Week 38/2025: A loud week

Week of 15 September 2025

This week started where last week left off: In Melbourne for Kramstable’s birthday. But, alas, we had to come home, and navigating the airport was Not Fun.

This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.

A loud week

Last days in Melbourne

Monday was a fun day of exploring!

I met up with a friend who I hadn’t seen for more than five years and we went walking in the suburbs. That was so much fun and we found some cool spaces to photograph.

I got back to the accommodation in time for my uni lecture, which was about ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, which I can summarise in one sentence. Samuel Taylor Coleridge took too many drugs and the ancient mariner was probably a kid who liked pulling wings off flies and killing things for fun.

Thankfully I didn’t have to write an essay on it.

We went to Hawthorn for lunch, which is so weird. As a kid I never went to Melbourne, so names like Hawthorn, Richmond, Collingwood, Footscray and St Kilda weren’t places, they were football teams. And even now, after having been there and seen that they are actual locations, they still don’t feel like real places!

But they are, and I went for a walk around Hawthorn after lunch. I had a great time exploring Glenferrie Oval and the surrounding streets.

It was also cool to look at the city from the tram stop on the way back to the room.

We had dinner with Kramstable and it was great to see him again. We didn’t get much time with him this trip because he had a lot of uni work to do but I was really grateful to have had the time we got.

Home again

The rest of the week was basically me having a really bad week with my hyperacusis and everything being too loud and too much and too overstimulating.

It wasn’t a fun week.

Under Milk Wood

I did, however, have a brief let-up when I went to see O’Grady Drama On Cue Ensemble’s performance of Under Milk Wood. This was Kramstable’s former drama class so I knew some of the cast, and it was a little strange seeing their production without him in it.

I knew nothing about this piece, but I learned it was a radio drama written in 1954 by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

It follows the lives and thoughts of the residents of Welsh fishing village Llareggub (read it backwards), and it was just so cute and quirky and adorable. They did a fantastic job and I’m glad I left the house to go and see it.

Habit tracker

Existing habits

• Go outside first thing (7 days): 5/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 6/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 5/5
• Walk (7 days): 6/7
• Carry a notebook with me when I walk (6 days): 4/6
• Thinking time (4 days): 4/4
• Mid-day journalling (7 days): 4/7
• Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
• 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 0/6
• Evening routine (6 days): 5/6

New habits

• Set timer for morning planning (3 days): 0/3
• Work shutdown (3 days): 0/3

Summary of the week

Some positive things

My copy of the photographer Thomas Ryan‘s new book, In Memoriam, arrived this week. It’s wonderful, and I even recognise one of the places in it because it is a place held deep in my memory.

I loved watching the ‘Neverending Story’ scene from Stranger Things 3 again.

I will never tire of this moment!

What did I learn this week?

• What bricks are made from. (Clay.)
• According to this website about literary devices, the word periphrasis originates from the Greek word periphrazein, which means ‘talking around’. It means using excessive and longer words to convey a meaning which could have been conveyed with a shorter expression, or in fewer words. That is, it’s an indirect or roundabout way of writing about something. It’s not always a bad thing to include in writing but it depends on the message and the purpose of the communication. Periphrasis is one type of circumlocution. The other type is ambage, which is an indirect and ambiguous way of expressing things or ideas. Both of these get used a lot in my field of work.
• The word pandemonium originates from Milton’s 1667 Paradise Lost, where it referred to a specific place. Pandemonium was the capital of Hell, where Satan held his high council. But over the next hundred years the word lost its initial capital letter and began to take on a more general meaning of a ‘centre of vice or wickedness; a haunt of evil’ and ‘a place or state of utter confusion and uproar; a noisy disorderly place.’ They were probably at Melbourne airport when they came up with the second definition.

What did I notice this week?

This tote bag on the tram.

What was the best thing this week?

Seeing Kramstable.

What am I reading this week?

• Unsettled by Kate Grenville
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

What am I watching this week?

• Stranger Things Season 3
• Resident Alien
• Stranger Things Season 4
• Doctor Who ‘Act of Infinity’
• Under Milk Wood by O’Grady Drama On Cue Ensemble

What am I listening to this week?

• Lost in the Cedar Wood by Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane