For some reason I’ve been feeling really sluggish and torpid for the last two weeks. Despite sleeping a good 8 hours per day, I don’t want to get up in the morning, don’t feel like doing anything during the day, and the best moment of the day is going to sleep in the evening. Like being sick without actually feeling sick. Today was a bit better, so hopefully that’s turning around now. The fact that I actually feel like blogging is certainly a good sign!

Eric and I went for a long walk in the countryside today, for the first time in…. must be about 8 months now. We’ve been trying to do this for a few weeks now, but one weekend Eric was off workin in Manchester, one was rainy, and last weekend Eric had to work (but we did get to Hampstead Heath last Sunday at least).

There are a lot of walking books in England – walks in London, walks around London, walks in any part of the country in fact. We’ve got two “Walks near London” books – one by Time Out, one by Globetrotter.

Books like this make it really easy to go out for a walk. There is an overview map at the front of the book where you can pick your walk based on region, and a list that sets out the length of each one.

Then each walk has a brief description with highlights (villages, hills, manor houses etc). That’s followed by a detailed route description and a schematic map. The directions are clear and thorough; we’ve done about half a dozen of these walks and never had any trouble following the route, even though we haven’t got any proper maps of the area. And all walks in these books are accessible by train (plus they even tell you which station the trains go from). Most of the time they also suggest picnic spots and good places to get lunch. So all you need is a train ticket and the book.

Today was an excellent day for walking – clear and sunny, a bit chilly but not too cold (just above freezing) and it hasn’t rained much recently so even the muddy patches were easily passable. Since we haven’t been out for any long walks for many months we thought we’d start easy – and the days are rather short as well – so we picked a shortish walk (14 km). We also made it a bit easier and lighter by not carrying our own lunch, which we usually do – we thought it might be a bit too cold to sit and have a cold lunch outside.

The walk was in the North Downs in Surrey, starting in Guildford and finishing in Gomshall. It was a mixture of hills, woods, grassy ridges and farmland – quite a lot of variety. Pleasant paths, quiet, not too many roads, and not too many people. Nice views in many places. A bit colourless, though, as nothing is really growing yet. But there were some green pine forests and quite a few holly bushes, and even a small patch of crocuses and some snowdrops.

No matter what kind of walk it is, it turns out that we cover about 3 km per hour, including all stops, rests and lunch breaks. And even though we had lunch at a pub this time (and a surprisingly good lunch – at the White Horse in Shere) and had to wait half an hour for it, we still ended up making the whole trip in just under 5 hours, so the 3 km/h average pace still holds.

All in all an excellent day, leaving me pleasantly tired. I definitely want to do this more often again. And we need get our legs used to walking again – my knees and hips are a bit sore.

It’s my last week on my old job. I’m shedding responsibilities one by one, like layers of clothes.

On Monday I handed over the morning report that’s forced me to get in to the office by 7:20 every morning. I slept until 7 both yesterday and today. Luxury! This morning I actually woke up before the alarm. And it was light when I got up! It’s as if spring had come overnight.

For the past 5 months I have been tired every day. All the morning things – brushing teeth, showering, preparing breakfast sandwich – were done in a daze. I only forced myself to a more alert state when I cycled out through the front gate. I used to almost catch up during weekends, and be more or less recovered by Sunday afternoon, but there was little left of that Monday morning.

Waking up rested is such a wonderful feeling.

For the first time in years, I am actually enjoying grocery shopping.

We have two supermarkets in the neighbourhood, both less than 10 minutes away by bike. One is a Sainsbury’s, and always has been, while the other one has had a more colourful history.

It started out as Safeway (red and green), and was initially a really good shop: wide range of goods, good quality vegetables, nice little inspiring ingredients.

Safeway then got bought by Morrison’s (black & yellow). Morrison’s aim is low prices, and that was very visible. Things got cheaper, but the choice narrowed. After a while there was 2 shelf metres of their own-label orange juice, and the top and bottom shelves were completely empty. I don’t know if that was intentional – they may have just been running the store while looking for a buyer – but I can’t imagine it went very well for them. We saw fewer and fewer people in the shop, and stopped going ourselves, too.

They finally sold the store to Waitrose (green) a couple of months ago. The change has been remarkable. There’s more choice, which is good, but even better is that their range is more focused on things I like! Instead of cheap fluffy white bread, they’ve got several kinds of whole grain bread; instead of many boxes of pale tomatoes they have organic vegetables. There’s a far wider choice of organic foods in general, and of vegetarian ready meals. The food in general is of better quality, and the deli department positively makes me drool. And the juice aisle has dozens of nice juices!

