo

Edgware Road schwarma

up Bishops Avenue, along Spaniards, back down through West Hampstead to Queens Park

Roy's breakfasts at my desk

swims after work at the Ladies Pond

swims before work at the Ladies Pond

trying to get a PB heading south on Kingsland Road

Look Mum No Hands after work

a swim and sun salute at Brockwell Lido with Sam

the Parkland Walk from Finsbury Park to Highgate

queueing for Franco Manca in Brixton

slow walks around the Summer Exhibition

basketball on Downham Road

cycling round in circles at the back of the With Associates studio at 54B

warm water at London Fields Lido

covered in kebab stains, streets of red and white, the morning after the FA Cup final

Waterloo Bridge, London Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Tower Bridge

the magic train from Kentish Town to Herne Hill

the noise of the building during members' hours at Tate Modern

loops of Dulwich Park

sloes in Bel Air Park

5k in Brockwell Park

Khan's on Rye Lane

parties at Dreamhouse

pastries at Dreamhouse

just one more at the Gowlett

a first date at the Gowlett

knowing the Velodrome is just round the corner

meetings at the Foreign Office

price comparisons at zero waste shops

capricciosa 500 Degrees

cycling up Highgate West Hill

cycling up Swains Lane

cycling up to Crystal Palace

we're not going far.

[goss]

cold was the steel of my axe to grind, 29

thing about everyone caring about GOV.UK on the internet again this week: there's no way to make everyone happy. it's a public service, so everyone feels a bit of ownership. fair enough. I'm looking forward to seeing how accounts play out based on what we learn, and having some proper chats about it as we go along.

moving somewhere bigger (...almost four times bigger) is making me mildly concerned about our electricity bills - it's looking like we'll move next month. so of course I'm now in a rabbit hole of privacy centric smart homes. I'm interested in thermostats and radiator valves, but not really in smart speakers. at the moment we've got a Hive hub but it's a bit flaky, and it properly locks you into the Hive system, too. open source privacy centric smart homes? do I have to buy a Raspberry Pi and start building thermostats on local networks or something? (would probably quite enjoy that tbf.) I'm reminded that Nat wrote about Ikea smart lighting a few years ago, and might now go and look that up again. should probably write a proper post about it when I figure it out as a way to capture the research, because that's what the internet is for.

even though we're moving, I'm super happy that we got a grant of a few grand from the local authority to make the garden outside our current block nicer. I put in a bid suggesting picnic benches and some raised beds, and it might actually happen. chalk that one up to "the world only gets better if you do something about it". this year's Cleaner Greener Safer grant fund ends on October 4, if you live in Southwark you can apply here for 'permanent, physical changes to your local area' - things like bike parking, playgrounds and benches. as far as I remember I did mine a few hours before the deadline when I was a bit drunk.

I'm interested in the 'will there be a remote future' / 'what will hybrid working be like' debates, because I am a white collared tech worker (ha ha imagine wearing a collar in 2020), but I'm also wondering about business models for these things. what about redistributing estates budgets to individuals or teams? what does it look like to give financial autonomy about ways of working to individuals or units? I could see a world where individuals get, I dunno, £200 / month to sort out their office space - and maybe if you chose to take team funding, a team of 5 gets £1200, a premium to encourage face to face collaborative work. essentially how could we redistribute and decentralise the 'future of work'? because 'office open / office closed' is hardly a new way of doing things, is it.

been feeling a kind of slow burn into stir craziness / cabin fever now I've been working from home for six months, which this week I told the internet about. astonishing response to be honest and I've no idea if I'll have enough time left as a south Londoner to meet all these humans. I think it's variety that's been missing; the only days I feel like I remember from the past six months are the ones where either we've gone looking for houses or I've been out all day on my bike (big ups to my riding buddies Will, Kuba and Papa). hopefully an injection of different people and perspectives will help make life feel like a thing that's being lived rather than survived. Though I suppose survival isn't such a bad goal either.

thank goodness for Folklore. imagine this year if it hadn't had a new Taylor Swift album in it? (the best bit, officially, is the bit in August at 1:43 - "back when we were still changing for the better, wanting was enough" - until "cause you weren't mine to lose" at 2:08, because somehow she musically codifies the feeling of longing, how'd you do it Tay?)

