The final weeknote.

I did pop into the garden office to prepare myself for returning to work on the 2nd. I removed the detritus that always comes with a gift wrapping session. I collected up dozens of post-it notes, pulled out the few items that are still relevant in 2025, and binned the rest.

I tided up, wiped down the whiteboard, hoovered the floor, charged my wireless keyboard and mouse. And I reviewed what’s to come in January.

Reflection: It is lovely to have this environmental “reset” - so calming. Which was needed as there’s so much work still to do. More than can possibly be done in the timescales allowed. And there’s also too much needing done where I’d be the best person to do it - not enough people have built up the domain knowledge yet to take much of it off my hands. So January and February 2025 need to be about loosening the dependence on me - we let it happen so we could meet the December deadline, but Audree doesn’t scale (no matter how many mince pies she eats).

I saw my eldest’s final panto performance. I’m so incredibly proud of her, and pleased I was able to support her to take it on - I reckon this is going to be one of the core memories she‘ll be able to think back on warmly for decades or more.

We had a family day at Battersea Power Station. It was a disaster. Everyone was too scared to ice-skate, too hangry to agree on a place to eat lunch, too cold to enjoy the outdoors, and too broke to be happy browsing the shops. It was a last minute thing - but if we’d really thought about it, we would have done something else. We went for the Christmas food market - which on the day we went consisted of a mulled wine stall and a chimney cake stall, neither of which we chose to patronise.

And on December 31st I was invited to a New Year’s Eve party that was doubling as a birthday party. Reader, it has been more than a decade since I was invited to either of these things - excepting kids parties, of course. It was lots of fun - I met loads of interesting people, got into some great conversations, and learned a little about DJing because the person hosting was a DJ and producer. Grown-up parties are pretty much the same as I remember them - except this crowd kept offering me a “bump”. It took me a second to realise what they were asking - but after declining a few times they stopped asking and let me enjoy my sparkling wine and dancing. Though I’m not any older than the rest of the group, I left at 12.10am (to get my last train home) and they all partied until 10am. I woke on the first day of 2025 refreshed, hydrated, and having met some new and interesting people - so I’m happy.

Reflection: the nice thing about this is that I got to talk to people I’d never normally be in the same circles with (folks in different careers, from different countries, with totally different backgrounds). I got the invite because I saw a friend-of-a-friend liked karaoke and I invited her out to sing with me earlier in December - she’s the DJ, and we had so much fun dueting that she invited me to her NYE birthday party. You never know where small efforts to connect with new people will lead - who you’ll click with, where that’ll lead. That feels like an important reminder for me at the start of 2025.

On that note: I’m going to stop weeknoting now. I’ll have work weeknotes for my colleagues again. But I’m going to spend my (much reduced) free time blogging instead. If you’ve enjoyed my 2024 weeknotes and would like to meet up for a coffee (or for a drink, or for karaoke, or for a walk, anything really), ping me a message and let me know. I want to get to know everyone better - and though you all know me quite well now, I doubt I know all that much about you. And I’d like to change that.

Audree x

All play, no work this week, as is right. I did receive a couple of client emails - one on Christmas Eve, one on 27th - but I’ve opened neither as I suspect they’re commissioning some urgent work from me, and well, if I don’t read them I reckon I’ve still got plausible deniability…

This Christmas has been a little unusual for two reasons, primarily. First, my husband and I separated this year. And second, my eldest is in a production of Aladdin at the local theatre - and is performing most days in December. The latter means we haven’t been able to see my folks up in Scotland (though the kids and I saw them at the end of Oct/start of Nov, so it hasn’t been that long really). The former means I haven’t been obliged to spend time with my in-laws, and we haven’t done everything as a family during the break. As I write this, the husband is with the kids visiting his brother and family - and there have been/will be visits to his various friends and family before everyone returns to work in the New Year. This creates entire days in the liminal period between Christmas and New Year where I’m without commitments (other than some theatre pick-ups/drop-offs).

After Christmas day itself - which was remarkably low fuss - and the tidying/cleaning after, I’ve kept myself occupied. Reading. Tidying and admin for the return to work - getting my office space cosy again. Looking at (worrying about post-Christmas) finances. Watching some telly. I’ve even been playing some computer games. I’m generally fine on my own - I know that being alone doesn’t have to be lonely, and I’m comfortable in my own company - but I could still do with some help with the escape room/puzzle pack I got for Christmas. Of course, the few local friends I might ask to join in are either busy with commitments, or have sensibly escaped this cold, foggy patch to somewhere sunny.

Reflections: The overall vibe of this season is low pressure. I’m have very few expectations of myself right now. I’ve taken everything at my own pace. I’ve no social hangover. It’s a revelation.

I’m not going to do a big reflections blog post or anything this year - I won’t do a year compass or anything like that. Because the things I need to focus on in 2025 are absolutely clear to me:

• physical health is my single biggest priority for 2025 - I will be stronger, fitter and lighter in 12 months time

• connection and friendship are next - I want to end the year with more of a support network, and I regret not putting enough energy and consideration into my relationships over the last, well, decade. This is mostly about friends, but applies equally to professional contacts too - something I want to fix.

• financial wellbeing is my final focus - single parenting in the area I live (and where I’ll continue to live while my girls are still school-age) is unaffordable without some serious belt-tightening a return to full-time working.

As I’ll be losing my Fridays, I’m going to drop my public weeknoting. I’ll return to abbreviated weeknotes for colleagues, and the occasional blog post instead. I’ll have one more, my final weeknote - and, as I tend to weeknote on Fridays, it’ll only capture that final part-week to New Year’s Eve. If I don’t see you, have a great one.

• I did a really rubbish job of not working during this week. It wasn’t full-time or anything - I was just occasionally checking Slack and emails, and then jumping in and helping out with things that either only I could do or I could do much more quickly/confidently than anyone else. Reflection: In our rush to get everything working, and while permanent staff aren’t in place, a handful of us hold a disproportionate amount of organisational, policy and service design knowledge - and that is a problem. It’s a priority to spread things round a little more in January and February - not just so that folks like me can fully switch off, but also for continuity and resilience in the service and org.

• I spent time hand-writing real Christmas cards for folks I have addresses for; and designing and sending virtual Christmas cards for friends and colleagues past and present. Reflection: I don’t often enough tell people I respect and care for that I appreciate them and are grateful to have them in my life. 2025 needs to be a year of reconnection.

