Monthnotes: March 2026

March was a busy month with some big work deadlines, but I did a good job of staying relaxed. I had a client trip to London, visited Haworth with Naomi, and spent a few days in Leeds for some meetings. The Hebden Bridge Film Festival took place. I also sent out dozens of copies of the Mycelium Parish News. I ended the month exhausted, but it was a good exhaustion.

Signs of Spring

The 4th Mycelium Parish News was printed at the start of March – over 2 months late. We did a small print run and had to quickly reprint to meet demand – which is great. Doing the fulfilment for the Mycelium Parish News on top of preparations to run work appraisal sessions was challenging, but I kept on top of it. Like they say, if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. Dan and I are slowly gathering items for the 2026 Parish News, but in a more organised way, so the next edition should be easier.

Woodland sculpture

My writing is going well, but I’m still not establishing a flow of sending things out. I attended both Wednesday Writer sessions, which were fun, and I’ve been preparing an April workshop for them. I attended an inspirational playwriting workshop with In a Land, run by Sadie Clark. Among everything else, I’ve been working on the 2026 Advent Calendar and a special, secret project.

Dead tree

Fitness and health were a disaster in March. I was tired a lot, which made it hard to maintain a decent diet – my sugar cravings were sometimes irresistible. I gained a pound and was lucky to get away with that. I think it’s time to buy a new step-counter, but that’s not as easy as it could be because I hate Google’s absorption of Fitbit so much.

More woodland sculpture

After last month’s movie binge I slowed down a little. I watched The Secret Agent, the last Oscar nominee I’d not seen, a day before the ceremony, meaning I’d seen all Best Picture nominees for the third year running. The following weekend was the Hebden Bridge Film festival, where I watched five movies and the short film competition. Apart from Rosy’s prizewinning film, my festival highlight was Koln 75, an incredible story about a teenager putting on a concert. I saw Sinners for the third time at a cinema and loved it. The Sound of Falling was an incredible experience. I also watched Eraserhead, but didn’t like it – not really a home movie experience, I guess.

Rosy receiving 1st Prize in the Calderdale Voices Film Festival competirion

I’ve been reading a lot this month, albeit chaotically. I caught up on Straub/King’s The Black House, read Evan Dando and Melissa Auf Der Maur’s new biographies, and a few less interesting books. The dystopian book club picked 80’s YA novel Futuretrack 5, which felt underwhelming and dated. Strange Buildings by Utekso was an interesting format, but I’ve never like mysteries all that much.

The Bronte sisters paraded around this table while reading their new work

Work-wise, March was intense – although it’s felt nothing like as stressful as December. Client work was full-on, which meant I had little energy at the end of each day for consultancy work I needed to do, preparing for the annual appraisals. I’m approaching 3½ years in the role now and still loving it, which is unexpected and exciting.

Leeds restaurant Donner Summer was one of the most fun meals I’ve had

On top of everything else with work, I need to learn about agentic AI to keep my skills relevant. I passed my GH-300 GitHub Copilot certification, which was so basic as to feel worthless. I’ve been playing a little with Claude, which is incredible for quick apps – in about 20 minutes I made a Spring Boot app to show me all locations from which you can see Stoodley Pike. But I need to build something more substantial. One of the biggest challenges I’ve found with agentic code is figuring out what I should make with it.

My client’s office turns out to be a short walk from Blake’s grave.

I’ve had some intense dreams since covid. One of my March dreams was about an enucleation cult, another about putting on a show with Lou Ice where we held the audience at gunpoint. Otherwise, I’m dreaming about work most nights, which I’m actually happy about. The work dreams to have driven off the bad dreams I’ve long had about growing up.

I appeared on the echologgorhea podcast, talking about my favourite work of art, Thomas Friedman’s 1000 Hours of Staring. There is some background elsewhere on my blog, as well as some older links I wrote after seeing this work of art. Rosy has also shared a video of me talking about the experience of seeing Picasso’s Guernica.

I’ve gone back to blogging. I was looking back at some old entries from the 2010s and realised how much I valued having these brief notes and curated photos (which I’ve written about in another entry). There’s something about the mode of writing where it’s in the open but not quite in public.

Covid ghost signs in London
  • I still hate driving, but I’ve been using the car more for small trips recently. It’s a great improvement on public transport.
  • Nuclear war terrifies me so I read a lot about it. Forgetting the Bomb tells the story of an essential material, codenamed Fogbank, that was so secret the US government forgot how to make it.
  • I was thrilled to discover there was a local horse photographer – and disappointed at the Hebden Bridge Film Festival to learn this was actually a human who photographed horses.

Why I love blogging

I’ve been blogging more recently. This has emerged from re-reading the blog and realising what a powerful record it provides of otherwise-ephemeral moments. It’s also been interesting to pass an export of this to an LLM and ask it to find patterns.

