Tag: Slow Horses

Update April 2022

On By tontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, tv, work2 Comments

Well April has been a busy month for me, and mostly productive. My work has been focussed on a key project rolling forward and quite a bit of work to do to keep up with developments, it’s not something that I can say very much about but it has taken up quite a bit of work time. When I’ve not been doing that I’ve been sorting through some very large boxes of slides, negatives and photographs that I found while clearing my parents house. I’ve nearly worked my way through all of the slides, and have found lots of memories there (see above). I’ve been using the SlideScan and FilmBox apps to process as many as I can, although I’d say I’m actually digitising less than 10%, partly because they have no relevance to me now but also because they’re just not of sufficient quality e.g. underexposed, to enable the software to make a decent transfer. It’s been a fun project though and I’ve also been able to surprise a few members of the family with pictures of them or their relatives that they’d not seen before. I still have many more to do, so should keep me going for a number of weeks yet.

I’m still publishing my Fifty From Fifty Newsletter, which is why posts here have been less frequent and I’ve now passed the 20% mark in terms of the 50 posts. You can subscribe via the link above, new posts typically go out on Monday mornings UK time. One of my recent posts was about some of the music from 50 years of life and I created a playlist to reflect this:

I’ve also been picking up my film camera again, particularly as we’ve had some really good spells of weather and I’ve exposed a couple of rolls of film which I’ve sent off to be processed. One I’ve sent to a new lab which is even more local than the one that I’ve been using that I thought of as local. They have slightly let me down however as they advertise a three day turnaround (from receipt of film) however I had an email from them to say that it will be at least seven days before they’ll be able to process mine. It appears that they’ve updated their policy without updating the text on their website. It’s not a big deal, but it is a bit frustrating particularly when trying someone new for the first time.

I was hoping that I’d get them back in time for writing this post but alas not, so I’ll write up something else (assuming the photos are any good) when I get both rolls back.

Allotment

I’ve been getting the plot going again properly. The potatoes are just peeking through from their ridges and some seeds – beetroot and lettuce – have been sown directly. I’m also bringing some squash, tomato and bean seeds indoors, to plant out later. As we’ll be moving somewhen soon, I’m being a little bit cautious with what I plant, as once the move happens we’ll have to give up the plot.

Reading

I read Len Deighton’s Spy Sinker and with it finished the middle trilogy of the three trilogies. Faith; Hope and Charity are the next three books and the final trilogy, but I haven’t started them yet. You can also read my review of David Cranmer’s Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen which is an outstanding collection of poems and I thoroughly recommend. Other than that I am trying to read more and spend less time on social media which seems to be working and have now reached 29 books read this year. Considering how busy work has been that’s a pretty good achievement. I’m not doing it for the numbers but in many ways that is the only metric I have.

Watching

We watched the new version of The Ipcress File which we enjoyed but I’m not sure why they needed to make the Harry Palmer character look like Michael Caine. It wasn’t necessary and I found it quite distracting. I think it would have been better if they’d just let the actor play him how they wanted.

Also Slow Horses on Apple TV+ which is very good, and a shame it’s only six episodes, even though they have already completed the second season.

Well that’s about it for this month. Whatever you’re up to stay safe and take care.

Of Mice & Men TWTW # 66

On By tontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, Kindle, podcasts, radio, The Week That Was, work2 Comments

Well this was a week that didn’t turn out how I’d thought it was going to at the start. The best laid plans and all that…

I had a meeting booked for Tuesday, followed by a lunch with a friend. The meeting was cancelled the day before but the lunch went ahead (see below).

Then on Thursday I had another meeting, and had made it to the railway station and purchased my ticket, when I got a text cancelling the meeting I was going to. Fortunately I was able to get my money back on the ticket. The week ahead has also been rearranged with meetings already in the diary being cancelled. I guess it just goes that way sometimes.

