I’m trying to get back into regularly updating the sites and projects which are most important to me. So part of that will be an attempt to summarise anything particularly interesting or important from my week on Sunday nights. I’m hoping it may help me to crystalise my thoughts and plans for the coming week as well.

So I’m almost at the end of what can only be described as a cacophonus April. It included a Bank Holiday, an Easter school holiday, and three big family birthdays, with two effectively bookending the month. Plus some other personal commitments, work, normal family and life stuff, and some illnesses in the household.

But as I posted on Facebook, ultimately the bad stuff wasn’t as horrific as it might have been, and the good stuff was generally better than expected.

This week was actually relatively quiet. But with possibly the most important birthday of all, especially as my son has recently become obsessed with skateboarding after discovering my old deck in the garden shed.

So obviously having ordered him a board (along with a helmet and pads), it seemed logical to pick up something cheap for myself as well. Because he obviously needs some company at the local skate spots when he’s starting out.

Having searched in vain for a local skate shop to try helmets and pads for size, the nearest place was a branch Skatehut in Corby. Frustratingly, their complete deals with board, pads and helmet can only be ordered online, but luckily it arrived promptly and without any issues.

And after a few hours at a relatively quiet local skate park I’d started to rediscover how to control a board (and how much it can make legs ache), while my son was getting the hang of it – and we made friends with some local scooter riders.

Basically I was reminded how cheap and easy it can be to find something to enjoy outdoors, rather than relying on the Xbox and streaming movies for lazy entertainment.

Speaking of which, there’s a new series of the always enjoyable detective series Bosch now on Amazon Prime. Which has been a welcome break from my girlfriend’s current hobby of recording as many slightly terrible horror films as possible – in the last week I’ve sat through Anaconda (cheesily terrible), Lake Placid 3 (cheesily more terrible), and the Final Girls (which is a great idea turned into a reasonable film, but could have been so much better).

Aside from that, my music listening has been limited to the Rush/Led Zeppelin collision that is Greta Van Fleet. I find it perfect to just have on repeat play all day whilst working, although apparently my girlfriend gets tired of it after hearing it for the third or fourth time in a row. And gaming has mainly been Apex Legends. Because it’s a free-to-play Battle Royale I can actually play to an average standard, and I decided to reward the developers by buying the Battle Pass for the current season.

There’s a couple more hectic days left in April, so I’m really looking forward to May as a chance to hopefully reap the rewards of the busy period, catch my breath and get back to developing some of my side projects in a more meaningful way. And that may include a delivery from Chillblast that I’m very, very, very much looking forward to.

I’m also intrigued to experiment and find out whether regular, more personal updates are something anyone wants to read. Especially in an era of email newsletters, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat etc. I’m experimenting with some different types of posting on various accounts, and different approaches to blogging to try and mix things up after more than a decade, and see what works for me as a writer, and you as a community… So if you’ve enjoyed it, hated it, think it’s pointless, or would rather see more structure covering the various topics (e.g. separate sections for areas like music, books, food etc in the manner of the excellent Documentally email newsletter), then do leave a comment.