Like a stock market bubble, the expected implosion of my reading total was staved off this year. In fact, I managed 26 books in total, which is four more than last year! For this I have to credit both our holiday in China and a golden two-week paternity leave which involved a lot of ‘sitting on the sofa next to a sleeping baby’ time. Since neither of these factors will recur next year, I’m still expecting my reading to drop off a cliff for 2026.
Oh, and on a non-book note, this year I also experimented with reading on a new Kobo Libra, rather than my Kindle, in addition to physical books. It’s really nice to have colour covers on an e-reader, even at the cost of some black-and-white crispness, and for some reason Amazon have decided they can’t be bothered to make a device with physical page turn buttons anymore. Also, it’s reassuring to confirm that my reading library works seamlessly between devices, rather than being tethered to one company. So, I’ve been very happy with that change too, even though the truly ‘perfect’ e-reader has still yet to be made.
Fiction
I kicked off the year with Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, followed later in the year by its sequel The Rosewater Insurrection. Set in the 2050s, this trilogy belongs firmly to the ‘alien invasion’ sci-fi subgenre and is centred around a giant, mysterious biodome which emerges suddenly in the Nigerian town of Rosewater. Thanks to the dome’s miraculous healing powers, Rosewater quickly becomes a major site of pilgrimage and begins to assert its independence from Nigeria itself.
In Rosewater, the creeping sense of having lost to the aliens from the very beginning, despite a slow build-up, had strong echoes of The Three-Body Problem, although the style is very different. In the second book, the focus shifts to the mayor’s attempt to formally declare independence from Nigeria, interwoven with the struggle to broker a mutually beneficial compromise with the malevolent alien Wormwood against their common enemies. Overall, this was a good first choice for the year, and I’m looking forward to concluding the trilogy in 2026!
Speaking of Cixin Liu, I also really enjoyed Of Ants and Dinosaurs, a short little fable which I borrowed from Katie and read in a few sittings. It’s a wry parable of Cold War-esque paranoia and the terrible logic of mutually assured destruction, with ants and dinosaurs alternating between beneficial collaboration and fierce confrontation. As always with Liu, you also get the sense that he just really, really enjoys figuring out the intricate military details of how exactly the armies of ants are able to wage their wars on dinosaurs, and vice versa. And to be fair, these little details also make it very fun to read too. Highly recommended!
A series I completed in 2025 was NK Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, completing both The Broken Kingdoms and The Kingdom of Gods. (Yes, if it wasn’t obvious, part of my reading choices this year were guided by a need to tie up some loose ends before having a child!) Overall, I still didn’t love this series, and although the second book showed signs of improvement, they fell away again in the last book. Perhaps the central problem is that having ‘gods’ as protagonists just doesn’t work for me, for reasons not unrelated to why they don’t work for me as a concept in general. It feels as if there are no rules, and so nothing really makes sense, because although the gods have Aristotelian ‘purposes’ (which is dumb) there’s no real drama or tension.
It figures, then, that The Broken Kingdoms stood out from the pack for being written from the perspective of a human (a woman named Oree, who is blind but has the ability to see magic) and focusing on her relationship with ‘Shiny’, i.e. the sun god Itempas made mortal. I also remember my favourite scenes were the ones in which the true terror of Nahadoth, the god of darkness, was made clear. But overall I’m relieved to be done with this trilogy so that I can move on to fresh NK Jemisin worlds.
I hate to say this, but I also have some disappointment around Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field, the concluding part of ‘The Book of Dust’ series which extended the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy which I grew up with, and loved. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a major improvement on 2019’s The Secret Commonwealth. We finally get the brave, adventurous character of Lyra back after the unhappy breakdown of her relationship with Pan, which never really made any sense. And it’s certainly a rollicking journey to the mysterious ‘red building’ in the Karamakan desert, far to the east. A particularly wonderful highlight of the book is Lyra’s encounter with Mustafa Bey – a Turkish merchant whose trading empire stretches far along the Silk Road – in a café in Aleppo. It’s just beautifully written.
