Hey everyone,
It finally got sunny here in the UK! On Wednesday it was a balmy 17°C (what my Dad calls “a beach day”, much to the amusement of everyone I’ve met who’s lived in a hot climate) and so everyone in London headed to the park on their lunch break to turn their face to the sun and get some vitamin D. I bumped into one of my students in Russell Square and being from Hong Kong, she was very confused about why the park was so busy all of a sudden. Well, just you wait until the first weekend above 20°C! Party time!
I felt of a much sunnier disposition this week, helped by the fact that it’s reading week, so I could finally do some writing. At the moment I’m writing a chapter about extreme heat in Tokyo. Not quite the same as 17°C in London but the sunshine did help jog my memory a bit better than the endless grey of this winter. In the end I wrote 3,300 words in a week of very chilled writing, which isn’t bad going. I also made myself a nice writing tracker on my Notion which looks a bit sad at the moment (I really need to write more) but definitely motivates me to keep going!
the pie chart updates automatically whenever I update the word count, it took a bit of messing around to get it working, particularly the ‘unwritten’ part, but I did it! fun!
Aside from that not much else happened really - I went climbing once, and then bunked off and came home to Chester for the weekend on Thursday afternoon. I’ve spent the weekend doing very little - on Friday I basically just helped Dad do the weekly chores and then yesterday we went to see Chester FC. Much to my delight, they actually won 2-1 - I feel lucky to have witnessed it because every other time I’ve been recently they’ve either drawn or lost. Oh the joys of 6th tier football! (they’re in the National League North, which is the 6th league behind the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, and the National League)
Not only that, we had a meal and a stadium tour before the game, including a bit of club history. The club is fan owned, and my dad, uncle and grandpa are two of around 1300 co-owners. This situation is quite unique for British football, which is usually dominated by millionaire (or billionaire) owners like Ryan Reynolds over in Wrexham. As Chester has learned from bitter experience, being owned by a rich person is great until they either run out of money, decide they’re no longer interested, or even use the club for money laundering… So in 2010, after Chester City FC was expelled from the league by the FA because of the owner’s mismanagement, the fans decided to reform as a fan-owned club, Chester FC. I may complain about how rubbish they are but I think it’s pretty cool that Chester is home to one of only a few fan-owned clubs in the country. That to me is worth not being in the big leagues.
So that’s been pretty much my whole week - it’s been a relief to have a quiet one! Here are some photos:
sunshine!!
SOAS looking lovely
enjoying my first picnic lunch of the year!
gorgeous sunset
a fun workshop I went to with my housemate Sophie (who is an architect) about queering domestic space - aka how can we break apart frankly boring floorplans and make them more interesting
climbing at my happy place, yonder. which is also an independent business! I caught queer night for once and spent a fun evening climbing with nix (not pictured)
a sunny russell square on wednesday
I also finally got myself a computer monitor to make writing from home easier
one of my dad’s spectacular salads thanks to my sister floss giving him a recipe book
on the stadium tour - yes there’s standing room not just seats!
the teams coming out!
more sunshine <3
in the dugout pretending to be cal mac the manager
2-1 yeahhhhhh!!! good game!
bonus feature - my open tabs
I’ve been saving up interesting webpages for ages intending to share them, but I never got around to it, and they’re cluttering my browser. So I’m going to unload them here for you to enjoy, web curios style. Have fun!
(also apologies for the lack of thumbnails illustrating these. I ran out of space in the email)
general things to read/watch
if you want to learn more here is a pdf: https://buildingmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ecosystem-Guide-April-2022.pdf
the indie web/thinkpieces
the indie web/building personal websites
examples of cool personal/indie websites
offline things existing in the material world
That’s that! Hope you enjoyed at least one of those things, and see you next week. Very excitingly, I’m off to Copenhagen!
Stella x
social change