We’re back! Prior to last weekend I’d only been to New York twice in my life, and both times in February. So when Randi and I were first invited to Mike and Melissa’s wedding, I was doubly excited: both to celebrate these wonderful human beings, but also to experience the city without a coat. Later, after Randi’s family had generously agreed to fly from California in order to provide childcare, Randi also had the inspired idea of contriving a bonus family road trip to New Jersey so that I could boost my state count to 32 states. So I was really looking forward to this trip for all sorts of reasons, and it didn’t disappoint.
We flew into Newark (which is technically in New Jersey anyway, but airports alone don’t count) and drove to Somerset, because this is where Beth and Stewart lived for a couple of years with baby Alex and we thought it’d be nice to go see their old house. We checked into a Residence Inn, which required both a physical credit card (“no contactless”) and – astonishingly – hard cash (!) to be exchanged into quarters (!!) if you wanted to do laundry. (And at the risk of providing too much information, while our flight with a seven month old was only marginally harder than it had been with a three month old, by that point we already had a lot of laundry to do.)
Fortunately, Beth was able to bail us out on all counts. But I would gently plead with the American hotel industry to consider a new approach. Otherwise, Randi found staying at a Residence Inn to be incredibly warm and nostalgic for bringing back childhood holiday memories. We were also proud of ourselves for jamming a toilet roll under the window in order to get some air without requiring the fan. So, overall I’m sure the staff thought we were totally mad.
Obviously it was important to find some distinctly New Jersey experiences, so on Thursday night we headed to the Somerset Diner where Beth and Stu had eaten many times when they lived here. Nothing quite beats a real American diner, from its characteristic features (the huge menu, the giant portions) to the finer details (like the placemat entirely covered in adverts for local small businesses) which just aren’t replicated elsewhere.
If I’m ever in Somerset again, I’d go back. This seems unlikely, though, as it’s not exactly a tourist magnet. Somerset itself is an “unincorporated community” located within “Franklin township”, and despite passing multiple road signs where the township boasted of being “the 5th best place to live in the USA” (at least according to Money Magazine 2008) this wasn’t quite enough to shake my preconception of New Jersey as a poorer, more industrial adjunct to its famous neighbour.
I’m very glad, therefore, that Randi did some emergency research and directed us to Washington Valley Park for a Friday morning walk through the woods. This was absolutely delightful, and a refreshing vision of life in the garden state. (Fortunately, we did not see any venomous Northern Copperheads, and therefore succeeded in giving snakes the “distance and respect” which the information board requested.)
We then enjoyed a scenic drive through Princeton, home of both the eponymous university but also the governor’s residence (“Drumthwacket“). This is a little odd because the state’s capital is two towns over in Trenton, although it’s not hard to guess why “the People’s House” is hidden away here instead. Our next stop was Lawrenceville – an excellent name – home to both an excellent sandwich shop and Rider University where Stewart studied as an undergraduate.
Our visit coincided with graduation weekend, which happens elsewhere, so the campus was quiet for our walk around the grounds. I appreciated the strict rules for getting a poster up on the noticeboard (“must be approved and stamped by the Office of Campus Life”) and rebelliously parked our buggy in the parking spot “reserved for President Loyack”, purely because there’s something about named parking spaces which makes me want to fight the system.
Also, they have a pub! At least it’s labelled as such, which was very promising, so maybe our child will want to chase his dreams here in a couple of decades’ time. If he does, all I advise is that he stays away from the creepy fraternities on the campus fringe, whose dorm buildings announce their separation from the others with pompous Greek lettering on the side, and oh goodness this is just a bit hard seriously for a glorified teenage drinking club.
Finally, we arrived in Trenton, where the rental car could be handed back and – in exchange – we were all ferried to the Trenton Transit Center to catch our train to New York’s Penn Station. While Randi and I were very grateful to be taxied around by her parents in New Jersey, we did feel a palpable sense of relief to be back on rails, especially as driving with a baby seems fundamentally flawed since you can’t pick them up if they start fussing or crying. Happily, the NJ Transit route seemed both frequent and well-used.