Overall, though, the issue is that once Lyra finally reaches her destination there are just so many questions left unanswered. A nicer way of saying this, to borrow from Reddit, is that the ending is “quiet”, which is true. And of course, I wouldn’t expect – or hope – for everything to be wrapped up with a bow. But everything from Lyra’s relationship with Malcolm (heavily built up, then suddenly tossed aside) to fundamental bedrock questions of the series (are the gaps between worlds a mortal danger to us, worthy of great sacrifice to close, or actually… good?) are just kinda left hanging in the air.
At my grandmother’s funeral this month, to illustrate the idea of an eternal afterlife, the vicar used the image of an author writing a book, of which only a single copy is produced and later destroyed. While the particular book is gone, the story is “not really lost” because it emerged from the mind of its author, and so could do so again. And so it is between humans and god. (“It’s not a perfect analogy.”) The obvious, gaping fallacy here, of course, is that an author obviously couldn’t write the same book again, because any work of art is not the product of a static, unchanging mind but a very particular result of particular conditions at one moment in time.
Pullman, naturally, would see right through this shallow theology. But I bring it up because it reminded me of the relationship between his two series. They may share the same author’s name on the cover. But the sparkling magic of ‘His Dark Materials’ can’t simply be reignited decades later, even if its slow-burning afterglow remains a very warm and happy place to be.
Another series which I managed to finish this year was Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, which concludes with The Mirror & the Light. This series hasn’t always been an easy read, but I’ve definitely enjoyed each book more than the last. There’s an especially chilling moment in this one – about a third of the way in – when a false rumour spreads about Cromwell’s plan to marry the King’s daughter Mary, and you suddenly start to sense the wheel of fortune turn for this masterful operator. Later, when the King admits to Cromwell that he no longer surprises him, and that he misses Wolsey, you feel the floor fall away beneath him. The end comes not long after, accelerated by a disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves and foreign interests plotting to undermine England’s great politician. (Special thanks to the Redditors who posted their chapter-by-chapter analyses in readalong threads – this made the book much more rewarding to read!)
The Underground Railroad had sat on my to-read list for a long time, and ultimately proved both very easy and very difficult to get through. The prose is nimble and light, but the underlying subject matter – escaping plantation slavery in the American South – is always horrifying. For obvious reasons, I did love the central image of a literal underground railroad, which (smartly) only appears at fleeting moments in the book.
I loved The Candy House, Jennifer Egan’s sequel to A Visit from the Goon Squad. It’s written in the same short-story style, but this time set a little in the future and features many of the children of the original cast of characters. I just wish I had a better memory for it all. Honestly, I struggled to keep straight in my head all the interlinked plots and characters from this book while I was reading it, let alone remember how they all fit together with the original. Thankfully, somebody has made a useful character map (here’s a mirror for UK readers) but what I really need is a big visual guide to the two books combined!
Any new Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel is something to treasure, so I was very excited when Dream Count came out this year. In the past I’ve always preferred her books set in Nigeria rather than the US, but this one splits the difference as it moves between the perspectives of four women – Chiamaka, Zikora, Omelogor and Kadiatou – and between Nigeria, the US and rural Guinea. The writing is always superb, and can’t fail to draw you in. It’s true that the moments which have remained most vivid in my mind are probably the most heartbreaking: Zikora’s abandonment during her pregnancy, the diminishment of the bold and brash Omelogor within the smug confines of American academic culture, and the awful trauma suffered by Kadiatou. But there are a lot of lighter parts, too. Strongly recommended, as always.
The Hallmarked Man was the latest entry in the Cormoran Strike series, and I thought it was a good one! The core plot was maybe not as innovative as the previous two books, but its resolution felt much more satisfying and cohesive, which is a major improvement. More importantly, absolutely nobody is still reading these books for the murders anyway: it’s all about Robin and Strike, and the writing is even more explicitly structured around this now.
Strike definitely comes across as a total dick: constantly in scheming mode to separate Robin from her perfectly lovely boyfriend Ryan. I did feel it was a bit of a cheap plot device to have Ryan (a recovering alcoholic) relapse, since it then softens the more interesting dilemma of whether Robin should stay with him or not. But hey, we finally get a finale with the big confrontation we’ve all been waiting for, and I loved the surprise (but very amusing) role for Pat at the very end.
