January 11, 2026

• Bleak, bleak, bleakbleakbleakbleakbleak.
• The return to work was fine. Mid week I thought, actually, I like being in this office. It feels good to be around people. Maybe I wouldn’t mind even coming in more than 2 days. But then I remembered the extremely complex and fragile state of the child-care and wrap around. Mine and Lachie’s working hours balanced perfectly but precariously to make sure we can do enough typing and meetings but also be able to pick the kids up because the school’s wrap around care, while perfect in Key Stage 1, is terrible in Key Stage 2 and nobody talks about this.
• Tonight I took my bike up to the school and left it there so that tomorrow after drop off I can cycle home and be on time for a 9am meeting. This is the only way I’ll be able to make this meeting on time, and even then, if it’s icy or if one of the sprogs has a hard time going in, well, I’m going to be late.
• Here’s a thought applicable to sewing and knitting but presumably transferable to most making things activities: there is a massive difference in people who can sew a garment and it looks good when you’ve finished it, vs it STILL looks good when you’ve worn it for a year. For most people going from zero to “can sew a garment” is hard to imagine but once you get to “can sew a garment” you realise… oh there is another 10 years of learning here and to most people they won’t even be able to see the difference.
• With sewing I’m trying to make something that is actually impossible to mass produce economically because the techniques require hand finishing or are too fiddly on a machine to do cheaply.
• Earlier this week I got a status page text message saying something vague about FT.com having issues. “Oh”, I thought, “I’m still subscribed to these status page texts, I’d better click this unsubscribe link”. “Sign in with OKTA” the page said which, of course, I can’t do because I no longer have an FT gmail account. Anyway, nice to get messages about how the ol’ website’s doing and at least I now know when the paywall might be down and I can read some articles for free 👀
• I could ask someone to deal with this but it’s kind of fine and I don’t want to be a bother and I sort of like knowing if the wesbite is OK. Presumably someone will remove me eventually.