21-27 June

Doing

• A birthday party at the beginning of the week, for both a friend and her company – she’s busy trying to set up Wisher, a gifting app.
• I only had 2 days in the office this week; on Wednesday, I went to Marcus for lunch, another one on my Michelin list, this one a 2 stars. Gorgeous food.
  
• Marcus was quite accommodating when I turned up carrying a huge backpack…after lunch I headed to Reading for the evneing, to camp out prior to the Joint Service Regatta on the Thursday, where the Army, Navy and Air Force rowing crews compete every year.
  
• Back home for the Friday, getting caught up on admin, including getting my first round of vaccinations for my holiday. Arms filled with tetanus, typhoid, polio and diptheria.
• Had a lovely lunch at a local pub on the river, The White Hart at Barnes. I’m always a sucker for smoked salmon and pickled cucumber, definitely one of my favourite dishes.
  
• And the final event of the week was Day 1 of the Formula E race. More on that at next report.
  

Reading

• One book(plus a novella, does that count as half). the book was A Darker Shade of Magic, by V E Schwab.
• Whatever became of grange Hills Benny Green (Guardian) A look at the fickleness of fame and what comes after it.

Running

• Just the one Sunday run this week, the rest of it got a little busy.

14-20 June

Doing

• The Amba City Mile race, a chance to see how fast I can run a mile. The answer is – not very fast. There wa a good group from my running club there and they put up a strong showing.
• The rest of the week was very quiet, although a lot was spent hanging around with colleagues. A project we were working on got moved, so we went from long, long work weeks to suddenly having very little to do. So in the nice weather, it was time for the pub.

Reading

• One book, another one on the theme of closed societies, this one set on a generation ship, The Forever Watch by David Ramirez. this one kept me guessing all the way to the end, with a final twist to surprise you.
>What is Code by Paul Ford. A brilliant article exploring what exactly is code, approaching the question from many different levels

Running

• Just the mile race this week, although with about 6 miles additional running before and after the race.

7-13 June

Doing

• On Sunday, I went and ran my first Colour Run, at Dorney, which was complicated by various blowup obstacles. I’ve never done one of these runs..they definitely seem to be targeted at the younger set, with lots of groups of teens having a lot of fun rolling round in powder. I went as part of a team and we had a fun run, dodging the colour and tackling the obstacles whilst keeping a steady run all round.

  

• Had a work event on Tuesday, a few drinks to celebrate the finish of the AAR Fitness Challenge. This was 10 weeks where groups of 4 all wore pedometers and attempted to get the most steps. As a team, we did not do brilliantly, but we had a lot of fun trying.
• Thursday was another night out, where the founder of Tsu, Sebastian Sobczak hosted a few London tech bloggers. It was a good night and learnt a lot about this interesting social network where you get rearded for sharing content. It’s a platform that is growing steadily and getting traction.

Reading

• Managed to get through 3 books this week; the 2 sequels to the Connolly book from last week and Dark Eden by Chris Beckett, as fascinating look at a society on a planet, descended from a crashed ship, where the energy is thermal rather than light.
• Love this site from National Library of Scotland – old maps aligned to new google maps. You can just keep moving around and seeing how things changed over the last 100+ years.

Running

• Just the 2 runs this week, seems to be about my average at the moment, really need to get back on it. So the Colour Run at Dorney and a quick river loop. So only about 6 miles in total.

31 May – 6 June

Doing

• Lots and lots of work, so noting happening during the week. On the saturday, I popped along to the Chiswick Food Fair, one of the events taking place in the first ever Chiswick food festival – Eat Chiswick.

Reading

• Just 1 book read, back to the fantasy, this time from Harry Connolly

Running

• Just a couple of runs this week, one of them with the work running group, the other a 10k river bridge loop, just keeping the miles ticking over.

24-30 May

Doing

• Sunday was a day in town, meeting up with a friend for lunch and to watch the Monaco GP in the pub. A great day, with just a little too much wine 🙂
• The fun the day before did not help that much on Monday, when I ook part in the Bupa London 10k. A superbly organised race around the closed streets of London, with 2 short of 12000 runners taking part. It was great to be on the same course as people like Jo Pavey. And it was good to be out racing with so many people anywy, I get a real kick out of mass events like this, even if I know that I can run/race at smaller events for far less, it’s just fun watching everyone try so hard at these types of events.

  

• the rest of the week was work, lots of work, with some hard prep for various meetings, so much so I ended up staying in town one night, for the first time using HotelTonight, which is a pretty good app for last minutes stays.

Reading

• All the Outlander books done, just managed to squeeze one book in this week, back to detective novels
• I was an Undercover Uber Driver – great story about becoming an Uber driver and the realities of this job – it’s not a solution for many and it’s only going to be worse
• The Mystery of Leah Palmer.(Buzzfeed) An investigation into how easy it is to create complete fake online personalities and a look at why people may do that.
• The Inside Story of ‘The Crystal Maze’. (Buzzfeed) A must read look at how The Crystal Maze programme developed. Buzzfeed does do some great stories, even if much of it is just clickbait.
• Stephen Fry, Jony Ive and Tim Cook. Love this story, love how Stephen explores the motivations.
• If Michael Gove Listens To Daniel Hannan’s Honeyed Polemic On Human Rights He Really Will Get Into A Muddle (Matthew Scott) and The Seven Hurdles for Repeal of the Human Rights Act (Javk of Kent). Two articles on why politicians often don’t know what they’re talking about, about.

Runnning

• This was quite a good week for running. As well as the 10k, got a midweek run to work in and Park Run on the Saturday.

17-23 May

Doing

• Nothing, absolutely nothing. Dairy says nothing, photos says nothing. This was a very quiet week. A week filled with lots of work and then lots of housework.

Reading

• Only the one book read. Finishing off the Outlander Series. Not sure I want to see it on TV, but will keep an eye out for it.

Running

• Just the one run, a little 5k on the Saturday.