More entries in continuing series included Stone & Sky, the latest ‘Rivers of London’ installment, or “the one with the mermaid”! Set in Aberdeen, I enjoyed the alternating narrations between Peter and Abigail, although at this point I feel like Abigail comes across as the stronger character. Meanwhile, down at Coopers Chase, I read both The Last Devil to Die and The Impossible Fortune. The emotional core of the former book is Stephen’s deepening dementia, while in the latter Elizabeth is starting to put her life together again. This storyline really helped to soften the most annoying drawback of the series for me, i.e. the glib entitlement of the retirees. Relatedly, Joanna is now my absolute favourite character for finally standing up to Elizabeth. (Oh, and Ron’s grandson Kendrick’s crush on Tia is absolutely adorable.)
You can tell that Arthur Conan Doyle had realised that his usual Sherlock Holmes formula had pretty much been exhausted by the time of His Last Bow, because some of the stories in this collection are pleasingly experimental, such as the expanded role for Mycroft Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’. My favourite was ‘The Adventure of the Red Circle’ because reading it aloud (a staple Domdi evening activity) provided the opportunity for lots of silly accents. Most unusual is the final story, ‘His Last Bow’. Written in 1917, this is an amusing reunion of an ageing Holmes and Watson to foil a German spy. There’s no detective mystery to unravel at all here, it’s just a patriotic contribution to the war effort!
The Wood at Midwinter is a very, very short Christmas story about a saint who wishes for a child and adopts a bear cub. Appropriately, I read it on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a pair of utopian sci-fi books (the ‘Monk & Robot’ series) from Becky Chambers. It’s set in a post-robot uprising world in which humans have learned to live harmoniously within their natural limits, while the robots originally built for humanity’s factories have retreated into the wild.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built was the first thing I read after our son was born, because I thought I owed him something optimistic for the future. It’s an odd little book. I don’t share the innate pastoralism, but the pairing of Dex (a “tea monk” who travels between villages, making tea and listening to people’s troubles) with Mosscap (a robot who emerges out of the wilderness to check on how humanity has progressed) is really lovely, and clearly a spiritual descendant of Asimov’s Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. If I was being critical, I’d say that Ursula Le Guin was much more honest than Chambers about the level of coercion required to make any social system work, even the ones which might seem very attractive.
So by a process of elimination, I think I’ve arrived at my truly favourite reads for 2025: Jane Pek’s The Verifiers and its sequel The Rivals. Huge thanks to Toggolyn for gifting the first one to Randi, which I subsequently borrowed! These books are fun, page-turning thrillers following the life of Claudia Yin, a young New Yorker who loves detective fiction and cycling in inappropriate weather. She joins Veracity, a secretive agency which investigates dodgy online dating profiles on behalf of its clients, and quickly gets drawn into the murky, murderous underbelly of the online matchmaking companies.
The second book loses a point for ending so abruptly on a giant cliffhanger, and in general the biggest weakness of the series is the sheer technical unbelievability of Veracity’s hacking abilities. On the other hand, there’s no need to stop and think about that for too long, thanks partly to the intricate mysteries themselves but also the stresses and strains of Chinese-American immigrant family life. In particular, Claudia’s relationship with her (very tough) mother is a central foundation to the series. But perhaps the best part about the whole thing is Claudia’s love for Inspector Yuan: a fictional detective who, in-universe, is the star of a long-running series set during the Ming Dynasty. I would absolutely read these next if I could, at least while waiting for the third Claudia Lin adventure.
Non-Fiction
Simon Sebag Montefiore has an odd writing style. I wasn’t especially seeking him out, but I was looking for a biography of Stalin and this was well-reviewed, which is how I came to read Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar this year. (Technically this is a follow-up to Young Stalin, but given that there’s a limit to how much Stalin I actually want to consume, it seemed best to prioritise his ruling period.) What initially threw me, although I did eventually get used to it, is that each chapter felt like reading raw writing notes, complete with all the relevant quotes. I was expecting more of a narrative!
That said, by the end I had a clear sense of how the small, petty corruptions of leadership were magnified to such horrific extremes in Stalin’s court. We’re all familiar with the dilemmas: not wanting to contradict the boss, but also not wanting to seem sycophantic. At root these same instincts were also underpinning Stalin’s rule, but leading to constant, bloody purges rather than poor business decisions or losing election campaigns.
