May Day fell on Friday this year, and what better way is there to celebrate workers than by not doing any work? It was hot and sunny, so I slathered on some sun cream, put on a hat, and went down to Deptford to catch the Jack in the Green procession.

I bumped into a few people I knew, and chatted as I followed the troupe for the first hour.

A crowd of people, many in headgear festooned with plants. In the centre is the Jack in the Green: a person in a huge frame covered in leaves and flowers

The Jack in the Green

If you’re wondering about the huge (mock) cleavers, that’s the Deptford Gut Girls, who celebrate the women who worked in the Foreign Meat Market in Deptford in the late 19th century:

One of the most unpleasant jobs was cleaning cattle and sheep intestines, which were used for making sausage skins (and, according to a later source, condoms). Originally men’s work, in about 1891 they went on strike for more pay: management responded by assigning the work to women. The wages were still much higher than most working class women and ten times higher than ‘going into service, which is what they were eventually forced to do.

Drummers in a variety of festive attire: one wears an orange boiler suit and white face paint; others have hats with leaves. The Jack in the Green is off to the left hand side

Drummers

As well as drummers, there were pipers of various kinds, and people playing guitar, banjo, concertinas, accordions, and even a hurdy gurdy. Somehow, they all managed to play together, and it sounded much more cohesive than you might expect from such a motley assortment.

I peeled off at St Nicholas’ church (where Christopher Marlowe is buried) and walked down the high street for lunch at the Waiting Room.

When I set up my new phone a few weeks ago, I configured Syncthing to upload new photos, but without downloading the old ones to my new phone. At least, that was my intention, but at some point it had synchronised the other way and deleted the old photos everywhere.

I had set it to keep backups for a week, but more than a week had elapsed by the time I realised.

This still wouldn’t be a problem except that I hadn’t got round to sorting and importing pictures into my photo management program for a few months.

After a bit of panic, I realised that the photos were still on my old phone, which was switched off, so I just walked down the street until I was out of range of our home network, switched the phone on, and set it to aeroplane mode. Back at home, I plugged it in and pulled all the photos off via USB.

And then I remembered that I had taken a backup of that phone just before I bought the new one, so it was never going to be as catastrophic as it seemed in the moment.

Nonetheless, it’s a reminder: synchronisation alone is not a backup strategy.

Unfortunately, thanks to “AI” companies having bought up all disks (as well as memory and graphics cards) and made them unaffordable, backups are no longer quite so easy. Yet another thing ruined by LLMs!

I spent a quarter of an hour running around the house on Friday night trying to work out where I’d put my music stand. I searched high and low, and even in the loft, but it was nowhere to be seen.

It was in the middle of the living room with a score open on it. You’d think that would be obvious, but I was oblivious: I was looking for a small black folded package, not the deployed stand. L— saw the stand, but assumed I was looking for a different one, because surely I couldn’t fail to see something so conspicuous. No, really, I could.

The Sanshinkai performance at Yokimono Market on Saturday went well. We ended up playing both sets an hour later than scheduled because, although we had sent detailed instructions to the organisers, no one had communicated the staging requirements to the people responsible on the ground.

Whether in Dalston or Stratford, Yokimono always seems to be the most chaotic of all the events we play, but it’s popular. Both sets went well, and we finished before the rain started; we were covered, but the audience wasn’t, and it would be a downer if everyone ran for shelter in the middle of a performance.

Although it rained in the early evening, the weather was lovely for most of the day. Between sets, I took advantage of the proximity of Westfield to escape the captive pricing and massive queues, picked up a marinara pizza from Franco Manca – still good value, even if the price has now broken above £7 – and ate it on the river bank under a weeping willow. It would have been even better if I’d chosen a spot without ants.

A vast brutalist edifice stands alone. Its façade is made of dozens of narrow concrete columns

The UCL East Marshgate building at Stratford looks like it would have been rejected as a bit too imposing for Albert Speer’s Berlin

I had a bit of success in speeding up a slow connection negotiation process at $CLIENT. This is a tool that attempts to connect to a router via a UDP protocol. The previous algorithm tried each network device in turn, and ran through three attempts with a generous timeout before trying the next one. If the relevant device was low down the list, it could take several minutes.

Instead, I rewrote it try each device once with a short timeout, then repeat with a slightly longer timeout, then finally a longer one still. This typically finds the connection in a few seconds.

My new toothbrush arrived, although as you’ll find out, that was really last week’s news. I didn’t necessarily want to buy a new electric toothbrush, but my old one stopped working. I replaced the battery last year and had hoped that it would manage another decade, but it seems that opening it up compromised the seal and it corroded on the inside.

I don’t mind using an old-fashioned manual toothbrush, but the dentist seems insistent that I should use an electric toothbrush (with a pressure sensor).

After reading around a bit, I ordered a Suri 2.0. It’s well reviewed, it looks stylish, it’s less covered in gunk-harbouring greebling than most of the other ones, and it promises less plastic waste. And as it uses vibration rather than an oscillating head it doesn’t have any moving parts to nip my tongue.

The toothbrush is great. The online purchasing experience, not so great.

16 April:

We’re busy putting the finishing touches to your SURI order and we’ll keep you updated on its journey and tracking details as we get ready to ship it soon.

22 April, after I enquired whether it would be shipped soon, given that it was supposed to be 48 hour delivery:

Your order is still being prepared and hasn’t been dispatched yet. You’ll receive a shipping confirmation and tracking details as soon as your order leaves our warehouse.

25 April, after I sent an email cancelling the order, because I realised I could just buy one in Boots instead:

We’ve finished packing your SURI order #XXXXXXX, and it’s now ready to leave our warehouse with our delivery partner.

If your delivery service includes tracking, we’ll send you an update once your parcel is on the way.

27 April, after they read the email asking to cancel:

I’ve checked your order, and it’s currently marked as delivered.

And there, in the screenshot, was a Royal Mail tracking number and the detail that it was delivered two days before they told me it was still being prepared, and five days before they told me they had finished packing it:

Your item was delivered on 20-04-2026

Maybe I should have checked the post room every day just in case they had sent it when they said they hadn’t, but it’s a big building and the post room is enough of a mess that I don’t generally go hunting for parcels I’ve been led to believe aren’t there.

Again, I’m very happy with the toothbrush, but it seems you’d be better off buying one from a retailer with more business-to-consumer experience.