2025 Week 30

Nearly gave myself a little jolt there by typing 'Week 40' I thought - surely we are not that close to the end of the year. Thankfully not. Though let us dwell momentarily on what things might look like by week 40 of this year - the assignments will be in and the marks received; the dissertation topic will be chosen and the work will be underway; mark reviews will be pretty much completed; hopefully the next ski holiday will have been booked; the tasks I need to do for the start of the new school year will be complete, or will no longer matter. 

I have spent much of the past week working on said assignments, though not as much as I should have done. I am meant to be working on the least favourite of them now, but find myself doing some extra bits of exam work that have come through today and chipping away at this blog post. I'm not sure if it's self-sabotage, a hint of burnout or just plain being stuck that is to blame for that. The preferred assignment is going well - so well, in fact, that I divined I might well spend all my available time on it and then fail the other one (I have already resigned myself to barely scraping a pass and am wondering what might happen if I did indeed fail, but since the answer is undoubtedly that this would just mean I have to work on it EVEN MORE and in September, when I'm busier...well, fine) so I have had to set it aside for now. 

In true navel-gazing style, I have been trying to work out what it is about this that is causing me so much stress. Whenever I make a concerted effort to actually do some work on it, I feel much happier and more hopeful about the whole thing. As soon as I stop, or look through what I haven't yet done, I just feel completely overwhelmed and out of my depth. Is this a feature of me as a learner? It has been an extraordinarily long time since I've done anything that I found academically challenging. As in, I can't actually remember a time. Maybe Year 9 algebra, with poor Father Hand explaining it to me over and over again on the phone from Florida. Maybe that assessment course I did with the exam board in 2016, writing those assignments was not fun, but they were short and a simple pass/fail. 

I think a big part of it also is that there is so much (SO much) that I don't understand. I read studies similar to the one I'm supposed to be writing, as we've been advised to do, and it's like reading something in a foreign language. I cannot write something similar because I simply don't know what they're on about. 

Anyway. This isn't helping, obvs. I just wanted to record it because the process of being a learner is currently so difficult and I need to somehow grasp on to this and remember it when I'm back in my classroom. I maintain that learning history can never be this difficult because it doesn't involve impossible tasks like testing for biases...oh actually. Yes, I did just write that and yes, I am having a word with myself. 

Other new this past week. We got to the end of the exam work on the predicted day: this is the first time that has ever happened, hurrah. I went to the gym four times, to yoga and to swim in the quarry, which is pretty warm now. I opted to do the oft-closed 750m loop but it felt waaaaaay more than 200m longer than the regular route and I was pretty tired by the end of it. My Z and I went for a nice brunch up the 'wood which is becoming a very pleasant habit. I tentatively packed for a little holiday I should be going on this week, to Oslo, though it may not go ahead as Mother Z is very unwell. 

We finished watching The Good Wife and I was reminded again how women in American TV series cannot ever really be strong and independent, enjoy sex or have power, without being ultimately punished in their story arc. Not much reading happened, I chipped away at Seven Killings but am put off by the fact it is a physical book and I need to take my Kindle on holiday, for space reasons, so I started Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, which is proving very readable so far. 

Back to the assignments!

Weird Gym Man

As a woman who has been a confident free-weight user for over a decade now, I frequent the free weights area of the gym regularly. I am always on the prowl for anybody out to give me guidance. In case you weren't aware, there is a large body of evidence out there demonstrating that (in particular) men like to interfere with (in particular) women's technique, weight load, just general business when they're in the free weight area. Some women are so intimidated by this that they won't use the free weights section. This sort of thing is why there are women-only gyms. I expect there are men who are intimidated as well but I haven't come across any stories about this. 

Not me, though. I am practically begging for someone to come at me. I have honed my icy glare, my single raised eyebrow, my polite but definite eye roll. I have good technique and I lift heavy. Please, let's talk. 

Well, I thought this was the case, anyway. Years passed with no interaction. I suspect I was becoming one of those horrible intimidating gym bros myself, so often did I scoff internally (and we know this internal scoffing can always be read on my face, I give everything away) at poor technique or not re-racking weights or not wiping down after use or, my personal bugbear, men staring at their phones for 10 minutes between sets. 

(I don't want to make it a gendered thing but it just is, at least at my gym). 

Fast forward to last month. I have my usual gym turn out - loud music in noise-cancelling earbuds, no glasses so I can't really see anything beyond the equipment I'm using, refusal to meet anybody's eye. I'm setting up for deadlifting. I've waited a while to use the deadlift platform. Man walks into the deadlift platform in order to retrieve the Olympic bar that I had intended to set up to superset squats with deadlifts. 