[goss]

the encouraged mediocrity of our society, 28

shed mouse has got some nerve. first eating our Brexit spaghetti. and now it's taken to eating the caps off bike chain lube (that’s two bottles lost to it now) and the straps of every single piece of bike luggage I own. humane or kill trap? both make me feel sick, but then, so does the rage I have for shed mouse, so.

I was pretty dismayed by the comments on Gary Younge's excellent piece in the FT (paywall, but the key sentence is probably: "The racism we are dealing with isn’t a question of a few bad apples but a contaminated barrel. It’s a systemic problem and will require a systemic solution."). a lot of 'all lives matter', so there's an example of people who are presumably reasonably well educated having not learned...anything at all, in the past six weeks. good to see how far uphill we have to go! black trans lives matter, btw. I'm doing my best to be braver at work and saying things that maybe previously I would've kept to myself. I don't expect any medals for it; should've done it a long time ago.

for some reason, despite never having worked in the cycling industry, my activism lies mostly in cycling infrastructure policy. maybe because it's, well, intersectional: safer infrastructure for getting around cities on a bike can benefit pretty much everyone. often it's people on lower incomes who don't have cars, and the roads are already safe for people in Range Rovers. and it's not right that the image of cycling in London is a middle-aged man in lycra (known as a MAMIL). from TfL's 2016 report on cycling potential: "more than half of all trips made by residents using motorised modes could be cycled." "The most significant barrier to realising this potential is that most cyclable trips are made by people that do not cycle at all." "According to 2016 figures from TfL, Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups account for 15 per cent of current cycle trips, but 38 per cent of potentially cyclable trips."

a qualitative insight into Black women cycling in London is Jools' book 'Back in the Frame' - Jools gave up cycling as a teenager, and refound it as an adult, and the book is really about that. part of this is being a teenage girl (I stopped cycling between about 11 and 21, too), but heck it's way harder to go back into doing something when you don't see others who look like you doing it as well.

not going to go on and on, mostly because it's bedtime, but access to safe cycling is an intersectional political issue and yes I have been writing to my elected representatives about this.

C got offered a fully funded PhD position by UCL. I'm very proud. our main response was to stick the flat on the market and start looking at larger places near the sea, because 5 days a week in an office (or hospital, in C's case) ain't happening for either of us now for the foreseeable and if we’re both going to work from home, we’re going to need a bigger boat I mean place to live. made an offer on somewhere yesterday, so fingers crossed.. owned by (based on the photos up on the walls) a lesbian couple, so maybe there'll be some pride solidarity in our favour?!

hi, sellers, if you googled me. sorry for creeping on your pictures, we like your house and would like to live there!

[goss]

tres leches, 27

cancelled an American Express card that I only got because I wanted some free lounge access. free for year 1, £140 for year 2 and every year after that, and when I got the £140 bill this month I was like "wuuuuut nooooooo". anyway, the point is: never had a lovely 'endings' experience: accrued points transferred to another loyalty account, "obviously the account fee will be waived", and a little chat about holidays. I guess that's what the account fee is for. the Amex staff were all working from home, too, so that made me feel better about phoning them up.

Dulwich Park was heaving this weekend but the Dulwich College playing fields were still empty. y'all, what you doing, just cross the street!

someone at work was selling a Surly Cross Check for £350. the part of me that loves a deal and the part of me that loves a Surly suddenly overlapped, so I walked to Streatham to pick it up. thanks Andy for helping do it up nice!

it's all getting pretty groundhog day isn't it. finding it hard to think about any kind of planning or whatever for the future. measuring life by our daily morning walks and ice cream sandwiches from Jones of Brockley, where I am surely in the top 5% of customers.

finished Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, which only took me about three months to get through. there were some lovely bits but overall the narrative jumping around was not what I needed. started The Return by Hisham Matar which so far is excellent.

I'm on a day off, thanks to the Queen, so I'm going to go read it in the Alleyns playing field, another of the private school fields opened up. I have come to love that field and hope they never take it back from us.

