i write this sitting in the kitchen sink but that’s okay because this is a motorcycle, quoi?

The beginning of the week was a very very long time ago now, and i took no notes. But, let’s see what i remember.

When we last spoke, i’d just accidentally dosed myself with magic mushrooms while trying to microdose. I met a seagull. He knock on my hotel room window. We became fast friends, and we shared a dark xocolatl sea salt nut bar through the small anti-suicide crack in my hotel room window. He did not understand that the poetry of the moment was in its evanescence, and lingered longer than i liked. i closed the curtains to hide from him, and any time i reöpened them he was ready, peering. i hated him. When he was gone, i missed him.

The week was stressful and unpleasant. i enjoyed seeing some people. i enjoyed sitting on the couch with a few colleagues watching the Bake Off with a matrix display trying its absolute darndest to keep up generating subtitles and failing.

I was ill. I’ve been ill since Canada. I show only passing interest in convalescence. On my last night, the train train’t and i returned to my hotel room and slept in my clothes. In the morning, as much as we tried to avoid it, mimi and me went for a lovely coffee and then sat on the pebble beach at the edge of England and watched the waves. We got on separate trains going the same direction by different routes. Back to London.

A few months ago i attended a permacomputing club meeting. It was at the Tonk office, because SET was closed.

We’re introducing ourselves, clockwise from my 12.

At my 4, “i’m Addie; i’m an anthropologist; i’m a friend of Jenny’s”

Jenny _[whispering] tell them about the farm

Adelaide oh, i work on a farm

i’m, and like. ok. okay, so. so.

i am not in the headspace to write this part right now. partly because my teeth hurt from eating chicken. i should have written about it at the time. and i’m extraordinarily dehydrated.

ok. to be quick: i kinda stop the whole meeting to grill adelaide on her raw vegetables, and then when the meeting is over, we’re all round the corner at the Love Shack, and Goblin calls me to say someone left a bright pink bag behind. Everybody denies any knowledge of the bright pink bag. Somebody, maybe May, says i should ask Addie and Jenny who are outside Love Shack on the street leaving. i hang up on Goblin and i step with alacrity out onto the street. i position myself within an area of personal space some might consider “too near” and say “i want to eat your vegetables” Addie says “oh do you have instagram”

A few days later there’s a story and a post inviting all and sundry to come to the farm and eat the vegetables.

A few weeks later, distracted, anxious and fatigued i’m walking down a country road not far outside Lewes in the hot hot sun with a laptop in one hand and a San Pel in the other trying to finish an idea that Dan Ingalls would later accidentally kill by encouragingly and sweetly and generously comparing it to something he built in 1984. “keep the dream alive”. I see one of those little Grey Wagtails standing on the road and greet it like an old friend (“you’re so far from water!”), though we’d only recently been introduced via MS Paint. There’s the gate, the grass, two lost people, a hill, a turn, a bouzouki (greek), an oak tree, a table like Alice in Wonderland, a slip in crumpled blue linen, a fig leaf, a pickle, a rice ball, a turnip, a dip, a chitter, a finger pointed indicating prior discussion of the matter, and a vague but unconvincing plan for another time later.

And then Berlin. And Canada. You were there for all of this. And in Montrèal especially. Suddenly there was music, because there was a chance. It’d only been a week, and of course a wedding.

A laptop in one hand and sentimentos peligrosamente tontos in the other. I mean, not that exactly. More like first light. Or… but there’d been a lot, the thrashing crashing, you remember.

And then there was return and weird misery, fear and sickness, shivering weak, sweating in the bedsheets, horrifying green circles over little faces, distance, embrace, collapse… and Imogen Heap was there for part of it. Close, and far, and open and close, and far away again.

Convalescence oscillations, large vibrations, bad vibrations. Eventually i felt good enough i got on a train and then the mushrooms and the seagull and the week and the pebbles and okay we’re here again. When i get to London i’m feeling somewhat better, Adelaide had text me feeling worse. I drop my jade green bag off and board the old mauve snake with a pocket full of Lemsip Max All-In-One. It has an extra ingredient, but a slightly less aesthetic box. A cold silver, harsh like aluminium, rather than a healing green.