• Youngest had a sleepover with a friend. Dog had a haircut (and is cold, so has to wear a jumper…why did we do that again?). And I caught up with the group of mums I met at antenatal classes whilst pregnant with my eldest 13 years ago - we had dinner, drinks and a lot of laughs. Reflection: we do secret santa, and one of the mum’s reminded me earlier in the day to remember to bring mine. I left the wrapped gift by the front door so that I wouldn’t forget it - and I believe this is precisely why I forgot it. I had underestimated how much I rely on that niggling sense that I’ve forgotten something to make me remember. If I hadn’t put it in a place that “would guarantee I’d take it with me”, my brain wouldn’t have considered that task closed (Zeigarnik effect) and I’d have likely remembered just as I was heading out of the door. Of course, we can’t know the counterfactual. But I wonder what other contexts I apply this strategy in, as I’m clearly doing it unintentionally.

• I wrapped all the remaining Christmas gifts. Sent four parcels up to Scotland for my sister, mum, dad and aunts/uncles. Made some lavender-scented wax melts as a gift. (Do let me know if you want some, I’ve plenty of spare wax left - and lots of scents).

A little work, mostly fun

• Youngest’s birthday party - I took a group of 7 of them to Puttshack. They’re bigger now, heading to secondary school next year, so I assumed they’d manage two games of mini-golf without any problem. I was wrong. Reflection: I remember being astonished at how much babies’ moods are ruled by their bodies - and it’s true for us at any age, to some degree. We know that the closer to lunch it gets, the more favourable a judge’s ruling will get; and any facilitator will tell you how painful it is to run a session during the room’s collective post prandial dip. The girls, at Puttshack, they were hungry and increasingly less focused on the game, and this started to make them hangry. It went downhill from there. I’ll remember to choose a better time of day next time. It’s also a good reminder for me generally to pay more attention to human needs - we may feel too busy to schedule a comfort break, or grab snacks and water, for ourselves or for the people in our meetings and workshops, but the outcomes we seek depend on our focus, our moods, our mindsets - and it rarely makes sense to compromise those things in the name of gaining a few extra minutes. Similarly, I hate to think of how often I’ve worked late to “just get this thing done” - and returned the next day to kick myself at not having realised that I (and so the quality of my work) had been flagging the night before. I’m all for taking advantage of a flow state when I find one - but that’s different to crawling over the finish line in the name of completion. Gosh, this turned into a bit of a rant. Moving on.

• I had a couple of days of work at the start of the week. Work has a policy of not allowing folks to carry over annual leave - and over the course of this year I’ve not taken as much time as I should have. That, with a bit of time off in lieu for good measure, means three weeks Christmas break for me. Work was quite frantic. Loose ends I thought I’d tied properly last week had managed to work themselves loose again on Monday, frustratingly, so I was pretty much fully focused on those. Reflections: I observed some things that reminded me of my time in previous government departments - and it really crystallised my thinking around power dynamics in the policy space. How, so often, if we could get the right six people in a room, and not let them leave until they agreed on a way forward, we’d save ourselves weeks of mistakes and miscommunication. But getting the right decision-maker from the centre of government (Treasury, Cabinet Office), in the same room as the right decision-makers from policy, legal, delivery and operations, is especially hard. Operational colleagues in particular bring reality into the room - conversations with them can be uncomfortable because they force policy folks to compromise the neatness of their policy positions in order that they can be implemented; they force legal advisors to find pragmatic ways through because there is always ambiguity and risk; they show service delivery teams that it doesn’t matter if X is on their Jira backlog right now, because it is already being delivered by frontline staff and so is already part of the user’s service experience and so is already part of the service. This is also why cross-functional multidisciplinary teaming is so powerful, of course - because you have a group of individuals whose job it is to find a way to actually achieve those policy outcomes, rather than just represent their corporate function or profession.

• I took Olive to the vet. She had a lump on her head. My eldest was losing sleep over it, so I eventually caved and got an expert opinion that this was indeed just a raised hair follicle. Confirmation we’ve a happy healthy dog - £60 (ouch). Reassuring anxious teen - priceless.

• I was going to see Cyrano at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, but it got cancelled on my train ride into London because of cast sickness. There’s some really awful virus going around - my eldest’s Sunday afternoon Aladdin performance was cancelled for the same reason (lead and understudy both ill). I’ve some relatives up in Scotland desperately sick, particularly bad cases of RSV in already frail bodies. And the boss is unwell too today. Stay safe out there folks. Get your vaccinations (if you don’t quality for an NHS flu/COVID vaccination, maybe your work will pay for a private one. It doesn’t hurt to ask). Mask up in busy confined spaces (I’ll still change carriages if I find I’m sitting near a sneezer). Take a COVID test if you’re seeing vulnerable relatives over Christmas. And wash your hands well and regularly.

• I did some festive Karaoke on Saturday. I don’t normally duet, but after a successful singsong with Pete Chamberlin the other week, I agreed to sing one or two with a friend lacking in the confidence to sing on her own. It was a great deal of fun, and a welcoming crowd. And really nice to have someone to go with. I’ll always choose to go somewhere on my own over not going at all - but it is much more relaxing to have someone to go with because I then don’t have the social awkwardness of introducing myself to strangers and wondering if they’re talking to me out of politeness or not…

So, Christmas season is in full swing now.

• Work-wise, my focus was almost entirely on tying off a new and worrying loose end I spotted Monday morning. Is sorted. Reflection: it wasn’t what I’d planned to spend my time on, but it was absolutely the priority once it emerged. I’m lucky - that I’m quite good at dealing with this sort of thing, but also, that typically I do get to work on the things I’d planned to work on in any given week. I’d dislike a job that was almost all fire-fighting. I know I find it frustrating. Someone said to me once “it’s great to be pulling drowning people out of the water, but it would be better to have someone go upstream and figure out how to stop them falling in in the first place”. I flourish when I’m moving between upstream and downstream.

• Antenatal group (from 13+ years ago) still going strong, with families meeting up every year. This year, bowling and pizza. I scored 72, I think. I’m comfortable being an inadequate bowler.

• Christmas tree and some decorations are up. We haven’t finished though. And the giant bags of decorations from previous years are sitting on the floor in the living room and kitchen, abandoned since last Saturday. Everything has been too busy this week so far to finish it.

• I think I mentioned that my eldest is in the panto - matinee and evening performances, all the way through December. It’s logistically challenging for us - but physically challenging for her, as she needs to keep herself healthy enough to keep up this pace until December 31st. She seems to be thriving though. I watched her yesterday and she was funny and amazing and oh-I-am-so-darned-proud.

• We had the work Christmas do on Thursday. First part of the day was a mix of management team year-in-review updates and some interactive sessions. Second part of the day was the work social - bowling and karaoke. I had a lot of fun. Reflections: we’re at least twice the size we were when I joined, and these awaydays feel very different now. I miss the closeness I felt when we were a smaller firm - not just knowing everyone’s name and face and current projects, but also being able to learn from what they are learning, knowing what they’d be great at helping with, or what I can share with them that they’d find interesting and useful. I take some getting to know - I’m an introvert and can come across as aloof or intimidating to people who don’t know how to read me, something I’m trying to work on - but rapport building isn’t something that scales easily. And as I’ve been focused intensely on just one project for most of the year, I haven’t really had the exposure to others that I need in order to get to know my many, many new colleagues. I *have* made some awesome friends on this project though. I bloody love this team and I learn from each of them every single day.

