David Hughes

I’m sitting here listening to Storm Isha battering our battened hatches, and remembering Storm Eunice. I was ‘trapped’ in London for an extra day but managed to find shelter from the storm in Hawksmoor Borough. Desperate times and all that…

As a fountain pen user, I have a Sunday ritual of cleaning and filling my pens that are low on ink. I have a small (ahem) collection of Lamy Safari and Al-Star fountain pens, one of my very favourites is the Copper Orange special edition from 2015.

It’s my favourite Lamy by far and the special edition ink Lamy released with it is both Lamy’s best ink and the best orange ink I’ve used.

Annoyingly the Copper Orange ink was only released in cartridges and so I was more than a little sad when I found the empty cartridge in my pen was my last.

I’ve ordered cartridges that were advertised as Copper Orange but turned out to be just orange before, so I didn’t hold out much hope of finding any stock online.

I found a listing on eBay and ordered with some trepidation. The parcel arrived quickly and was very well packaged which gave me some hope, surely a fraudster wouldn’t go to this much effort. Would they?

I removed the Barbour Sean The Sheep tissue paper that had been wrapped around the cartridges and… they were genuine Copper Orange. All praise the holy ink well.

I know have a stock of just 15 cartridges, but I am tempted to look for more to create my own Copper Orange ink lake.

The highlight of this week was formally launching All Flows 2024.

We already have an amazing lineup of speakers, with more to follow soon. We have a very cool new website courtesy of my talented friend Richard. More importantly, we have a massive 40% off for Mega Early Bird tickets. If you are thinking of coming – book now and save some serious money.

On Saturday I had a very pleasant morning with my son; after a trip to the barbers we had coffee and then popped up to the Super Sausage Cafe for ‘brunch’ which was epic as always.

This morning my lovely wife and I popped to Canal Street Coffeefor breakfast. The coffee was excellent as always and supplied by a new (to me) local roaster Doe and Fawn.

I have a bag of their filter coffee on order which I’m really looking forward to trying. I hope their filter is as good as their espresso – review to follow.

I was in the office on Tuesday and Wednesday and had my first social event with my peers and teammates on Tuesday evening. Going in I didn’t really know what to expect, most of them have worked together for 10 – 12 years, but it turned into rather a good night. When I went out I did not expect to be getting in at 2:30am the next morning.

Wednesday morning confirmed that after 30-plus years of not getting hangovers, I do indeed now get hangovers.

I had to head back after lunch as I had an MRI scan later in the day. My last MRI scan had been at the local NHS hospital which turned into an unnerving experience; the scan was of my head so it had to be held still in a, for want of a better term, cage. My nose touched the cage and then my shoulders touched the inside of the MRI unit which freaked me out.

I’ve never been claustrophobic so this was a surprise and not a good one. The operators removed some padding from the cage so my nose no longer touched it and I managed to get through the scan.

It occurred to me that our outer extremities, like our nose and shoulders, must work in a similar manner to a cat’s whiskers – if my nose and shoulders are touching something then my monkey brain is telling me that this space is too small.

The MRI on Wednesday was very different being held at a private hospital and being a scan of my wrist so only my arm needed to go inside the MRI unit. Although I would have been happy to be inside this one as it must have been twice the size of the one at the NHS hospital.

Thursday morning I met my friend Christian for breakfast and caught up on his exciting news and imminent life changes. I must admit to being a tiny bit envious of his impending digital nomad status.

We had a relatively quiet weekend with nothing particular planned which has proved the wisdom of my shift to the Apple Watch. After a relaxed morning yesterday, it was clear that the chance of closing my rings was unlikely unless I got up and got out, so I went for a walk and did the same again today.

The Snoopy watch faces released in WatchOS 10 are great fun, not what I want as my everyday watch face as I like a very minimal watch face, but I’m enjoying what I’ve christened Snoopy Sundays and using them for a change on the weekend.

New Years Eve 2023 – I must resist the urge to write a yearnote, but if I’m honest I’ll be glad to see the back of 2023 as, with the exception of a few highlights, it’s been a distinctly underwhelming year.

Back to the weeknote – this week has been a traditional Christmas with family, food and drink and rather a lot of Indiana Jones.

Having watched The Dial of Destiny, I decided to revisit the earlier films; Temple of Doom is, unsurprisingly, by far the best and it was glorious to watch a film without CGI and where all the stunts were real and so much more impressive for that.

On Friday my wife and I took advantage of a break in the weather and headed out for a walk around Stowe Gardens, which was a welcome breath of fresh air and a chance to stretch the legs and burn off a couple of pigs in blankets.

It highlighted how little I’ve moved, literally, over the last few months. I got a little bored of trudging around my local area on the same old routes that became embedded during lockdown and my employer seems to have a culture of lunchtime meetings.

Having recently been diagnosed with low Vitamin D as a result of working like a dumbass and barely leaving this desk through the summer, that will be changing in 2024.

As will where I publish my weeknotes, as I said a couple of weeks ago for 2024 I’ll be publishing them via my newsletter.

So this is the last weeknote here on my blog, I hope you’ve enjoyed them and will join me on my newsletter.

Happy New Year!

A short weeknote for a relatively short week as I was ill for a few days.

My iMac finally sold and was collected by the new owner, it seems to be going to a good home. The longevity of Apple hardware is unique in the world of technology I feel, I do sometimes wonder why I’ve spent all this money on the Studio Display and MacBook Pro if I’m honest.

My daughter and I popped over Canal Street Coffee for a morning to get a change of scene. The light over the marina was striking as the sun came up to burn off the morning mist.

In May my friends Richard, Simon and I ran the first All Flows Festival, which was an amazing two days of fantastic talks and cool side events. I had thought I wouldn’t be able to give enough time to All Flows for 2024, but I’ve found I need an interesting, creative and rewarding distraction from my day job so I’m back on board.

Richard and Simon have done a great job lining up some fabulous speakers and we made a big decision about the venue at the end of the week – watch this space for more news early in 2024.