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…)
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.
Happy new year! As you already know, we spent a week in Chicago in a sneaky attempt to persuade our child that, relatively speaking, London really isn’t that cold. In truth, the Chicago winters are a little overhyped: you just have to dress appropriately for the weather, and snow is generally lovely. The only thing to really worry about is ice. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not a fan of ice. Ice is malicious and dangerous, so it’s inspiring to see the steps which Chicago takes to defeat it.
The flight there was very easy – our baby even received the “baby of the day award” for his lack of crying from a flight attendant who was clearly not a fan of babies in general. Thanks to AJ meeting us at the airport, he also enjoyed his very first journey in a car! (We’re planning on teaching him that cars are a uniquely North American invention, although others have already been sceptical that this will work.)
Using Catherine and AJ’s home as a warm and cosy base, we did venture out a few times to see other people, starting with a Sunday afternoon at Toggolyn’s. Very excitingly, Ellen – last seen on this blog in 2021! – was able to join us, and together we all had a super interesting conversation about blogging and writing. I think sometimes the idea of a regular person in 2026 sitting on their own and working on a piece of writing for personal reasons can seem so implausible – even though it’s literally what I’m doing right now – that it’s genuinely a bit surprising to learn that other people do it too.
(Side-note: I felt this surprise again today – back in London – when I heard about someone else’s scribbled notes during a pub meetup with our NCT group. Is everyone still still secretly writing? I would find this reassuring.)
A few days later we joined Julie, Colleen and Karol for a delicious cajun brunch at Big Jones, which was extremely tasty. I mean, someday Randi and I have got to find our way back to a Yats, but in the meantime this hit the spot.
Meanwhile, visitors to the apartment included Christian & Erica and kids (a brief stopover and tornado of lovable chaos) and Anna & Ned’s family, with whom we shared an order from Randi’s favourite Thai restaurant. We also made our obligatory and much-anticipated visit to Janik’s for brunch with Mike & Melissa, who were visiting Chicago at the same time from New York, and received Buffalo Bills baby gifts!
But otherwise, we mostly enjoyed a lot of great home cooking (Detroit pizza night being a particular highlight for me) and made various attempts to match all of the kids in the same outfits. This really came to a head on New Year’s Eve, when party hats were briefly thrown into the mix too, and the resulting photos are surely something to treasure and\or grist for anti-parent angst later on during their teenage years.
Oh, and I’m pretty proud of the popularity of my very own children’s stories about creepy Mr. Google and his nosy, data-collecting habits…
Thank you so much to Catherine and AJ for hosting us, as always!
Annual Roundup
No prizes for guessing that ‘having a child’ is my dominant theme of 2025. Randi’s pregnancy already seems like a lifetime ago, but I’ll never forget our regular bus journeys to Denmark Hill for midwife visits, scans and movement checks. Thankfully, everything went smoothly and since October we’ve been happily getting to know our son.
Another massive highlight of the year was our two week holiday in China, which I’m so glad we did. In 2025 I was also lucky enough to become a German citizen, in a personal act of rejoining the EU. After many, many viewings Randi and I also successfully moved house… albeit staying on the very same road! And the end of the year I had some major changes at work, which will certainly keep me busy in 2026.
Finally, this year our family lost two of its enduring figures: Sabina and my grandma Doreen. We miss them both.
Travels
- Chicago (January) – We welcomed the new year at home with Catherine & AJ playing with Mr. Speaker Bear, counting to ridiculously high numbers and reading Green Eggs and Ham.
- China (April) – Our big trip of 2025! Heartfelt thanks to everyone who reassured us about going when we worried about the chance of food poisoning in early stage pregnancy. Instead, Randi and I had an amazing time together in Beijing and Chengdu, from high-speed trains to delicious food tours, crazy live music bars and my day trip to Chongqing.
- Edinburgh & Kirkcaldy (May) – The trip in which Katie & James introduced us to Jet Lag, while Lea and Abi showed us the very worst art in Kirkcaldy.
- Chicago (July) – A brief but jam-packed solo trip to Chicago over 4th July. With Toggolyn I struggled to get to the bottom of the Nygard mystery, at Catherine & AJ’s I had a very special first meeting, and with the Dietz family I appreciated a rooftop conversation about parenting while fireworks lit up the sky.
- Lutterworth (September) – Overnight stay at the very lovely Kilworth House for Ellie and Michael’s wedding!
