At the risk of being annoyingly vague, it’s been a really terrible few weeks for a couple of people close to us. So, if you’re reading this, this is just a moment for me to mark and remember before moving on with less important things. 💛
For us, the highlight of January was Randi’s mum Beth – Bubbe! – coming to stay with us for a 10 day stretch. On a previous visit we had accidentally gotten Bubbe and Zayde completely addicted to Jet Lag, so much so that they had promptly gone home and binge-watched every season so far. As a consequence, Randi and I were obliged to prepare for Beth’s visit by speeding through Tag Eur It: All Stars (an extremely good season!) in order to be up-to-date enough to watch Hide + Seek: UK together with her. (No, I hadn’t anticipated that this blog would turn into a Jet Lag fanzine either.)
It was obviously very exciting to see the team speed around a familiar landscape, and although I was disappointed we didn’t get any London-based rounds, Britain’s railway system held up much better overall than Germany’s Deutsche Bahn. It’s just clear to me that in a few years we’ll need to get ourselves a copy of the home game and organise a family event!
Aside from watching competitive YouTube travel shows, we also had a delicious evening at Nonna Maria, enjoyed a great afternoon and walk around the neighbourhood with Great Aunt Carolyn, and hosted Sam, Reema and Esther one evening at ours after work. Randi and Beth cooked many things for this, but the most exciting – even though they didn’t turn out quite as desired! – were the extremely moreish potato knishes. Thank you!
We also completed the first batch of pages of our first family photo album, which Randi and I have decided to do in a deliberately retro 90s style complete with fiddly adhesive paper, handwritten captions and that plastic film which you can never smooth out 100% correctly. But it’s nice to be forced to curate hundreds of digital photos into a more manageable story, and it feels very grown-up to have a big physical album on the shelf.
In January I also felt dutifully civic by doing some local litter-picking (thanks to Kate and Lucy for organising!) and very much enjoyed watching the 13 minute comedy Govan Fair Queen. This Scottish short film was recommended by Katie, who I think has realised that the chances of me watching a feature-length movie are now even lower than usual. Randi and I also had a lovely afternoon at Frankie and Kirst’s baby shower.
Talking of Scotland: last weekend, our son made it north of the border for the first time on a long weekend to Edinburgh. Our first stop was to see Katie and James’s new house in person, which has a wonderfully cosy vibe, and we’re excited about appropriating it as our Scottish base of operations for years to come. Then we had a quick turnaround in order to make it to a Labour Party Burns supper.
I’ve never been to a Burns Night before, but the haggis-centric menu is obviously excellent, and I appreciated the brief but intense performance of Burns’s poetry. Sadly, we weren’t able to stay late enough for the ‘Toast to the Lassies’ and their subsequent reply, but we were able to hand over our baby to Anas Sarwar for safekeeping for a little bit, and I can confirm that the leader of Scottish Labour is also a natural with children. So, that’s one photo for the album! The next day we also had a wonderful afternoon at Kirsty and Roger’s, although I accidentally ate the last mini cupcake and still feel quite guilty about it.
For Secret Santa this year Randi and I had been given tickets to Edinburgh’s Barnton Quarry Nuclear Bunker, and so on Sunday afternoon the five of us set off for a fascinating tour around this newly-restored Cold War era facility.
Originally an RAF base to detect and deter Soviet attacks by air, this underground complex was transformed into a civilian command centre during the height of the Cold War once it was recognised that the nuclear threat had shifted permanently from planes to missiles. Now that there was no chance of actually preventing armageddon if an attack was launched, the government’s focus shifted to trying to prepare to govern in its aftermath, and so the bunker includes a BBC radio studio to broadcast instructions to the public (they play a rather chilling test announcement on the tour) and facilities for officials to try to maintain some semblance of law and order.
In retrospect, it turns out that thanks to aerial photographs the Soviets had always known the exact location of Scotland’s prospective ‘regional seat of government’, so they probably could have wiped it out completely if they’d wanted to. And (spoiler alert!) thankfully the world never actually descended into all-out nuclear war, so the preparations were moot.
In the 1980s, the site was decommissioned and lay abandoned, becoming a great spot for illegal raves. (And to be fair, walking around it did feel like the ideal ambience you might want for an illegal rave you had to organise.) Indeed, my favourite fact on the whole tour was that trespassers originally used the ventilation shafts to break in, and given that this is a trope used in every single sci-fi TV show ever made it was very exciting to see giant, human-sized air vents in real life which could actually be used for such a purpose. In the 1990s the whole thing was destroyed by fire, but since 2011 teams of volunteers have been working to restore the site and it’s only recently now open for visitors.
In summary – a highly recommended tour!
Back at Katie and James’s we watched two more short films from the BBC Comedy Short Films series: neither as good as Govan Fair Queen, but a sweet enough short about two Bradford kids imagining themselves into space in Rocket Fuel and the rather dark 7 Minutes. We also got a chance for a quick classic Doctor Who two-parter with The King’s Demons, which is by no means a highlight of the genre (and doesn’t even include any trespassing through air vents!) but was nonetheless an unexpected bonus of the trip. Finally, we all played Dominion together! (Randi would want me to include that she won.)
This week Randi returned to work part-time, and so we were especially grateful to Granny G for coming to stay with us for a couple of days of childcare duties. She also rustled up a pair of scrumptious fish pies, and joined us for Friday night drinks at the Perry Hill pub to celebrate the weekend. Finally, yesterday we also reached the exciting milestone of baby’s first swim! Despite probably being a bit cold (a full-length swimsuit is now in the post) he seemed to enjoy it, and I’m very much looking forward to more follow-up sessions soon. I used to love swimming as a kid, and all of the fun stuff (like floats!) brought it all flowing back.
