Once again, it’s time for my annual reading review, i.e. the moment when declining to rate any books on Goodreads is finally rectified. It hasn’t been a peak reading year, to be honest, with a lowly total book count of 28 (my lowest since 2014) and a failure to find that one standout story which really whisked me off my feet and took me somewhere dazzlingly, thrillingly new. Nevertheless there are a lot of good, solid entries below, with lots to recommend if you’re making your own plans for 2024.
Fiction
I’m usually pretty good at picking my first book of the year, but ended up with very mixed feelings about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It’s definitely a novel I’m ‘supposed’ to like, but it took me over a month to slog through it and with such a large cast of characters it’s irritating to deal with the unnecessarily added complexity of having to puzzle out exactly who is speaking (which is often unclear). That said, it’s also the kind of book which improves on reflection and, after reading some helpful reviews, I came to appreciate this portrayal of Thomas Cromwell – a self-made, wry, pragmatic rationalist – as some kind of anachronistic emissary from modernity. Mantel is also very good at conveying the human drama of Tudor politics, particularly in the scenes with a humiliated, angry young Mary.
One of my honeymoon reads was Death’s End, the final entry in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. It’s a brilliant series, of immense scope, and the third book continues to explore complex science fiction concepts over many future eras of humanity, including a memorable section featuring three densely metaphorical fairy tales which continue to haunt me. In fact, there’s an inescapable melancholy to a lot of this trilogy – difficult to avoid when you’re dealing with the end of the universe, I guess – so if you’re looking for an uplifting location to read the very last page, I can heartily recommend (from personal experience) that a heated pool overlooking the magnificent forests of Guatapé, Colombia will do the trick.
Another (quite different) honeymoon read was The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This is a highly enjoyable, fast-moving page turner with an intriguing set-up: former Hollywood star Evelyn Hugo, now a recluse, handpicks a young, inexperienced journalist to spill her life’s secrets to. But why her? Spoiler: there is a shock ending, which is all part of the fun even though it feels awfully contrived. There is no shock ending to Woman at Point Zero – a very different kind of book – first published in Arabic by Nawal El Saadawi in 1977. But it’s written with bracing clarity and can be read as a gripping page turner of its own, even though you know from the very beginning exactly what will happen to Firdaus. Based on a real person, she is female prisoner condemned to death for murdering her pimp who nevertheless retains her own fierce dignity as she tells her life story.
I was not overly impressed by The Committed, a sequel to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. A thriller is supposed to have some thrills, but everything is weighed down by a lot of laboured intellectualism and compared to the original book it left me cold. On the contrary, A Visit from the Goon Squad is the Jennifer Egan book which I should have read last year when I plumped for Manhattan Beach, and I’m grateful for Todd and Carolyn’s quizzical raised eyebrows in convincing me to go back and try this one out instead. I enjoyed this a lot more, even though the punk rock / music industry setting was not initially appealing, and I appreciated the unusual interlinked short-story structure to the book once I understood that’s what was happening and I wasn’t just struggling to keep track. Also, as soon as I finished I immediately thought that it would be really useful if somebody had made a diagram of how all of the characters and storylines intersect, so kudos to the many people on the internet (here’s a good one!) who have of course already done that.
Confession time: I don’t think I will ever be the right target audience for Lauren Groff’s Matrix. I did try! In fact, the omens were good when I started on the intriguing first chapter, curled up on a comfy chair in the top floor of Chicago’s Open Books bookshop. What’s this? Lauren Groff’s new book is set in a 12th century English abbey? But try as I might, this study of intense religious mysticism and slow-burning sexuality was never going to make my list of favourites, even though I can recognise it as objectively good writing. To embarrass myself further, I even paused reading it halfway through to binge on the newly-released Comoran Strike instalment, which is a bit like sneaking out of the back of a high-end Chicago restaurant to go eat at Chick-fil-A. But, man, it was good.
The Running Grave is easily categorised as ‘the one where Robin infiltrates a cult’, which (a) keeps the tension very high throughout, (b) is a good strategy to plausibly prolong the Strike/Robin relationship, (c) is occasionally tiring and you wish she would just get out sooner. Less so than the last book, but I still found the ending a bit of a problem: everything seems to collapse and resolve itself more quickly than you’d expect, and there’s no big showdown with the cult leaders. Of course, all of this is quickly forgotten with the big cliffhanger ending… which I do fear will be easily glossed over again at the start of the next book. We shall see.