The narrowboat is green, like the dark leaf of a white camellia. We drink vinegar out of teacups and watch the sunset (lilac and tangerine, sometimes grey with secret mint, tight light clouds). Chittered for a bit. She dresses like eternal flowers, you know those everlasting bouquets? They dehydrate the larkspur, cockscomb, dill and fennel, rosehip, roses, anyway. You know, chitter chatter in the sun and then i take a nice walk home with full moon and we’ve a plan. The flower market. For chili plants. For the roof. On Sunday. And move the boat to a waterpoint.

And the next day was Feeling of Computing. i emceed. It was really a very beautiful and special night. All kinds of little things that sometimes happen happened and it felt like nearly all of them. It was the best one we’ve done. Every single talk was so special to me. And it was so nice to see so many friends, and several of them on stage. May in particular was incredible. She was last, and spoke so beautifully and perfectly and made the whole night feel like it was about making stuff with your little paws, to learn, and to tell your friends. Placement of talks is so important, the last talk really gets to set the tone for the night by how conclusion creates narrative. (when there are many little details, how a story ends is tells you what the story was about, and the details that don’t fit fade a little out). It was a little bittersweet, as it may well be the last FoC i’m able to be a part of. If that’s so, it could not have been a better goodbye. What beautiful people.

What happened on Saturday? I made a little computer program to find the midpoint between some starting points by public transit time. Did anything else happen? Oh! I had coffee with dear Brooklyn, and lunch with dear River, and collected Cyrus’s suitcase from Newspeak House. And then i curled up in my little basket and went to sleep.

In the morning I wake so bright eyed and bushy tailed. Flower market. For chili plants. For the roof. And then to move the boat. Flower market. 9:20am. Limes for sale. Lemons. Coffee first. I’m not sure how much to write. All the details are so sharp, nothing is in the background faded. They do have chili plants, normally only cut flowers, the supplier made a mistake. Magic, kismet, cosmic business. Winter heathers, chili peppers. Olives, maybe, dehydrated larkspur. Adelaide leaves with cabbage, mint and chili plants and some pretty little flowers.

The last lady, boat lady, her plants have died on the roof. We walk back. Occasionally Adelaide stops and says something like “i have to pick up some fennel” as though she were popping into a Tesco, before hopping into a bush.

Dogs, a little song, it’s so easy that i’m overwhelmed; boat, engine won’t start.

Pot the plants, soil in the fingernails, chili bright and chili happy.

Friendly little cabbage.

Nice boy next door boards and he goes into the hole with many electric snakes, and the engine clicks but will not start.

Click click click.

A man on a bike with a child on a bike goes into the hole with many electric snakes. Noises, instructions, turning keys.

Click click click.

We make new plans, we’ll go and we will walk with empty bottles and fill them at the park’s taps.

Click click click.

Unexpectedly, vroom.

And suddenly the movie Speed. The engine’s going, we can move but if we stop we’ll never start. Needs a part. Tomorrow, call me. He has my number, I have to go, things of this nature.

Black rope, blue rope. Chair in left lateral recumbent. On the roof, toss me that, pass it over plant by plant. Blue rope, black rope. Pull and easy, pushing out. Nose to left. Twist around the wrist and pull, ease it in. Knot around the mooring ring. Hop like Frogger, boat to boat. Through the house and out the front. And we’re off.

We try to turn, the space is tight, the wind’s against us. Another plan, a different spot. Turn again, the wind’s against us. Shouting down the boat 1 word in every 9 can make the distance over motor sounds. Plans change. Once in a while i run through the house to deliver a message or a hug or a wishing of good will. And occasionally it’s beautiful. And occasionally there’s a little table with two brown chairs, or a father with his daughters on a bridge. “Look, a house! And there’s a garden on the roof of the house!” and i tell him “We just got the chilis today!” and wish him well and wave at the girls and then on other occasions my wrist is twisted crushed between the nose of the boat and another boat i’m trying not to pierce. The wind’s against us. I pop my little legs off and push against the broadside of one to turn us, and above my feet there is an open window, a family eating toast.