The view from the train thereby completed my New Jersey experience, at least for now, as we passed through stations such as Elizabeth, New Brunswick and – my favourite – Rahway. As in, there’s genuinely a railway station called Rahway Station, as though it’s just very posh.
And now… New York! On this trip we stayed entirely within Brooklyn, which feels somewhat more ‘Londony’ than Manhattan with its relative greenery and lower-rise buildings. But only somewhat. Overall, NYC’s urban infrastructure is genuinely unique within the United States. (Shout-out to the much improved subway cars on the A train we rode to the hotel!) But at the same time it’s very obvious that you’re still in an American city, just from a hundred little things, just as London may be a fellow ‘world city’ but is unambiguously still the British capital. People sometimes imply that these giant cities stand completely apart from their countries, but it’s just not true.
Good New York thing: the new subway map (rolled out last year) is so delightful and such an improvement. I’m so proud they finally did it!
Bad New York thing: their drivers feel significantly less tamed. Perhaps it was just because we were staying on the busy Flatbush Avenue, but cars overall feel significantly less tamed.
Anyway, on Friday night, Randi and I (plus baby) walked to Mike and Melissa’s welcome drinks at a nearby brewery, which also featured an incredibly delicious build-your-own-taco buffet. I definitely didn’t need any more food on the way back, but since we were walking by it seemed stupid not to pick up a classic New York pizza slice too, which I also appreciated.
I did not appreciate the suggestion from a random person on the street that if I fell out with Randi at some point in the future I should resort to murder. I’m not saying there aren’t violently minded Londoners, but perhaps they’re just less socialised to offer unsolicited advice, and I’d like to keep it that way. On the other hand, the woman at the hotel the next morning who struck up a conversation with me while I was looking for proper tea bags (not easy) was lovely, if a little pushy. (“I have a niece and nephew in college nearby.” “Are they enjoying it?” “They better be enjoying it! If they want to make a career out of it!”)
On Saturday we did some emergency wedding shopping and then headed over to Prospect Park to hang out with Phoenix and Marcos, last seen on this blog last summer during their holiday to London. Prospect Park is wonderful, and – like all of the parks we saw – was chock-a-block with families enjoying the sunshine. We had a great time catching up, and then Marcos engaged his superpower of “locate nearest food spot which everyone will enjoy” and we brunched at a tasty Italian place.
That night was the wedding itself, which took place in the garden of another Italian restaurant with even more exceptional food. Randi and I were both slightly giddy since it was our first childless night in seven months, and we found it very sweet that – since Mike and Melissa are both lawyers – they were married by a judge which Melissa used to clerk for.
Talking of lawyers: I tried to deter the lawyers sitting on our table from doubling down on their written constitution idea, but unfortunately I think that ship has sailed. Enjoyable conversations though, with an unexpected focus on post-Soviet states. But the person I was most interested in hearing from was Mike and Randi’s mutual uni friend Matt, who is a honest-to-goodness college counsellor: a role which I’ve seen in films but always struggle to imagine as a full-time job. He was lovely, though, with all the earnest idealism of a native San Franciscan who spends his time encouraging teenagers to envision a bright future ahead.
Sunday was Randi’s birthday, which we kicked off with a family walk across the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge. Afterwards, Randi and I scuttled back over to the Brooklyn side for lunch with Rachel and Ana at Miss Ada: a Mediterranean restaurant with lots of sharing plates which was a big hit with both adults and baby alike. The walk there and back took us through another busy park – Fort Greene Park – which was similarly packed out with families.
It will surprise nobody to learn that our next stop was the New York Transit Museum, which has an advantage over the London Transport Museum in that it’s housed in a real abandoned station. Not only does this give the exhibitions plenty of atmosphere, but it also allows them to dedicate the platforms to a whole slew of subway cars from different eras which kids (and non-kids) can happily run through.
There’s also an excellent shop, although I was disappointed not to find any Forest Hills-specific memorabilia which I would have been compelled to buy. I will note, for the record, that the section of the museum about payment systems has some brazen factual inaccuracies about both London and Hong Kong, and implies that New York was some kind of pioneer in contactless. This is… not correct.