I do understand and respect those who no longer wish to read JK Rowling. For me, the most extreme example this year where the personal failings of the author really intruded onto the work itself came when reading Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity. Asimov’s sexism shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s read his books (although the extent of his personal criminality is awful) but in this story his refusal/inability to write a realistic female character in Noÿs Lambent really undermines a promising sci-fi concept. Anyway, this book is the story of the ‘Eternals’, an elite, arrogant organisation who meddle in humanity’s timeline and, intriguing, also facilitate commercial trading between different eras. So, think of the ‘Observers’ from Fringe with a little dash of the WTO thrown in for good measure. Despite the character flaws, I appreciated the Cold War-era vibes (this is definitely a critique of central planning, amongst other things) and the philosophical charge of the book’s final line.
For a more sophisticated imaginings about politics under the guise of science-fiction, try Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed from 1974. Anarres is a moon orbiting the planet Urras. Resources are scarce, but society is successfully organised under an anarcho-syndicalist model after being founded by a one-off set of idealistic colonists from Urras several centuries earlier. I do believe there is a strong case for authors to write utopias – not just the more common dystopias – and this classic of the genre is a very credible attempt to explore a somewhat-believable anarchist utopia. Guin does a superb job at balancing a genuinely attractive form of communism with the reality of how utterly crushing it would likely feel if you were not brought up in it, and I think the interwoven nature of politics and culture is the real point of this book. The relationship between Anarres and Urras also made sense to me, and the language and worldbuilding is top class: the ‘dispossessed’ of the book’s title are poor but also reject possessions, unlike the ‘propertarians’ of Urras. The plot itself, as so often in these types of books, is less compelling.
In contrast to Le Guin, Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is a much more ‘standard dystopia’ and I found it a little rote. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well-written and a perfectly compelling read, but the implementation of PACT (Preserving of American Cultures and Traditions Act) felt cartoonish and contrary to everything we know about how American society actually works. In this novel, the US is rapidly transformed (by ‘The Crisis’) into a deeply repressive, authoritarian state with virulent racism directed against Asians. My issue is obviously not that there isn’t a lot of racism against Asian Americans already (of course there is), nor that a society couldn’t transform at frightening speed (of course it could) and, of course, everybody knows the American state has form when it comes to enforcing racism through terror. I just didn’t buy this telling of it. American society is so noisy and fragmented that a clean, wholesale transition to this New Order is too unsubtle, too straightforward, and not hypocritical enough. That said, and maybe this sounds contradictory, I did really enjoy reading it. So please read it too, and then we’ll see if I’m the only one who feels this way.
The Man Who Died Twice – the second in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series – is a fun read, but I do think his instinct that all his characters are so arch and ironic all the time ends up undermining the individual characterisations. It also removes jeopardy when everyone manages to be suave and unruffled in the face of all threats. Well, I say that, but most characters remained pretty unruffled in Agatha Christie’s cracking The Body in the Library and it was still excellent. I also chuckled to myself at her insertion of a character praising Agatha Christie as one of the great crime authors of the day… so maybe I should just fully accept the Thursday Murder Club books on the the same cosy terms.
Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends was very enjoyable. To steal brazenly from another review, her characters “zig where you’d expect them to zag” and I found that to be very true: there’s something about her writing which sends these relatable human moments into unexpected directions. This year I also went back to Ishiguro (but I really am running out now) for An Artist of the Floating World, which is set in post-war Japan and centred on an elderly painter whose former reputation is now tarnished by his actions during the war. This is exactly what you’d expect from Ishiguro and nothing less: unreliable narration and memories mingled with guilt, denial and misdirection about the past.
By challenging all of my skills of emotional repression, I have successfully subsumed any desire to read the third in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy into a Schrödinger’s box of anticipation: it won’t be there until I look. In that spirt, I enjoyed his yet-another-diversionary novella, The Narrow Road Between Desires, as an evocative ride through a day in the life of Bast. It helped that I hadn’t read the short story of which this is a slightly-longer revamp. Talking of novellas, this year my Rivers of London diet was limited to the new Winter’s Gifts sidequest featuring FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. This was fun (giant tentacles emerging from the ice!), but let’s be honest and agree that Kimberley is a weird mishmash of American stereotypes which don’t quite come together as a convincing person. Oh, and on New Year’s Eve I snacked on Philip Pullman’s The Collectors, a spooky short story from the worlds of His Dark Materials with little hints about the early life of Mrs Coulter.
