Now: 3 - 9 March 2025

Thursday was maybe the second or third Nice Day of the Year—a pleasure. Doors were opened and washing was hung out on lines across the neighbourhood. The solar panels booted back up and charged up the battery downstairs to like full power. The grass and the trees and the hedgerows and thickets all across East Durham came alive and started booting pollen out into the hazy sky and pretty much disabled me from like 10am onwards.

Then at the weekend we had a couple more nice days; on Sunday I even went for a run in just a t-shirt. The Boston Marathon (not that one) is looming and I want to make sure that I’m prepared, so I’ve been out pretty consistently as the weather has gotten better.

A bit of sweat and fresh warm air feels like just about the only thing keeping me together, mentally, at the minute. I’ve gotten to the point in my career where I’m starting to butt up against the limits of my background: yes I can read Shakespeare (with annotations) but no I don’t have the muscle memory to keep track of Turing machine states in my head. I can understand—and handle—feeling out of my depth, but reading through historical computer science A-level exams, or trying to figure out logic puzzles, makes me feel like I’m in a whole nother body of water, in terms of out of my depth.

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I’ve given up YouTube for Lent, which is one of those things that only 30ish-year-olds in 2025 do, because 30ish-year-olds in 2025 have impulse control problems related to YouTube Shorts. In February I spent probably more time than I want to know about watching 22-second clips of men laying concrete or traffic accidents on UK roads. I’ve lost that time for good, but the Lenten Spirit of Jesus Christ is going to help stop me from losing any more time in the future.

As a result I’ve gotten back into books; that’s right I’m back baby, I’ve put Dhalgren behind me and I’m reading for pleasure again. I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell this week and I’ve moved on to Michael Schur’s How to be Perfect, which has been… middling. Maybe a bit less rigorous than I’d like it to be. Oh and Sam and I are reading Hamlet, which is a lot more dramatic and a little bit more funny than I remember it being. Anyway the point is that without the distraction of rapid-fire content about two-handed greatsword technique I’m back to staring at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.

Nice midweek trip up to Kielder with Sam and Ghyll to spend a night in Flittingford bothy to celebrate the new year. Parked at Black Middens and took the long way round, rather than starting in Falstone as it seems most people do (at least, based on the bothy book).

Walked in with plenty of fuel (kiln-dried from Aldi, truly the lap of luxury) so we stayed nice and toasty overnight. Wandered outside to relieve myself at the late hour of 6pm and found a stunning aurora in full glory. Stood around taking pictures of the sky until our fingers started to numb with cold, then retreated inside and learned how to play rummy with the well-worn deck of cards someone'd left behind in ages past. Popped a couple of coals on the fire to keep us going overnight; asleep by 9pm.

The walk back out was in glorious clear weather (if a tad nippy). Stopped by the Sidwood Romano-Saxon settlement on the way out; little more than some earthworks to see, and a moss-overgrown plaque. Then popped up to Black Middens to ogle The Way the Other Half Lived (the Other Half are Border farmers from the Tudor period).