It was a short work week thanks to the bank holiday on Monday. I spent a few hours on Monday typesetting various pieces of music; I feel like I understand Lilypond better and better.

I’ve been busy with the local elections recently, and especially on election day itself on Thursday. I woke just after 6 and spent a few hours delivering election day leaflets to identified Green supporters to encourage them to get out and vote.

After work, L— and I spent an hour telling outside a polling station – that’s the thankless task of standing outside in the cold asking people if you can check off their poll number so that they don’t end up getting disturbed later on. After that, we went to knock on the doors of people to encourage them to vote before polls closed at 10.

All that is a lot of work, and walking, and doing things that I really don’t particularly enjoy, but the past few months paid off: in the target ward (Rotherhithe) we got two out of three Green candidates elected.

Because the effort was focused on wards identified as winnable, in our own ward of Surrey Docks there was no activity and only paper candidates. In the final count, however, the Green candidate who came fourth was only 27 votes away from third place. It’s a shame, but it bodes well for the general election.

For Greens in Southwark it was a good result: Labour no longer have control (down from 52 out of 63 councillors at the last vote) and the council is now split: 29 Labour; 22 Green; 12 Liberal Democrat.

I completely wrecked my voice shouting over the din at the celebrations on Friday night; I was still a bit croaky on Sunday.

We dropped into the Surrey Docks Farm Spring Fair on Saturday, where a friend was singing with the London Sea Shanty Collective. That was a lot of fun to listen to.

I left after their first performance with the intention of cycling to Sanshinkai practice, but a busy week, not enough sleep, and a late night on Friday caught up with me and I took a 1½-hour nap instead.

I’m going to Electromagnetic Field (aka EMF Camp) 2026 in July. I went for the first time in 2024, and loved it. This year, however, the tickets sold out within seconds, before I could even open the drop-down menu and click “buy”, and I resigned myself to missing it unless I managed to snag a last-minute ticket again. But I also submitted a couple of talk proposals. One was accepted, so I was able to buy a ticket without needing gamer reflexes, at a bit of a discount.

It’s a talk proposal that I first sketched out a few years ago, and it’s been percolating in my mind for a long time. I’m looking forward to making it real at last.

I’ve heard far too much of that excessively auto-tuned new song by the Strokes on the radio this week. I hope it drops out of 6 Music’s playlist soon.

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