An intense week, mostly in Newcastle, trying to get things over the line. So it’s weird that most of my reflections aren’t work reflections.

• Quite a lot of close working with developers and testers this week. Writing plain English test banks that can be used on the code. Puzzling through the occasional unexpected output. Understanding the nuances of rounding on complex multi-stage calculations. Reflection: I enjoy this type of intellectual puzzling - it forces me to disconnect my brain from rapid response mode and think more deeply, systematically and strategically. But I wouldn’t want to do it all the time - I’m far too curious and opinionated to work to a permanently narrowed focus.

• Spotted a policy inconsistency no-one else had, one that would have carried a giant multi-million pound risk (and an even larger reputational one). I successfully set out the case for taking a slightly different approach, got agreement to formally change the policy and adjust the regulations to clarify. Reflection: this is my one of my favourite things about truly cross-functional multi-disciplinary working. We’re all in it together - when we feed back on problems, people don’t tell us to “stay in our lane”, they say “thank god you spotted that, let’s get it changed”.

• When you have the sort of brain that is good for absorbing and making sense of masses of information, and have been around since the start of a project, people will tend to rely on you to know things. What does this mean? Ask Audree. Who should I talk to if I need to find out more about this? Ask Audree. Sh*t, has anyone thought about this yet? Ask Audree. I’m like a human design history. And I usually don’t mind it. Reflection: but this week I do. I’ve three weeks off coming up soon - and I’m worried that I might have allowed myself to be turned into a single point of failure. So I’ve got two weeks to build up confidence (my own, and others’) that any critical knowledge for the next 6 weeks is spread well enough around the wider team that we won’t have a problem.

• I don’t do self-care very well when I’m working away from home. I’ll usually not eat between breakfast in the hotel and getting back (late) at the end of a busy day. This time I thought it would be good to go to a gym near the hotel, see if I can use the spare evening time to get back into the habit for December. I found one that had week passes available, signed up, and then rocked up in my trainers ready for a workout. Reflection: I ought to check these things out before I spend money on them - the gym was huge and really well equipped. But everyone looked like they were under 21, and the whole place stank of sweaty teenage boy, and after my first workout I didn’t have it in me to return. Next time? I’ll book a hotel with a gym.

• Home late on Thursday evening - Friday was Christmas movies and popcorn with the kids. I had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in far too long. I started experimenting with candle-making with my youngest. And booked her birthday party at the local Puttshack. December looks frantically busy so nice to have a relaxed weekend.

Yet another big week at work.

• We had a couple of really important assessments - very definitely go/no go points - and as a team we nailed them both. Reflections: first reflection - that I wasn’t especially phased by either (including one in front of the Audit Committee), because I’ve done this all before and I was confident we were collectively in a great position. Second reflection - we came out the other side of the week with some really fantastic documentation and storytelling for what we’ve done so far and what we’re planning. It took these two assessments to catalyse the synthesis process - we’d been heads down designing and delivering thus far. Until this point it was a “should-have” we hadn’t gotten around to yet. So it’s great to have a forcing function. I wonder if we could engineer them in future - it’s a risky strategy though…

• I watched “The history of witchcraft and contemporary feminism”, a lecture from the institution of historical research. The poor speakers really struggled with the technology as it was a hybrid session. But I learned plenty. Interesting to see how much the discourse on witchcraft was shaped by the legal/administrative sphere - the witch trials - and the impact that has. Felt like it had parallels with some of the points made in the book Data Feminism, which explains how society’s thinking, histories (and stereotypes) about particular groups is shaped by record-keeping and data availability. If, instead, you look for narratives that start with the role of women in communities, as midwives and healers and elders and ages, the story is very different. Was also fascinated to hear about the countries where men were more likely to be accused and put on trial as a witch; and how common it was for women to report other women for being witches. The relationship between witchcraft, feminism and the patriarchy is not as black and white as we might believe (when are things ever?).

• It is official jigsaw season. Every year Chez Fletcher, as it approaches winter, we clear a surface and start the first of many festive jigsaw puzzles we’ll work on over the coming weeks. Is a very firmly established family ritual - closely associated with slippers and hot chocolate. A very “cosy core” vibe.

Short notes today because I missed this week by quite some margin.

• I ran an iteration of that technical training I designed. This time it was the same duration, but with more content (the missing pieces). I simplified the exercises so was confident I’d be able to get it done in 3 hours. And I did. But it didn’t work as well. Reflection: the scrappier session, where there was less content on slides, and more people diagramming on paper, worked better for people. They understood it more quickly - because they were sketching and testing their understanding, rather than passively consuming what I was saying (before being asked to do some exercises). Also - the additional content had a completely different structure to what had come before. It was entirely driven by the content (it wasn’t a design choice), but the switch really threw people. By the time we reached 3.30 (and yes, I know not to run challenging sessions late afternoon), some people looked like they were in pain.

• I made the mistake of agreeing to run the training on a day where I wouldn’t be able to travel up the day before. London to Newcastle and back, with a full day of training and meetings, is just painful. That’s not even including the journey from home to London, and the unreliable train connections very early morning/late night. Reflection: this left me absolutely shattered on Friday. I think I might even have collapsed on the bed and fallen asleep in my clothes. I had been working four days a week to create some breathing space for myself, to give more time for self-care, to make progress on my book, to have time for reflection. The fact that these weeknotes are three weeks late tells you how well that has been going.

• I’ve been watching who picks up things quickly in the training, and who doesn’t. A few patterns: folks who work with spreadsheets or told me they’d science/maths backgrounds tend to feel more comfortable with it; the smokers chose to work as a team and were really good at communicating/dividing up the labour; people in more technical roles tended to spot the patterns in the rules; and people who were able to focus in the session (able to literally disconnect from their inboxes and DMs - and able to cognitively switch off from that day’s crisis). Reflection: I need to spend more time thinking about how to make it easier for people who don’t fall into these categories. Clearly the technical nature of the content is a major constraint - but I reckon I can still do better. Especially since the folks who most need the training have been hired for their people skills, and don’t necessarily have more technical backgrounds. This learning needs to be more accessible.

The opposite this week - all work, not much personal life.

A very unusual circumstance for me: first week of operating the actual service with actual service users. So I decided to sit with the frontline staff in Newcastle, to be on hand to support them however they needed. I left Sunday afternoon, arrived early and stayed late most evenings to help address blockers the teams had encountered during that day so that they might progress the next, and didn’t return home until Friday evening. It was quite a shift.

