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Weeknotes 2023.15: Redefining ‘full pelt’

Weeknotes 2023.15: Redefining ‘full pelt’

I went into the office for every working day last week, for no other reason than I hadn’t done it in a while and I had things to do in the area. By the end of the week I found myself exhausted. Keep in mind that my commute is a leisurely 35-minute cycle, I wasn’t doing work that was especially taxing, and our office is generally quite quiet with people respecting boundaries, gentle interactions, and so forth. I genuinely don’t know how I used to go into the office every day, and then do something social 2-3 times a week after work, and then have energy in the tank to do things on weekends. If you asked me to do that now, I’d simply refuse. Remote-first is now simply non-negotiable.

The weather has been in two minds all week, but the spring showers have given us some spectacular skies. Yesterday, we made an impromptu trip to Chalet Wood to see if the bluebells were out yet. They are, but they’ve not quite popped yet—by mid-week they’ll be stunning. I shall have my rolls of film ready and swirly lenses packed. (Previously.)

Close-up on a row of English bluebells in woodland, rising and starting to bloom—but many of them are not quite unfurled yet, with the racemes still condensed or only starting to droop.

Finally, I urge everyone, especially cisgender people, to read these articles from Mother Jones and VICE about the current wave of wicked and cruel anti-trans sentiment sweeping the ruling classes in both the US and the UK. Surprise surprise: it’s the religious right at it again, whipping up the same moral panic they whipped up about gay people in the 2010s, and the 2000s, and the 90s, and the 80s. And it just so happens to be a useful wedge issue and culture war for the morally and economically bankrupt conservative parties (which makes it all the more enraging that, in the UK, the leadership of the Labour Party is engaging with it and feeding into a small group of people’s obsession with strangers’ genitals.)