I’m smiling the whole time. Everything that happens. The things that are hard are hard in a way that feels reasonable, explainable, tangible and occasionally wet.

We’re trying to get to the further point, get water by the marina. A nice lady’s on her roof with a paintbrush, tells us we might like to try again tomorrow. The marina’s where the water is. The marina’s closed on weekends. Tomorrow you can call them, and they’ll sort you with a slot. We move again and plan to moor, a man with a blocked engine says he needs that spot. Soon after, we find ourselves an open stretch where no one lives and park it. Two nice boys, one called Max, come and help us out by catching ropes. I run up and down the boat tying and untying, and we pull in and we tie up. And we’re beat. There’s a little cafe on the corner. A stranger walking by kindly lets me know we’re somewhere close to Tottenham. It’s interesting in a boat that you can move house by surprise. Couple wee bottles of San Pel, and a little sit and a chat, and that’ll be be me away off down the road.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and do a day of work. At lunchtime i’ll be meeting with Agnes which will be a delight. In the afternoon I’ll hopefully have thought enough about the 12 months that i can speak eloquently about them. It’s lb’s birthday this week, happy birthday sweet lb. Tuesday I have booked in 3 events, and hope I will attend no more than 1. But it’s a good week for keeping busy.

What are you doing for the new moon? Would you like to board a train for 40 minutes, and another train for 40 minutes, and then a bus for 10 and walk for 40 more so that we can lay on our backs on Bignor Hill and look up in the sky and see the Milky Way?

sorry i didn’t write this on sunday

i was once again unconvalesced

i’ve no notes from the week really

on thursday and friday there was a work thing

wednesday evening and thursday morning i enjoyed, the rest of the week was kind of a write off

on sunday i took a microdose of mushrooms that turned out to be more of a dose and i made friends with a seagull and we shared some food through the window

i don’t remember anything else

i’ll see you in a few days

i don’t have my notes from this week due to a potentially catastrophic bug in a piece of software. and i really mean catastrophic. like, it works fine. but the existence of this bug has the potential to completely undo my life. i’ll talk about it some time. few years.

on monday i had coffees with people. on tuesday i had lunch. on wednesday i had a long talk that i’m glad for. on thursday i had spontaneous curry with legg. friday i can’t recall, might have gone for a walk. saturday i went to a three dimensional sound experience with cyrus, then an algorave event at southbank.

on sunday i had what might be a good idea, perhaps a very bad or silly one. i’ve started working on it.

turned on my steam deck, and opened the menu for the most recently played game. it said “last played october 25th 2025”.

it’s kinda wild how much my weekend was knocked sideways because i didn’t close the lid of the macbook pro. it’s very important to close the lid of the macbook pro at the end of the day. and maybe one day there’ll be some way with no strings attached, no el wire, no things like that, no c.h. no b.c… i’m sick again. think i’m allergic. turning pink and green at slightest contact, or even the thought. a man on the pelican stairs gave me an americano. and i was wrong, last week, but it doesn’t really matter. i’m hungry now, but there’s no food in the house so i’ll eat sparkling water. oh yeah on friday i ate a whole chicken.

i put my hand on the bible and i solemnly swear
leave the mall with more shoes than i can possibly wear

T-shirt idea:

i've been performing some dark acts of ritual magic in public and private for a while there and now it's time to bury it, bury it, into the super-conscious. Hopefully it's before I've done that harm.