Finally, I had a lot of fun with Ben Elton’s Time and Time Again, and am still impressed by the little twist in our assumptions about the timeline which is revealed near the end. To summarise the conceit: a secret society of Cambridge academics, with a nostalgic yearning for the lost greatness of European society destroyed by WW1, find a way to send ex-solider Hugh Stanton back in time to prevent the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and then, for good murder, kill the Kaiser. Spoiler: this is not a good plan. One slight issue I have with this book is that I think Ben Elton wants to skewer the ‘Great Man of History’ school of history in favour of wider social and economic forces, but then his actual plot ends up making the ‘wider social and economic forces’ brigade look like a bunch of idiots since minor historical changes (again, spoiler alert) end up having utterly massive implications. So the real lesson ends up being ‘obviously you can’t just fix the twentieth century by shooting the German Emperor in the head’, which I think we knew already. But who cares? It’s super fun and I want a turn with the time-travel history-messing toy now.
Oh, and one evening – inspired by Angela downstairs, I think! – Randi and I decided to read The Importance of Being Earnest out loud as a piece of old-fashioned entertainment. I enjoyed this, and we should do it again, but next time we should either pick a two-handed or rope some other people into joining us so we don’t have quite so many characters to cover…
Non-Fiction
Beyond Weird was my first non-fiction book of 2023, and in my mind is indelibly linked to the physical sensation of reading it from a hammock on the front porch of our homestay in Colombia, after the sun went down, on the first night of our trek. For a funk-inducing guide to quantum physics and the deep mysteries of nature, this felt very appropriate. Quantum physics is a common subject for popular science books – precisely because it’s so weird and counterintuitive – and although this book strives to move beyond the clichés (hence the title!) there’s still something shocking about, say, the double split experiment – no matter how many times you’ve read it before. Anyway, this was a great book and highly recommended whether you’re new to this world or not.
Joanne B. Freeman’s The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War is one of those books which I picked up as a recommendation from The Ezra Klein Show years ago and finally got around to reading this year. It’s also one of the most ‘history’ history books I’ve read in a while: sticking to a carefully defined domain (physical violence in the US Congress during the antebellum years) and inspired by a close reading of a primary source (the diaries of Benjamin Brown French, a clerk in the House of Representatives). French himself is an interesting figure precisely because he himself is historically insignificant and largely goes with the flow, starting off by seeing the abolitionists as a radical, disruptive influence and then slowly shifting as the political realities shift around him. These type of people are, of course, much more common than the few unusual characters who usually make it into popular political histories.
Anyway, my main takeaway from this book – and this may not shock anyone – is that it doesn’t actually seem that Congress itself was inherently violent, at least for the time, but rather that the representatives of the South in Congress were unusually and exceptionally violent! Given that they were representatives from a monstrous society based on plantation chattel slavery this doesn’t seem all that surprising, but I think it’s worth pointing out since it reminds me of the equally absurd equivalences drawn between Democrats and Republicans in Congress today. Whatever you think of them, they really aren’t just neatly symmetrical mirror images of each other.
Skipping forward to much later American politics, Robert Draper’s To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq is, well, exactly what the subtitle says it is. This is very much a personal story of individual decision-making and organisational politics gone wrong rather than a big-picture geopolitical account. As a result, some of the most interesting parts (at least to me) are those things which might have broader lessons for organisational culture. For example, I was intrigued by Bush’s management style: he wanted brisk, efficient meetings where the people under him presented a consensus view which they had already hashed out between themselves. In the context of the Iraq War, this seems obviously dangerous, as it was far too easy for complications, caveats and opposing views to be squashed before ever coming close to the President. Then again, I can easily imagine the opposite style being critiqued elsewhere for its meddlesome micromanagement! (Sigh… this indecision is why I’m not destinated to write the next bestselling airport book for aspiring middle managers.)
I bought Africa Is Not a Country in a bit of a bookshop panic: that feeling when you’re overwhelmed by choice, overwhelmed by all of the books on your to-read list already and just want to take a punt on something unexpected. It paid off, because this collection of essays by Dipo Faloyin was an absorbing read, covering topics from the profoundly negative legacy of nineteenth-century European borders in to today’s intensely competitive West African rivalry over how to make the perfect jollof rice. His wider point, which is not new but always worth making, is to push back against very harmful and totalising narratives of the entire African continent. Of course, the only way to do that successfully is to familiarise more readers with specific people and places.
