jody hughes

for some reason this occurred to me:

F1 but without the cars:

just distance runners going around a (much smaller) track dozens of times, but it’s all about shoe technology. spring-loaded shoes okay, but no batteries. there are pitstops where they can change shoes. there are two days of qualifying to determine who gets to start at the front, elbows out. you can impede others trying to overtake, but if someone falls over or is injured, everyone else has to stay in their relative position until the track is cleared.

maybe all athletes must continuously make a high-pitched whining sound.

#SomewhatRandomMusings and this one is pretty outré.

today in surprising illustrations in otherwise boring old books.

found as a kind of frontispiece in ‘everyday things and their story: the romantic story of modern industry and how it supplies our daily needs’ published by odhams press, no date.

i think it’s well done. no artist attribution in the book, sadly.

was just watching andrew graham-dixon on french art (an old series being shown again on bbc4 just now). he is always interesting, though you have to keep an eye on when he shifts from fact to opinion.

but he was very good on chardin's la raie (the ray). it's a great painting and he contextualised it well.

#ThreeGoodThings

• had a day with no music in it* • walked about more or less randomly after sitting by the river for a bit in dappled sun and light breeze. this helped with a general jitteriness (of mind and body) • detarnished a silver necklace so it looks like new again, which is pleasing

• no playing and no editing. full disclosure: there was some talking about music for a bit when a colleague rang to whom i could / did not say ‘not today’

some untethered low-level anxiety floating about in my head; no clear source, no way to address it, an ungraspable miasma sticking in my nostrils (sayeth the anosmic, hah) that will dissipate eventually, i imagine

okay eating grownuply — three actual meals in a single day, nothing highly processed, all vegan — has not magically made me feel any better and i have a headache now, so i am sodding off to bed, to contemplate the idea that i am allergic* to healthy eating, or veganism, or not being asleep

• it’s probably a cold

today at the charity shop (which has a strong track record of supporting lgbtqia people) i had a discussion with the manager about its stance on selling material produced by the transphobe that is jkr.

the charity's stance is, we accept it and sell it. i suggested/requested that the charity should stop selling it, because as things stand it looks hypocritical.

the manager, who i like and respect, will take my request up the chain of command. we will see.

#lgbtqia #takingastand

#ThreeGoodThings

• a cancelled rehearsal* meant a number of admin things got done that needed doing • including sending a couple of invoices for work completed in the last week or so • and some fod shopping, which i didn’t enjoy but was good in the necessary sense

• this will be added to three bad things when we rehearse on thursday next week, since it kiboshed a social thing. so maybe three good things is a zero-sum game. i’m pretty sure that if i were to list four good things, someone else would have only two.

this one ⤴️ still makes me laugh. sometimes i wonder what good uses* i might put my brain to if i didn’t spend so much energy thinking of ridiculous things like this.

• hah like there are better uses than wordplay

#ThreeGoodThings (yesterday edition)

• i took the afternoon away from editing. a kind of weekend-in-training half day* • made an exploratory walk to the ring road where the new aldi is, 40 minutes light exercise • arranged to catch up with older daughter by phone today, after a longish gap we were equally responsible for

• it was for the most part not enjoyable, as it’s harder to step away from knowing how much work i have to do. and i couldn’t take a holiday from practise for upcoming concerts. but still it was probably a good thing in some grander scheme.