last monday was a day of travelling, didn’t get chance to write that week’s notes. today is a day of travelling, but i messed up the train times and have an hour of downtime in a cafe in Buxton. for simplicity’s sake i’m calling these “last week” and “this week” despite monday. it’s just as well, this week’s entry is fairly short.
the dermatologist(s) referred me for UV phototherapy. the first session was on the wednesday last week, at the Bermondsey Wing of Guy’s Hospital, which has great vibes in an 80s shopping centre atrium kind of way. it turned out was just a patch test of sorts: the nurse had a small handheld UV gun that fired a window pane pattern of ten beams of UV in increasing strength on my back, and a briefing on what to expect from the phototherapy itself, which left me with more questions than answers, and too much anxiety to ask them.
then thursday was the first actual UV session. i want you to imagine Jon Osterman getting locked into the Intrinsic Field Subtractor. i go behind a curtain, strip naked, put on goggles and a visor, step into a box, close the door, the UV fluorescent tubes lining the walls go binkbinkbinkbinkVUUUUUM, i stand there rotating my limbs for the longest forty-eight seconds of my life.
is this just what sunbeds are? i have no idea
also wednesday,
okay so on /r/synthdiy Martin from Neutral Labs was asking “hey is anyone in london able to do a tiny repair job that really doesn’t warrant shipping the thing back to Germany?” and i said “yes i can do that”. some back and forth later and this guy turns up at my studio with an Elmyra 2 that needed a jack replacing.
i test the unit and confirm there is no signal coming through that jack, take everything apart, the jack looks physically okay. i poke around with a multimeter some, there are no discontinuities. on a hunch, i plug a patch cable into the suspect jack, and everything is working fine??? i put everything slowly back together, testing at each step to make sure it is still working, doubting myself the whole way. but everything is absolutely fine.
saturday i went to one (1) day of Greenbelt Festival. i volunteer there every year, making somewhat competent barista coffee at the Tank Cafe. i’ve done it since 2012, with exceptions for 2017 (completing a house purchase that weekend) and 2020-2021 ().
this year the week after (the one i’m calling “this week”) was the only week we could do our annual uni friends cottage holiday, which would have entailed either taking three (3) trains from Kettering to Buxton with all our camping stuff plus a week and a half worth of clothing and then taking it home one week later also on trains (no) or taking five (5) trains from Kettering to Buxton via Nunhead to drop our camping stuff off (also no). so, no volunteering.
going there for just the saturday was totally feasible though and meant carrying just a handbag and a folding festival seat. it was wet and muddy, the wettest the festival’s been for a good seven years (but not nearly as uh interesting as the knee deep mud of 2012).
some good talks, some good music, managed to catch Beer And Hymns. popped my head into the Tank to say hi to and hug my friends, which was bittersweet. i’ll be back next year.
and then Buxton. well actually Cowdale, this tiny hamlet on a moor about 2mi out of town. an enormous barn conversion holiday cottage, six bedrooms downstairs, huge open plan livingkitchendining upstairs plus a snug. walking (although not as much as i’d have liked); boardgames (although not as much as i’d have liked); synth noodling (although not as much as i’d have liked); working on a cute visual programming language idea (although not as much as i’d have liked); playing Baldur’s Gate 3 (way more than was socially acceptable); we saw the house that inspired Pemberley, the house that inspired Thornfield, some excellent caves. i cooked the best roast dinner of my life.
half of the group needed to leave on Saturday. three quarters of the rest had to leave on Sunday. which left me spending the night alone in a cottage that sleeps twelve. 0/10 absolutely haunted do not recommend