After the museum we all went our separate ways, leaving the three of us to enjoy an afternoon wander along Brooklyn Bridge Park. This is a long, linear stretch of greenery by the East River, punctuated by piers, and has a surprising smell of the sea. We ate some ice creams in the sun before setting off to the airport for our overnight flight back home, although not before stopping for one final burst of New York pizza. (I’m not entirely sure why the UK didn’t welcome a generation of late nineteenth century Italian immigrants to sell pizza by the slice, but it was a serious policy error.)
We might all be a little exhausted – and varying degrees of sick – after this mad, nonstop weekend. But it was extremely nice to have a bit of the old travelling feeling back again… and, of course, to scratch off another US state from the scratch map. Still 18 more to go…
Happy 22nd birthday, blog! You turned 22 on 27th April, and while it’s tempting to say “ah, they grow up so fast!”, that’s emphatically not true in this case. It feels like forever! Unfortunately the only thing I could find in the list of rights at different ages for 22 was that “support ends for young people who have been in Local Authority Care… unless they are going into Higher Education” which is (a) convoluted, (b) not applicable, and (c) surely more of a loss than a ‘right’ anyway.
Back in the world of human parenting – which is significantly more hands-on, and doesn’t come with any backups – the latest milestone has been ‘settling-in days’ at nursery before he starts properly later this month. For the very first session, we just sat together in the nursery for an hour, and I got the same warm and cosy feelings that I had on our first visit, long before he was actually born. Fingers crossed he agrees!
Of course, nursery also means an entire marauding army of new germs heading our way, some of which may have been responsible for his dodgy eye and subsequent trip to the walk-in centre in Beckenham to be prescribed some eye drops. This just happened to be on local election day, and so our plan for a relaxed after-work family stroll to the polling station to commemorate Randi’s first time voting in the UK turned into a genuine moment in the pharmacy (right after “I’m so sorry, but we’re actually out of those”) of wondering if I would actually miss my window to vote. But then came “oh actually, I found one hiding at the back of the fridge!” and we all made it in the nick of time. It is a really good thing that polls in this country stay open until 10pm, though.
Talking of new experiences: you know what else might be revelatory if you were born in October 2025? Long sunny days in the park! A couple of weekends ago, we finally hit the tipping point for being able to lounge on a lawn for a few hours, enjoying a beer and\or ice cream and admiring the rival foam rockets being launched around us in all directions. On Saturday we did just this in Beckenham Place Park, while on Sunday we headed to Crystal Palace Park to hang out with Caroline, Josh and their little one – who we hadn’t met yet! – in the new (and very cool) dinosaur-themed playground.
This month, I also celebrated my aunt Bonnie’s 60th birthday at a fancy dress party with the theme “something beginning with B”. Naturally, I went for British Rail (yes, the defunct nationalised entity), which is why I’m now the proud owner of an authentic British Rail corporate shirt, cap and whistle. (If only I had a matching Silverlink outfit then I’d also be sorted for Halloween.)
Anyway, this was lots of fun, with a special shout-out to the Bananas in Pyjamas and – of course – to the latest cousin to join the newest generation of the family! Despite it being her birthday, Bonnie also produced an outrageously large number of desserts, which were delicious and great fuel for my journey home.
All that said, the big event of May was Catherine and AJ’s latest visit to London! There are too many kids in too many photos to do justice to their whole trip on here, and since I was working I also missed out on some choice outings, including an overnight stay in Canterbury or the obligatory visit to the Transport Museum. But, I did get a decent chunk of time to hang out with everyone, including trips to Padella, the Perry Hill pub (twice!), ScandiKitchen and a quick stop at the British Library (albeit mostly as a nappy changing destination).
We played in parks too, of course: a very satisfying brunch in Crystal Palace, a fun day out at Blackheath and Greenwich Park (during which I was surprised when AJ just flat-out agreed with me about daylight savings – that never happens!) and Beckenham Place on their final day with special guests Tash, Katie and Cormac. These three trekked a long way across London to hang out with us all, which we were very grateful for. To capture the real essence of these trips, look no further than the lovely Polaroid snaps taken from the sightline of a four year old, which really took me back to the unusual angles of my own first photos taken with my own childhood camera.