More generally, I now walk around in the store and feel good about the things I find. Rather than thinking, “Don’t they have anything GOOD here?” I can pick and choose. I find interesting things that weren’t on the list but would fit nicely into my dinner plan. Grocery shopping isn’t a painful chore any more.

It turns out that Waitrose is owned by the same group who run John Lewis department stores, which happens to be my favourite department store, by far. Those people either think just like me and have the same preferences – or maybe they just know very well what sort of customers they have and what those customers like. Either way, I really like this shop.

My favourite organiser consists of a piece of cardboard and post-it notes.

For the last four and a half years, I’ve been using the Getting Things Done approach to keep my life organised. In its simplest form, GTD has two parts: (1) capturing all things that you want to get done in a trusted system outside your head, and (2) making decisions about new inputs (emails etc) when they arrive, rather than letting them pile up. The GTD seminar that got me started on this path, and the book that goes with it have made a great difference in my life. I thought I was reasonably well-organised before, but this is so much better.

The second part of GTD is a matter of discipline and routine; the first one requires a physical system. Initially I used Outlook and a Palm Pilot for most of my organising. But over time I realised that while they were great for keeping my calendar and address book up to date, I didn’t like them for keeping track of my outstanding projects and tasks. I couldn’t get an overview, I couldn’t scribble notes on them, I could only reorder them based on rigid categories and priority levels.

So I moved to a paper-based system that gives me more flexibility. My organiser consists of an A4 piece of cardboard and post-it notes. Different categories and/or priorities get separate post-it notes. It’s simple, dirt cheap, easy to reshuffle, and I can see everything at the same time without scrolling. Adding an item is also much faster than going to Outloook and creating a new task. Some large projects get a whole temporary page of their own; likewise if my list just grows too large for one page. I usually have about 2 to 4 of these on my desk at work.

I tried to use the same for life outside the office, but for some reason it never took off. After a month or two, the list got neglected and out of date. I think this happened because I didn’t use this one list for all my non-work projects and next actions – some were still in the Palm Pilot, some just in e-mails – because I wanted to be able to see them when I was at work or out on town, or because I thought of them when I was at work.

Now I’ve finally decided to get rid of the Palm. I’ve used it very little lately, and it takes up too much space in my handbag. The first step is to move my tasks and to do lists out of the Palm. I’ve also migrated my passwords database from the Palm to a PC application (Password Manager XP). Address book, general notes and calendar are all important too, but I don’t use them constantly like I use my task list, so these can all wait until later.

The Palm had an advantage in portability over the A4 sheets – they just won’t fit into a handbag. So I’m currently experimenting with a smaller format of my paper-based organiser. The initial prototype is roughly 10 by 15 centimetres, which is just about the same size as my wallet, and large enough for two standard-sized post-it notes or seven mini-post-its. There’s a cardboard cover shaped like a book, six loose cardboard leaves inside, and the whole package is held together by a small bulldog clip.

For a prototype it’s worked surprisingly well. It’s pleasantly physical, and very convenient, so it’s more up to date than the previous solution ever was. I can add an item as soon as I think of it, because the organiser is always with me in my handbag. It’s easy to spread out all the pages to get an overview of what’s on my list.

The cardboard cover is not durable enough for long-term daily usage, so I plan to make a leather version soon. The final version will also have pockets on the inside of both covers for spare post-its and for more permanent lists (phone numbers and such). And it will hopefully be more pleasing to the eye than simple grey cardboard!

We had a whale in London yesterday – according to Sky News, the first-ever whale in the Thames “since records began in 1913”.

I had never seen a whale before, and it was Friday afternoon after all, so I took some time off work and went to see it. (Once again I’m glad I cycle to work – I couldn’t have done it otherwise.) At the time BBC reported it as being near Battersea, so it would only take me around 20 minutes to get there. (The office is near Blackfriars.) Already at Vauxhall bridge I could hear helicopters, so I knew I wouldn’t have trouble finding it.

And indeed after Chelsea bridge there were crowds on both sides of the river (over a thousand I think) and three helicopters hovering overhead. Half a dozen boats of various shapes and sizes marked the spot: two police boats, one harbour master, one that seemed to be filled with either journalists or biologists since they were taking photos all the time, and a few others.