I read and listen to so much about the crumbling of liberal democracy these days, but all political systems have their own horrible weaknesses too, and ultimately the cult of personality is not a durable institution. So, in a strange way, this book left me hopeful.
For obvious reasons, Randi and I both read Emily Oster’s data-driven guide to pregnancy Expecting Better this year, plus her follow-up Cribsheet which covers the early years of parenting. These came highly recommended, although Oster is American and so some of the advice isn’t particularly relevant for British parents.
Expecting Better is the better book, and overall very useful. From memory, the most helpful sections were on miscarriage rates by number of weeks (always good to have the raw numbers) and a clear explanation for why certain foods are advised against during pregnancy, because it’s helpful to actually understand the mechanism in order to properly judge the risk. (For the record, things like mercury and alcohol are actively bad in certain quantities, whereas the danger from foods such as sushi is purely the risk of food poisoning.)
I found Cribsheet much less helpful. Partly, this is because while we all largely agree on the outcomes we want from pregnancy, raising a child is obviously deeply personal and dependent on the individual parents. The empirical outcomes are much harder to measure anyway, which is why so many of the chapters conclude in a vague, open-ended way. But also, Oster is clearly a naturally anxious person, so a lot of the book is just her talking herself into being more relaxed. That’s good for her, but thankfully this isn’t a problem we currently have, and fingers crossed it’s something we can avoid…!
Unreasonable Hospitality was a gift from the nice people at Booking.com, and I don’t have much to say about it other than some stories were clearly lifted directly into The Bear! This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong was a gift from me to myself, and an absolute delight. Randi and I have been big fans of Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones’s Map Men series from the very beginning. We’ve even got a Map Men mug! Happily, this book perfectly captures their blend of self-aware humour and, well, super interesting facts about maps. The whole thing is great, but I think my favourite chapter was the one on Google Maps, and the difficulties they faced when expanding to India. (Did you know that 60% of Indian streets don’t have street names? Neither did Google…)
Finally, on a bit of a whim, this year I read Laura Spinney’s Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. This traces the astonishing spread and development of Proto-Indo-European, the singular ‘ancestor’ language to many modern tongues as diverse as English to Gujarati. I definitely won’t pretend to have taken everything in, but it’s very rare for me to read any history which stretches so far back, and so a little mind-blowing to think about modern humans migrating and communicating long, long before any of our ‘historical’ categories of peoples or nations make any sense.
It’s a good reminder of how impermanent these constructs really are. I also appreciated Spinney’s reminder that it was only 18th century European nation-state building projects which established the idea that monolingualism was the ‘normal’ state of affairs for a country, and that much of the world just doesn’t work this way. (See also “different places are genuinely different” from This Way Up, as above.)
Since I’m not a linguist, I do struggle to spot the difference between ‘these words are clearly connected’ vs. ‘these words are totally unrelated’ just by looking at mysterious IPA symbols. I was also deeply curious about why it’s worth writing a book about Proto-Indo-European but not its ultimate Proto-Human ancestor. This is briefly discussed but then set aside in the intro, but I was interested to learn more. Is it just impossible to say very much? Why can’t we use the same techniques to extend the ‘family tree’ of languages further back? (I’m sure there are plenty of good answers to these questions… they’re just the ones which occurred to me at the time.)
I’ll leave you with my favourite language fact from Proto: the origin of the English word ‘merry’ (as in, Merry Christmas!) evolved from meaning ‘short’. In other words, people were probably cheerful when their religious ceremonies didn’t drag on for too long…😉
Before I begin: yesterday my Grandma died overnight at the age of 93. She was my last surviving grandparent, which is quite something given that I first wrote this type of post back in 2008.
My earliest memories of Grandma are hazy, but in a good way, as she helped to look after me when I was very young. I’m pretty confident that egg and toast soldiers on the little table in the kitchen were involved, though. Later, armed with my incredible portable tape recorder, I remember going with her to church and recording the service, which she was disappointed to discover sounded “mostly like people standing up and sitting down again”.
My siblings, cousins and I can all thank her for a huge number of family outings, and for bringing a packet of Fruit Pastilles to pass along the row during any theatre trips in case we got hungry between the start and the interval. At home, she hosted many family gatherings – both big and small – and was the central figure around whom the rest of the family orbited.