Reflection: I didn’t make the progress I wanted to make on the other tasks on my plate. But I’m not finding that as frustrating as I ordinarily would because the experience has given me a unique and valuable insight into what the first week of a customer case is going to look like - which will help me work with others to improve the service design around that for service staff and users. I got to see first hand what didn’t work, what was missing, what we’d managed to nail first time, what I needed to clarify. And perhaps most importantly I’ve also come away with a new appreciation for how special those frontline staff truly are.

My body/mind woke me at before 5.30am every day this week - but this morning let me sleep until 8.35am (20 minutes ago) so I’m finally feeling rested. I’ll get some quality time with my eldest daughter today/tomorrow - my youngest is off to Guides camp.

Half-term - so no work updates this week. Instead, I:

• spent time at the Southbank just reading, people watching and enjoying the Autumn sunshine - I was there mainly to hear Richard Dawkins and Florence Given both speak. I enjoyed the latter a lot more than the former. I think because Dawkins’ talk was more of a celebratory lap - telling stories of his career, of arguments he’s had with various critics, answering questions about the legacy he wants to leave. His celebrity weighed quite heavily - everyone stood up to applaud him simply entering the room. But I didn’t really learn anything, or feel intellectually stretched in any way. I really enjoyed Florence’s session because she was so relatable, she tapped into the unapologetic feminism bubbling inside me, and because she made me think twice about some of the ideas that I’ve been holding unquestioningly. Reflection: Both were great speakers. I chatted to a truly lovely person afterwards about the experience and mused that perhaps my experience and expectations of Dawkins had been influenced by my experience of Given’s earlier talk? What would it have been like to come to him fresh, without my feminist instincts front of mind/gut? I guess I can’t know. I’m thinking perhaps talks like these deserve more careful pairing. I’m watching Michael Marmot talk about Health Inequalities at Gresham College this week - I’m now trying to imagine what an appropriate intellectual appetiser might be, to prime me to get the most from his session.

• went to Greenwich Park and the observatory with the girls. Before we arrived, the girls got lunch (and food poisoning) at a street food market. E adored the observatory - went from room to room absorbing all the history, studying the tools and telescopes. We saw the 1pm ball drop. She and Z hopped either side of the Meridian line. It was a truly lovely day. Reflection: I wish I thought to organise this sort of thing more often. I forget that day trips with them are nowhere near as much effort as they were when they were much younger. Those exhausting days spent on high alert, making sure that the kids didn’t hurt themselves, or damage property, or have a meltdown - they’re long gone. So I can, and should, plan more into our diary. Especially as they’re secondary school age and will soon not want to spend time with their mum.

• took the girls to Scotland on the train, to see my Mum. It was a very early train - and shortly after boarding, Z started throwing up. A few hours later, joined in. This went on for around 36 hours. On the train. Outside the apartment. On their bed. All the way through the night. So I did a lot more washing than I’d normally do whilst away on holiday. After they’d recovered, they were still weak - so, though we had some nice walks at the beach, they spent most of the time eating toast and watching game shows with their grand-dad. And trying (and, for E, failing) to not react to his racist anti-immigrant banter. Reflection: you couldn’t make it up, how unlucky I’ve been on annual leave this year. Sh*t happens I guess.

Work

• Another week of creating clarity and momentum by taking masses of complexity and uncertainty and turning into things that are simple and just certain enough for people to get going with. Training workshops, slide decks, job descriptions, spreadsheets, checklists. All designed to help people understand the space they’re working in and provide them with something to start with. Reflection: It’s often so much easier to get going with a straw man than a blank sheet. And I know more than most about what we’re trying to do here, I thought I’d start filling in some of those blank sheets for folks. And it’s going down a treat - people are really taking this stuff forward at pace. They just needed a foothold. It also meant a bumper show-and-tell this week, as it feels like so much has come together at roughly the same time.

• I built out the training session further and delivered to other people, people who will be the trainers in future. I iterated my first version too - making the revealing of the complexity of the legislation more progressive, so less overwhelming. Workshop participants have the opportunity to learn and practice with a simple version of the calculation - then they consolidate this initial learning as they learn and practice a moderately complicated (fake) case, before doing the same for a very difficult one. Reflection: I could actually write a blog post about just this training design. When I was leading the curriculum materials discovery and alpha for DfE, I learned a great deal about good curriculum design and pedagogy - and so know quite a bit about how to design effective learning and really nerded out applying that learning this week. And it showed - I’ve had rave reviews.

• After a little time spent trying to establish ownership/accountability for something, I finally found the right leader for it. It’s hard for new leaders in an organisation to know who to go to for answers outside of their own teams - especially if their teams are gatekeeping just a little too effectively. As luck would have it, the leader in question called me up to talk about something incidental to the main thrust of my work, so I took the opportunity of that conversation to achieve what I was looking for more widely from them. Reflection: the chance appeared when they asked a question and, within a minute or so, I offered a phone call to talk something through. I should have emailed them and offered a meeting the first week they joined: I know how important it is for us to work together, even if they did not. No matter - end of week two and we still got to where we needed to be.

Work

• I experienced a very pointed reminder this week that “a prototype is worth a thousand meetings”. Frustrated with how much I was struggling to communicate a nuance in intent to a designer who thinks very visually, I stopped trying to explain, and giving feedback on his design (which wasn’t working) - and instead just designed a basic version of the thing I’d been trying to describe, annotating the ways in which it was different. They understood immediately how it was different, with the bonus of getting to start from a not-too-sh*tty-first draft they can iterate. Reflection: I normally steer clear of doing the thing because I don’t want to disempower or take learning opportunities away from people whose job it is to do the thing. But occasionally “showing the thing” is not just the fastest route to delivery, but also the shortest path to learning.

• Another week, another Newcastle trip. I swear I’d barely travelled anywhere in the last two years, so all the train time has been a bit of a shock to the system. This week it was running some training. Reflection: I’d designed a session that was highly interactive, and which allowed them to work at their own pace, with different levels of stretch available in each exercise. It was a lot of fun for me, and they enjoyed it, and they’re putting the skills and knowledge into immediate practice in their jobs. Can’t ask for anything better than that.

• Not all sunshine and roses. I believe in sharing early and often - and that if you wait until you have something you’re happy sharing, you’ve left it too long. But…this week I discovered where my floor on quality is for sh*tty first drafts, when I was asked to share something I was actually cringing about sharing. Reflection: It’s of no real consequence because there will be plenty of eyes on plenty of iterations. That’s the point really. Nonetheless it has been a while since I felt this so viscerally.

