I have returned from my three week round trip by land and sea to Finland, with stops in Denmark, Sweden and Germany en route. Here is a picture of every train I went on. Several of them were not ones I planned to go on.
I also went on the Copenhagen metro, several local buses in Jyvaskyla, a ferry from Stockholm to Turku, and from Trelleborg to Rostock, a local bus from Kemi to Haparanda, a local bus from Rostock Port to Luetten Klein, a Flixbus from Rostock to Luebeck, my local bus from home to Edinburgh and from Kirkcaldy to home, and some skiis and a child's sled.
A weekend with K and Lowenna. We threw the ball in the park and walked around the local woods; walked in the Pentlands; and trekked across town to Castaway Coffee for a treat. Lowenna is slimy.
Loads of flowers on my oxalis. A sneaky nasturtium in the tradescantia. An early veg harvest: carrots, mustard greens, land cress, rocket, sprouting broccoli, chives.
J and family came to visit. We had lunch in Merchant's House, then walked from Path Head to Dysart along the beach and coastal path, looking for sea glass and pretty rocks. When it was time to go home, E did not want to leave.
I'm very tired* of the assumption that the Web needs advertising in some form to continue to exist as a widely accessible service. I will not accept this false dichotomy of ads or paywalls.
Everywhere we fucking look we have ads and paywalls. See: media streaming services, the cinema, print newspapers and magazines...
Please, I beg you, go involve yourself in some kind of co-operative, collective, mutual aid, community organisation, literally anything that isn't just transaction/exploitation based, and consider that maybe there are other ways to exist.
* tired in the sense of exhausted and weary, and also in the sense of mind-numbingly bored by.
Time in the garden yesterday. Promoted tomatoes and gherkins/courgettes/cucumbers to bigger pots or the ground in the polytunnel. Harvested chard and purple sprouting broccoli. Mange tout and beans have sprouted, but my soya beans are a no show. Again. No sign of beets or carrots yet. All of the labels washed off so we've kind of lost track of what else went in the trays.
Also made experimental mustard green kimchi. I do not have high hopes.
Mixed days this week; mostly braw, but some chill winds and banks of cloud with substantive raindrops passing through. A nice day of big crashy waves. Pictures from sunrises and walks with Max.
Three days of intense Co-op work at Wortley Hall, punctuated by nice walkies around the fields with the Wortley Wanderers, and lots of carbs (though the food gets better every year).
A three-day, quite intense and tiring but overwhelmingly positive Open Data Services Co-op CoGM this week. We're in a state of flux at the moment as several complex and interdependent internal moving parts come together in support of the co-operative future we want, and that can often lead to frustration and stress. We had a lot of alignment this week, collectively, but (and) there also remains a lot of work still to do.
I was taking today off to rest, but accidentally drafted a Remuneration Strategy based on thoughts percolating in my subconscious from the past few days instead. (I continue to surprise myself when I reflect on what my job seems to entail these days.)
Delighted to report that the UK gov emergency alert test didn't come through on either of the phones currently about my person. I had assumed it would work over whatever lets you call 999 without a network connection, but turns out it requires such new-fangled concepts as "4G" and/or "Android 11+".
To Mum's for the weekend to recover post-Wortley. Went to a quilting fare, walked in the woods. Lunches at Denstone Farm Shop and The Ramblers. But mostly, sitting around and bananagrams.
