Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

Looks like I’ve correctly incremented the week counter in the weeknote titles all year (or at least made an equal number of mistakes in each direction). Also I’m told today is Sunday, although of course at the moment it’s impossible to tell. Yesterday was apparently Saturday because there was parkrun, but then I’m sure it was Saturday on Wednesday so maybe not. I didn’t even bother trying to remember which bin to put out when.

I’ve been off work all week, and all I’ve managed to achieve from the infinite chore backlog is finishing the TV aerial cabling and tidying away all the access equipment that had been up for weeks, and vacuuming (which I’m told most people do often enough that finally getting round to it in a week off is not news).

Oh yeah, I also marzipanned and iced the Christmas cakes. I’d forgotten that I needed more eggs for the marzipan, and combined a trip to the greengrocer to buy some (plus a couple of other shops for bits and bobs) with a short run. I probably should have rearranged my rucksack when I nipped into the little Sainsbury’s to get apricot jam and caster sugar – by the time I got home I had a slightly sticky back, only 11 intact eggs and a bag very much in need of a wash.

Christmas Eve saw the annual 6k-ish fun run in aid of Suffolk MIND at the Royal Hospital School. The bottom bit of the course is usually a bit muddy, but this year was the driest I can remember. I was slower than last year, as seems to be the pattern these days.

Christmas day, also as usual, began with a bonus parkrun (my 52nd of the year with one to go – once again I missed one). Then home to cook my traditional excessive lunch.

I tried to be a bit creative with the inevitable leftovers, including making a chicken & bacon pie (I’d made too much pastry for mince pies) and a “pigs in blankets in the hole” which I thought I’d invented but actually seems quite popular.

Nobby seems to have been feeling better this week – he’s been eating more-or-less normally, and the antibiotics seem to have cleared up his respiratory infection. The blood tests showed poor kidney function though, so he has to go back in for more checks and may need to go on a special diet.

I watched the new Wallace and Gromit, which was excellent (I may need to watch it again and pause to check out all the background details), and Doctor Who which was … meh. I’m not sure what it is about the way the Netflix era show is shot and lit, but parts of it somehow seem to fall into the uncanny valley from the opposite side (real people sometimes look offputtingly computer-generated).

On Saturday I took a train to Colchester to see Ben Brown, Generation Feral (who was one person last time I saw her, but now seems to have acquired a drummer and guitarist) and Pet Needs (yes, again!) celebrating ten years of the Three Wise Monkeys. According to setlist.fm that’s 11 times I’ve seen Pet Needs in two years, and they’ve recently overtaken Frank Turner as my most-seen band/artist (it took me ten years to see him nine times).

The next photo isn’t mine (it’s stolen from Jonathan Dadds), but it’s a great shot despite me accidentally being in it.

I finished work on Friday, and now I’m not going back until the 6th, which feels very decadent. It seems the Christmas/New Year “I have no idea what day it is” feeling has crept in already, as it doesn’t feel like Sunday evening (despite it having been a fairly standard weekend).

Last Run for Beer of the year on Wednesday, and we went to Bin 93 again to avoid the pub crowds. They did us a deal for a wine or beer (or two soft drinks) and basically all you can eat cheese and biscuits for a tenner, and I missed a trick by picking a relatively cheap beer, then accidentally choosing one that was twice as strong and twice as expensive for my second. Neil had the same two in the opposite order, so his expensive one was included with the cheese and he paid for the cheap one. Schoolboy error on my part.

Nobby cat’s been a bit ill this week. He’s been a bit snuffly on and off for ages, but got worse and stopped eating, so I took him in to the vet on Friday. They’ve taken some blood for tests and prescribed some antibiotics for the infection and some mirtazapine to stimulate his appetite. He’s still looking poorly, but his nose and eyes seem to have mostly stopped running and he ate some food today, so hopefully he’s on the mend (he’s sitting next to me as I type this). He’s 16, so no longer a spring chicken, but still put up a struggle while having his mouth examined, and managed to leap up on top of the high kitchen cupboards when we got back!

The very drawn out installation of the TV aerial continues – the aerial itself is up now, and the cable’s fixed to the soffit down to the edge of the house, so just the easy bit to do tomorrow (it seems like every time I start there’s only an hour or so of light left!). While I had the roof ladder up I replaced a slate that’s been broken for ages.

Work Christmas do on Monday, which consisted of an escape room (which we were distinctly average at) followed by a meal at the Botanist. Then I decided to add eight miles or so to my cycle home by doing 15 loops up a hill to take the local legend for a Strava segment off Robin (don’t worry, he went and did seven loops later in the week to regain it).