- Chicago (December) – We knew baby’s first flight had to be to somewhere special. So, we closed out the year at the same place we began by flying back to Chicago to spend New Year with Catherine & AJ. This meant our kids could hang out together for the very first time, and I am sure that this will be the first of many, many Chicago trips for our child! So far this one has had plenty of Bread and Jam for Frances, Eloise and My First Carcassonne.
Live!
I have a feeling that this category will basically disappear from next year’s roundup 😂
- The Merchant of Venice 1936 (January) – Shakespearian adaption starring Tracy Ann-Oberman in an electrifying portrayal of Shylock, which got me thinking a lot about the history of the character.
- Joshua Radin and Ellen Krauss (January) – A chilled-out night in Camden with some charming American stage presence.
- Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew (February) – Bush play which we should remember for its sensitive and nuanced handling of intergenerational differences and buried grief, but actually will forever be known to me and Randi as The One Where The Table Leg Broke.
- The Score (March) – Brian Cox is Johann Sebastian Bach, and Johann Sebastian Bach is very unhappy indeed to have to meet King Frederick II of Prussia. Impossible to take your eyes off the guy.
- Live music bars in China (April) – Two crazy fun evenings in Beijing and Chengdu, even though we had very little idea what was actually going on. Like, did the people on stage actually know each other?!
- Cockfosters (May) – Last year I totally forgot to include The Truth About Harry Beck in my annual roundup. Oops. But this year, I definitely won’t be forgetting this rowdy, zany, sketch comedy inspired show about finding love on the Underground, so thanks again to Steven and Sadie for organising this!
- The Gang of Three (May) – Ah, this was really, really good! 1970s Labour party titans Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Denis Healey battle it out for the leadership. (Spoiler: none of them win.)
- House of Games (June) – I think we all had questions about this adaption of David Mamet’s 1987 thriller about con-men and confidence scammers in Chicago. It seemed particularly odd to water down the original ending so much! But, an enjoyable night out if you can get past the accents.
- Nye (July) – Thanks so much to Melissa for taking us to the National to see whatever-the-theatre-equivalent-of-a-biopic is about Aneurin Bevan, brilliantly played by Michael Sheen. While it is somewhat hagiographic about the NHS, there was one particularly interesting scene in which – having achieved his dream – Bevan is suddenly overwhelmed by endless, conflicting demands on the Secretary of State for Health… which rather nicely illustrated the need for compromise and trade-off in any healthcare system.
On Screen
- Severance – Catherine and AJ introduced us to the meticulously crafted world of Lumon Industries at the very beginning of 2025, and watching the first two seasons was easily our prestige TV highlight this year. In particular, the finale of the first season was phenomenal. (Just don’t skip the intro!)
- Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes – Silly, fun, low-budget Japanese time-travelling comedy, as recommended by Katie.
- Conclave – My last visit to the cinema, at least at time of writing. I enjoyed this backstabbing story of Vatican intrigue, although it’s pretty superficial and the people you’re ‘supposed’ to root for are still deeply eye-rolly.
- 12 Monkeys – This 1995 Terry Gilliam film is a clever take on the “send tough guy back into the past after a catastrophe” genre of sci-fi. But my god, the romance is tough to swallow. (Mental note: I still need to watch Brazil…)
- Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – Featuring the job-killing robot gardener Norbot, and the return of Feathers McGraw!
- Thames Water: Inside the Crisis – Wry satirical comedy, set in a world in which England’s water supply was privatised but without any competitive market pressures whatsoever. Some performances slightly over-the-top.
- Doctor Who – This was a difficult year for Doctor Who. While new companion Belinda showed a lot of promise, Ncuti Gatwa’s second season never hit the same great stride as last year, and ended with a sadly premature regeneration. On the other hand, watching the finale with an enthusiastic audience of fellow fans in a central London cinema was a lot of fun, especially for the scene with Jodie’s surprise appearance.
- Jet Lag – OK, so when I said Severance was our ‘TV’ highlight of the year, Jet Lag was the thing we actually loved the most, especially during Randi’s pregnancy. We even bought a Nebula subscription to watch without ads. If you don’t enjoy watching Sam, Ben and Adam racing around on public transport and doing challenges, there’s something wrong with you.
- Landman – Wry satirical comedy, set in a world in which Men are Real Men. (Technically I only watched the first episode of this with Todd, but that was enough.)