Home

• Vaccinations - it’s that time of year. I’m surrounded by people coughing and sneezing, and the Slack channels seem to reveal another colleague downed by COVID each day. So I wasn’t sad to rock up for my COVID and flu jabs. But I was sad at the two sleepless nights I had immediately after - I’m a restless side-sleeper ::grimace::

• I’ve been experiencing a really lovely vibe for the last couple of weekends. It’s like someone turned the dial right up on Autumn. Gorgeous tree colours; watching dramatic weather; pyjamas and bed socks on; mugs of hot chocolate; a stack of good books; a mood-setting playlist; snuggly quilt; candles. It feels so cosy, nourishing for the soul.

Work

• My job is advisor, coach, professional subject-matter expert on digital transformation, leadership and specialist digital capability. No, that’s not what it says on LinkedIN. But that’s what it usually consists of and/or focuses on. These last few weeks haven’t felt like that though, so I spent a bit of time reflecting on how it feels right now. Reflections: sorry for the war analogy, but we often describe ourselves as “in the trenches” with clients and their teams. The proposition is essentially “we’ve been in your position, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t, let us guide you through it”. So I felt some discomfort when, over the course of a week, I went from: “you know this thing needs to be done, yeah?”; to “you know how to do this, or do you need me to show you”; to “the deadline for this thing is Friday, are you sure you’ve got it handled?”; to “here’s how to do this thing”; to “the deadline is later today so I’ve done the thing, shall we set everything up so that you can do it next time?”. It is hard building capability from a standing start - even harder when you’re up against tight delivery timescales. I guess, on weeks like these, the best we can do is ship it, and learn lessons for tomorrow.

• I’ve had to travel up to Newcastle for a few weeks running now, to deliver or attend workshops, and deliver training. Like a good brie, I don’t travel well. So I prefer to set off late the night before a morning workshop, get a decent night sleep at a hotel, and arrive fresh-brained and smiling the following day. Reflections: I’ve quite a few colleagues who prefer the early morning start. I’d have to leave home at 5.30am to make it in time - but, even if it was a 7am start, I know I would not be at my best in a meeting or workshop after a 4.5hrs of travelling. If we’re spending all that time and money to have precious in-person time together, travel-weary and foggy-headed Audree is not who you want to have in the room. So I’ve decided to make this a general rule for any significant travel going forward. That and “Seatfrog is my friend” - I get so much work done when I’ve a proper table and a little space to spread out.

Home

• Some really special moments this week. The Aurora Borealis above our house was something special - the first time we’ve seen it, and potentially the last given we’re at a solar maximum right now. The girls and I have been checking Aurora Watch religiously for months and so we’re stoked for that effort to have finally paid off. And - it was during the Draconids meteor shower, so we got some bonus shooting stars that night too. Reflection: these are the things they (and I) will look back on for years to come. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sense of awe and the squeals of excitement that come with seeing something so transcendent. It’s a reminder that you’ll never really know when something truly special is going to happen - you just need to be ready to seize the chance when it does.

• We had a family trip to New Scientist Live. It was great seeing Z get excited by all the stands and demonstrations on Saturday - she threw a barrage of questions at pretty much everywhere she stopped, so incredibly curious. E and I got much more out of the talks - so much so that we decided to return for the second day. We heard about anomalistic psychology (Christopher French); forensic science (Anne Coxon); the art of uncertainty (David Spiegelhalter); Bayes Theorem (Tom Chivers); the laws of social connection (David Robson); life, death and disease in the Middle Ages (Alice Roberts); and the social brain (Robin Dunbar and Sam Rockey). I missed out on the astronomy sessions (I love the talks that remind us how unlikely and insignificant we all are) and the Pokemaths talk (which I’ve heard was very good). There are online recordings available so I’m going to pop back and watch them.

Work

• I said I wanted to learn more. Well, I need to be careful what I wish for. I’ve shown that I’m good at doggy paddle when plunged into unfamiliar waters, so they’ve pushed me into the sea of treacle that is payment systems, to see if I can still float there. Reflection: I’m confident my work will be good enough. But with so little domain knowledge, it won’t be great. And I just have to get over myself. Doing “good enough” in any one thing is honestly optimal because anything more than that comes at too high an opportunity cost when there’s so much to do and everyone has to muck in.

• The realistic optimist in me is going to keep reminding people of the risks they’re facing. The risks don’t go away just because a decision-maker deleted the risks paragraph in the submission. It feels almost negligent of me to let the bigger risks fall off the radar. Reflection: I’d rather take those risks head on than pretend they’re not there. So I have to accept the consequences of that for relationships - and hope that people just find me irritating, rather than believing I’m trying to make things harder for them.

• A team I’ve been on the periphery of is coming to an end as it merges with other teams to grow in size and scope. I was invite to a team retro this week and very much enjoyed the time with them. Reflection: It was a privilege to watch this team reflect on its achievements, and honour the time they’ve spent together and their shared identity, through what felt very much like a memorialising ritual. I want to remember this and adopt it myself when I’m in similar circumstances in the future.

Home

• Dentist appointment. My teeth are fine. But E has an orthodontic referral as she’s kept some of her baby teeth 2-3 years longer than they’d expect and her mouth is getting overcrowded. I wore braces (bottom) and a retainer (top) for four years in my teens and I hope she doesn’t have to.

• Drama. E asked if she could audition for a show last weekend and, not having anything else to do, I said sure. Hers was one of a handful of successful auditions from that day - and we promptly got an email outlining precisely what it was we’d signed up to. 15 rehearsals in November and 50 performances during December (many during school hours - and the theatre is not near her school). I’m not worried about her grades suffering because she’s doing fine and isn’t in a GCSE year - but she’s going to be tired and cranky and stressed. And her father and I are going to have to juggle all the logistics of getting her to and from performances multiple times a day during our working days. Whilst both of our jobs ramp up in pressure because of projects each of us has on during November and December. All whilst we’re negotiating our separation. Reflection: we’ve discussed it and we feel it’s important enough to E, and a great life learning opportunity, that we want to support it. It’ll be hard for us all, and I’m sure there will be arguments. But we’ll make it happen. In the future, I’m not going to agree to an audition until I know much more about the commitment on the other side of it. I can’t believe I did that. What a mug!

• Learning: I went to a lecture at Conway Hall - Life Lessons From Historical Women. It was to celebrate the launch of a book by Eleanor Morton. I picked E up from school and we went together on Thursday night. It was a roomful of middle-aged women, a handful of men (most dragged along by their partners), and E. And, being the fierce feminist that she is, she loved it. She even asked a question: which historical woman from the book would each of them like to see on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square? E came out of the event raving about it - she’d forgotten how weird she’d felt walking through London on a school night in her school uniform - and she’s eager to go to another event at Conway Hall soon. Result. Reflection: I’ve been doing quite a bit with E recently, and as mentioned am committing a lot of additional time and energy to supporting her performances in November and December. So I need to remember to carve out some specific Mummy-and-Z time. I can tell she’s already feeling neglected, so need to fix that sharpish.

