A couple of weekends back, Randi and I were honoured to be invited to my cousin Alix’s big birthday weekend bash in a house in the countryside near Bath. We were joined by Tash and Cormac, Advia and Yama and many other friends of Alix and Adam for a weekend of incredible food, challenging Taskmaster-esque games, long soaks in the hot tub and communal Winter Olympic viewing. A special thank you to everyone who helped with childcare – not least the slightly older children running around who all took turns in baby cuddling on the sofa! Adam also deserves much credit for his epic organisation.
Our Friday night train there was uneventful, although I was pleased to discover that violently attacking one of my hands with the other could produce endless amounts of gurgling joy in a child. On Sunday afternoon, however, our journey home was interrupted by an unplanned self-guided bonus walking tour of Westbury for an hour thanks to a cancelled train. (It wasn’t a big deal, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Westbury, and apologise for the dropped sock.) Fortunately, we made it back just in time for our dinner with American cousins David and Ginger at Nonna Maria!
The following night I hopped across town for some last-minute evening plans with the Dietz family, who were all in London for a couple of days and by that point had made it to a pub in Marylebone with some of their former Groupon colleagues from Malaysia. I stayed for drinks with Robert and Julie for a while at their hotel, and it was just such a lovely night, which makes up for missing them in Chicago over the holidays.
In my 2025 annual review I briefly mentioned the death of Sabina, who was a life companion to my great uncle Leonard and sadly died in April. Last Sunday was her stone setting ceremony at a cemetary just north of London, and thankfully a few of us from the Regan family were able to make it.
I grew up with Sabina being “part of the family” but I never knew much about the rest of her life, so it was really good to hear such a fulsome eulogy from her cousin Esther, who also sent round a fearsomely well-captioned photo collection afterwards. (Seriously: if someone with the same archivist spirit is around for my death, I’d be very grateful!)
Sadly the bus service continues to fall off a cliff the minute you cross the Greater London boundary, but we took this in our stride and had a great walk from the cemetary over to Theobalds Grove for a pub lunch with mum, Andrew, Bonnie and Tash. Mum then came back with us for a final stint of childcare (at least for a little bit!) – we especially appreciated her commitment to taking him to the local library for singalong sessions!
Other recent guests have included Reema (who allegedly planned to bring us Mini Eggs, but then found them impossible to resist eating on the journey) and Esther (who did manage to arrive with Mini Eggs unscathed). We invited Esther specifically because she’s casually written an incredible novel in her spare time, and Randi and I both had so many thoughts and questions after reading it that we thought we’d stage a private ‘meet the author’ book club for the two of us. Thank you so much for Esther for putting up with all of our overthinking of things!
We’ve waited ages for Katie and Mairi’s appearance on the quiz show Riddiculous to be released, so were excited to finally be able to stream it! (No spoilers, but they were great, albeit with some quite impressive opponents too.) On Friday night, we allowed ourselves to stretch bedtime just a little in order to try the new Khachapuri restaurant in Crystal Palace, which was predictably delicious and will definitely be due a revisit soon. And finally, last night we went to a birthday party for Randi’s colleague Dan in Cricklewood, which was a super-interesting gathering of people. It also provided a great opportunity to make a nostalgic exit at Willesden Green, which will forever be my home station.
Today we welcomed back Stewart (aka Zayde) to London for his stint of grandparent childcare, so for his sake we’re all hoping that spring continues to blossom forth. Otherwise, Randi and I have just been incredibly lucky (so far!) to enjoy an incredibly chill, easygoing baby who doesn’t complain when he’s bundled in and out of trains or passed liberally between strangers’ arms. No doubt things will get harder, but he’s certainly given us a relatively gentle introduction to parenting at least. (Famous last words…)
