We ate the eleven-year-old Christmas pudding that I found in the cupboard. I opened it to check first – it looked fine – and soaked it all day in a glug of supermarket own-brand brandy to ensure that it was adequately hydrated. After an hour of steaming, it was delicious. Can a supermarket Christmas pudding ever be too old? We have not yet discovered the upper bound.

We watched The Banshees of Inisherin at the cinema on the bank holiday Monday afternoon. It’s a fantastic film, but gruesome in places. I saw it described as a “black tragicomedy” and it’s all those. Very funny, and very dark. On my way out of the toilets beforehand, I skimmed my knuckle on a partition hard enough to draw blood, and had to beg a plaster off the ticket desk. That was somehow appropriate for the film, but fortunately not too much like the film.

On the way back from the cinema, we stopped off at the Tate Modern to see the Cézanne exhibition. It was crowded, as you’d expect on a holiday, so I’m planning to go back for a quieter visit before it ends in March. The advantage of being a member is not having to worry about getting your money’s worth out of each visit.

I ceremonially burned the lemon pig that I made at the start of 2020 and which failed to bring any luck in that year. I hope that 2023 will be the year that 2020 is finally over.

I fitted a bed touch sensor to my 3D printer and after a bit of initial failure (including sending back the first sensor that just didn’t work as advertised) I now have the ability to measure the distortions in the print bed and compensate for them. My main aim was to get first layers that are good enough that I don’t feel the need to prime and paint them, and I think I’ve done it. It also makes bed tramming (getting the bed level), which was previously a very tedious process, much simpler.

I also set up the Raspberry Pi 3A+ that I was able to purchase recently as an OctoPrint server. It’s convenient to be able to control the printer and print directly from my computer, without having to juggle a micro SD card.

Back to work this week. I know it’s a bank holiday tomorrow, but as L— is working I might as well do so. I didn’t achieve a quarter of the personal projects I was hoping to do last week when I was totally at leisure. Maybe being busy will help.