The theory we're working with at the moment is that at some point in my youth i had some kind of accident where what should be my inner monologue got dislodged into my mouth and my subconscious got moved up into my brain

i'm so cool, but i'm so hot, and i'm so cool, and you... you're so not

To me now "listen to music" seems to exclusively mean "listen to Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation 101 on repeat"

i was going to perform an act of emotional surgery the likes of which the world has never seen, a carving from scruffy sleef grafted like tree bark onto skinny and shoeless but it turns out i don't need it; sometimes you just need to talk to follow a wizard into an ant hill and talk to a goblin

Met up with Gabriel to discuss magick with a k, nice young man, nice night; i was coming undone, of course. That was the week really til Saturday night, coming undone. I really should try to write something down about Saturday night for my own sake to refer back to later but it's in the chat logs, it's in the logs. but it would be good to put it in glass caps in case of emergency. For a lot of the week i was laying in bed shivering and shakering. Seemingly in response to small green circles beside little pictures. One by one. Have you ever had flu-like symptoms in response to dread? I didn't know it was possible, or i guess i did in theory but it's so real for me now. And on Saturday it was like I'd been struck by lightning. Imogen Heap pointed at me and said "the social computer", but it was not then. It was earlier. Knocked right out, crawled away, beginnings and endings.

not sure this is a vitamin thing
more i’ve ruined my life type thing
but thanks i’ll try magnesium

Middleton Green is middleton brown. No water upstairs in Bethnal Green. And Kat's Digital Micropublics Workshop was excellent and it was great to hear everybody talk and all their interesting ideas. But i was extremely out of it that day. Extremely out of it. Out and out and out. But there was a very good conversation in the afterwards. And i left ready the whole time in retrospect, and on the way home the pilot light was reignited by spontaneous combustion.

So that's the past, that's finally the past. I'm happy. Woke up ready to set the sky on fire. It was me the whole time. I'm sleepy now but today I went to SET Social which is a very special place that's in danger.

It was so sweet, some of it. And there was Sunshine.

artclubsartclubsartclubsartclubsartclubsartclubsartclubs

✅ true

i can not believe it's Sunday again and time to write. this week went like that. last one was one of them ones but this week went like that.

you live here all your life?

yes

do you love it?

y...e…s……….

so why do you stay?

other places it’s better to be on the beaches or the fields but here it’s better to work

other places it’s better to live but here it’s better to work?

yes *turns the music up*

did the french really invent going down a street and not being able to get out the other side?

Aug 24, 2026 at 10:09 PM EDT | 17°C Partly Cloudy | MP Reproductions, Montréal QC

i’m lying on my lil rabbit couch in my little rabbit hotel watching battle rap. would like to spend a little more time here. it’s a big mouse town. it's a sitting around on little benches town. it's a church next to the stripclub town. you know the kind of town? that, and a big mouse town.

i really wish -- no never mind -- 15 minutes of fame -- a quarter too -- i'm a dime short of a half dollar and you're a quarter too -- that is worth some time to think, that is worth some time

Aug 25, 2026 at 3:12 PM EDT | 21°C Partly Cloudy

i didn’t have time to get a new tattoo in Montreal, so i owe a piece of myself to that city must return

i'll quit my job and open a vibe shop like Velours

i popped into Kingston, it was nice.

Aug 26, 2026 at 7:21 AM EDT | 15°C Fog | Union / Mowat, Kingston ON

tim horton hears a hoo

Aug 26, 2026 at 8:12 AM EDT | some little clouds but mostly gentle baby blue | Megabus Terminal

i'm once again on the back of a cross-country bus. Though they don't have Greyhounds here anymore and I don't think they have anything that goes across the whole land. but i understand there are Megabuses that cover the East, Megabuses that cover the west. Some of real formative happenings happened towards the back of one of these kinds of big bus, nodding out (not from heroin, lack of sleep - but very similar to heroin without the nice lifting out of suffering). I'd come to and there'd be a city I'd never seen; a 7eleven parking lot; a rush-in-rush-out McDonalds pit stop "we'll leave without you!"; a river, a forest, a field, a white stone lime temple (might have been a bank), a desert like straight out of loony toons with a orange-mellow sand and cartoon cactus (looking back maybe they might have been the kind with little hats you can eat in Mexico). That was nearly 20 years ago. Just 2 was Barca-Paris-LDN. Two before that was between me and sof and the waterfalls, that's in here i guess. Both? Trains feel like transport but big bus don't, they're a place on wheels

The Megabus smells fascinating. Agent Smith really the most sympathetic character in The Matrix (1999) right now.

