• In meetings at work, for my actions or actions that I need to follow up on etc. If I am prepared, I will add them to an existing document that we are working from in the meeting or will create a specific actions email as we go. If I am not prepared, it will be notes jotted in a physical notebook. In either case, I will then copy any actions for me to MS TO Do - which is one of the very few relevant apps that we have available on both the locked down phones and laptops. Just occasionally, it is more appropriate to make notes directly in the TO Do app.

• Generally for non-work stuff, I will use Google tasks - since it available on all platforms and integrates with the calendar etc. I would love to find a good alternative to google and have tried a few over the years, but have never found anything that I can get to at work and on all platforms at home and will integrate with a calendar that is also available on all platforms - including those that my SO uses - as well as this.

The majority of notes that I make these days are either things that I have to do or are updates on the status of particular projects or systems though.

Last was in May this year and the next - probably just camping - will be in September.

I am very fortunate in having a friend with a holiday chalet. A group of us go down to open in up and stay for a week or two most years. The only cost is the fuel to get there.

My SO and I usually aim to get another week away - maybe camping, maybe a holiday cottage - later in the year too.

We are in the UK and always go to other location in the UK for holidays. Neither of us have flown since the '90s and have no intention of doing so again.

I’ve got the same one here as on reddit, and on tildes as it happens. It is a variant on a local mythic being in my part of the world.

Archive.is link..

Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.

As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks has a reputation as being an homage to LotR, and they are quite enjoyable.

Waaay back, this was what I turned to after reading LotR. He had only published the first then and it was what made me understand the difference between good writing and bad. It gave me nothing else other than that lesson and certainly didn’t scratch the itch that I had for something like LotR. In fact nothing did and I found it best to look for something completely different that was good in it’s own right rather than poor imitations.

Another BF listener here - I really liked Walker and McGann on screen in Annika too.

Otherwise, my SO and I have the Ted Lasso finale lined up. The third season (yes, I know, but I agree with the Americans that there is a distinction between series and season) has been a necessary conclusion to the material in the previous two, but not without some fun moments.

And - in terms of other UK TV - we are just on to season two of Jam and Jerusalem which I totally missed at the time but am enjoying now.

Otherwise, in non-UK shows, Drops of God and Shrinking are the clear highlights in our lineup at the moment.

Some that I have enjoyed:

• A Spy Among Friends
• Slow Horses
• The Ipcress File (both the recent TV show and the 1965 film are great)
• Traitors (2019)
• The Night Manager
• London Spy
• The Game (2014)
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (both the TV show from 1979 and the 2011 film are great)
• Smiley’s People

It’s not quite there yet where I am, but I am certainly hoping to a bit later this summer from time to time. I have hopes of WFH (…From Hammock) at some stage, now that I have garden that is suitable.

My ‘big read’ this year is Finnegans Wake - which I am (or have been) reading week by week along with the TrueLit sub on reddit. It would be a profoundly different experience to read it without the analysis and discussion going on there, so that is something…

Otherwise, I am reading The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, which is engaging and entertaining, as was her The Hollow Places which I read immediately before. I am also dipping into a collection of the Para Handy tales by Neil Munro, which are a cosy - if stereotypical and patronising - glimpse into another time and pace of life.

I have just returned from a couple of weeks away during which I finished an anthology of Clarke Ashton Smith short fantasy tales (all about the atmosphere: story and worldbuilding are very much secondary and character scarcely features); Haldor Laxness’s The Atom Station (a sparse look at the clash of modern - written in 1948 - and traditional Icelandic values); and Blackwood’s The Willows (an extrapolation of the original idea of “panic” - as several of this other tales are).