Admittedly, he perhaps wasn't to know that, but I think it's bad form to walk into someone's workout space and take something from it without asking. My face says this, loudly. He scuttles off with the bar to the chest press rack I have recently vacated - the one with the Olympic bar in the rack next to it, where I had placed it, where he sets it up to do the exercise I had just finished. I am confounded.  

For a short time, I consider just modifying my work out, but in the end I decided I can go and retrieve the Olympic bar not in use for my squats. I do this, trying not to make eye contact or talk, but it turns out, his stolen bar is in the way, so I have to ask him to move. He speaks but I pretend not to hear or notice, in case he's trying to tell me off. It turns out that all my bravado is worthless in the face of potential confrontation. I return to my area and do my deadlifts and squats combo. It's hard. I'm slow and tired and sweating. 

At some point, Weird Gym Man comes back to the deadlift area and sets up the deadlift hex bar on the mats next to me. He puts 30kg on. This adds up to about half what I'm deadlifting (interior smile). There is, again, some attempt to talk to me, particularly when I am re-racking weights, but again, I pretend not to notice. It's not that hard to do this as I have become temporarily mostly deaf and blind. But eventually, his persistence gets to the point where I just can't ignore him anymore. 

Him: I said, you have a strong back

Me: Er...yes

Him: You're stronger than me

Me: Yes. Well, it has taken a while (thinking: I weigh a lot more than you)

Him: What's the heaviest you've done?

Me: Er...I did 120kg once. But it was a long time ago

Him: But you're lifting 90 there and you make it look like it's floating

Me: (I didn't think this sort of interaction was supposed to be so ego-boosting) Thanks...haha...er, well like I said, it's taken a while

Him: I reckon you could do 200kg easy. That's what I'm training towards. If you watch the world's strongest man, they do maybe 1-3 reps of a very heavy weight and then they don't deadlift again for a couple of weeks

Me: Oh, right, well I do it [this way]

Him: I guess that's one way to go. I am no expert. I can guarantee you that within 18 months, I'll be deadlifting heavier than anyone else in this gym but you...you'll be a close second

Ahhhhh! There it is! Wow, I cannot WAIT to be a close second to Weird Gym Man. That's going to be a CV-worthy accomplishment, particularly considering he is currently nowhere near a close second to me. 

The positive of this is that he has made me lift heavier. I tend to wait until I can do three sets of 10 at a weight for a few weeks, before going up. I am going up quicker now. Tbf, lifting very heavy is not really my goal. I am strength training for (1) better skiing ability and, at a distance behind that, (2) higher resting metabolism because I still eat too much and (3) better health in my old age. But the very idea that Weird Gym Man might outstrip me has lit a fire under me. 

We have had a couple more interactions now. Once I was using the chest press and he wanted it next. I asked him if he wanted my weight. 'No! You're much stronger than me! For now...give it 6 months though...' (oh, we're down to 6 now!) and then I sprayed the bench down and he told me how pointless he thought all this wiping of sweat was. We're in a gym, everyone sweats, why do you bother with that? I resisted the urge to point out the multiple signs instructing gym users to wipe down their equipment and muttered something about it being a habit since covid. He wouldn't let it drop though. I had to do an awkward 'oh heart rate's dropping, gotta go exercise some more' to get away. Now I moved him firmly into Weird Gym Man territory because nobody not weird likes other people's sweat THAT much, surely. 

I have moved deadlifting to Friday's session for the summer holiday. I still go on a Sunday, though. Quite often he is chatting to someone who looks like they've been caught at home by a double-glazing salesman, so I'm thinking - just socially awkward. Last Sunday, I clocked him, recognisable even to my glasses-free blur by his unusual sartorial choice of dark t-shirt and white shorts. He came and dangled off the bar next to where I was doing pull-downs. I fastidiously ignored him. 

Now I will shorten him to WGM so if you're reading future entries and wonder who that is - here is the key. I have noticed a surprising amount of traffic to my blog lately, you ten regulars are joined by 80-100 more readers in the week or so after I've posted, so I can only assume I'm being crawled by 80-100 LLMs who are learning my writing style for nefarious AI purposes. Joke's on them, LLMs are never going to be in with the chance of being a close second to a WGM. 

2025 Week 29

School's out! We broke up on Tuesday and, for the first time in many years, I didn't join in the partying at the end of term, because I had a root canal (second half) at 8am the following morning. The weather was grey and windy so I went swimming in the quarry, a swim I booked some week ago so of course the weather was bad. The water was warm compared to the wind and I was reluctant to get out at the end; I really felt like I had left the school year behind me when I eventually stepped back onto dry land. As if by magic, the work issue I had been turning over in my mind for a week without solution solved itself on the drive home. Some school work needs to happen some time, but it can happen in the future. 

