• This week I got 3 tonnes of topsoil delivered to the house so I can put it all in the veg plot. It’s steaming warm on the inside. On Friday I moved a whole tonne, and planted out the broad beans, peas and nasturtiums. This is absolute YOLO-chaos of course. You have to let it settle for a couple of weeks before you plant into it, but I don’t have a couple of weeks — I have now or I have never. Fite me, nature.

  • I read a magazine called The Fence the other day and in the back it had some quick-fire questions for one of the men from Rizzle Kicks. Here are the ones I can remember — you can send me your answers if you like. A little Easter treat. I’ve added some of my own too.

    1. Would you ever live in Chicago?
    2. Aren’t people who turn off Read status on WhatsApp fundamentally a bit sinister?
    3. Do you fold or scrunch your toilet paper?
    4. If you had to be in a committed 18-month live-in relationship with one of the following former Liverpool football managers, which one would you choose:
      • Rafael Benítez
      • Roy Hodgson
      • Kenny Dalglish
      • Graeme Souness
      • Roy Evans
      • Brendan Rodgers
    5. Have you ever slapped anyone?
    6. Coke or Pepsi?
    7. Babies or toddlers?
    8. Who was the best Spice Girl?
    9. Are there too many podcasts?
    10. Costa, Nero, Starbucks, Pret — what’s your ranking?
    11. How many people do you trust enough to lend £200 to?
    12. How many people in your family would turn down a peerage?
    13. Which is the most basic Monopoly piece?
    14. When was the last time you blocked a toilet?
  • My honest review of the copy of The Fence that I read was that it was good and I would pick it up again if I needed something to read.
  • The kids were away this week up north. When they got home I asked wee man if he missed me and he said, “No! I had so much fun with all the trains and we went to Thomas Land, so I didn’t miss you.”
  • He picked up his toy monkey and told me next time he sees his baby cousin he’ll share it with her, and when I asked why, he thought for a while and said, “Because everyone knows it’s really bad when babies are sad, Mum.”
  • Hey, remember when I set up a book club and we read the 20th anniversary edition of The Pragmatic Programmer and it made all my gorgeous soft lush liberal European software colleagues a bit annoyed by all the US military software analogies? Well. This week I read another 20-year-old business book — The Fifth Discipline. The audiobook is very decent but it does have actual panpipe music between the chapters. Also I kind of zoned out on the chapter about mental models because I listened to it while heaving topsoil around. And we’ve come full circle.

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