Hello gorgeous friends, hope all’s good. I found it a melancholic experience to rewatch the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, not unlike looking at photos of a distant loved-one. But it reminds me to be grateful it happened rather than sad it passed.
🌅 Nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works as well: Neuroscience is finding what propaganda has long known: nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works too.
🏢 In Praise of the Office: An office is a home for work. It’s a space where we learn what it means, and what it takes, to be someone. But for many an office is a cozy cage, with all the benefits of shared captivity. Workers who swore that they preferred the work of making their office, rather than going to the office, seemed to be chasing mastery over their working lives.
🚐 The little guide to vanlife: So much more than a hashtag that makes you want to quit your job, it’s quickly becoming an unbeatable way to travel. This mini-guide from Québec sets out some of the basics. Hint hint.
😻 Missing lost cat reunited with Northfield NHS nurse owner after three years: To heck with bad news! My sister-in-law’s cat came back.
😷 C-Face smart mask is a Bluetooth face mask that can record conversations, amplify the wearer’s voice, make phone calls, transcribe speech into texts and translate Japanese speech into 8 different languages. See also: these Masquette face coverings draw inspiration from the rail and Underground networks and are machine washable.
📃 The making of Japanese Washi Paper: a visit to Tokushima, Japan to tour the Awagami Paper Mill.
⭕️ Circular asks you to draw a freehand circle on screen, then it’ll tell you how close you got to a perfect circle. I’ve spent much of the last week doing this.
🎀 Mini Tactical tool Hair Clips on Amazon are as delightfully silly as anything calling itself ’tactical’ usually is. These are the multi-purpose hair clips the Swiss army are using to control their lockdown hair, featuring a screwdriver, ruler, serrated knife, box opener, wrench, trolley coin, bottle opener and nail file. Ready for action! Putting the fun back into functional!
Stories made to be told
I don’t miss commuting. It’s only now, with the distance afforded to us by distancing, that the true nature of my relationship with commuting has truly revealed itself. Thinking about it objectively, the commute has strongly influenced many of life’s big decisions. I’d put thought and money into securing the commute of least resistance, and that has influenced where I live, where I work and even what time I wake up.
Yet commuting is objectively awful. It’s tricky to think of anything to redeem it. But there is one aspect I do miss: the time spent alone, listening to an audiobook.
Some people like to be lost in a box-set, but apart from a select few I find I’m not particularly invested. Others find no greater pleasure than being curled up in their favourite chair while devouring a novel, but not much in the way of fiction holds my attention. For me there’s something about the self-imposed sensory deprivation of commuting with a good audiobook that has gone missing this year.
Author Mark Haddon declared himself a big fan of audiobooks, even overcoming reservations about listening back to his own works. But once he had, actor Tim McInnerny’s reading then became the voice with which the author hears his own work. It’s arguably part of a revolution in audio storytelling brought on by the digital era, from audioboooks to podcasts and even dramas.
Last year, while book sales declined, audiobooks boomed. If Amazon-owned Audible’s dominance sticks in your craw, as it does with many publishers, then there are hundreds of audiobooks available for free as well as plenty of other subscription services.