A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The forty-ninth post of a series of fifty-two: I’ve decided not to continue writing weeknotes next year.

I want to do something a bit different for 2023, though I haven’t quite settled on what. The blog will turn twenty years old in May. This feels significant, though mostly reflects time plus inertia.

I’ve been reading Zadie Smith’s Intimations this week.

Writing is routinely described as ‘creative’ – this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

I’ve also been writing plenty of emails and briefings which boil down to “it’s under control, panic is the enemy here”.

When I am writing, space and time itself bend to my will! Through the medium of tenses!

I’ve long known and used the fact that “writing is control”, but never had such an elegant phrase to describe it. And in describing it so well, Smith has helped me to see for the first time the now obvious connection between creating control through writing at work, and marshalling my thoughts through writing at home.

Note to Paul McCartney: you may be one of the most celebrated lyricists in history, and you’re welcome to the singular ‘they’, but really I must insist on agreement between singular subjects and their associated verbs.

The choir of children sings their songs.

If you could record a small retake 43 years on, it’d really help me to have a wonderful Christmastime.

The backspace key on my wireless keyboard became a bit mushy this week. I prised it off to clean it, and in so-doing, snapped one of the retaining clips.

I got my spare wireless keyboard out, and was irritated to find that it wouldn’t charge.

But get this: replacement clips and keycaps are available cheaply for the first, and the batteries in the second can be easily changed.

After all the talk lately about ensuring consumer goods are repairable, not least for ecological reasons, it finally seems to be actually happening.

The images in this post are all AI-generated images for the prompt ‘computer keyboard with Christmas decorations’ created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. You’d have thought that a computer would have a better idea of what a computer keyboard looks like.