I’m incredibly glad that she got to meet her fourth great-grandchild before she died, and that she approved of him too!
We are now hurtling towards Christmas, and after carefully measuring the ceiling height of our new house, we were kindly joined by my mum on pram-pushing duties so that Randi and I could continue our tradition of carrying home the largest possible Christmas tree. It’s a beauty!
Back in November, I also had my celebrated first mulled wine of the season at The Free Press in Cambridge, during a family trip for lunch with Peter Mandler. (Yes, this means our child has now crossed over the London boundary for the first time… and his father has successfully changed a nappy on the freshly-mopped floor of a Greater Anglia toilet!)
We’ve also enjoyed a lovely afternoon visit from Andrew and Bonnie, and also made it up to Kingsbury for a long-awaited first meeting with Josh, Anna and family. This was an incredibly special moment as Josh and I did always plan to have kids at roughly the same time so as to unlock the possibility of joint walks across Hampstead Heath later on. That’s still in the future, but in the meantime I was very amused to receive Economics for babies as a gift. “It was her favourite book!”
In other news, I was very, very happy to finally give blood again successfully after my ban for failing the iron test expired. It’s good to donate blood, of course, but the main motivation (other than keeping myself in the race with my sisters) was that I could legitimately pick up one of those adorable ‘my dad gave blood today!’ stickers which I have wanted forever.
I was also very chuffed to be chosen, alongside my colleague Patrick, to attend the 2025 Travolution Awards. My company, eviivo, had been shortlisted in several categories but we had no idea we were actually going to clinch ‘Best Technology Product’. Huge congratulations to all of my colleagues at eviivo who work so hard to build something amazing!
Finally, yesterday turned out to be an extremely strange day. After waking up to the news of my Grandma, Randi and I turned our attention to welcoming the rest of our NCT class to ours for a holiday get-together. (It turned into a real feast after everyone arrived with lots of delicious food, but as a backup we were also ready with an array of premium biscuits: Grandma would have been proud.)
Martina and Will were the first to arrive, and while chatting over the frying of latkes, Randi and Michaela discovered that for a year they had actually gone to the same high school, only one year apart. This is all the more impressive given that Michaela is from the Czech Republic.
Those latkes, by the way, were hands down the best latkes I have ever had. It’s going to be nail-biting on Randi’s next batch to see if she can replicate them.
In the evening we also popped over to Angela’s for her 50th birthday drinks, although we didn’t join the trip to go clubbing in Balham afterwards. (Actually, I’m not sure we were really invited to go clubbing in Balham. My 50th is going to be a lot more pedestrian.)
Tonight is also the first night of Hanukkah, so we’ll also be experimenting with baby’s first candles!
Time for a few more of baby’s first…
- …trains! Appropriately enough, his first outing was on our local Windrush line as we made our way to Maria’s 70th birthday party (and north of the river!) via Overground. Awkwardly, some unexpected delays on the way back led to the antique Bakerloo line becoming his inaugural Tube journey, which Josh will be gleeful about. He’s also ticked off the Mildmay, Jubilee, District, Central and Southern trains in the course of a very special visit to his great-grandmother and an amazing lunch hosted by Tash & Cormac in Leyton.
- …pub! Allegedly, young people are turning against pubs, so we’ve tried to buck the trend by having dinner in the very family-friendly Perry Hill pub nearby. (I mean, it’s so family-friendly that there were also tables of older children doing some organised pumpkin carving for Halloween.) Together with Randi’s family, we also discovered another lovely pub just off Peckham Rye Park after a long weekend walk.
- …Halloween! Randi got into the festive spirit by buying him two separate pumpkin-themed outfits, which were very cute during their brief outings before he needed changing again. Meanwhile, I discovered that buying Jaffa Cakes is an absolute winning formula for trick-or-treaters. “I really want to take them even though I can’t eat them!”, said one girl. So this is basically a mental note for next year to buy more Jaffa Cakes.
Over the last month we’ve continued to have a stream of visitors, which has been really nice. Our son has now officially met all of his aunts and uncles, plus:
- Randi’s colleague Dan and his family (who came a long way for a short visit!)
- Kira, who empathises with a newborn’s existential questions
- Kirsty and Roger and the enormous picnic of dreams
- The Three As for brunch and a stroll around Mayow Park
- Cat and Brian, who were happily in the country on a work trip and made a flying visit to see us!