The sky today's all periwinkle peppered pale with salty clouds, i’m sitting in the back of the bus with my bag opened up. There’s a picture of the two of us! Yes, what a pretty sky like washed denim.

the cpsi numbers in Toronto are out of this world. Highest of any Canadian city so far

and it was lovely, LOVELY, to see Shehara and Marianna and meet their husbands. it's been two decades of anticipation. and it was lovely to see my friend Zaina. Shehara made a dip, we sat silly in the park and then to the One Star Bar with Zoozoo where i ate a bowl of chili until i got too sleepy to live and then me and Zoozoo went back to my place and talked.

The lady at the record store let me try the box chomper, that's the chomper that chomps boxes open from their protective plastic shells. And there's a toilet rusted shut and hinges clogged with uric clumps. When you're ready to be friends let me know and we'll go to the movies. Until then it's... all the stops hurt like clockwork. Sorry, forget I said anything. All the fixings in the bathroom are squeaking like they're tight new fits but they're tight from filth i think?

Zaina took me out to the ball game and it was such a wonderful night. There's nothing like a big baseball game. It's for everyone.

Remember when the hot dog man shouted “goof! fucking goof! faggot! white faggot!” at that dude outside the museum?

And Diana took me to a marvelous little gallery called Toutoune. Wonderful people. I love them, hope i will return.

There is so much more to write about that, and about Toronto. And if i don't write it now so much of it will dribble out of my ears and into the nowhere forever. But I've run out of time, I have 2% battery and it's already the day after yesterday.

I'm absolutely dreading going back to work. I don't want to talk to anyone or about anything at all to do with any of that ever again for as long as i live. Perhaps after a little nap and a bowl of chili i will see things differently. But right now the very idea with it fills me with a dread that is so wet i might drown in it, a slimy wet dread that coats the bathroom stall and there are things living in it and i can't even look at it because i'm afraid i might smell it or taste it or see it move.

I visited Eataly, Toronto. Didn't I write something about that? And Zoozoo came. It was so nice to have a friend. I could really move to Toronto and have a whole group of friends to just slot into, several little scenes. Also, some other day a guy from Ottawa showed me a photo of some boobs on his phone in the back of a coffee shop on Queen Street and then the barista called me baby and gave me a free cold brew. She was trying to fix me. It worked for a little while.

Back in the mild wild web. Can we have files that only exist when you're somewhere? But they exist for everyone who's there? It's time to open an art gallery / shop / tattoo parlour. i think the computer is part of it too. i feel a little like teenage engineering did when they made the op-1, everyone was going analogue. And Jesper was like hey, i think there's still some more juice in pure digital computer synth. there's more FM, more LPC, there's stuff in there. Let's make it feel good and lean into the computer. The girlies are making cyberdecks, they go into their little analogue bag. The analogue bag has an iPod in an unexpected turn on linguistics.

You know how Digital and Analogue mean like Discrete and Continuous? You can measure a newspaper column in inches, that's analogue. Or in words, that's digital. Quantative vs Qualitative research could get that too. We could rename them. Quantative research can be known as digital research or discrete research, and qualitative research can be renamed to analogue research or continuous research. Quantized is on a grid, but non-quantized is more true to life. Free, true, continuous, grainy. Infinite resolution research.

sorry - it's time to go and make a chili. i hope tomorrow i find out i'm going to be okay. but i don't know how to 7 of Wands without 5 of Swordsing it all up. or, i'm not sure i do. a wingless cauduceus carried by a disembodied griffin as long as we hold on to our emotions and focus on... well, i need to buy some celery and beans