I started a new part-time contract on Monday. It’s going well so far, and it’s reassuring to have some money coming in for the first time in a while. It’s all remote, although this time it’s not because of the rona, but because the client is in the US. The work I’m doing is mostly on my own, so the time difference doesn’t seem to be a problem.

I hope that being part time will be more sustainable, as I’ll still have time to spend on other things. So far, I’m enjoying having a bit more structure to my days: I’ve resumed my habit of going for a walk along the river after breakfast before starting work.

To coincide with the new contract, I got an email from Thonk telling me that the Plinky synth kits, which I’d had on my wishlist for a long time, were back in stock. It felt like serendipitous timing, so I ordered one as a present to myself for getting a new job. I put it together on Friday and I’ve had it on my desk since then (it helps that it’s a tiny thing of about 13cm on a side) while I explore it. It looks quite confusing at first sight, but the interface is very regular so once you’ve worked out the basic operation it’s easy to apply that across everything. The randomisation and full modulation matrix makes interesting sounds out of simple sequences.

On Friday, I felt that my crème de mûre had had enough of a maturation to try out making some Bramble cocktails (there are various recipes out there, but I went with 1 shot lemon juice, 1 shot simple syrup, 2 shots of gin, shaken with crushed ice, 1 shot of crème de mûre poured over). It didn’t come out looking as fancy as a proper bar version, because I wasn’t very successful at crushing the ice, but it tasted very nice. I still have about 1.94 bottles of the liqueur left, so I should be OK for a while.

We went for a walk to Bermondsey on Saturday and entirely by chance bumped into Tony in the Kernel taproom. It still astonishes me how much the area around the railway arches has changed over the sixteen years that I’ve lived in SE16.

The Beer Mile is obviously now a popular destination for stag parties, because we must have seen at least five of them by the late afternoon, including a couple of groups playing catch by throwing a floppy rubber penis across the road. Nature is healing, I guess.