• Podcast: I’ve been listening to Sherlock and Co podcasts this week - enjoying them very much as long as none of my family are in the room. They seem to believe it’s fine for them to just talk to me while I’m listening to a podcast. As if, somehow, my ears and brain are capable of monophonic input and I won’t miss a key plot point whilst they’re babbling on about what’s for dinner or who stole whose favourite pencils.

A bit of a head-down week.

Work

• challenges around scaling - in three months this has gone from being a tight team of people who could all fit in a single room for a kick-off workshop (felt quite start-uppish) to many, many times more people working across delivery, comms, engagement, policy, operations, legal, finance etc. Reflections: culture change inevitable with such an increase in interactions, relationships and lines of communication - but how do we make people still feel connected and part of one team pulling in the same direction now that they can’t all be in the meeting? And a wave of people from traditional departments’ enabling functions have arrived - so how do we avoid them simply importing the culture, ways of working and organising principles from the places they’ve been, and encourage them to try and adopt our new ones? It’s disorienting arriving somewhere new, and people naturally cling to what they know - it’s a big ask of them, and usually only the people comfortable with change and confident in their own professional capability give it a try (that’s not everyone).

• I’ve been focused intensely on narrow aspects of the project for a few weeks now. It has left me feeling untethered and I don’t like it. Reflection: I’m feeling untethered from the team, the wider project, and from PD. The team: when I’m focused so narrowly, I can’t easily see overwhelmed colleagues needing my help. That’s a problem on intensive projects - because it’s the camaraderie and mutual support that helps us get through it. The wider project: colleagues have said that the thing they value most from me is my holistic and integrative thinking - something I can’t easily contribute when my focus is a particular task or silo and I can’t see the whole. And PD: I haven’t had the time available to be the enthusiastic participant I usually am in community and corporate activities. I haven’t been at show and tells, community events; I haven’t buddied any new starters. We are changing and growing and improving and I’m missing it.

• I’m adding a new “invisible matter” tool to my strategic design toolkit this week - I’m calling it Al Capone-ing. Al Capone was a Chicago kingpin in the 1920s. The FBI spent years trying to pin him with racketeering charges, and failing. Then they realised they could still get what they want - Capone behind bars - if they went about it a different way. They charged him with federal tax evasion - and he was sentenced to 11 years in Alcatraz and handed a fine of around $6m in today’s money. Applied in the world of organisational invisible matter: if you hit a brick wall with your direct approach (perhaps you’re arguing a point of principle, or perhaps you’re making an evidence-based argument for your desired option), see if you can find an indirect approach or a back door. Instead of focusing on your preferred option - can you perhaps render the other options irrelevant, taking them off the table? Perhaps you can’t land the argument from a service design perspective - but could a more influential ally from another professional function (comms, data) make a compelling case for your option for different reasons? Stay focused on the outcome you’re trying to achieve and think laterally about how you might achieve it.

Home

• I’m loving the transition from summer to Autumn. Leaves starting to fall, squirrels digging up my lawn to find the nuts they buried earlier in the year (well, loving that less). Hot chocolate. Bed socks. Blankets back. Cosy lighting in the early evenings. I spent the weekend having the Autumn equivalent of a Spring Clean. I swapped out my summer clothes for my winter wardrobe. Dug out clothes that need repaired, sewed some buttons back on, binned the holey socks I’ve been ignoring for months, aired out the winter duvet.

• Less lovely: hearing the hostel E was staying at in Valencia was shot at while she was there. At 3am she heard gunshots incredibly close by - when the schoolgirls in her room eventually got brave enough to look outside, they saw the outside wall had been hit a metre from where E had been sleeping. She messaged me saying she was scared and wanted to come home - and I’ve never felt more helpless and incompetent as a mother than I did at that moment. She came home later that day. And she is fine. Not sure I am though.

• I want to lean into my interests more. One of my biggest interests is learning: I have learning on the job at work; and I have learning about optimism as a side project; but what I love most is breadth of learning and being able to go wherever my curiosity takes me. So I’ve noted down a load of different London-based lectures, tours and talks over Autumn. I won’t be able to attend them all, but I’m looking forward to doing at least some of them - and now I can’t use not knowing what’s on as an excuse. I’ve already booked this one: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/health-gap

• On the train back from Edinburgh (SDinGov) I found myself feeling envious. I was at a table of three older women - all widows - on their way back from a short break. They told me of the things they’d done that week, then they told me about their lives, how they’d all met, and what they have planned next. I saw the platonic love between them - and I realised that I don’t have that type of friendship as a part of my every day life, feeling a little sad. Reflection: some of it is down to the stage of life I’m in, some of it is the product of past choices, and some of it is bad luck. I moved away from my home town and haven’t really looked back - not having many friends there to begin with. At university, I build a small and lovely group of friends - but most of them scattered, and though a couple of them live close enough to possibly see once or twice a month, they’ve got smaller kids and tougher household logistics. When I left university I was adopted by Steve’s friends and for a few years my social life was full enough that I didn’t really have room to build additional friendships - they, of course, all got married and had kids and I now see them once a year maybe (and, now that we’re separating, I likely won’t even have that). Early in my career I had a social life after work - but colleagues move on, after-work drinking culture isn’t good for my liver, and COVID meant London-based people scattered around the country. The colleagues and ex-colleagues who do still live near enough to London to occasionally socialise after work now all work different days - so scheduling time to meet is more complicated. And, of course, lots of them have families, other types of responsibility, or chronic health problems, that mean they don’t have much time/energy for socialising with people who aren’t already their close friends. I’m also not a natural organiser, much preferring spontaneity over diary scheduling. But few of the people in my life have space for social spontaneity. So yeah. I’m lonely. I need to find a way to build and deepen social relationships with like-minded people. I want to find the other old women who’ll sit round the train table with me when I’m in my early 70s, sharing funny stories.

This week was a mostly about SDinGov. With a little bit of work stuff - largely focused on adding a further level of policy nuance to a digital team’s understanding of the service we’re all trying to design. And, of course, preparing for SDinGov.

• I love the feel of knowing a talk well enough to walk around the stage, and connect with the audience more deeply than when I have to stay close enough to the laptop to keep flicking a glance to speaker notes on the screen. But this time I didn’t have the time or headspace to rehearse the talk to the point of being off-book/notes-free. In fact, despite this talk having whirled around in my head for months now, I was still finalising content the morning of the talk - because my brain woke me repeatedly during the night with new ideas I wanted to incorporate. Reflection: I went into the talk anxious and disappointed in myself. But from the feedback I’ve had (and thank you everyone who took the time to tell me you got something from it), it looks like I’m my harshest critic. So I’ll chalk that up as a win and be kinder to less-prepared-Audree in future.