As a meta-point: Faloyin’s background is as a senior editor at VICE and you can really tell that he grew up writing for online audiences. I wish more non-fiction book authors would embrace the flexibility which results from this style. The chapters in this book vary dramatically in both tone and length, with no attempt to enforce an unnecessary consistency. If the chapter is done, it’s just done.
I laugh at myself when it comes to Homage to Catalonia, which is (of course) George Orwell’s first-hand account of his time spent as a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War. Famously, this doesn’t include an awful lot of fighting, and Orwell successfully captures the sense of boredom, frustration and futility which pervades the conflict. In the original edition, Orwell includes two ‘background’ chapters about the wider political situation and the internecine feuds between the Communists backed by the USSR and Trotskyist groups such as POUM, which is the group that Orwell himself had joined. Later, Orwell requested that these chapters be moved to become two appendices at the very end of the book, and apologetically notes that future readers may find them outdated and uninteresting. Most modern Goodreads reviews seem to agree, but for me these were by far the most interesting part of the book! I’ll take obscure political manoeuvrings over a description of what it’s like to get shot in the neck (spoiler: unpleasant) any day.
I hadn’t seen any TV series or film about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, so Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster had the advantage of giving me all the facts and characters afresh. It’s a totally compelling thriller with so many sad and shocking stories, especially when a piece of personal heroism or self-sacrifice turns out to have been completely pointless. The moment which stuck with me most vividly came soon after the explosion when three engineers are investigating the state of the reactor, pass through an airlock, stare right into the core of the reactor and – within seconds – are suddenly exposed to utterly fatal doses of radiation. Worse, at least one of them is a veteran of nuclear submarines and immediately understands that he is now doomed to die, and soon. It’s chilling.
As a veteran listener of Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales podcast, the immediate cause of the accident is also so familiar. A series of small mistakes, bad decisions and the understandable desire to just get a routine late-running test over and done with: all things which, on their own, wouldn’t have amounted to anything but just so happened to come together that night in the most awful way possible.
Finally, a massive thanks to Kira for gifting me I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country. This is a collection of journalism by Elena Kostyuchenko, a Russian reporter for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper who is now barred from returning to her home country after covering the war in Ukraine. In the book, short autobiographical segments are used to preface much longer essays from her career, covering everything from squatters living in Moscow’s huge, abandoned and very creepy Hovrinskaya Hospital (since demolished) to a community of sex workers working overnight by the side of a highway and her own brutal experiences of attending Gay Pride marches in Russia. A very moving collection.
The run-up to Christmas this year felt very normal: stressing about buying presents, trying to close down projects at work and going to at least one end-of-year office social event: thanks to Steve, Kira, Tomas, Lee, James and Paul for coming out to the pub! As an intriguing side plot, I slipped out the next morning to visit the German Embassy and submit my naturalisation paperwork, following the path which most of my family has already completed. Hats-off to the embassy’s lovely (and efficient) legal staff! And no, I’m not planning on moving anywhere, but it’s always good to have post-Brexit options. Anyway, having done my bit, this process will now trundle on through the bureaucracy for another year, so fingers crossed I didn’t mess anything up.
This last-minute dash to the Embassy was a little surreal, but things really started feeling different the next morning when Randi, Kira and I arrived at Paddington and boarded a train bound for Exeter. As I said to my sisters, ‘leaving London to go see your parents’ feels like one of those quintessential festive traditions which we’ve never experienced before. Thankfully, despite some worrying moments just outside of Paddington, everything ran relatively smoothly and we made it to Exmouth as planned to join mum, Katie and James for a Christmas by the sea.
As you might expect, we played a lot of games.
The first game worth mentioning is Don’t Get Got, Kira’s extended party game in which we each collected secret missions to be carried out against other players over the entire Christmas. Naturally I felt very paranoid and conspiracy-minded by the end. With this continuing background threat we also played many, many shorter games including Spaceteam (an absurdist app-based challenge to collectively pilot a spaceship while yelling instructions at each other), Codenames (some of the funniest/most stressful Christmas moments at once), and Terraforming Mars (a deeply enjoyable Eurogame which I managed to win – albeit with a heavy helping hand for starter players!)
We also struggled to interpret the confusing rules of Connecting London – but had a lot of fun while doing so – and got very animated playing Cobra Paw (of which Randi is now a very proud owner of) with Katie’s friend Caitlin, who popped over on our last morning and shared some valuable local knowledge. Finally, it made me very happy to introduce more people to the joys of Worms Blast, while Katie was overcome with joy to get the Toy Story 2 action game running on her laptop again after all these years. (If anyone from the extended family is reading this and worried that we’ve abandoned all traditions, don’t worry: we did find time for the odd moment of charades too.)
