Weeknotes 204

Apparently it’s December?

Snow and -1 °C outside broke my resolve: heating on.

On Tuesday I met Alice for a coffee at what used to be Bulldog Edition inside what used to be Ace Hotel. I used to see her in London more frequently so it’s a rare treat to do it now. Aren’t things different these days? Remember the past?

It turned out to be an expensive coffee because some ruddy toerag nicked the light from my bike while it was parked on the street outside. In broad daylight!

The cost of replacing it was annoying but the bigger problem was that it made the ride home even more treacherous than usual. And for what? Is there a thriving black market in used bike lights? Sigh.

On Thursday I got stuck in a lift for half an hour with two strangers. We stepped in on the ground floor, the doors closed, and then it didn’t go anywhere.

The alarm button was labelled “for emergencies only” so we had a brief British moment of trying to decide whether being harmlessly deprived of our liberty really constituted an emergency.

After a few seconds of polite stalemate I pressed the bloody button and spoke to an unhelpful person who was more relaxed about the situation than I wanted them to be. After about twenty minutes they became less relaxed and started asking whether any of us had a medical condition and I didn’t enjoy that much either.

The ultimate resolution was that, instead of the doors just opening, the lift began to ascend extremely slowly while making an ear-splitting beeping noise, not stopping until somewhere around the thirtieth floor where we could finally get out.

Not recommended really. Having to sit on the floor was already quite undignified so I’m relieved I didn’t have to do a lift poo.

SUDOKU CORNER CORNER: I enjoyed Simon Anthony’s solve of Advent Calendar because the puzzle exploited his bloody-minded commitment to singing Losing My Religion every time he finds a three in the corner:

I watched The Creator which looked incredible and had very impressive production design. Its story was pretty flimsy but I enjoyed the characters and the worldbuilding, and it was just a relief to see something decent in this genre that wasn’t based on some existing intellectual property.

I also saw The Killer, a characteristic piece of David Fincher’s brilliant, clinical, visual filmmaking. There’s even a couple of funny bits! It’s like American Psycho with Morrissey instead of Phil Collins! They can have those quotes for the poster.

It’s (intentionally?) boring but still compelling. Surprisingly relatable too; who hasn’t been on a product team like this?

And finally I saw the new-to-me (but actually from 2016) 4K transfer of Labyrinth. It has an amazing amount of detail; I watched this film loads of times as a kid and thought I knew what it looked like, but there’s plenty of new stuff I’d never noticed before. It’s still a very comforting watch even though David Bowie seems to get mysteriously more problematic each time.

CONSUMERISM CORNER: After last week’s Black Friday debacle I’m ashamed to reveal that Cyber Monday tricked me into buying an Ode Gen 2 coffee grinder. I don’t really need this but it’s nicely designed, very satisfying to use, and (importantly) much quieter than my ageing Wilfa Svart. I do drink a lot of coffee and we’ll all be dead soon enough so I suppose it’s fine.

Although I’m extremely reluctant to become one of those people who uses phrases like “dial it in”, it’s taken me a few days to dial it in. The coffee tastes great now.