[goss]

come on pilgrim. 26

the week before last, I didn't want to write a weeknote. last week, I just didn't make the time for it. sorry to my 25 week streak.

we cleaned out / tided the shed. I'm simultaneously very happy about this and also a bit sad that "sorting out the shed" is no longer a thing to look forward to. questions remain outstanding over what I should do with one working and one broken Shimano 600 STI shifters/brake levers, not to mention the many spare downtube shifters I appear to have acquired in the past decade. I've got enough spare parts that I could build a real mongrel of a bike, although it would be a bike without a front wheel, brakes or a seatpost.

yesterday I took an hour for lunch and went out on my bike and down to Fowlds (inspired by Andy). had my first flat white in 7 weeks which was simultaneously lovely and also underwhelming. hope the first pint in the Gowlett is more momentous.

the other success story of the week is that I bought a tiny solar panel and bulb (off Amazon, sorry world). solar panel on roof of shed, bulb off a hook inside. there's a whole world of solar panel lighting out there when you start looking. surely we can't be far off my dream of a solar powered freezer (never say I don't dream big).

we've started going for walks first thing, leaving the flat somewhere between 6.30-7am. either up to Dulwich - park or woods - or, this morning, to Brockwell Park. it's good to get a headstart on the day, and getting back at 7.45 still feels like enough time to have a cup of tea and a sit before starting work. when did I become a willing participant in mornings?

work: continues. there was a point last week that I was like, ah, here I am, at the perfect point which intersects across all of my experience. that quickly folded into "I offer nothing unique on this project", and now we're back to an even keel again. what a rollercoaster! I'm getting big meeting fatigue, though, so this week I'm trying to just...get us all writing stuff down more. like the Jeff Bezos 6-page-memo thing. though, lols at having a week to write something at the pace we're moving. nice idea, Jeff!

the only other thing of note is that I bought a new phone for the first time since February 2015. the iPhone SE is pretty much exactly the same form factor as my previous iPhone 6. I was deeply impressed with Apple's onboarding / data transfer process - just keep the phones nearby each other, and everything will switch across, just a bit of extra auth required for banking apps - but unlocking a new phone to find it looks visually identical to the old one really exacerbated the feeling of slight underwhelm. no clean slates here! just a metal object, slightly different to your old metal object. I guess that's the feeling when there's the flip from smartphones being an object of novelty into being utility items. but at least Strava tracks my runs more accurately now.

[goss]

covid power couple, 25

fell off my bike on the way back from the shops on Friday morning. clipped a bin and came off sideways on a route I've done probably 150-200 times. there are bruises, no skin was broken, I only cried ten hours later after C got home and was nice to me.

arnica is helping.

started doing the Running Clinic's 5k programme last week. jumped straight into the end of week 6. so until Friday my mind was entirely thinking about intervals and the next run. dead annoying to have to skip a couple of days!

C's days at work are getting longer. I am not above saying that I find 12-14 hours home alone challenging. big love to the people who live on their own.

the long weekend was excellent, but can I remember what happened? like hell I can.

long chat with Iso this morning, partly around the 'hero' narrative for NHS workers. they're not heroes, they're skilled workers we should be grateful for and we should pay and reward properly. the moment people become heroes is the moment they can also become martyrs.

I think the only work news is that I'm staying on GOV.UK as lead designer indefinitely now and won't be going back to international even after coronavirus stops making work a bit crazy. happy to carry on working with Stephen and the rest of the crew.

started thinking about this whole 'what does the world look like after coronavirus', the narrative around "we can't go back to the Before". the trouble is, as far as I can tell anyway, the way things have been (and continue to be, let's be real) structured is as a result of power, money, and comfort. so when I buy that coffee off someone who earns less than a proper London living wage, I'm doing that for my own comfort, and I'm still part of the exploitation. how do we reimagine power structures when it causes people discomfort to give up some of the comfort they have? I'm not entirely convinced that enough people are willing to do that. (I mean, one argument is that some people have more money than there is comfort to buy and won't feel it anyway)

anyway, if we could reimagine the world, then thoughts around being less influenced by Europe / US - how do we get a media that properly references the whole world? I want to read about Argentina and Colombia and Nigeria and the Pacific Islands as much as I want to read about Germany and the US, please: equity of coverage hopefully leading to a bit of diversity of thought.

if the economy needs rebuilding and economic stimulus and all those things, could we rebuild it in a green way? build cities for pedestrians and bikes (so tempted to buy two of these and put them in the middle of our road early one morning to create my own car free street), tax breaks for investments in renewables, ummm other things that would help also welcome.

finally and related to the last point: just went for a walk around the grounds of Dulwich College, which have been opened up to the public for the time being. it's huge! bigger than Dulwich Park! not to mention the attached golf course. how about we share that kind of land more often than just a once-in-a-lifetime (I hope) global pandemic, huh?