Lent started this week, and although it has some religious significance and a period of fasting (one of the reasons for pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was to use up stocks of eggs, flour etc), it’s also a time when people give something up. I’ve been struggling a bit with social media for a while and thought I would give that up for Lent. So at least until the 9th April, I’m not using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. So far so good and I haven’t cheated. I posted my intentions on Shrove Tuesday, put all the apps on my various devices into a separate folder and then deleted them on Wednesday morning.

I’m conscious that there are a few things that auto-post in various places e.g. this blog and my kindle, but hopefully I’ve disabled those too.

So far I’ve found it quite easy but then it’s only been a few days. Time will tell whether or not I can stick to my intentions, and the impact it has. I suspect it will also make these posts a little different, as it’s often a source of information for my writing. What happens after the 9th April also remains to be seen.

My social media retreat has given me more time for other things, including reading, and this week I’ve been reading Dead Lions by Mick Herron. This is book 2 in the Slow Horses series. I read book one – Slow Horses – last year and didn’t actually enjoy it all that much, but Dead Lions is much better. A bit of a good old spy story with a twist. The “Slow Horses” are all secret service agents who’ve screwed up at some point – left secret documents on a train; caused a mass panic; have a gambling problem; that sort of thing – but can’t actually be fired so have been sidelined in the hope that they’ll resign. Dead Lions involves a former agent dying in mysterious circumstances and a possible Russian plot, which the slow horses are the only ones to notice.

On my travels I’ve been listening to The Unexpected Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke. This followed listening to the Nature Table on Radio 4, which given that this is radio is a show and tell programme that my inner 8 year old loved, and so may not be for everyone. It is however lighthearted enough that you don’t really need to concentrate too hard on the content, just enjoy the bad puns and facts about the natural world. There are about 4 episodes of (I think) 12 planned in total.

 

My Tuesday lunch was with good friend Christian (he’s @documentally on Twitter, and writes an excellent weekly newsletter which you should all go and subscribe to [full disclosure: the newsletter is only weekly for paid subscribers, of which I’m one, but otherwise you can subscribe for free and receive it every other week]).

He very kindly bought me some old camera equipment after hearing about my starting to dabble again with film cameras, and I was dropping off some amateur radio equipment that used to belong to my Dad for him.

The pub we chose to meet at was done so completely at random, it’s location more because of its proximity to my aborted meeting, but it turned out to have an interesting segway for us.

The table we ate our lunch at was overlooked by a picture of an elderly man with a beard who appeared to be asleep. When Christian enquired as to who he was, he received the answer that it was Freddie Jones an actor, and a one time regular of the pub until he passed away. As the conversation progressed it turned out the Freddie Jones’ children were also actors, including a certain Toby Jones. We both exchanged a look and enquired if that was Toby Jones of The Detectorists. Turns out it is, and we’re both fans of that show.

Off all the pubs….

If you’re a regular here, you’ll know I talk about climate change a bit. Here’s a link to Carbon Brief’s explainer on Climate Tipping Points, which is pretty frightening. Climate records are not things that should necessarily be broken.

The allotment is looking pretty desolate at the moment. We’ve had another winter storm sweep through this weekend, so nothing much was done down there again beyond a quick visit to check everything was okay, and there’d been no damage to the shed or anything else. The shed will probably need a new roof this year, it’s starting to rot at the edges and the felt is also starting to fail. The shed has been there for over ten years, but was secondhand when we got it so in reality it’s much older than that. Hopefully a little tlc on the roof should keep it going for a little bit longer, without needing to be totally replaced.

On the subject of roofs, the bits I needed to replace the seal on my car’s leaking sunroof arrived in the week, and I spent Saturday morning taking the sunroof out of the car, replacing the seal and putting it back in again.

I’ve watched a few videos where I’ve seen it done, and it really was as straightforward as it was on YouTube. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish and although I’ll have to wait and see whether it has worked and the leak has gone, I do feel a sense of accomplishment for having done it and not ended up with a car with a big hole in the roof and the sunroof that was in that hole in pieces on the floor!

Well that’s about all I have for now. My upcoming week has changed a bit already, but I’m hoping to get out with some film in a camera at some point, and I have a number of work commitments.