More early Christmas celebration on Thursday, with the festive edition of the TTT (neither tempo nor ten miles on this occasion), running round a few local pubs.

I arrived late to parkrun yet again. Fortunately one of the timekeepers had a brief technical glitch which bought me a minute, but I still started a little way behind the tail walker. I managed to work my way from 157th (ie last) to 28th, which is a surprisingly high position for a not particularly stellar run (although admittedly it was quite tough going in places).

Another long run on Sunday, visiting nine of Ipswich’s parks. Holly and I were joined by Maria this time, for her debut run over the Orwell Bridge, just after slipping in some mud. The distance was less than last week, but I felt just as tired by the end.

I still haven’t got the TV aerial up, but I have at least got the bracket for the TV aerial up, which is a start. I would have finished the job this afternoon, but ran out of daylight.

It was good to see Phoenix LiveView 1.0 released, with a last-minute tweak to Heex allowing interpolation with {...} in more places that used to require the old-style <%= ... %> (and a corresponding formatter enhancement to automatically convert code to the new style). The 1.0 tag indicates that everything should be stable from now on, although to be honest we’ve been it in production since 2019, before it even had a version number, and haven’t had any issues with instability or major deprecations or changes. It’s still my web framework of choice to produce dynamic web apps without having to stoop to writing Javascript.

On Wednesday I cycled straight from work to Kesgrave community centre to give blood, then (having possibly not answered the question about doing exercise later entirely honestly) straight to a track session, and from there to the pub (if you’re going to ignore one piece of post-donation advice, you might as well go all in, although sadly there was no opportunity to get a third by spending time in the sun and getting too hot).

Annoyingly, the button on my front bike light has broken. I eventually managed to get it to turn on for the ride home on Thursday, but turning off was a different matter. The only option seems to be to let it discharge, then charge it up and turn it on, at which point it keeps going until it’s flat again. This is not entirely practical, but fortunately I found an old one to use for the moment.

Friday was the club social run/pub crawl/quiz/meal in Felixstowe, which we didn’t win.

The weekend weather has been pretty miserable, with the edge of Storm Darragh passing through (people further west got it much worse), but I still managed to fit in a parkrun on Saturday and my first long run for a while (London’ll be here before we know it!) on Sunday.

It was very tempting to write off the five whole pounds I’d paid for a ticket to the Washing Machine Christmas Party at the Hunter Club in Bury St Edmunds and stay home in the warm and dry, but I’m glad I dragged myself out, and I didn’t get too wet cycling and walking at either end of the train journey. Pet Needs were headlining and in excellent form as usual, and there were not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR other local bands – Nicolas Rage vs Pianardo DiCaprio, The O7s, Manic Stanley and Fleas. It’s a lovely venue too, which I’d not visited before.

I still haven’t put the TV aerial up, despite getting the ladder up on the roof ready about three weeks ago. Maybe one day there’ll be a dry weekend day without strong winds!

December!

It did actually catch me a bit by surprise – I checked the numbers and figured today’s cross country (with a warmup) would be just enough miles to tip me over 100 for November, which feels like a bare minimum of miles, even if I’ve been slacking off somewhat with training for the past month. Then after parkrun I realised my mistake. Oh well, it’s good to break that kind of streak, otherwise it can lead to madness.

The new Beans on Toast CD arrived on Monday (which is odd, as it wasn’t supposed to be released until today). It feels like it’s almost unusual to get a CD that’s not signed these days – and, yes, also unusual to be still buying them, but the artist gets a lot more money that way than by streaming – but I think this is the first time I’ve had one that’s also signed by the singer’s six-year-old daughter!

I went ten pin bowling on Wednesday for the first time in ages, with a bunch of the coffee runners (plus a couple of partners). I was predictably terrible, but it was fun, even if the bowling place has changed a bit since I was last there – it now has an even worse selection of beer at the bar, and apparently you just wear your own shoes these days.

The aforementioned cross country was in Woodbridge (well, Sutton Heath, near the eponymous Hoo) this month. It’s on a mixture of heathland and farm tracks, with a surprising number of puddles on the latter, given that I haven’t noticed much rain lately. I ran round some puddles and round others, then happened on one that suddenly got a lot deeper than the others had, lost my footing and fell in quite spectacularly. Fortunately Phil was on hand to record the whole thing for everyone’s amusement!