We also had our NCT group over at ours one Sunday morning, which was lots of fun (especially when our instructor forced us to line up all the babies on the sofa for a photo) and also a great excuse to start eating the incredible inscribed macaroons which Troy sent us. Thank you!
Otherwise, we’ve also been doing… lots of paperwork. We had to wait a while for Lambeth’s next available slot to get his birth certificate, which was the critical piece of paper needed to unlock all of the others. But props to the lovely woman who registered him in a surprisingly pleasant civic building, who also provided a cute “Born in Lambeth” lamb-themed pun-tastic baby vest (free when you purchase 4 certificates!) and a superb piece of British socialisation:
“Do you need to see our marriage certificate?” I asked, because fathers are only allowed to register a birth solo if they are married to the mother.
“No, it’s OK!”
“Oh… I just wasn’t sure how you’d actually know we were married…?”
“Well, you can’t lie to the government!”
“But I’m pretty sure people do though?”
“Well yes… but that’s a crime!”
It also makes me chuckle that my place of birth is listed as ‘Westminster’ (per my own birth certificate) whereas Randi is simply put down as ‘United States of America’.
In non-baby news, we’ve also resumed our quest to work through the entire Jet Lag back catalogue – just one more season to go now! – and, in possibly one of the sadder moments of our lives, decided we’d watched too many episodes of Location Location Location and so pushed the boat out by trying Location Location Location Australia. (Not quite as good, but still very compelling. And you get to see those famous on-the-street house auctions which Kim told us about!)
Shortly after going back to work our department also had a series of in-person meetings, which meant I finally got to meet our teammate Bala after six years of working together! There was also a delicious evening at Inca London, which I’m mostly writing down so that I remember to return here for Peruvian food with Randi someday. Assuming we can find a babysitter, of course…
It makes me very, very happy to say that our baby son was born at 3.03am on Wednesday 1st October. He’s perfect.
That could probably be the whole post, to be honest! But I also wanted to throw a few more memories into the time capsule from our two-week cocoon at home, as a brand new family, with neither of us working. Because, honestly, I’ve just been surprised at how blissful this all feels. It’s more work for Randi, of course, especially with the overnight feeding… plus our unwelcome discovery that this also needs to be followed by 20 minutes of overnight-being-held-upright-to-avoid-reflux. But right now we also all have time for each other: time for slow morning starts, followed by gentle migrations downstairs and maybe an afternoon walk along the river if we’re feeling up to it.
I know that all of this will get harder, in many different ways. But I think I was so prepared for it to be so tough from the beginning, I didn’t quite realise how wonderful this time could be. I mean, even changing his nappy is so strangely enjoyable… just to know that he’s working properly, and that I can help him when he needs me. It’s lovely.
Randi kept a diary of the birth itself, so we both have something to help us remember the details in 10/20/30 years if our child ever asks about it. Suffice to say, we made two attempts to get into King’s College Hospital that night, and I felt intense relief in the triage room on the second try when the midwife confirmed that Randi was now sufficiently dilated to be admitted. This was already after midnight, so it really wasn’t very long before he was actually born, but in those critical hours I can’t imagine a more incredible team of midwives looking after us. You’re all so amazing. Thank you.
And then, once he arrived, we were lucky enough to get everything we’d been promised from the ‘Golden Hour’ and then some: just hours and hours together in that private room, before anyone in the outside world even knew he existed, relishing our first skin-to-skin contact with our new baby. Plus that magical tray of tea and yoghurt with a giant stack of golden buttered toast! (Is that toast universal? Would recommend.)
In short, I feel very grateful both for the amazing care we received, and that we didn’t need anything out of the ordinary. But, if we had, I know that we were in the right place. 💙
And yes, obviously we have tons of photos… and he is very cute! I’ll resist turning this blog into a feed of baby pictures, though, and just thank everyone who has sent cards, gifts, meals, love and general well wishes into our bubble. Also a massive shout-out to the community midwife who visited us the morning after our first (terrifying) night of sleep at home, and then sat on our bedroom floor for an hour and a half to answer all of our questions and do observations without us even needing to get dressed.
