Albert Chat

I continued to get my money's worth out of the earplugs I brought for our Canadian flights. Rebecca is still working in the only cool room in the house while I beaver away at little bits. It feels like she's always on work calls on in meetings, thankfully my handy earplugs made her voice sound like she was about four rooms away from me and I could focus up on my work. 

An old colleague got in touch with me tonight about sustainability paperwork which I was only too happy to sit down and go through. Before we knew it two hours had flown by as we were just catching up and venting about projects. Didn't expect my evening to be hoovered up with chatting but it was actually a really nice time. 

Venba Gets Food

Forgot to share out my latest YouTube video here. I'm pleased to present Venba Gets Food - a video essay about a recent cooking game and why it deserves its place alongside the great foodie stories. I wrote this one back in 2024 and it felt a shame to let a good script go to waste, with a bit of time off I had the chance to get it ready for the world - hope you enjoy.

 

Hot Bones

The bones of the house have heated up now. No amount of curtain closing will save us now. Only thing for it is to camp out in the coolest room in the house (the dining room). Just a shame that Rebecca has the same plan, and with two bodies panting in there it ain't much better than the other spaces we have. 

But we got an excuse to head out in the early afternoon. Rachel's birthday was today and we all headed into the park to sit under the biggest tree we could find and have a BBQ. Since I brought 16 burgers to cook I ended up being the fella with the tongs who smelt like smoke. The food went down really well though - a lot of Rachel's buddies are foodies and they all said to the group how good the grub was. I was just glad to do my part in making Rachel's birthday memorable. 

Love Exposure

I mentioned that the curtains have been drawn in my house for most of this long weekend in order to combat the rising temperatures. It worked perhaps a little better than I had anticipated because when I stepped out into my garden to gauge the heat it was like stepping off the plane on holiday! I suggested hanging out with Dan today and even he was like 'arw you sure?' I opted for the lowest effort thing possible - a pint on his doorstep and an ice cream chaser before retreating to his flat for a board game. 

Before all that though I woke up early to catch the worm. Specifically to watch the final long movie of my weekend marathon, and no film is more fitting than Love Exposure - a four hour work of bombast and depravity that was too intoxicating to deny the joys of. The four hours melted away into nothing but I still felt like a different person when I emerged on the other side of it. I spent virtually the rest of the day processing exactly what I just bore witness to - when I eventually construe my thoughts on LetterBoxd I'll hopefully be a little wiser to my own opinions.

Curtains Drawn for Films

Employed the Spanish technique of keeping the curtains drawn to keep the heat out. It also helped massively reduce screen glare as I sat down to watch two pretty lengthy movies. Last night we did a Marvel Movies Tier list with some people on a discord server I'm part of. I haven't seen a Marvel film for almost five years now, but a conversation last night encouraged me to jump back in for a few of them because they bucked the formula. Eternals is almost a different flavour of superhero flick, but it's still shackled by its involvement with the MCU. Which is a pity because Chloe Zhao know what she's doing but she wasn't really given carte blance to direct.

Barry Lyndon was the other one which was fab. That's sat for far too long on my watchlist (Mash Potato May remember) but it was a real treat. Just classy filmmaking from head to toe.

I noticed only after these movies finished that I hadn't spoken a word today (minus babbling to the cat). I've already fixed a hangout with Dan tomorrow so I can expell my social battery a bit, otherwise I'm going to really develop cabin fever.

Short on Shorts

Unexpectedly, the cat let me sleep in this morning. So much so that I actually overslept and felt a bit wretched for most of the morning. Still, I pushed through and put the finishing touches onto my latest YouTube video. I even exported it and sent it over to Rebecca in Poland to watch and give feedback on (she's good like that). I did her tweaks and now it's ready to go live next week.

I wore my shorts for the first time this year as I headed out for a lunchtime walk, it's heating up over here now. It also exposed how much I need a new pair of shorts... Perhaps it's time to treat myself.

Toasty Edit

With just me and the cat knocking around in the house I had no excuses not to lock in on editing my video. I took the project from 70% to 95% in my eyes, just a little bit more feathering (as I call it) and then it'll be out in the world. Just as well too because the back room is starting to get toasty in this mid-May heatwave and I'd rather not be sitting up there in my pants rendering out footage.