The last complete week of being here alone, with only Pippa the cat and the builders in the garage for company. The garage roof is now nearly finished, looking good, and is watertight. What a novelty.

Pippa and I have our regular routine throughout the day: our respective feeding times, the her-on-my-lap times (morning coffee, afternoon tea, evening watching TV), the heading to bed time.

I can’t decide if caring for an animal like this is good for one’s mental health – the routine, thinking of a creature other than yourself, the probably false belief that when she’s chosen to sit on your lap it’s because you’re a caring person who’s at one with nature – or whether the obsession with satisfying their irrational whims will slowly drive you mad.

I had been relieved we hadn’t had many mice – whole or part – left on the floor recently. But on Friday evening I was heading up to bed, with only a light behind me casting a shadow up the stairs. As I neared the top one of our nifty motion-sensitive lights came on just in time to illuminate a dead rat on the top step, moments before I stepped on it. At least six inches long, tail aside.

Given the skill and effort it must take for a cat to catch and kill a rat, then get it through the cat flap, then carry it up stairs, you’d think Pippa would appear more pleased with herself. But she trotted past, on her way to bed, without even a glance at it.

§ I’ve continued to avoid some more important tasks by fiddling away at a redesign of this site. I do enjoy this kind of tinkering, especially design tinkering, with no client and no deadline. There’s no rush, I just do a little every so often, with time for it to percolate, and then look at it again with fresh eyes a day or two later.

Having something on the go is always good at night too – if I ever find myself wide awake, with my mind inevitably circling towards all the worst thoughts and worries, then thinking about my current design and/or coding project is the most reliable way to get my brain focused on something else.

§ I had a blood test and basic health check at the GP this week, the first I’ve had in a few years, and everything was fine. They didn’t say I would live forever but then they didn’t not say that either. So who can tell.

§ I forgot to mention last week, and maybe the week before, that I started watching The Studio with high hopes, having seen person after person enthusing about it. It was pretty unbearable and, having forced myself to keep trying, I ended up turning it off mid-way through episode 4.

I find it hard to put my finger on why it wasn’t good. It looks good but then so many shows are visually rich and impressive these days, so what. There was something smug about it. And although much of the humour relies on awkwardness and incompetence – which I’d usually love – it all manages to be so over the top as to be unbelievable, while the situations feel uninspired and predictable.

§ I watched more films this week:

• Jour de Fête (Jacques Tati, 1949). I’d never seen any Tati films so thought I should fill a gap. It was fine! Much slower than I expected for something slapstick, which usually makes me think of Chaplin and Lloyd. A couple of days later I started on Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday but after 20 minutes or so I couldn’t face any more of its ponderousness so that’s probably me and Tati done for now.
• The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967). I’d also never seen this and it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, great! A lot of fun, really good. Currently on Mubi and iPlayer.
• Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023). Nice, good. It’s a bit, “Ahhh, you see, we should all aspire to be as content with our lot as a quiet man who cleans toilets and smiles when he looks at trees, ahhh.” And I’d have liked it more if the guy’s musical taste didn’t feel so “music Wim Wenders liked when he was young”.
• Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, 2024). I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but liked this more than whatever I expected. It’s quite silly and was fun to watch two posh-ish English guys, as GTA characters, attempt to put on a Shakespeare production in Los Santos while, of course, everyone else wants to shoot everyone. I actually laughed out loud at one point, which is rare. There’s a nagging part of me that wonders/worries that some of the more sad and touching scenes were scripted / set up, which would be a shame.
• Fingernails (Christos Nikou, 2023). I gave up on this about 35 minutes in. It wasn’t bad, and the performances were fine, but the script was pretty clunky. Quite a bit of, “As I explained earlier, [goes on to explain things]”. And a lot of, “Have you taken… The Test?” accompanied by glances at bandaged fingers. Ooh, whatever could this oh-so-mysterious test involve… in a film called Fingernails?!
• The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960). I must confess that I didn’t really enjoy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot but I liked this a lot. It is Too Long but otherwise, top marks all round, funny and touching and thoughtful. Bonus: Sheldrake’s suits looked so good.

§ Every week I think, “Nothing’s happened, there’s nothing to write about,” and yet here I am and, apparently, here you are.