DCAP
Next week we’ve got a meeting in Tillingham and we’re supposed to be thermal image surveying 4 houses at the same time – not sure how it’s going to work!
Day Job
Work begins on the April issue of the magazine. Wrote an internal blog on the use of AI in Emilia Pérez.
Everyday Life
Someone came around to give a quote on getting the kitchen sorted and we rang someone else to get a quote on re-plastering. I’ve still got some concerns about damp and the render on the exterior walls of the kitchen preventing the building from breathing. It’s hard to find local contractors that understand the needs of a C19th building.
My Aunt’s estate stuff finally completed. Saturday my bro and I met up and started to go through the photos and other bits he had picked up from her house. More of my grandparents’ photos that I’d never seen before and am pleased were not lost. We did triage on the stuff – definitely want to keep, definitely don’t want, and we’re left with the rest which largely consists of my Aunt’s photos. She began a career as an air hostess in the 1960s and worked for airlines her entire life, she was well travelled and there’s a lot of photos. I’d like to keep some record of her life, but there’s a lot of landscapes, people I don’t know: her friends and colleagues, memories that were hers. The early 1960s photos are pretty good as she obviously ran with a mod crowd – smart clothes, mopeds the lot.
Tax Return. £2 to pay somehow ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I submitted a short piece on the ‘planetary’ to the Long Now London newsletter – and posted an illustrated hyperlinked version here.
My friend in Altadena got the all-clear to return to the street and found that his house had made it. Happy Birthday next week Stephen!
Media
Films
Wilding (2024) The doc based on Isabella Tree’s book about the Knepp estate and its rewilding project. It can’t avoid showing their castle home but it doesn’t mention that Tree’s hubby Charlie Burrell is the 10th Baronet and grew up on the family estate in Rhodesia. I’ve mentioned before that rewilding is following the organic ag path of being pioneered in the UK by the landed gentry.
Yes Man (2008) Never seen this before. It’s OK – not Jim Carrey’s best, but very much akin to his other work around that time. I don’t suppose it bears much relation to Brit comic Danny Wallace’s non-fiction book of the same name that it’s ostensibly based on (I’ve not read it). It had Dice Man vibes (but I’ve not read that book either). I’m sure it must have been mentioned that Zooey Deschanel is primo Manic Pixie Dream Girl in this (checks Wikipedia. Wiki cites a Variety article where Deschanel rejects the characterisation but author Zack Scharf writes that the label had followed her throughout her career since her appearance in 500 Days of Summer (2009) )
TV
Monty Don’s British Gardens – too many gardens in an episode to get any depth but there was much to enjoy. There were lots of stately homes, an indication of the historic excessive wealth of the British upper classes. There was some commentary to the effect of ‘no one could afford to do this now’ – which seemed a strange claim to hear the week I watched the three richest people on the planet at the Presidential inauguration – a lot has been made of the lack of philanthropy from Musk et al (where are the hospitals, libraries, art galleries etc. that the golden age oligarchs delivered?) but I also wondered where are the gardens? Bill Gates buying farmland doesn’t count. Knepp appears again, but this time just the walled garden with naturalistic planting by James Hitchmough.
Prime Target – not sure I can be arsed to continue. So far it’s a poorly paced secular Three Body Problem with a cast that have all given better performances elsewhere.
Severance S02E02 – I’m enjoying it – but there was too long between seasons 1 and 2 (which can’t all be the fault of COVID and union strikes)
Online
I don’t know if it’s the WiseUp Zucker move to cease moderation but my FB feed is increasingly full of posts from groups called things like the ‘Queens England’ with “old” photos (many clearly AI, perhaps all) with a brief bit of text along the lines of ‘how it used to be’ or ‘before they took it away from you’ with heavy implicit nods to racism which are made explicit in the comments below. It’s getting as bad as the BlueSky bot problem – this is probably bots too, dezinformatsia aimed at destroying consensus and breeding disquiet.
Dengie Bioregion 