Meanwhile, the exam marking finished, then it finished a bit more, then it finished completely - days earlier than it usually would. I'm working through the endless reading that goes on at the end of the process but it has been managed differently this year, so the work is a small fraction of previous years' (243 half scripts to read, as opposed to 900 full scripts. No, I have not got those numbers wrong) and it's all set up on a nice online system for me, instead of me having to open 1800 separate pdfs and fill in 60 separate Word docs. Common sense finally prevailed - at least for this year. The reading and the reports represent the final tasks of the series, bar the mop up, which means I should be finished a full week earlier than usual. 

This is just as well, because rumbling in the background of this are the two MSc assignments that I really just need to get on with. Some of that has happened this weekend and I am trying to force myself into the work, on the basis that if I can continue to work hard now, I won't have to take any work on holiday with me. And I could do with the break. 

Oh yes, the root canal! Don't read this if you don't like tooth things. Back in November I had an abscess that absorbed two rounds of antibiotics but did not actually go away. It didn't hurt, that was the main thing. Every so often I'd get a weeping pustule on my gum (lovely) but - it didn't hurt. I had a check up booked for April so I waited. That check up got pushed to the end of May. The dentist x-rayed me and said words you really would prefer not to hear from the dentist: 'The human body never ceases to amaze me'. Rather than heal, the infection had spread from the old root canal it had been festering around to the tooth that had actually hurt last November, even though it had been infection free. No, it doesn't make sense. Yes, it necessitated a root canal. The dentist, Bianca, love her, got me in for said root canal last Friday, only after an hour of drilling, terrifying words like 'calcified' and 'sclerotic' and appalling smells, she was not even close to finished. 'My next available appointment is on August 1st,' she said as she patched me up, and I nearly cried. All weekend long I religiously double-dosed ibuprofen and paracetamol every four hours, including through the night, and it had thankfully lessened to a dull ache by Monday morning, sort of like a jaw punch. I stalked my emails, waiting for the appointment. Happily she squeezed me in on Wednesday - happy holidays! - and managed to get it finished. I was braced for another 48 hours of horrible pain but it hasn't materialised. 

I have to say that a silver lining to having such terrible teeth is that I don't get so phased by the dentist anymore. I was almost asleep in the chair on Friday. I would prefer to have good teeth, though. I think it would be one of my mythical three wishes - perfect teeth, teleportation, the ability to speak, read and write all known languages fluently. I'd be unstoppable. 

What has happened since then? Not much. I've been to the gym twice, woo - I've been missing my Sundays lately. I'd kept up quite a good streak of Sundays until marking season hit. This reminds me that I have a Weird Man At The Gym to write about, the falling off of the weeknotes means he remains in obscurity for now but I will try to come back and write about him some time this week, when I'm avoiding my assignments. He was there today but I successfully ignored him, something that doesn't happen very often. 

I went to knitting for the first time in a little while and made a start on a unicorn jumper for the niece. I figured out I might see her in the last week of August so I would like to finish it for then. It would make perfect train knitting for my upcoming rail adventure to Milan and then Bari. 

I've been reading a bit of A Brief History of Seven Killings which I bought in May last year when I heard Marlon James speak at Toppings. I know it's going to be all-consuming but I haven't really got into it yet. What I really need is that Thursday Murder Club book I bought for light reading and have now put somewhere safe and can't find. We continue to rewatch The Good Wife which takes very little effort and I continue to be jealous of how many banging red jackets the female cast members have between them. It's not fair, I can't find even one red jacket that isn't really a strong orange. 

This week? Getting things DONE. Hopefully. 

Weekend FO

This is from a weekend some time almost a month ago, but it still counts. 

As an aside, I really love these new red shorts I got from Boden. The only sad thing is that Boden seems to have been the victim of its venture capitalists because the quality is just really poor compared to what it once was, so I'm already mourning this gorgeous red colour, which I fear can't last more than this summer. 

This is the Tolsta tank from my last post - square neck version. The only mod is that I went down a size during the body of the top, by decreasing 4 stitches every 6th row until I got to the stitch count for size 4. 

It took about two skeins of the Namolio yarn, so maybe 600m, and I love the glimmer from the secret strand of sparkly linen thread. 

Nothing else has been cast on yet but I have wound the yarn for the niece's unicorn jumper, I just need to look away from my phone for long enough to cast on. Well, if I have to be honest, the blocked is that the pattern is not immediately to hand. I know it cannot be far away, probably it has fallen down the back of the sofa, but mental energy has been somewhat lacking as I mark and mark and mark and then spend much of the rest of my time worrying about the aforementioned university assignments. I did make a start on one them 10 days ago but it made me cry so I have not been back to it since. The very opposite of a sensible, rational reaction. 

Still, school's out now. Today I have seen the dentist, the optician and the beautician. The house is filthy but relatively tidy. The end of marking is in sight. It's two weeks until my first holiday. Time to get cracking.