The entries on this blog go back to 2007, but I started blogging back around 20011. The entries and comments have dried up since most people moved onto Twitter and Facebook, but there’s something valuable about writing openly but in a place that’s not promoted, that has only a tiny audience.

While I’ve consistently produced monthnotes since the start of 2020, I wish I had more incidental posts between those times. I’ve been starting to do more of these. To build up a flow of things that have happened. To share more photographs. There’s still value in the monthnotes, but I also want detailed posts about the things I’ve been up to. I want more things to look back on. My own personal blogging revival.

  1. I recently went back and re-read the first few years of my blogs but decided not to import them here. Blogging back then was very different, ↩︎

A Visit to the Tate

I went to the Tate at the start of the month to see Tracey Emin’s new show. One of the fun things about growing older is how things connect across time. I previously saw an Emin solo show in New York in 1999, with my friend Katharine – Every Part of Me’s Bleeding. I called Katharine after visiting the Tate, saying she should go see the show, and explaining that I hadn’t enjoyed it.

The show is titled My Second Life, referring to how Emin survived cancer, and it’s intense. The fact I didn’t enjoy it is no reflection on how great it is – I’ve never seen a show that was this honest and disturbing. The horrors portrayed were a little too much for how I was feeling that day. Emin was dismissed as a confessional artist in the 90s and it’s a mark of success how the times have changed so that her work is now mainstream.

I hadn’t realised there was a Richard Long exhibition on at the same time. A simple five-room display, this was a good overview of his work, with scupltures, photographs and maps.

I also spent some time in the Rothko room. I love staring into those paintings. The room was fairly quiet on a Thursday day-time, and I could truly enjoy the space.

I’d been listening to Songs for Drella that morning, and was happy to see a Warhol in one of the siderooms.

On the way home, I passed through St. Pancras Station, where I saw one last work by Emin, added in 2017.

What to use agentic code generation for?

Last weekend I was playing with Claude AI. I need to get more experience of generative AI for work, and that requires a larger project to play with. But what do I work on?

Suddenly, code is easy. I should be excited by the opportunities that agentic code generation gives me. The problem is, there weren’t any projects I was blocked on due to software complexity. If I’m not careful, I’ll simply generate another source of clutter in my life.

I did have something that stalled due to the coding. It’s due to emerge as a real-world project in collaboration with a friend, using very little technology. We’re not giving that one a URL or even a web presence.

Another project involved taking data from the FitBit API. This floundered on the issue of needing an official privacy policy and terms of service. That API was intended for corporations rather than hobbyists.

There was a controversial essay by Mike Judge, Where’s the Shovelware, which claimed that agentic AI had yet to produce an uptick in finished projects on places like Steam and the app stores – code is not the only barrier to getting things out in public.

Maybe the power of agentic AI is in enhancing private workflows. Craig Mod has talked about building his own private accounting software. Maybe I should write bespoke editors or plugins to fix the clumsy errors I make when writing. I’m definitely thinking of using agents to structure my hugely complicated South Downs Way project. That is, at least, public-facing – but not something I can talk about in my corporate role.

Which means a new project, but one that won’t add clutter to my life. Maybe it should be a game, a photo scavenger hunt. Or a collaborative art project. But those would involve a lot of non-technical work to manage the participants. Other ideas are half formed – something to do with mapping?

So many projects have the drawback of making my life more complicated. Improving private workflows looks like the best case. Fortunately, it looks like I have a friend who needs this for a public project. Something I can work on for now.

The 2025 Mycelium Parish News is out

The 2025 Mycelium Parish News is out and available on Etsy. Thank you to Dan and Ben Graham for all your help.

Our 4th edition contains the usual listings of things that happened in our corner of counter-culture in 2025. There are also micro-essays from John Higgs, Reverend Jon Harris from the Church of Burn, and Saath from Echologorrhea. As ever, this will be put online once we’ve distributed all our physical copies – but we think it’s more important than ever to promote things outside the feeds and algorithms of the Internet.

Compiling this was hard work – which is why the publication date drifted by a couple of months. A few times, Dan and I discussed skipping this year. But I’m glad we kept pushing. I’ve changed my approach for compiling the 2026 edition and expect this to be much, much easier.

One major change is that we’ve dropped the use of GenAI images. I’d hoped to write an essay on this but didn’t have the capacity. We’ve listed some GenAI projects that we love in the zine, but I’m aware that some people are boycotting anything made with GenAI. I’d rather not be putting people off from our magazine – but I wish I’d had time to say how much I love the interesting GenAI projects I’ve seem.

Future issues will be published in Jan/Feb. We’re collecting entries throughout the year, so let us know anything we should add.