[goss]

just like OGDs, no wonder they hate on me 24

completely adore the Surly. cables are starting to stretch a bit already, but I'll deal with that in a few weeks. only ridden it twice since the last weeknote - once with C on her way to work again, once today to go to the shops in Peckham - but I love it. can't wait until it doesn't feel slightly edgy to go out on a bike.

we pre-ordered a Colomba from General Store to pick up this morning, and decided to go to the butcher at the same time. going to the butcher was effing stupid, because everyone else also wanted to go there. after an hour we fell for the sunk cost fallacy and decided it wasn't worth going home empty handed. so we stayed and got what we needed after two fucking hours, but the whole thing made me feel like I never want to go to a shop again. something about being outside for so long made me feel like I was more involved in this thing that is happening than I do when I don't go out. felt both stupid and anxious. as per the other week: I think I prefer staying indoors.

C's team are no longer on the wards but doing research on coronavirus at the Nightingale. it's been a bit up in the air, but yesterday when I was at a standup early doors, she got a call and came in the room to say "right, induction's at 11, I'm off to the Excel, bye". bit of a whirlwind. given the circumstances, research at the Nightingale is far from the worst outcome.

work slowly ramped up as the week went on. didn't ship anything as previously expected. did show a prototype that I already think is off to a bunch of people in other government departments. got an email from Jen that set off an awful lot of thinking, then decided off the back of some engagement-type feedback that the thinking was in the wrong direction. but hey, course correction is what we do, right? and course correction of three days of thinking and chats is a lot cheaper than course correction of building something. had a crazy useful hour of chats with Ignacia yesterday morning: I think the thing I love about being on GOV.UK is being back working with other designers every day again. sorry, other people. I like you too.

had my last therapy session yesterday morning. I ran out of things to say somewhere around when working from home started. self actualisation doesn't feel very important at the moment: I mostly just think about food, work, and which bit of the flat might need cleaning next, and how many days it's been since I've gone out and whether I should do that soon. maybe I'll go back at some point, but for now, figuring things out about myself feels...unnecessary.

after I tweeted about the Gowlett, group chat midweek turned into "top 5 moments in the Gowlett". special shout outs for all the quick pints that turned into not going to yoga / spin / the gym, for all the "one for the road" on the way home from elsewhere that turned into three, for all the pints on heads photos from five years ago, for all the quick pints that turned into a full evening complete with pizza, for that first time after it reopened and was only taking cash, for all the birthday parties, for our first date nearly 5 years ago. yeah, I miss the pub.

I was very, very into Barking by Ramz when it came out. have been slowly doing a rewrite, spurred by replacing "AJT" with "OGDs", which is the shorthand for 'other government departments' that seems to get used everywhere. I've got this far: "just like OGDs, no wonder they hate on me, cos I'm making Ps [pixels] and you see this code, yeah I ship it for free". the million dollar question is what to replace the word 'Barking' with. yeah, I'm good, busy, how about you?

[goss]

enjoyed the occasional chat this week about what's "right" with regards to the acquisition of stuff. all kinds of stuff. food. other stuff. this article in the New York Times ends with the line "Sometimes a fleece is only a fleece. And sometimes it can be a creative rescue line, and a bet on the future." but do I want all those warehouse workers and delivery drivers being out in the world or would I rather they stayed at home? and is it alright that I'm having what a friend called 'the boujiest pandemic' by mostly doing Natoora orders and occasionally visiting Jones of Brockley for bread and radicchio? in my head I'm keeping supermarkets free for people who need them, and supporting smaller suppliers. in reality, maybe I just really like expensive rhubarb and Neal's Yard cheese.

most of the ads I get on Instagram now are for fruit and veg wholesalers who have become retailers. the algorithm knows.

accompanied C on her ride to the hospital this morning then rode back home before starting work. really not sure why we've allowed construction workers to still be out there, cos no one's keeping 2m apart. roads are decently quiet!

work has been less intense this week and there were points that I felt like I was designing something in a vacuum, a little blind of policy intent, user need or GOV.UK's position in the wider ecosystem. that's a potential problem with working at this kind of pace and with this much going on. I was happy to end the week with a thumbs up on the work and I think we've now got a way forward, so I'm expecting to be shipping a second thing in 4 weeks next week. I am enjoying being close to shipping products and services again: very much my comfort zone, even on a national government website in a crisis.