But my favourite moments were back at ours, from chaotic daytimes to chiller evenings featuring some combination of Taskmaster, wine and caterpillar birthday cake. At some point we did wonder if hantavirus was about to lock us down together, but seemingly not this time. It is kinda incredible that we’ve kept up the frequency of visits, though, and now we’re into a groove it feels unlikely that our children won’t be forced to play together for many years to come… while we argue about the primary election schedule.
Next time on dom.blog:
- Dominic’s 32nd state!
- Some familiar faces
- A marriage made in Brooklyn
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If you’re skimming this post only for the baby news, the big update in the last few weeks is that we’ve started weaning! (If you’re bored of all the baby news, I can only apologise.) So far, the good news is that he’s been more than happy to experiment with food. Sometimes, when we’re feeling chill and modern, this has included strips of carrot, sweet potato, avocado, and so on. Also pancakes and latkes! At other times, after we’ve talked ourselves into paranoia around choking, we’ve retreated to the mashed baby food of yore like porridge, mashed potato and yoghurt.
Either way, he’s definitely into it, and is also methodically working his way through the allergens. (Obviously, you should introduce allergens in priority order based on how sad you would personally feel if your baby couldn’t eat them. Dairy would be tragic. Shellfish less so. I am not a doctor.)
Mainstream clinical advice is that babies should not consume ice cream or beer, but this doesn’t extend to parents. So on a sunny Saturday in March, we celebrated his very first high-chair meal with a trip to the Crystal Palace Food Market. We’d never visited before, but the ice cream flavours included rhubarb, so we will be going back. From there, we moved on to the Gipsy Hill Brewery Taproom. Originally, this was driven by a birthday voucher for a brewery tour from Tash and Cormac, but over email the company had patiently explained that it would be hard for them to deliver a brewery tour now that production has moved to Kent, and perhaps I’d be happy if it was converted into a voucher for drinks at the taproom instead? More than happy, guys!
Another big family outing in March was Randi’s citizenship ceremony at Lewisham Town Hall in Catford! In the interest of protecting his privacy I won’t post the (mandatory) photo of Randi posing with a portrait of the King, but while anything involving the monarchy is always going to feel very odd – especially with an American – my overwhelming feeling was how warm and Londony the ceremony was. Most of the time, you likely just take for granted quite how wide the range of backgrounds in the city is. But having everyone’s home country* announced one-by-one as they collect their naturalisation certificates felt like a peek into the superdiversity engine which, I increasingly suspect, is an essential foundation to sustain liberalism today.
I also found it very funny that the newly-minted citizens were divided into two sections of the chamber based on whether they had chosen to say the religious ‘oath’ or non-religious ‘affirmation’ of allegiance. I understand this was for boring practical reasons of making sure everyone said the right magic words at the same time, but it felt like they were setting things up for a controversial revival of CBBC’s excellent gameshow 50/50 (ask your parents).
I will also note, with my historian hat on, that we were promised a “history of the borough” in the email and very much did not receive one, even though Jay Foreman has produced some great videos on the London Government Act 1963.
But still, I’d taken the day off work for the occasion, so after we finished up at the Civic Suite (which charmingly includes the fancy old Mayor’s chair from the council chamber as a novelty seat in the foyer) we headed over to the Perry Hill pub for an authentically British celebration. It’s taken a while, but at least everybody in this household now shares at least one common passport!
Recently we also had Reema and Esther over for dinner, during which I hope we successfully encouraged Esther to reconnect with her old school pal David Broadband. A few nights later, Randi and I were invited over to kick off the long Easter weekend with NCT friends Jordan and Miska. And speaking of NCT: a week later, we caught up with the rest of the gang at Horniman Market, and it is true that knowing just a few parents with kids the same age and within walking distance (even if those kids are still amusingly different sizes!) is a really nice thing to have.
But getting back to Easter itself: our biggest family adventure in recent weeks was to Bury St Edmunds, which was an exceptionally lovely trip. The sun was shining, our Airbnb came with virtually its own secret entrance to the Abbey Gardens, and both Bubbe and baby got to experience Suffolk for the first time. Shout-out to Randi for remembering to take us all to Nowton Park after she discovered it on a run last time, and to the cheesemonger back in Bury who sold us a wide variety of very tasty cheeses for our Saturday night feast! Then, on Sunday, we took the train to Diss for a very special Sunday roast at Ampersand Brew Tap with my uncle Derek and aunt Ginny and cousins Julie and Daisy.
