Sumpin' new

• The clocks have changed, spring has sprung, there’s music in the air, there’s laughter everywhere, we bought new bed linen.
• Out of nowhere I remembered 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ new) by Coolio which I’m pretty sure was an earworm of mine from ages 10 to 20. I look forward to forgetting it again at 47.
• Another busy week at work. I did another satisfying bit of work on a UI component for the top priority story I’m currently working on. I also got to the bottom of an analytics issue I was seeing across our Flourish projects, and helped Justine prepare for her final apprenticeship project which starts next week. I’m trying to convince the team we need project managers. A lot of project coordination work either falls through the gaps, or falls to a random member of the team on any particular project (often a developer such as myself) — not only does that take away from development time, but also it’s not an efficient way to manage a project (I’m not an efficient project manager because it’s not what I’m trained to do and while certain parts come naturally others definitely don’t [and it’s a bit insulting to project managers to suggest that anyone can do it or at least do it well — they can’t]).
• I had a chance to remind myself of Peg’s progression this week when I fell over in the mud and rather than biting me on the nose (her previous go to response whenever I hurt myself) she came and head tilted at me and gave me a sniff. What a good dog. I got very muddy.
• I saw two specialists this week with varying levels of success and have started taking statins. Hopefully I won’t be the one in one thousand who experiences “Muscle weakness, tenderness, pain or rupture …caused by an abnormal muscle breakdown. The abnormal muscle breakdown does not always go away, even after you have stopped takingand it can be life-threatening”. Starting medication that I’m likely to be on for the rest of my life is scary and miserable. And I feel pretty certain (in my non-medical opinion) that the cause is inflammatory rather than genetic, but nobody is interested in helping me investigate that which is quite depressing. But needs must and I’m lucky that there’s a medication which is so effective.
• I finished Misery by Stephen King which was really very good and also I sort of regretted reading at various points. I’m starting to realise that I have a complicated emotional response to horror books. I then read Self-Help, a set of short stories by Lorrie Moore which was good I think? The Self-Help name was reflected throughout the book with a lot of lines that were kind of instructional which I found a bit irritating and kind of jarring to read, but there was a paragraph early on that took my breath away, and I really enjoyed the last couple of stories, so a solid read overall. I then read Treacle Walker in one sitting yesterday which was an absolute delight. So magical and not at all intimidating in the way I was expecting. It was almost like a children’s book but for adults. I’ve now picked up In Cold Blood by Truman Capote — I’m only forty pages in so far, but this feels like a good book. I gave up on the Cormac McCarthy audiobook as I really didn’t have a clue what was going on (perhaps I’ll get to it in paperback one day). Instead I listened to The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer, narrated by Bob and Sally Phillips and that was thoroughly enjoyable. A bit silly, very comforting, if you think you’d enjoy hearing Bob Mortimer having conversations with a squirrel whilst worrying about police corruption then I’d recommend listening to it.