https://andrewdoran.uk/blog
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Waiting for the start of Glengarry Glen Ross at The Old Vic theatre, 13 July 2026 A really big week. We spent the first three days on a management team offsite. It was bittersweet, as it was the last one we will have with someone in our team who is retiring later this year. We hadn’t been all together in the same place for about two and a half years, and it was excellent to reconnect with each other as a group. We spent the first day at The Old Vic theatre, with excellent professional coaches…
The latest heatwave has weighed heavily on everyone here. It is just too hot. All of my time seems to be spent working, watching World Cup football, or lying on my bed without any covering, hoping that I will be able to sleep. On Thursday I met one of my neighbours on the train and he offered to give me a lift home. Our conversation turned, naturally, to how everyone is coping with the heat. He revealed that he and his wife have two fans in their bedroom. It left me wondering why I hadn’t…
Finished reading Tsunami Kids by Paul Forkan and Rob Forkan. An incredible story of their unconventional upbringing, the tragic events of Boxing Day 2004, and their subsequent business success. For me, the book is let down a little by the writing style and a lack of editing, which stopped it from being a totally gripping page-turner. But the story is the main thing that I came away with. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to go through such a life-changing catastrophe.
Lining up at the start of the JPMorganChase Corporate Challenge A fully-packed week with plenty going on. Multiple days of back-to-back meetings coupled with things happening in the evenings. And when things weren’t happening, the football was on. The football is always on. This was a week in which I: Have been really enjoying having an intern in the team. It has got me thinking about how much context someone gathers over many years of working that someone new to the workforce doesn’t have. The…
A swan and their cygnets on the bank of the River Bulbourne by The Old Mill, Berkhamsted. Boiling. In the UK we are not equipped to live through day after day of mid-30s°C heat, with the temperature only dropping into the mid-20s overnight with barely a breeze in the air. Sleeping was a tough gig, lying on top of our bed with a fan trying its best to help us get some rest. You wake up hot and dehydrated, lusting after a shower set to a cold temperature that you previously could never have…
My regular morning view from the hotel gym, looking out across the Rosebank suburb of Johannesburg. When last week’s Sun City-based conference was announced, I decided to extend my stay in South Africa so that I could spend some time with our team members who are based there. It wasn’t perfect timing; Tuesday was a public holiday for Youth Day, so many people chose to take Monday as leave in order to get a four-day weekend. But the time I did get to spend with the team and other colleagues from…
Just randomly recalled that as a kid, we used to say ‘fainites’ when asking for mercy or a time out. I thought it was a weird word made up amongst some friends. It turns out that it was a real word used throughout southern England.
An intriguing, ill-fitting door in the wall at Lancaster Gate tube station. Who knows what is hidden behind it? Two days in the office followed by two conferences, one in London and another in Sun City, South Africa. The morning agenda for the Gartner UK & Ireland CIO Community Executive Summit, 10 June 2026 On Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday I attended the Gartner UK & Ireland CIO Community Executive Summit for the first time. Compared to other Gartner conferences, this one is very…
Finished reading Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins. I’m a big fan of dissections of all things pop, and although the topic of this book isn’t quite the same as a music documentary or a look back at 1980s UK TV programmes, the backstory of PowerPoint is in the same wheelhouse for me. It’s played a big role in my life and feels like a part of mainstream culture. The book scratched exactly the same itch. The author was hired by Forethought, Inc. in 1984 as Vice…
Last weekend’s sore throat and feeling parched after a very warm cycle ride turned into something else on Monday. It started as a head cold and then later in the week worked its way down into my chest. I didn’t have any kind of fever; it felt as though I was running at about 85%, enough to be a little frustrating but not enough to keep me away from work. The week consisted of copious amounts of tissues, menthol lozenges and smoothies. I’ve read somewhere that if you’re ill from the neck up,…
This old Metropolitan Line train at Chesham is nearly ready to go, with its cargo of parched weeds. We’ve properly entered Phil Collins season, with extremely hot temperatures dominating the week. My morning walk from Euston to the City of London is now on hiatus until either (a) it cools down again, or (b) the Tube goes on strike. The train line between Berkhamsted and London couldn’t take the heat; the rails weren’t happy, so I had to use the Metropolitan Line to and from Chesham for a day…
I was out the door early on Tuesday to head to Heathrow to pick up our eldest son, who has come back from university for the summer. It’s great to have him back; the house is a very different place with him in it. He arrived on a cold and drizzly day and had to listen to my insistence that this was an anomaly compared with the past few weeks. By the end of the weekend we were all trying to stay cool as the temperatures ramped up beyond 30°C. The cats have been expressing their views on the…
Springtime in full bloom. This week felt tough. I ended up in the office four days in a row. The end of each day arrived too quickly as I still had plenty of things left to tackle. It was great to get to Friday when I could get some exercise on my indoor bike trainer and then climb into my cave in order to catch up with some things on my own. This was a week in which I: Welcomed the newest member of our department, someone who has joined our small development team. It was a tough process to…
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Voting time for the local council elections in Holborn, London. I walk past this lovely London street on my commute to work. A four-day week due to the plainly named Early May bank holiday in the UK. Recovery from the big bike ride felt good; unlike the year before, I had no major after-effects apart from slightly stiff legs and feeling thirsty for a couple of days. I recounted the tale of the ride to colleagues who humoured me when they found themselves hearing my stories for a second or third…
I can’t read this label without hearing Boycie’s voice in my head.