We’ve also had wonderful visits from Granny G and Aunty Tash from my side of the family, and from Bubbe, Zayde and Uncle Alex on the other. Oh, and on day 5 we’ve even had Baby’s First Trip to A&E – don’t worry, everything is fine – which is just a reminder that we’re about to be hit by so many more firsts in quick succession, whether we’re ready or not.
Am I nervous and scared? Of course. But I’m also so excited. He’s finally here, and we’re doing this!
Update on moving house: we did it!
Well, I say ‘we’, but most of the actual moving credit should go to the amazing people at Finest Van, who also came and packed everything the day before. They really do go above and beyond and are highly recommended if you are looking for a moving service in London.
We’re also very grateful to Sienna for coming to stay with us that week! Not only did she give us lots of practical help during the move (including cooking a giant curry and helping us figure out where to hang everything in the new place) but we also had such a lovely evening together on the final night. We have five years of amazing memories from a flat which we truly loved, so it was really nice to just sit together around the staircase – all the furniture having been packed already – and reminisce.
Our new house is very exciting but also feels absurdly large for just the two of us. I’ve been assured that it won’t take long for us to feel differently. In the meantime, we’ve just been desperately trying to work through our top priority list before the baby arrives: unpacking all of the boxes (tick), getting the whole house recarpeted with something soft (tick), acquiring a cooker so we can cook food again (tick). And last night, Ewa and Mario came round with a drill to hang everything on the walls downstairs – including the famous railway departure board! – so now it’s really starting to feel like home. (Thanks! You guys are the best!)
Unsurprisingly we haven’t been out and about all that much recently, although we did enjoy a really fun evening with the rest of our NCT class at the Perry Hill pub, and as a Friday night surprise Randi also took me to a new (and delicious) Polish restaurant which she discovered has opened in Crystal Palace. I also had a great night out with my uncle Andy after work, the two of us entirely unaffected by the Tube strike thanks to the growing list of Tube-like things which aren’t-technically-the-Tube.
And for the purposes of making sure she gets into the blog, I’m just going to pre-emptively guess that Randi and I enjoy having Reema over this afternoon for a big shakshuka lunch! (If it turns out to be awful, I guess I’ll just have to come back and add a postscript.)
Last but certainly not least: last weekend was Ellie and Michael’s wedding up in Lutterworth! Randi was understandably not up for travelling, so I hopped on the train from St Pancras to Market Harborough solo. Apparently the big crowd I passed heading in the other direction was a group of far-right supporters on their way to enjoy their Big Nazi Day Out in central London, but I was running late so just assumed it was some sporting thing.
We’d already booked a room at the hotel where the wedding was taking place, so after imploring one of Ellie’s cousins who I’d never met to tie my tie for me (thanks!) I checked-in and then headed downstairs to third-wheel with Simon and Fleur.
Hanging out together over the course of the wedding was super fun, combined with helpful doses of baby talk and life advice, and although Simon was upset at me for sending back Randi’s starter and main course at dinner I tried to redeem myself by hanging on to her crumble at the end to share. All of the food, much like the rest of the wedding, was fantastic.
I’ve only met Michael once – and haven’t seen Ellie in a while, either – so it was really nice to learn more about him from the excellent wedding speeches, and from the rest of our table which turned out to consist of Michael’s semi-professional quiz team. They seemed very nice and intimidatingly knowledgeable. Plus, there’s clearly some air of mystery attached to this group, because later on in the night we were approached by a drunken man with a slightly wild look in his eyes, who asked:
“Hey, are you guys on Michael’s quiz team?”
“Oh, no no no…”
“But… you were sitting on their table!”
“Oh, yes, but we were just interlopers. We’re not quizzers.”
“Hmm… OK” he said, clearly still suspicious, before storming off again – presumably still on the hunt. I have no idea what this was all about, but I’m just glad I verified that the quiz team was alive and well on the dancefloor later, or I worry I would have become a side-character in an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
After a very hearty English breakfast the next morning, Simon and Fleur kindly dropped me off back in Market Harborough where I hung around in a café for a bit, confirmed that Randi hadn’t unexpectedly gone into labour overnight and then headed home. Our new home! (In which, incidentally, a succession of cats are now taking it in turns to watch intently from the garden. It’s as if they’re on duty…)
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
