Noisy Note

• I finished reading The Salt Path within a week, an incredible feat given how slowly I work through fiction. I couldn't put it down.
• It was a joy to browse a bookshop after a long hiatus. For other finds eBay is a great way to pick up good quality, cheap second hand books (Amazon 🖕). So let's keep this fiction train rolling!
• This week we had our neighbor's poor doggo* barking all night long, absolutely howling. We got no sleep. She had been left alone, scared of the world, and desperate for attention: I relate.
• After a while I started to wonder if there had been a murder. Of course we didn't say anything when our neighbour returned the next day. Hopefully it was a one off. Do you think Lassie would have been as successful if everyone ignored her?
• I got runner's knee – I think that's the technical term for something not right in the knee area – and hobbled about for a bit. It's fine now. I thought you would want to know?
• Our local community magazine had a page about “Why so many Londoners are heading to the Beautiful North [and pushing up property prices]” - are we the baddies?
• Combining Typefaces is a helpful little guide to... combining typefaces. The e-book version is now available to download for free. I've especially appreciated the references it points to for tangential learning.
• Drip...drip...drip...drip...drip..?..?..drip-drip. I finally fixed the dripping tap! Hurrah! I took it apart and gave it all a good clean with vinegar. However I replaced the cartridges the wrong way around so now we have to push back for liquid and pull forward to stop the flow. We've decided to change our behaviour rather than swap them around, lest risk a return of The Dreaded Drip.
• R chose Nǎm Sông for our first indoor restaurant experience this year. We sat on the floor and ate from a little table, legs crossed. There was no shortage of chairs when we visited Vietnam but it was a fun novelty. The food was delicious. The distinctive coffee bought back nice travel memories.
• Beer garden! New people! My default form is a hermit, and in a new city during a pandemic I'd be a full-time recluse, but thankfully Laura and Caolan are nearby and excellent. 🙇‍♂️
• Interestingly, as this relates to pub chat, a large spider broke our understanding! We agree to live in harmony on the condition it live between the dishwasher and the wall, the fusty liminal space for evil things, with the option to explore near the bins late at night – if it scares me by the bins in the early hours when I'm making more pointlessly-decaf-tea that's okay, it's its time. But to cut a long story less long than it could be I found the-promise-breaker-with-eight-legs above the cooker yesterday. Completely against our understanding! I did some research to see if knowing more about its species could bring us closer. It couldn't. I'm very itchy and would like to burn down the house. Maybe with the drop in temperature my spider cohabiter could be in search of a mate.
• That's all! A long one this week. I expect a short one next, we'll see, bye for now!

* In my actual unsanitised note, taken on the night, "poor doggo" was originally written "pissing yap arse dog". I don't know why I'm telling you this, but there we go.