- Highland Cops – Another favourite watch during the evenings of Randi’s pregnancy. You definitely get the feeling that the Highlands of Scotland are policed by a team of about seven people, but they’re all very nice, and there doesn’t seem to be much crime about anyway.
- Location Location Location Australia – The show we started watching once our supply of fresh UK episodes started to look dangerously depleted. Literally everyone says they’re looking for “open-plan living” like there might be some other kind, but we never see any alternatives.
- The Bear – Currently we’re midway through the fourth season, and sadly this already feels like a show which has passed its peak, stuck retreading the same ground already covered. Episodes which focus on Sydney remain the most watchable.
- The War Between the Land and the Sea – December’s five-part Doctor Who spin-off, pitting humanity against
the Sea Devilshomo aqua. This was very uneven. The scenes of the human baddies were easily the worst part, but there were some good moments with both ‘ordinary guy’ Barclay Pierre-Dupont (unexpectedly called upon to negotiate on behalf of all humanity) and UNIT’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. The ending, much like the original Doctor Who episodes which inspired this series, is also just incredibly bleak. There should have been another way…
That Moment When…
- …at Pizza Arte, we finally got my sisters on a call together at the same time to break the big news.
- …a hospital managed to lose my blood by somehow couriering it to a completely different hospital, even though it only had to move from the 7th to the 4th floor of the building. (And this was not even the first time my blood had been lost this year…)
- …the National Grid media team belatedly responded to my email, signing off with “hopefully […] your friend group’s harmony can be restored”. It was. Thanks, Anna!
- …one of the Fantastic Stories I bought home from my mum’s – a favourite collection from my childhood – gave Randi genuine nightmares.
- …I chatted to Geoff Marshall on a bench at Penge East station while waiting for the delayed Southeastern service to Brixton.
- …after realising that our local corner shop sold blue Fanta (aka Lilt) I started popping in often enough that a fellow shopper, in the process of buying a can of beer, felt moved to stage a gentle intervention by saying that he “sees me in here buying this a lot”.
- …we danced to the 8-bit themes from Word Rescue, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, Worms Blast and Sim City 2000. Gotta start ’em young.
- …Randi just couldn’t stop humming the Snack Zone theme.
- …our wonderful midwife, Liv, stopped by the ward after the birth at the same time of our previously-scheduled antenatal appointment, just for a chat. My hero of 2025.
Has it been a great year for the world? No, definitely not. But 2025 was a wonderful year for my little corner of it. Wishing everyone a relaxed and peaceful New Year.
Hello from Chicago! I’ll write about this trip once we’re home again, but for now I’m taking advantage of still having my hands free (despite also having a sleeping baby on me) to bring this blog up to date with our Chrismukkah back home.
My first Christmas outing was to listen to carols and general festive songs at our beloved local pub, The Perry Hill, along with a baked camembert, a pie and a pint. (Truly, it’s hard to think of a better combination of things for an evening.) I also enjoyed some seasonal post-work drinks one night with Lee and Paul to bid farewell to the year. The following night, after wrapping up at work, my family descended on Tash and Cormac’s for a very special Hanukkah celebration together.
The last few days in the run-up to Christmas were a little hectic, with us juggling a second round of baby vaccines, a madcap dash to collect his passport from the US Embassy in time for travel, and my grandmother’s funeral on Christmas Eve. A few days before that, the extended family gathered at her flat to say goodbye and – of course – compete in a brilliantly-organised quiz. (My team lost badly, and I still feel bad about my contribution to this defeat. Otherwise, it was the perfect send-off.)
In amongst this we also managed to see Matt, Laura and their kids for a morning at ours, and also spent a lovely afternoon with Reema and my mum. This included an amazing moment at a café in Sydenham where, after Randi and Reema had been discussing the plot of the novel which their mutual friend has just casually written in her spare time, we were interrupted by the man on the next table asking for the title so that he could buy a copy!
After all of these comings and goings, we ended up on Christmas Eve with my mum, Tash and Katie hunkered down at ours, ready for our first family Christmas of the next generation. We had such an incredible time filled with many generous presents, some water-based tummy time, several rounds of mutual psychological analysis with the ‘Preferences’ game, Katie’s special Christmas mull, the WILTY Boxing Day special, a sunny afternoon walk up Blythe Hill and – of course – lots and lots of filling Christmas food. Special thanks to Tash for proposing the excellent Christmas ham with Coca Cola recipe, which was delicious!
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