The whale itself was a northern bottle-nosed whale, according to the news – 5 metres and 7 tonnes. It looked small because of the distance, but its real size was more apparent when it got close to one of the smaller boats. It wasn’t particularly co-operative when it came to photographing. It only came up to the surface very briefly, showing only its back. So my pictures aren’t particularly good, I just took them to have some memento of this event. This is the first time I’ve seen a whale in the wild… eh… in nature… well, outside of a TV in any case!

I think the boats were mostly trying to discourage the whale from moving further upstream. The whale didn’t move very far during the half-hour or so that I watched it. Comments in the BBC say that it is now exhausted and disoriented, understandably. I hope it finds its way out, or is helped out soon.

The BBC has pictures and some facts and comments. There are also pictures on Flickr, including one of mine.

I used to slightly envy Eric his family. It’s a large family, for starters, and that can’t be said about mine. It’s also a very open, relaxed and warm family. They are welcoming to guests and very obviously all care very much about each other.

As I said, I used to be envious of that. Until I realised, a while ago, that even though I don’t share the name, it is now actually my family too!

The family is what I miss most, here in London, far away.

We’re in Stockholm for a long weekend (Thursday – Sunday), mostly visiting Eric’s sprawling family (sisters Nina & Lisa, brother Anders, father Christer, and all their families).

Seeing Nina’s daughter Hedvig, now almost 6 years old, is always a joy, and she enjoys our visits as much as we do. We usually stay at their house when we’re in town. I haven’t been to Stockholm since last January, I think, so she has had time to grow a lot since then. Last time she was more into playing make-believe games (involving lots of princesses who needed to be rescued), counting things and making bead pictures; this time she is more interested in drawing pictures (of houses and gardens – for princesses of course).

Hedvig’s brother Ivar is just over a year old and getting more interesting to interact with – leaving the “cute warm bundle” stage and becoming a person.

We spent yesterday evening in the company of Anders & Karin and Karin’s parents. Her father Sam is a rather eccentric character, but he is a writer after all, and writers almost have an obligation to be eccentric. A pleasant evening, even though the conversation tended to be about things I don’t have much interest in – the oddities of the English royal family, the hilarity of old soap operas, etc.

During daytime I have just been walking around in central Stockholm and wandering around in the shops. Normally I don’t particularly enjoy shopping, but Stockholm’s streets and shops are so much less crowded, and so much cleaner and fresher, that it’s quite a pleasant way to spend half a day. Besides, most things on sale in Stockholm are better designed and more to my taste than what I find in London, so I took the opportunity to buy things that have been on my shopping list for quite some time.

The same is true of the public transport system, for that matter – cleaner, less crowded and more pleasant to look at. in London we always cycle when we want to get somewhere, but if/when we move back here, I think I might start using the metro again.

This year’s most immediately successful Christmas present: a Sony PSP + Lumines. It’s a Tetris-like game but more and better. After a while, Tetris just comes down to having incredibly fast fingers. Here, planning and forethought matter more, and it’s possible to get a lot better by practising. Higher levels are not just faster but also different, and require different tactics.

The “colorful, swirling backgrounds” that the review describes as “clear and clutter-free” are anything but, in my opinion (big flashing things in colours that are very close to the colours of actual game elements) but I’ve got to admit that they are quite pretty.

There are also “time attack” and “puzzle” modes which are good for short games – a full game now takes me about 30 – 60 minutes, depending on how well it goes. A very nice game; the first one in a long time that I’ve really loved, and quite addictive.

A winter with no snow is not a proper winter.

Snow is the definitive separator that cuts the long cold season (“not summer”) into distinct parts. Without snow, autumn just gets colder and and darker until it starts getting noticeably warmer again, and then it is called spring. All rather unsatisfyingly vague. But add some snow, and winter emerges as a proper season, worthy of having a name of its own.

Snow makes the world lighter and cleaner. It brings sharp contrasts, covering up autumn’s indistinct dust and mud, and the black skies of winter evenings are set off against a sharp white ground.

There’s rarely any snow in London… we had one snowy day last year. This year I hear rumours that some snow was sighted between Christmas and New Year, while we were away in a warmer place.

But I got at least one weekend’s worth of snow in the Ardennes (with Kid 2 weeks ago). We wandered around in a beautiful coniferous forest for hours. The snow was wet but fresh, and many paths were untouched by human feet (though there were tracks of hare and squirrel and deer) to the point where it was sometimes difficult to see where the paths were. The thick mists were very pretty but didn’t make pathfinding any easier!