Alan Williams's Blog, page 10

Fifty From Fifty

In a few weeks time I turn 50. I’ve been toying with ideas of ways to mark it in some way and I thought I’d write about some of the things that I’ve learnt in my life, things that were important to me.

I wanted it to be a limited thing too, something that would be roughly 50 posts, done before I turn 51. So rather than post them here I’ve set up a separate newsletter that way if you’re interested you can sign up for it and if you’re not you don’t have to worry about it – although I can’t gua...

Reading Productively

At the end of last year and for the first couple of weeks of this year I seem to have been reading a lot of books that could broadly be classed as “productivity self-help”. Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Mason Currey’s “Daily Rituals“
Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism” & “Deep Work“,
Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks” (as an audiobook),
James Clear’s “Atomic Habits“

All of these have been recommended to me via a variety of difference sources; friends, podcasts, etc, and some of these books r...

2020 Take 3

A couple of different people have mentioned that this seems like the third attempt at 2020 after 2021 turned out to be the rerun. I’m not sure yet whether 2022 will fare any better but so far it’s starting out a little similar to 2021 with Covid-19 on the rise, a government that is focussed on its internal party politics rather than the betterment of the country, work being cancelled or changed as a result and life not being quite what anyone would wish for. It probably doesn’t help that the day...

Mid Way

I’ve reached the mid-point of my post a day in December experiment and decided to stop.

I’m going to have a social media detox for the rest of the year and have decided to include blogging in that. A complete switch from what I had planned.

If you want me, you can contact me in the usual ways (telephone, email), if you’re not sure of the details then please ask and if I know you well enough I’ll supply the details.

My Best TV of 2021

Unlike my films of 2021 post yesterday, there’s a bit more to this, even if looking back some of what I’ve enjoyed most this year are things that were made some time ago, so case in point:

Maigret (Michael Gambon) and Inspector Morse were both made back in the 1980’s and 1990’s but still stand up really well today, obviously the latter has had spin-offs (Lewis and Endeavour) and the former a more recent incarnation with Rowan Atkinson as the French detective, but we watched all of both of these s...

My Best Films of 2021

This is going to be a really short list for two reasons. Firstly Covid has meant that I haven’t been to a cinema in over two years and secondly I haven’t watched much that I’ve really enjoyed. There’s been more TV that I’ve watched which has been better. So a couple of honourable mentions:

Greyhound – made for Apple TV, with Tom Hanks as an escort destroyer Captain during the Atlantic convoys in the Second World War and adapted from C S Foresters book The Good Shepherd. Okay the book is bette...

My Best Books of 2021

At the time of writing GoodReads says that I’ve read 75 books this year. I suspect I’ll get at least a couple more in before the end of the year but I’m not sure whether I’ll read something that would displace a book from this list so I feel fairly safe posting this now. Here are my top 5 that I’ve read this year. Only two of them were actually published this year and three of them are second world war military history – but although this is an interest of mine, they are there on merit of being ...

Robin Song

When I got up this morning at about 05.30 there was a robin singing in the garden, I could hear another in the far distance singing in response. I nipped back indoors and got my recorder, clipped the mic to a twig in a nearby tree, put the recorder on top of a waterbutt and pressed record. Here’s the results (best listened to with headphones):

Robin Song (with occasional car and plane) Not the robin singing

Allotment by Headlamp

Headlamp – Thrunite TH10

It was still dark when I went to the allotment this morning. We stopped in there on our morning dog walk to see how wet the ground was and whether it was feasible to do anything practical there today. The result was a negative, the ground is still too wet to do any digging, and walking on the beds would do more harm than good. So instead I settled for digging a few leeks – I am thinking about a leek and brussels sprout cheese sauce over some pasta for supper tonight. ...

Car Service Part 2

The car service didn’t go quite as planned yesterday. When I collected the car I could tell straight away it wasn’t running right. So I took it straight back. They’d changed the spark plugs as part of the service and turns out one of the new plugs was cracked. They probably should have spotted it when they fitted it but they didn’t. Anyway new faulty spark plugs replaced and back on the road again.