I don’t get to see this side of the family very often, but we had such a great afternoon catching-up on everything from baby news (massive congratulations to my cousin Kieron!) to the Artemis II space mission, which Derek was following with the same baseline interest and enthusiasm which my dad would have had. I am also grateful to Daisy for agreeing to split a chocolate brownie with me, as otherwise the prospect of dessert would have been dashed. Afterwards we all went for a walk on the fens nearby, before returning to the brewery where Randi – clearly envious of my earlier haul at Gipsy Hill – picked up some craft beers of her own. The perfect Easter outing.
We very much intend to keep returning to East Anglia as a family, even though we’re now another generation removed, so I hope we did a reasonable job with our first indoctrination attempt. But we also have brainwashing goals back in London too, and perhaps none more important than Hampstead Heath.
Josh and I have been promising each other for literally decades now that we would slowly mind-trick our future children into enjoying long walks by meeting up on the Heath, and last weekend we finally accomplished this for the first time! I mean, sure, not everyone was walking yet. And at one point we actually had to exit the Heath to save the buggy from a dust storm. But we got there, so onwards and upwards.
(Pro-tip: we were looking for a semi-affordable lunch in Belsize Park beforehand and came across Brad & Dills, which is tucked implausibly around what feels like a hospital service road but I promise is real and does excellent bagels. I also accidentally ordered more doughnuts here than I meant to by saying “we’ll take one of each!” and not realising there were more than two kinds, but I regret nothing.)
Finally, we’ve also managed to watch a couple of long-form things recently! The first was Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, i.e. the third installment of the wonderful Benoit Blanc murder mysteries, and honestly I could enjoy these forever. Ideally I’d enjoy them in an actual cinema, but Netflix’s release window is a crime all of its own, so we tried to watch it on Beth’s account as, no, we still don’t have Netflix. This was our intention, at least, but actually we ended up adding a “Beth” to Sam Pow’s Netflix account (look, if you sign into Netflix on our TV, it’s gonna stay there for a while) and triggering a wave of confusion on her side about what on earth was going on. Sorry, Sam!
The other thing we saw – yesterday, in fact! – was Heart Wall at the Bush theatre. This was the other voucher from my birthday last year which was rapidly reaching its expiration date (thanks, Katie and James!) so Randi and I were doubly excited to find one of the Bush’s “relaxed performances” on a weekend matinee. Essentially, this just means there’s an expectation that some members of the audience, for a variety of reasons, may need to make some noise or leave and re-enter the show. It’s a brilliant idea, especially if – like us – you have a baby who is largely willing to sleep through the performance. (He woke up at the end to the sound of clapping all around him, which must have been a little weird.)
Anyway: the play itself was also brilliant! Don’t fool yourself into thinking that we picked something child-friendly for his first theatre outing. This is an emotional family drama about buried grief, set somewhere in the North West of England, and staged mostly in the local pub – the kind of pub where everybody knows each other and the karaoke machine is always available. (Here I’ll pause and voice my respect for the audience members who volunteered to have a go at some karaoke beforehand.)
In the play proper, we start with 23 year old Franky’s surprise visit home from her detached London life. But despite what you might guess, it’s not really a play about class or place. Instead, we see the unravelling of the tragic events which clouded Franky’s childhood, building to an emotional confrontation with dad Dez. Honestly, Heart Wall is just one of those plays where everything just kinda works. Every individual performance is very strong, there’s a good balance of light and dark, and the pace moves well through a single act. Highly recommended.
Finally, and apropos nothing, please enjoy my sad face when I realise I’ve taken the wrong branch of the Windrush line home after a day in the office:
(*P.S. If you’re thinking that ‘home country’ is a confusing term for me to choose here, because of course Britain is now also a home country, the truth is that I originally wrote ‘country-of-origin’ before deciding it sounded too much like a food label.)
