2019/12: Hogsmeade Station

My job is a little strange sometimes. This week I was asked to write a policy on what you should do upon finding a dead body. I didn’t have a clue where to start, but I figured I had a rough idea of what you shouldn’t do and it kind of worked itself out from there.

We managed to get out camping again. It was a bit chilly. Overnight temperatures are down to six degrees, so that’s probably the end of camping season for this year. We camped on a small site in the Yorkshire Moors, just above Pickering. The moors are beautiful at this time of year – bleak and wild, but full of color and life. We visited Goathland, whose train station was the setting for Hogsmeade Station in the first Harry Potter film; and Whitby, famed for being visited by Dracula. Plenty of culture around these parts.

I’ve got it in my head that a caravan would be a wise investment. Less messing around than a tent, and a few more home comforts included. E says that we are far too young to own a caravan. She’s probably right, and I doubt our feeble car could pull one anyway.

Finished reading:

The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah

Never has Alaska sounded so beautiful yet so formidable. I put off reading this for ages – a mistake because it was wonderful. Also, this was marked three hundred books since I started counting in 2012. Imagine what I could have done with all that time.

From the net:

Some things I enjoyed on the internet this week:

• The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan [Wired]. A recommendation from my friend Jon, one mans story of a lone walk across Japan’s Nakasendo Way using only the bare minimum of technology to document his journey. Something that struck me while reading was the authors assertion that social media forces you to enter the ‘stream’ in order to share, a distinguishing feature from email, blogs, text messages and the like. You can’t share without consuming. I’ve never thought about it like that.
• Stephen King: ‘I have outlived most of my critics. It gives me great pleasure’ [Guardian]
• Simon Nowicki [Instagram]. Super black and white street photography.