2026 Best Picture nominees

The last two years, I saw all of the Best Picture Oscar nominees before the winner was announced. I seem to have made this a commitment, and set out to do it again this year.

In both 2024 and 2025, I had to watch most of the films between the nomination and awards – I even made an overnight trip to Manchester to be sure of seeing I’m Still Here.

From the 2026 list, I’d seen nine before the list of ten was announced. The only one missing was The Secret Agent, which was not released in the UK until a month after the list came out, and was showing in my town last night, the weekend of the Oscars ceremony. I had a fairly good hit rate of films I watched because they were said to be likely contenders – I don’t think I saw anything I hated that didn’t make the list.

Tomorrow the Oscar winner will be announced, but here is what I think of the nominees, along with links to my letterboxd reviews:

  • Sinners (10/5/26) – My hyperbolic statement about Sinners is that it is the most exciting film I’ve seen since Star Wars. I stand by that. A lot of the joy was that this was a fantasy movie that did not rely on existing intellectual property, and used the fantastic elements to say interesting things. That one scene in the juke joint is as great as everyone says. I’d love to see this win the Oscar.
  • I saw F1 (12/7/25) with James and Alex. This was very much an IP-based movie, with a clumsy plot and fast cars. The only moment I loved was that final lap, played in near silence. Maybe there is a great movie you could make about Formula One, but this wasn’t it. The worst thing was that the film hinted at more interesting stories then ignored them in favour of a generic sports-movie plot.
  • One Battle After Another (18/10/25) is the big contender for this year’s Oscars. While I enjoyed moments of it, I wasn’t particularly blown away and I wish I’d liked it more. It felt flabby and I hated the sound track.
  • Bugonia (24/11/25) was another cinema trip, and another film I’d not have seen without the Oscar buzz. I’ve never enjoyed a Lanthimos film, despite thinking I should. This one had an intense performance by Emma Stone and I’m not sure why she went to all that effort.
  • del Torro’s Frankenstein (30/11/26) was getting a lot of buzz at the end of the year. I’d have probably skipped it as an adaptation except for the Oscar buzz. Comparing this to Emerald Fennel’s “Wuthering Heights”, the Bronte adaptation did something interesting with the source text, whereas Frankenstein was too faithful.
  • I watched Marty Supreme (2/1/26) with Rosy at the cinema. It’s a brilliantly made film with some great performances but also felt slight. The film was guilty of showboating at times. I gave it 4 stars in my letterboxd review, which reflects how much I enjoyed it at the time – but it’s not lasted well in my memory.
  • Sentimental Value (11/1/26) was another film that I would not have seen except for its likelihood of being nominated. Another movie about toxic male genius. I found myself wishing that the subtext was text, and this had actual ghosts in.
  • The same week, I saw Hamnet (16/1/26), another film that I watched only for the list. This felt like a synthetic heritage-England sort of movie, with little to really say. Parts of it reminded me of Blackadder. I could tell how much everyone else in the cinema was loving this even as it left me cold. I’d like to read the book though.
  • Train Dreams (19/1/26) was on Netflix. This was a beautiful, slow movie about a man’s life, watching it all unfold in a couple of hours. What would my life be like as a sequence like this, condensed down to something so short? This was a fantastic film and I hope more people watch it.

I saw The Secret Agent last night and I’m still considering it. The film is clever and beautifully constructed, with some great performances. I would definitely not have seen this without the nomination, but I’m glad I did.

As far as the winner goes, my heart says Sinners, but my head says One Battle After Another, which seems to have all the momentum from the BAFTAs. But the eventual winner doesn’t matter so much. I’ve seen ten interesting movies, some of which I would not have seen without following the Oscars discussions. I’ll be doing this again next year.

On microfiction

In April, I’m running a writing workshop on horror microfiction. It’s been a long time since I’ve taught a workshop rather than simply facilitated a writing session. I’ve been thinking a lot about tiny stories over the years and it will be good to crystallise my thoughts on the topic – starting with some notes on this blog.

Why write microfiction

  • I think my love of microfiction comes from reading comic books, and how the captions would sometimes refer to other stories, firing up my imagination. A lot of the books I loved best as a teenager intentionally played with this.
  • I always found these hints more interesting than what was later set as canon. Franchise fiction will introduce mysterious characters and eventually fill in the backstories, and something is lost.
  • I think the same sort of references work in horror – the hints of something awful happening are often worse than what can be depicted onscreen. There’s a power to creating a gap for other people to fill in.
  • I can’t be sure that these gaps are something that everyone loves – maybe some people prefer stories to be defined and complete. But, for me, I like ambiguities and mysteries.

