We planted this apple tree on the allotment in memory of my mum a few years ago. It’s established itself very well.

Status:

Relatively full day today, though I tried to manage it to prevent a crash. I think I did OK? Will find out tomorrow I guess.

First had a visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen for a long time. They’ve also got CFS symptoms though haven’t gone through the diagnosis process yet. It was nice to be able to suggest things that have worked for me, hoping they can head it off at the pass, as it were — I’m pretty sure if I’d had an intervention earlier instead of being stuck on a waiting list I wouldn’t have gotten quite so disabled. It also occurred to me that explaining to others is how I deepen my knowledge, so helping them understand the CFS management techniques will also help me. Could be a win-win.

Then we went to the allotment for a compostables drop-off. Fi offered to help me fill the compost bay but I decided to do it on my own. Getting help is important, and I’m grateful for it, but I need to learn how to do things at my new slower pace. If I’m working with someone else it’s hard not to match their pace, and getting someone to do a thing the way I want to do it can sometimes be more tiring than doing it myself. So Fi went and weeded her vegetable beds while I spent two hours slowly and gently loading the compost heap, a job that used to take me 15 minutes, if that. Plenty of breaks, lots of water, and a couple of chats with passing folk I hadn’t seen for a while. Lovely.

Reading:

• Step inside Belle & Sebastian’s visual universe — I always like seeing the contact sheets for iconic photos. via
• ‘Have I been influenced, or is this actually me?’ How personal taste fell out of fashion — Ooh, I feel like I could write a lot about this, from the very concept of ‘taste’ and how it’s formed to the idea than the ‘algorithm’ is fundamentally any different to previous systems of optimisation. Then throw in a critique of the cult of individualism under capitalism (century of the self and all that) and the awareness that no matter how nuanced and refined you are about, say, music, you can be pretty vanilla about, say, food, and some people take food very seriously. Fun times.

Watching:

• Dining table with chopped legs restoration ‌(31:35)

Listening:

• Alan Partridge’s Summer of Sport ‌(3:45)

Bookmarking:

• HTML for people — “I don’t think websites were ever intended to be made only by “web professionals.” Websites are documents at heart. Just about everyone knows how to make a document in this digital age, be it Word, Google Docs, Markdown, or something else. HTML shouldn’t be an exception."