Weeknote 0026

• Apart from in college and an ill-judgement during a lockdown, I’ve never bothered trying to be clean-shaven. Another lockdown ill-judgement was to try and grow a ‘proper’ beard, but the two sides of my face are yet to reach an agreement about whether it should be curly or dead straight. Attempt abandoned. These days, the grey hairs are more resistant to trimming than the others. My cat has white whiskers from her brown cheeks: I wonder if I would end up the same.
• Another episode of The Grand Tour turned up on Amazon Prime, which I half-watched. It’s essentially based on the road-trip segment of the Top Gear format. But somehow its lost all its production values. The good camera work, the good edits, the good grading, all discarded. It looks like YouTubers made it, which makes me wonder why it’s still worth showing.
• Lovely London lunch with a friend I’d not seen since the beforetimes. Covid prevented get-togethers for a while, but asynchronous communications continued. So it kind-of doesn’t feel like so much time has passed. I’m losing track of who I’m losing track of.

Van notes

[In which Mo builds a campervan]

• Post MOT, work continues. The big learning from this project, now in its third year, is how seemingly minor things cause massive delays. Getting stuff painted before assembly can in some cases result in weeks of waiting. If it were a full-time project and nothing else were happening, it’d be fine. But fitting painting coats around real life, while the other jobs stack up behind, can start to feel very static. Then occasionally there’s a huge leap forwards in the space of four hours.
• Next, I have to figure out how to build the lightest possible kitchen.