Last year, as you may recall, I picked up German citizenship. After just a little more paperwork, this resulted in a burgundy Europaische Union passport of my very own, which has duly sat in a desk drawer until – finally – a few weeks ago I actually had an excuse to use it on an overnight work trip to Berlin. Perfekt!
I must admit that I was a little nervous approaching the passport gates for EU citizens. I mean, I don’t believe Germans are particularly known for their practical jokes, but was this actually a real passport or simply an elaborate bureaucratic prank? Fortunately, it was real, and the gates opened with a swoosh of acceptance. On the other hand, at this moment I also realised that if you scan a German passport at a German machine in Germany then the on-screen text will (not unreasonably) switch to German. Similarly, if you present a German passport to a German receptionist at a German hotel in Germany, he will also switch to German. So at the very least, I really need to memorise some apologetic phrases about speaking English.
Berlin itself was short but delightful: a hearty Expedia party here, a tasty Airbnb breakfast there, and just a little bit of spare time to wander around ITB Berlin’s giant convention halls and compare the national tourism stalls from various countries. (The equivalent of the over-competitive Science Fair kid is surely Spain, which somehow bagged an entire room to itself!)
A few weeks later, Randi and I spent a morning at the German Embassy in London to kick-off the process of passing this European identity down to the next generation. “I should warn you that there is a bit of a backlog to process the birth certificate…” we were warned by the lovely woman at the birth registration desk after she had checked our documents, before learning that the estimated wait is three years. “But don’t worry, your son is already legally German!” she confirmed, before noting brightly that three years is already a big improvement on the four years it used to take. And, more importantly, none of this stops him getting a passport in the meantime. (And yes, we’d have to make an awful lot of family Christmas market trips before this became a cost-effective way of avoiding the €20 ETIAS fee, but still…)
Some general child updates:
- He has now graduated from SnuzPod to cot. This was a sad and traumatic moment (for me, not for him) and I have no idea why he insists on growing so quickly.
- He has also now graduated from carrycot to parent-facing buggy seat. Again, I felt very bonded with this piece of equipment, and now the era of the carrycot has just been abruptly terminated. But thanks to Jamie for coming round and giving both of these items a new home!
- All of the articles I read about the appropriate levels of screen-time for young children are so focused on TVs, phones and tablets that they never address the most addictive screen of all: the train board. He’ll always turn his head to seek this out!
- He continues to show zero interest in rolling or crawling, but is very happy to sit up straight. I’ve asked him just to pretend to crawl a bit in time for Catherine and AJ’s visit, purely to keep up appearances.
Our revolving-door childcare team over the last month has comprised Stu, then Beth & Stu together, and finally solo Beth, with a few days of bonus Aunty Tash too. Everyone has been wonderful, so thanks! These visits also coincided with both Stu and Beth’s birthdays, so we also got to compare-and-contrast Randi’s dual birthday cakes and evaluate nutella vs. peanut butter icing. (I say “we” but unfortunately I mean just the adults, sorry.) For Beth’s birthday we also spent an evening at Dishoom in Shoreditch, which is always a winner.
This month we also spent a lovely Sunday morning with Steven and Sadie and their little one, who is very close in age to ours, and so will be dangerously vulnerable to the “you must be friends!” argument in future when the parents just want to hang out. I also enjoyed some post-work drinks with Andy in Clerkenwell, watched the Wild London Attenborough special as recommended by Tash (which was great, although I do hope he’s still able to get travel insurance to go further afield) and started a new series of Jet Lag with Randi and Beth. This one is set in Taiwan, which is probably as close to scratching the “you should do a series in China!” itch as it’s possible to go.
Last Sunday, we also took both of our mothers out to a tapas lunch at El Molino in Penge to thank them for all of their grandparenting so far! Their grandson was also super-delighted to have both Bubbe and Granny G together at the same time, as our photos attest.
And finally… Tash, Katie and I also found a few hours for a session on Board Game Arena together! This was extremely fun, and we played all sorts of favourites, from Incan Gold and Can’t Stop to Cartographers, Ticket to Ride and Dobble. My only slight issue is that over the entire course of these varied games, I managed to win precisely none of them. Zero! So, a rematch will clearly be needed at some point.
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…)
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