• I was grateful to have the second speaker slot of the conference - immediately after the amazing Rachel Coldicutt - because I can’t eat breakfast or have a cup of tea before a talk, I’m too nervous. I was famished by the time we reached lunchtime - I would have felt positively faint if I had the final speaking slot of the day.  Other advantages of this slot: I was able to give other speakers my undivided attention, I wasn’t distracted and unsociable because of nervousness about being underprepared, I was relaxed and engaged and so really enjoyed some smashing talks. It’s a shame we don’t get to control which session we get, isn’t it

• Highlight of the conference was KA McKercher’s session - I really needed the inspiration in the codesign space. Things that resonated most - reminder that not everyone can or wants to participate in activities of the intensity offered; that there are a range of roles that can be played by people in the community that aren’t group-based workshops but are just as valid and often as or more valuable; and that consultation (and other channels for voice and contribution) isn’t a bad thing and still needs to happen.

• Lowlight of the conference was hearing someone seeming to attribute the Windrush Scandal to design debt - rather than recognising the hostile environment written into legislation as an intentional policy design choice, and recognising the massive and enduring repercussions that many decades of systemic and structural racism have for the Windrush compensation scheme. Reflection: We need to be more actively anti-racist in calling each other out for this sort of sh*t. We also desperately need more on decolonising policy and design in the civil service. And we don’t currently - as far as I see - have policy design leaders in the civil service capable of delivering this.

• I loved getting the chance to see so many people IRL with whom I’ve worked on projects or chatted on social media. Reflection: I’m never going to make the most of the networking opportunity at conferences because my brain is often too buzzing from the sessions for me to go into extrovert mode during the breaks. And I’m okay with that - I am good with who I am, and I did still have a great many awesome conversations.

Home:

• I missed the kids this week. They were out at the Milton Keynes Brick Festival on Sunday with my ex-husband, so I didn’t get to spend time with them then. And then on Monday I travelled to Edinburgh. It was really lovely to be able to socialise with old and new colleagues and reminisce about times passed. But I’m looking forward to getting back. 6 days without spending time with them is too much (for me…they might not mind…). Steve is heading off to Poland with the rest of his product team - one of them is getting married and they’re all going over for it. So I’ve had plenty of time with Z and this weekend to make up for my absence.

CW: sexual assault.

Work

• A great deal of work to catch-up on, still, a week after returning to work. Reflection: it’s great to not be indispensable on a team because when you go away, nothing stops. It’s also hard coming back because, while you’re away nothing stops. You’ll come back with a lot to catch-up, a full diary, a full inbox and colleagues already operating at full speed. The only solace is that it’s the same for them when they go away - and so they’re kind about waiting for me to catch up.

• A trip to Newcastle - with a really fruitful workshop and opportunity to meet the newly expanded team. I’m really looking forward to see how the leadership team coalesces into a tight collective leadership unit overseeing the services - it’s quite easy for functional leaders to retreat to the comfort of their siloes in this position, so I’m encouraged the intention to truly lead collaboratively is there. I also got some unsolicited feedback from people who’d only just met me - I was described as a human knowledge map - able to start with a simple and easy to understand description of a very complex scheme and service, and then progressively disclose layers of nuance and detail as and when needed, to answer questions as people dive further. Reflection: It’s great that even relative strangers can quickly identify the value I add - I worry people who don’t know what to expect of me might not want me around without the clarity that comes with a standard digital team label like “service designer” or “product manager”.

Personal

• I went to see Prima Facie at the cinema - a special showing through National Theatre Live. It was incredibly moving - Jodie Comer is such a talented actor. I was reminded of all the times I’ve felt so powerless. I’ve been sexually assaulted in the past - as a 15 year old, as a 20 year old, then on a busy London Underground train on my way to/from work on a couple of occasions. This was I think the second entirely monologue production I’ve ever seen (Sarah Snook in Dorian Gray got there first) - and I was riveted. Reflection: Jodie Comer’s performance was commanding - taking me on a rollercoaster ride through my emotions, but leaving me with one bubbling furiously at the end - pure feminist rage.

Work

• Still getting used to the new office and finding the best route there. It used to be Croxley to Farringdon on a single train, with a two minute walk the city end. Now it’s a 15 minute walk the city end. It’s not a massive addition, but enough to make me consider what my other options are. It’s also lovely to explore streets I’ve not been down, looking for things I’ve not seen before. This week I walked from Euston Square to Holborn, past the British Museum. Reflection: the office move triggered a “review” in the way that the train strikes 15 years ago did. Back then, being forced to find an alternative to the Tube, I discovered a train route that cut my commute time in half. I’m not expecting that this time round. I’m hoping, instead, for a shorter or equal length route and with perhaps a safe stretch of bike ride within it?

• Wednesday ended up being a day of deep work - a lovely long stretch of time to think properly and create things that leap us forward. Back-to-back meetings are fine, but I add my greatest value when I get to think. I hadn’t planned this in - Wednesday was supposed to be busy too - but meetings got bumped unexpectedly. Reflection: I was able to make the most of the unexpected block of time that appeared because there was a clear “deep work” task on my plate and in my mind. I reckon I’ll be able to be similarly responsive in the future - and not waste such a block on emails and admin - if I build a habit of always knowing what the next piece of “quality time” work is. Something I’ll try to do in sprint planning (though clearly can only be a should/could do…).

• London day on Thursday - back-to-back meetings. Including a couple covering for colleagues, where I had expected to be a bit of a spare wheel because I don’t have the depth of expertise in payment systems I thought was needed. In the end my contributions were considered incredibly useful - because I’m so much closer to the user research insights and service design detail. “I brought the human angle”, the group said gratefully. Reflection: I do subscribe to the principle of only attending meetings where you know their purpose and what you’re there to contribute. I do. But also - we mustn’t discount the value that can be brought by “boundary spanner” types who share much needed insight and knowledge between organisational, professional, project and service siloes. It isn’t just running interference with the rest of the org so the delivery teams can focus - contributions at these boundaries can be game-changing in terms of alignment and preventing future blockers. Like the sweeper in front of the product team’s curling stone.

• I asked my colleagues for feedback. I picked colleagues who’d worked closely with me, and asked for feedback on three development points I have prioritised for improvement this year. Reflection: this structure meant the feedback I got was targeted on the things that I care most about right now. It yielded incredibly helpful suggestions too - as well as requests for feedback in kind, creating opportunities for some fruitful one-to-one conversations that wouldn’t have easily happened in a team retro.

Personal

• Heavy Mum-taxi week - and as E’s friend’s don’t live especially nearby, picking them up to come round ours and dropping them all off after really eats into my evenings. Reflection: I didn’t have many friends growing up (I know, shocker, right?) - those I did have didn’t live near me and I never thought to ask my Dad to do the parent taxi thing because he’d have said no in a blink. So I want to be able to do this for my kids. At some point though I’m going to have to draw the line. Feels like it’d be an arbitrary line though. And some times it’s more inconvenient than others, so would the line move? More parental boundaries thinking to come on this I guess…so will stop complaining for now.

• Applying for secondary school. It was a done deal for Z - she’ll get into the same great school as her sister based on the sibling rule for admissions there. So I just went ahead and entered the selections online. Z was not happy - she explained calmly that even though there’s no doubt about the school she’ll go to, she wanted to be the person making the decision and pressing the button. So I rescinded the application, and let her apply for herself. Reflection: when I was making this transition, there was no choice - we just went to the only school in the area. And if there had been a choice, it wouldn’t have been mine to make. I’m proud Z recognised this as an important moment and asked to do it for herself out of principle. The first of many assertions of independence to come, I suspect, as she heads to big school. Yikes.

• I went to the cinema on my own to see Deadpool and Wolverine. I’d forgotten just how crude the humour in Deadpool was, so had initially thought to take E before then she noticed the age rating (she’s attentive like that). I’m pleased she did. Though tbh if the crudest of the jokes wouldn’t be totally over her head then I reckon I’ve let her down as a parent.

• Z and I cycled the incredibly juddery Nickey Line between Harpenden and Hemel Hempstead. Was a gorgeous day to do it. Afterwards we went to a local music festival - Croxfest - where I realised I was actually too tired to have conversations with other people, and so swapped places with my ex-husband, who came to keep an eye on small dancing Fletchers while I went home to make dinner in silence. Reflection: hydration. It’s almost always hydration, if I’m too tired to play extrovert. So why do I never remember in the moment? It’s frustrating.

Last week of annual leave - again, no work updates.

• We arrived in St Andrews on Monday. The place we stayed in was at the east end of North Street, a five minute stroll to the beach at the Castle, and from East Sands. We dropped our bags and headed off to one of what was many visits to Janetta’s Gelateria during our stay.

• I noticed quite a contrast between our accommodation in Ayr, and the one in St Andrews. The place in Ayr had been designed to feel sleek and minimalist, but the landlord hadn’t been touching up the decorating or fixing the furniture over the years: the padding in the sofa was so flat you could feel the wooden frame through it; the blinds were all broken; and the walls were all scuffed, or else mottled with polyfiller, where they’d been damaged but not made good. I’m confident it would have looked show-home good for a few years and, absent a little love, has looked cold and scruffy ever since. The place in St Andrews is a home-home. It isn’t minimalist, doesn’t have the “clean lines” and carefully chosen props of the one in Ayr. Everything was functional, clean, well-maintained and comfortable - albeit it in a much smaller (and woodchip-papered) space. It is perfect and modest, with an undeniable coziness that we loved.

• The kids spent most of their time on the beach or in the North Sea. They took their wetsuits, found a tide pool the size of a 50 metre swimming pool (part of the castle ruin that gets submerged at high tide), and started swimming. E was relieved as she was worrying about strong currents. Z stayed in as long as she could before her lips turned purple (about 45 minutes) - then they got changed and walked to East Sands to build very sophisticated sandcastles with deep moats. That’s where she learned about the water table - because she dug deep enough for her moat to fill with water, even though the tide was way out. We’d explained it to her conceptually before, but there’s nothing like seeing it in front of you to crystallise understanding.

• E enjoyed getting up early and walking with me round the shops. We’ve never lived anywhere you could stroll for 10 minutes and reach a butcher, a baker, a greengrocer, and a deli before. E is not a morning person by any means, but she is quite the foodie, so this was a feature of St Andrews that very much appealed to her (to the extent that she’s now thinking of seeking a History degree there).

• The early mornings were especially impressive because the girls both persisted in their efforts to see an aurora. They’d subscribed to Aurora Watch - excited because this summer we’re at a Solar Maximum and so the chances of seeing an aurora are much higher than they’d normally be. Of course the two nights earlier this summer they slept through the alerts were clear nights with visible auroras - so they were gutted to be awake for an aurora in St Andrews, only for it to be an overcast night. It could have been a stunner, that far up North.

• I’ve reflected a lot on myself. I romanticise aspects of life - digging trenches with the kids on the beach, examining interesting insects with Z, Parkrun on Saturday mornings - when given the opportunity I quite clearly choose not to do these things. I like the idea of sandcastles - I don’t want to spent 2 hours (and it was 2 hours) kneeling in damp sand, rebuilding crumbling sand ramparts. I like the idea of examining minibeasts - but creepy-crawlies give me the creepy-crawlies. And I love the idea of having a regular social outdoors exercise habit - but my fallen arches, unstable joints and underwire bras will not thank me for taking up running.

• One thing I know I love is reading. I spent really quite a lot of time in bookshops - one a Waterstones, the other a “Topping and Co” - an amazing store with bookcase ladders and hidden corners and free tea and coffee. From the front window alone I can see dozens of books I’m excited to read at some point. It made me realise how my recent reading choices have been very much guided by Kindle recommendations, and the availability on Kindle Unlimited, so I’ve haven’t really seen beyond that book title echo chamber. I started noting down titles and authors for the ones I most liked the look of (I’m not exactly going to buy 30 books on holiday) until I realised how shady that looked to the staff. I bought 5 books. And weirdly left a little sad - reader’s FOMO perhaps - at all the books I’m not going to get to read.

Annual leave this week, so no work updates.

• Ill again, secondary infection from last week’s virus I reckon. Meant a day in bed, voiceless.

• I found it impossible to concentrate on finishing my SDinGov talk. Partly the brain fog from the virus, partly having the girls full-time at home, partly procrastination. But also a reflection of the stage I’m at with it - this is the hard bit, taking all these ideas and overall narrative flow, choosing what to cut, and turning it into things I’d actually say. Looking through my notes and deciding which set of 8 bullets is 2 minutes of talking, and which is more like 10. Trying to rephrase things so they’ll roll off my tongue and stick in people’s heads. And convincing myself that what I have to share with you all is good enough.

• We had Steve’s birthday dinner. My youngest was wriggling like an octopus the whole time - I can’t help but wonder if she hasn’t burned off enough energy, or been stimulated enough this week. I also had dinner with a friend - it’s nice to have a local friend of my own, one who doesn’t know me through Steve or through the kids.

• We got the train to Ayr, to visit my parents. It rained constantly on the journey and while we were there. The youngest loved the beach - sideways rain, she “played” learning into the wind to see if it could take her weight (it could). She came back soaked and sandblasted. But that’s why blankets and cocoa exist, surely.

• We had a Sunday roast at my parents’ house. My sister and parents relished it - they don’t usually eat at the table, and typically only make roast dinners at Christmas time. It hadn’t occurred to having a roast lamb in the middle of the day, and spending the rest of the day digesting and playing boardgames is an absolutely legitimate way to spend a Sunday.