Friday, May 15

This morning was the final session of the Web Analysis course, which had included participation in Omtänk as its final assignment. We therefore spent the morning in a debriefing session. I was intending to run the session with Liisa since the cultural producers had travelled a different route through the course, but she was mysteriously missing, so I covered her part of the discussion by assuming a knowledge that I did not actually have.

The discussion was genuinely interesting and produced some comments and suggestions that I would never have predicted. I acted as a scribe and took the minutes of the meeting so that I could pass them on. We will have a lot to discuss when the Omtänk board meets again.

I learned that Tommy is taking a job at YLE that will become permanent after a year, unless he decides to return to Arcada. I was persuaded to go for lunch at China Flavor and afterwards, by way of celebration, for one beer at Chico’s. I then left for home.

Unlike yesterday, when Sunshine was out till the middle of the night, he was there waiting for me when I got home. He came in for some lunch and then left again into the sudden summer. The sky was bright blue and the air was warm and dry, and both the cat and I were surprised.

I decided to cycle to Prisma to get food for the weekend. I decided to cook a stew rather than buy pizzas. I bought pork, and carrots and turnip to go with the onions, parsnip and potatoes we had at home. We also have tins of Bisto from the last time I was in England.

Now I have filled my shopping bag, and bought a bottle of wine from the Alko which is open again, and I am on my way home. As I cross the road from Prisma I am struck by the shadows everywhere, and look for something to capture this. I am looking for a tree in a field and this is the best I can find.

As I cycle home I will decide that I did more yesterday than I thought, and that the pace that I did it was probably the best way to do it. It was not as fast as I would have liked, but it was important to take the time to think about each stage. I will decide that this is fine and that I will continue at the same pace.

I will play around with the site for a couple of hours, fine-tuning the css. I will go back and look at how the current site is structured and my opinion will be confirmed. The current site is a patchwork of bodges and improvised solutions to problems I never fully understood. The new site is clean and logical. And it follows the current WordPress conventions, which will make updating it much easier.

I will sit in the hot and sunny garden reading until I decide it is time to make some slow-cooking stew. I won’t need it today but I won’t have time to cook it tomorrow. I will enjoy making it, even though I will suspect that it might turn out to be a bit bland. In a bid to rectify this I will pour half of the wine into the stew. I am not necessarily convinced that it will improve matters, but it always looks good when they do it on television.

In the evening I will decide to watch television, but my eyes will be drawn to The Time of the Doctor dvd on the table, and I will watch it again. This time it will not take me by surprise and I will be able to absorb it. Today I will not be surprised by my reactions yesterday. It is so exactly what Auo would have wanted to see. It contains a multitude of in-jokes for fans of the series; it completes some dangling plot threads in unexpected ways; it includes a cameo by The Weeping Angels (the only monsters that genuinely scared Auo); it contains a brief return by Amy Pond; and it has a story that makes no sense if you analyse it but leaps from one emotional moment to the next in a magical realist way. It would have appealed to her in exactly the ways it appealed to me: trainspottery and moving at the same time.

Yesterday watching it just brought back memories of coming home from Thomas’ party to watch the 25th anniversary special and having Auo recount the first fifteen minutes of it accurately and rapidly, filling me in on the plot threads and references as she went. All that served to prevent me actually watching it. Tonight I will watch it, through my eyes and hers, and we will enjoy it.

Afterwards, Sunshine will fall asleep somewhere between alongside and half-on my laptop as I am typing this, and I won’t mind.