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10.13 – 10.19

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Life

A builder who seemed like he knew what he was talking about came to take a look at our flat. I reckon his quote’s going to be astronomical but hopefully that’ll help us choose the first guy we were probably going to pick anyhow.

Me and Σσ booked Thursday off work so that we could hang out without the kids for once. Then Αα got tonsillitis and shat all over that plan. We’ve had a very long total-parenting session with very little sleep and very little sign of it abating any time soon.

Ηη came off his bike quite dramatically on a downhill stretch in Finsbury Park on Saturday and now has a pair of fat lips as a result. He was so excited at the top of the hill and he was immediately off, deaf to my cries of ‘use your brakes’, and ‘put your feet on the pedals’. Then as soon as I’d seen the first speed wobble the inevitability of what was about to happen was crystal clear and I saw it unfold in slow motion. He was lucky to get away without any breaks or missing teeth. I don’t think he felt particularly lucky.

It has been open season on the application of medicinal ice-cream and lollies for the alleviation of pain arising from tonsillitis and wounded faces.

I got Claude to rewrite my dad’s charity website as a fully-templated 11ty app instead of the mongrel mess it’s been the last few years. Certainly wouldn’t have been an enjoyable manual task.

I finally heard back from Heathside coach regarding my sub-3 marathon campaign and he doesn’t think it’s totally out of reach. Staying (and first getting) uninjured seems like it will be the biggest challenge. But I also got an appointment with a first contact therapist through the NHS and had one of those rare interactions with a health professional where they (at least on the face of it) fully understood what I was saying and told me exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve now got a referral to Sports Medicine at Homerton hospital and a glimmer of hope that somebody can help me sort my hip without torturing me and rinsing me for £80 a pop.

Work

We had a three-hour live accessibility audit. I think we can give ourselves a fairly big pat on the back.

We released the new Collections section. The thing that pleased me most about it was that we found a compromise that let the designer keep the typewriter effect which also kept the relevant WCAG success criterion happy. As a side note, I had to turn off ‘reduce motion’ in the accessibility settings on my phone to test the page (we use the prefers-reduced-motion media query to turn off the typewriter) and I don’t know how anyone can live with the default amount of motion on an iPhone – so much whizz-bang! Perhaps it got even worse with iOS 26, which, it has to be said, is objectively hot garbage.

Reading

• The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks – I am very glad that that was the last one in the series
• Daniels’ Running Formula by Jack Daniels – uses an extremely uncalled for amount of abbreviations, but I think I’ve worked out my training paces

Running

• Monday easy 45'
• Tuesday Heathside track
• Wednesday easy 45'
• Thursday Long tempo
• Saturday hills
• Sunday Heathside LSR