A quiet week at work. There were two public holidays in South Africa on Monday and Friday, so quite a few of our SA-based colleagues took the other three days as leave. I had some nice gaps in my diary to allow me to get things done. I took Friday off to relax ahead of an early start on Saturday, but ended up spending a lot of it in Bedford, trying to work out how to contact my bank as we attempted to buy a used car. I’d sent the transfer on Thursday but the payment was blocked as suspected…
Me, at 5:48am in Chalfont St Peter Community Centre, having just finished the 2026 London Wales London bike ride. All week I watched the weather in anticipation of the London Wales London Audax ride at the weekend. I’m fortunate to have a real-life weatherman living in my street, so on Wednesday I messaged him to see what he thought. The news wasn’t good. Our spell of sunshine was going to be replaced by a band of rain moving up through England. I’d figured that by doing the ride at around…
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Looking out from a viewing point near Ivinghoe Beacon. Photos like this never do justice to how breathtaking the landscape is in person. One of my lifelong school friends recently lost his dad, so on Monday I took the day off to attend the funeral. It was a lovely service, with many heartfelt and moving eulogies from family and friends, and a mix of Indian and American musical influences that included Ravi Shankar and Elvis Presley. I’m so glad I went. One of my other school friends gave me a…
After listening again to Rufus Wainwright’s cover of the whole album at the weekend, this week, as I left the office, I put on Judy Garland’s concert at Carnegie Hall. By the time I’d made it to the train station I’d been moved to tears twice. It’s that amazing. Serendipitously, I just found out it was recorded 65 years ago today.
All of these people saying that Formula 1 is now like Mario Kart. I don’t think they played the original on the SNES; that was proper racing. There was none of this ‘blue shell’ malarkey and artificially being faster just because you’re at the back. I think we need to get more specific with the metaphor. “Formula 1 is like Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64” is the proper form of insult.
A good, solid week at work. It felt like I got lots done. I had a very busy end to the week, including a lot of socialising and an excellent long bike ride in the spring sunshine. This was a week in which I: Agreed how we will move forward with a temporary setup in our new office — both technology and furniture — to allow our colleagues to get in and start using it. Synced up with all of the main project team members on our plans, including the project manager who was on holiday. I don’t like…
Despite last week being filled with illness and unexpected jobs that consumed me for days, it felt great to be back at my desk on Tuesday, so my time off must have been restful after all. Over the weekend, my friend Nick texted me to ask how I planned to get to the office this […]
A week off work, dominated by having a streaming cold for a few days and a catastrophic failure of my home network drive, resulting in multiple days of effort to get it up and running again. All last week I had felt as though I was on the cusp of getting sick, but it never […]
🎶 Came across this wonderful video from 1969 with Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross. The performances of the songs are superb, and there is such a lovely warmth between the two of them.
A really tough week, mentally and physically. I spent the first two days at the Gartner CIO Leadership Forum, an event that I really like as it is relatively small, resulting in you bumping into the same faces in different sessions. I felt all jumbled up and out of sorts, which I first attributed to […]
My first five-day work week for a while, and it was a tough one. Despite twenty years of following GTD and working on simplifying my workflow, in busy periods I end up falling back to a simple list. A mental sweep of all of the things I really need to get done as quickly as […]
The start of the week was spent travelling back from Kingsville, Texas. Saying that it is 5,000 miles away from Berkhamsted isn’t doing justice to quite how long it takes to travel between them. I was up at 6am and on the road less than an hour later in order to get the car returned […]
