A quick digest of some worthwhile or interesting nature and outdoors reading.

There’s a good reason we should temper the current Substack enthusiasm in journalism circles with a little caution. It wouldn’t take much for the newsletter platform to reinvent itself as an attention gatekeeper.

And there’s VCs lurking the background, wanting their payday…

A restaurant in Île de Ré, from back when I used to travel overseas.

And go to restaurants.

An Île de Ré restuarant in August 2019.

Frost on the roofs this morning. The girls were very excited. The adults, less so.

Frost on Emerald Quay roofs, Shoreham Beach.

Didn’t take them long to find the refilled feeders.

Closing in on feeders in a tree in a Sussex garden.

I used my new MacBook Pro for an hour this morning to monitor a livestream I was running, dived into a quick Zoom call, have done some emails, edited some photos and worked on a blog post.

And I have 95% battery left. 🤯

Conspiracy theories: making the gullible feel insightful in your Facebook feed right now.

So… this is my first post from a Mac powered by Apple Silicon.

Spending far too long looking at video of myself has been one of the major downsides of the pandemic.

This is a good piece: I found the wall-to-wall COVID coverage very hard to cope with back in the spring. Research shows just how much it dominated reporting.

Blogging is a discipline: it’s a practice of expressing your thoughts in writing, routinely, and with focus. Writing a post every day for Microblogvember has helped reinforce that.

And…done. 🍾

It was a gorgeously foggy morning this morning:

I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, a pedestrian by preference. Walking is my favourite way of getting anywhere.

Shame it’s impractical for so many journeys.

Has anyone else come to quite enjoy wearing a mask? I like seeing the fashion choices people make with them, and will quite miss that when the pandemic passes.

I won’t miss the disposable ones left as litter on the ground, though.

Last night, I faced the dilemma of going to bed early, or staying up and having some quiet time to myself. I chose the former - and was rewarded with a half hour to myself, as I was up before the rest of the family.

Result.

After years of having the house to myself for several days a week, it’s hard to adjust to constantly sharing it.

I’ve never craved “alone time” much - but I’m starting to.

Much as I hate to admit it, structure and focus make a huge difference to a client Zoom call. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the pleasures of small talk, too.

Lovely day for a beach walk.

Adam Tinworth in a raincoat on Shoreham Beach.

Requiem for a lamp

I’m saying “goodbye” to an old friend this morning. For the last 23 years, whenever I’ve been working at my desk, across three different properties, this old, battered lamp has lit my work. Last week — in the middle of a lecture — it finally, catastrophically fell apart.

A broken anglepoise lamp.

I didn’t even choose it. It came into my life because my girlfriend of the time was working at Terry Farrell & Partners, a firm of architects. They were having an office refurb (or was it a move? I can’t recall at this distance) and she grabbed some things that were being thrown out.

She left it behind when she exited my life and, amusingly, my relationship with the lamp has lasted well over ten times longer than my relationship with her… But I’m proud that I’ve used this thing that came my way for so long. This lamp has had over two decades of extra use after it was first consigned to the bin, and in an era when we’re ever more aware of the climatic cost of a throw-away culture, this small choice has proven to be surprisingly satisfying.

Eight months ago I was forced into delivering online training by the pandemic. Even after mass vaccination, I think it will remain part of my mix. The benefits - attendees from all over the world, provision of videos of the session afterwards - are too compelling.