Baby Shoes

  • A lot of people have come up with theories about what a ‘story’ is. Generally, a story will include characters going through some sort of event, with a beginning, middle and end.
  • But this is not true of every story – for example, Baby Shoes. This is the archetypal tiny story, but it works as a piece of found text. The three two-word sentences reveal an event that has already happened – and the change in the story is in our understanding of what we are seeing.
    • For Sale – tells us this is some sort of advertisement.
    • Baby Shoes – introduces the characters by implication, a parent and a child.
    • Never Worn – a twist in the tale, leaving us to realise why these shoes are good-as-new.
  • This story is often attributed to Hemingway, but versions of it date back to 1906, and the attribution seems to have come from 1989 (both facts according to Wikipedia).
  • This inspired the six-word memoirs project

Technique

  • The most important thing about writing tiny stories is that they are stories rather than descriptions of a story. It’s easy to fall into this trap. Rosy has rejected quite a few advent calendar stories on that basis.
  • You can see this in a lot of collections of six word stories. A lot of them feel glib – there’s not enough space for the pathos these aim for.
  • You can only cut back a story a certain amount. You need some sort of change for a story, otherwise it becomes a description.

Future Plans?

  • I’ve always wanted to write a novel from fragments. It’s something I’ve played with, but never tried as seriously as I should have done. My professor for my MA, Nicholas Royle, asserted you could not make a novel from vignettes, but I am convinced that you can.
  • I think I’m going to make some prototypes then give this a proper try. I suspect very few people would read any novel I write but, at the moment, I’m more interested in questions of craft than audience.

Other links

Appearing on Echologgorhea podcast

I appeared on an episode of the Echologorrhea podcast that was published last week, Thomas Friedman’s 1,000 Hours of Staring, where I talked to Wrev and Saath about one of my favourite works of art.

I love Echologorrhea. The podcast opens with the following announcement: “This podcast is rough around the edges for a simple reason: we are amateurs; we make this in the spirit of samizdat”. Echologorrhea is about sharing excitement, not about joining the podcast industry.

I have several favourite works of art that I love intensely, including The Invisibles, Twin Peaks, and the Tate Modern’s Rothko room. And then there is Thomas Friedman’s 1000 Hours of Staring. I saw Friedman’s ‘sculpture’ back in 2012, at the Hayward’s Invisible exhibition. I wrote a little about the piece and the exhibition at the time: Thousand Hour Stare and The Art of the Unseen. I’ve only seen it that once. While the work is in Moma’s collection, it is not currently on display.

Friedman’s work appeared in a room where all the exhibits were ‘blank’ sheets of paper, which would be identical to a careless glance. Friedman’s particular artwork stood out to me and has haunted me ever since. Hopefully, I successfully communicate this in the episode. We also get into a broader discussion of what we love about art.

David Bowie: Ten Years

The second week of January, Rosy ran a David Bowie night at the Trades Club, marking ten years since his death. I’d imagined January as a difficult night to run a club night but it was busy. As well as a DJ playing Bowie, there were two bands, cabaret performances, and immersive elements. It even appeared in the Guardian’s round-up of memorial events, ‘A perplexing, astonishing finale’: world pays tribute to David Bowie a decade after his death:

For slightly less intellectual celebrations, club nights across the country will be hosting Bowie-themed nights over the weekend: one particularly immersive offering at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, promises a Ziggy Polaroid booth, tarot readings, laughing gnomes and bulging codpieces.

I was doing the tarot-reading for the evening with a Labyrinth-themed deck. It was the second time I read tarot cards in public, and quite challenging to be heard above the music, but I had fun.

Rosy’s night followed the same format as Trailer Trash, with acts coming on between the DJs, including a couple of dance performances by Rosy, Toria and Hayley. There was also an appearance by Coco DeVille, who we used to hang out with in Brighton back in the day. Rosy also set up an installation of a teenage bedroom in the corner.

I had a good time, even though I only had the energy to stay until midnight.

The Bowie Bitches performing
Coco DeVille
Out past my bedtime in the teenage bedroom area

Someone made a sculpture in the woods

On Monday morning, Lou and I went walking in Crow’s Nest Woods where we found a sculpture:

I’ve seen a few similar pieces in the woods, but this is the largest. I know some of the others were made by Winston Plowes – but he’s also collaborated with people, so I don’t know exactly who made this. I love that art like this is that is unsigned.

My phone camera won’t give a good impression of the artwork, so I made a short video:

Finding things like this on my regular walking route is magical.

Here are a couple of other pieces I’ve found in the same woods – one from December:

And another from February last year (this is after it had been in place for a few days)

It’s good to see these sort of things in the countryside. I have hundreds of photos of graffiti and street art from living in Brighton. I miss that sort of creativity. Here are a couple of images shared by my friend Hannah, who took them in Brighton last week.