I took my Surly Straggler frame and wheels to Brixton Cycles a while ago and sat with Lincoln there to order all the other bits. on Saturday last week it was ready to go! so we used our government mandated walk to go there and pick it up. it is a nice bike. I am very, very happy with it.

in a mad good mood today for some reason. probably the hour's ride first thing. maybe the work. maybe the beer delivery from waterintobeer (thanks Tim, thanks Helen!). maybe just getting used to the indoor life. just a strange feeling of contentment. weird.

[goss]

you’ve got grottos mate. 22

another mad work week. worked through the weekend prototyping a new form which went live on GOV.UK today.

Stephen was out for a few days earlier in the week so I covered him and pretended to be the head of design for GOV.UK. nothing broke, though that's almost all credit to the brilliance of the design team who amongst them picked up on the businesses offering support work, switched focus to some other work at the drop of a hat, and calmly updated the landing page while politics swirled around us. Ignacia, Mia, Kate, Conor, Jeremy, Joe, Tim, Stephen: can't think of anyone I'd rather design through a crisis with than all of you!

I've always thought the Design System was cool, but don't usually come into contact with it in the course of my work. using it in anger made me appreciate it even more.

Conor suggested at one point this week that we'd shipped more in the past two weeks than some people do in a year. no slight on those other people, but he's not wrong: we have shipped a lot.

woke up exhausted on Tuesday morning and took the afternoon off. definitely went too hard at it: by Sunday night / Monday morning I'd got into the mindset that "well, there's nothing else to do I might as well be working". and by Monday afternoon I was definitely not on my game: switched on my product manager muscles when I should've let someone else do their own job. Tuesday afternoon was just enough of a reset to get me through till today. I'm not going to make that mistake again.

due to minor cough last week, we've been indoors for our respective 7 days. C went back to hospital work yesterday. it was meant to be her first full time week of health research. instead, she's being redeployed back onto the wards. felt a bit sick after closing the door after her yesterday morning. I'm trying not to be bitter about it, but last night with the NHS clap I thought, yeah, remember your clapping next time you go outside for an unnecessary reason.

complaining much less about my back since we started a Yoga With Adriene 30 day challenge.

I went for my first walk of a week just now, just to the park. stayed off the paths and on the grass and well clear of everything. feels well apocalyptic out there with this kind of zombie avoidance stuff; I think I might prefer staying indoors.

started Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, but found it really hard to read it without wondering when the pandemic was going to arrive in the plot.

a family member of a friend in Italy died this week. Bergamo is the worst hit city in Italy so I guess that was likely to happen. but still some deep sadness these past couple of days. it is senseless. please just stay indoors. I'm re-orienting my mind from thinking "it's just the corner shop to get some biscuits" to "are biscuits essential?". and of course the answer is no, they are not.

have taken this afternoon off too: went for a walk, cleaned the floors, and dusted off my record player. picked out My Favourite Things by John Coltrane to play loudly. little things.

[goss]

l’ho visto, il virus! 21

well, what a mad week to join GOV.UK.

the past five days been a combination of finding my place, figuring out GOV.UK, remembering how to deliver, not putting my back out, learning how to work remotely. and probably something else too.

it feels like it's been a very long week. as predicted, it has been great working with the design team. and everyone else! there's been loads to get my head around and things have shifted multiple times. the team shipped a new version of /coronavirus today which has come together exceptionally fast.

made a prototype today for a service we'll be likely launching early next week. deeply grateful to Tim who batted back and forth on screen layouts and flows with me. Mum, I'm an interaction designer now!

we both have sore throats, so I guess I'm not going out for 7 days, at least. probably inevitable given that C works for the NHS. hopefully it doesn't get any worse. not sure why I'm not more worried.

most of my health complaints this week have been about my back: our flat was not built for home offices. lots of lying on the floor, planking between meetings, and 15 min yoga videos.

few of us went to 'the pub' on Google Hangouts last night. gonna do it every week.

this is mad weird. I'm glad to have been busy because I think I'd be going mad otherwise.

Sonia dropped a loaf of bread round. a proper drop off: brown paper bag at the bottom of the stairs. thank you Sonia! I'm having toast for my dinner.