2026-39

The summer holidays flew by in something of a blur. It was a change of routine for all of us. The kids spent several weeks at a (very affordable, open 8-6, thank you!) holiday club near Belsize Park. They love it there and come home every day tired and filthy. A- and I were busy with work most of the summer too, so the days were long and hot.

We did take a week off in Barcelona. A- has an old friend who lives in La Llagosta around 30mins by train into the centre of the city. We had a few brilliant days exploring the city with the kids (A- and I had been together before) including a trip to the excellent CosmoCaixa science museum. We also spent two days at the Portaventura theme- and water-park where A- and N- took on some of the bigger roller-coasters while F- and I cowered with Elmo in Sesame Street.

A page from my sketchbook with two sketches made in Barcelona. One of sandwich shop Can Paixano the other of a tree-lined street in Sant Adreu.

Back in London we saw My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. In terms of stage craft it was one of the most spectacular performances I’ve ever seen. The music (by Joe Hisaishi) was also fantastic, as it is in the film. I really recommend seeing it, if you can.

I’ve been finding it increasingly hard to cope with the goings-on in the tech industry. I can’t bring myself to use “AI” coding tools but their presence is absolutely unavoidable in almost every professional and online space now. Coupled with the take-over of open source projects by out-and-out authoritarian racists, it’s all a bit too much. I’ve found myself compulsively checking social media (Mastodon) and news aggregator sites like lobste.rs looking for any kind of hope or reassurance. This is really not doing my mental health any good. I’m planning to scale a lot of this stuff back for the next month and then reassess, as suggested in my re-read of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism.

I have been having some fun with computers, though. I’ve enjoyed resurrecting my old 11-inch macbook air with Fedora Linux and the Sway window manager. I loved this machine when I got it over 10 years ago and it seems to run well. I might need to replace the battery. I’ve also been messing around with esoteric programming language sequencer thing Orca.