Other highlights included:
- A ranked-choice voting mechanism to decide on our Christmas Eve activity (after which Kira confessed that she had no idea what she voted for as she had no expectation that it would make any difference)
- The winner of said ranked-choice vote: The Muppet’s Christmas Carol! (still the best Christmas film)
- Calling Tash and Cormac on Christmas Day itself, during which they enjoyed a James Cameronesque dive into the depths of the oven itself
- Doctor Who back on Christmas Day (finally!) with The Church on Ruby Road: a magnificent, rollicking, goblin-filled introduction for Ncuti Gatwa and argh I’m so excited for more
- The traditional Boxing Day family walk… but now along clifftops!
- A post-Christmas visit from the wonderful Fox family
- Watching some unexpected boat races from mum’s balcony
- The nostalgic whirr of Kira’s polaroid camera
- A triumphant return to Aby’s, the local café I staked out on my first visit to Exmouth
- A triumphant introduction to one of mum’s new local pubs (and their sticky toffee puddings)
But, let’s face it, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without an abundance of food at home. Massive thanks to mum for her incredible Christmas Day spread – the crowning glory of a packed menu including Katie and James’s tacos, Randi’s shakshuka and Kira introducing us all to the delicious Azerbaijani qutab. Oh, and we all built a gingerbread train too 😀
Merry Christmas!
A few weekends back I made my final trip to Scotland in 2023 for a festive one-two punch of the Midlothian Labour Christmas party (featuring a tricky Midlothian quiz and a brava bagpipe performance!) and then a Hannukah celebration at Kirsty and Roger’s with Katie and James (featuring Randi’s delicious latkes and an improvised solution to a shortage of candles). In-between, Randi and I went over to Katie and James’s flat for the Doctor Who special which I’ve been most looking forward to – The Giggle, with Neil Patrick Harris as a perfectly-cast Toymaker – and it was amazing.
The following week I enjoyed a really lovely end-of-year virtual boardgaming night with my team at work, at which we all learnt that Zirak is absolutely fearless when playing Incan Gold and there’s no competing with him. Randi and I also said goodbye to Alex and finally made it to The Perry Hill pub for dinner and drinks. This is somewhere which should qualify as ‘one of our locals’ but just isn’t in the direction we’d normally think to walk – but I’m glad we did, because it was very cosy!
However, in truth we were merely warming up the cosiness level because our real Christmas treat was a long weekend to the German town of Bad Wimpfen for the authentic German Christmas market experience. This trip was masterminded by Randi as a way both of seeing a different side to the country than Berlin (which we’d both visited already) but also exploring how far we can comfortably get across Europe without flying.
To that end we started our journey on Thursday night with the Eurostar to Paris, and then checked-in to a private room in a hostel a short walk from the station. The next morning we had time to enjoy a long breakfast with Reema, followed by a brief wander around the banks of the Seine, before hopping back up to Gare de l’Est (much nicer than Gare du Nord) for our train to Mannheim. Our *sniff* high-speed *sniff* train, on a network which France has been developing for decades… and perhaps the less said about this the better.
In contrast, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn has been in ‘permanent crisis’ (the words of Germany’s public auditor, not mine) for years, with record delays and cancellations, so we were a bit sceptical that our change of trains at Mannheim would go smoothly. And it did not! But since we were on holiday we secretly enjoyed the chaos (is this train going to the destination displayed on the outside or the inside?) plus the cheer which went up when it finally started moving. This delay also meant we were inspired to break for dinner at our final changeover station (a.k.a. schnitzel at Sinsheim!) which was delightful. And, in fairness, the rest of our DB experience ran smoothly on this trip. It’s important that the German railways stumble every so often, in order to provide hope to the others.
Bad Wimpfen itself was truly magical. I had imagined a cute German town with a fenced-off Christmas market somewhere in the middle, but in fact the market stetches out to cover the entire historic centre. The crowds (almost all domestic German tourists) circulate gently around the hilly, cobblestoned streets – glühwein or bratwurst or both in hand – pausing to appreciate the brass band playing from the balcony at city hall, the stalls selling homemade wooden toys or the merry-go-round at the entrance.
We were particularly impressed by the Feuerzangenbowle – or ‘fire tong punch’ – a mulled wine variant which is served alight, although for ourselves we stuck with the safer, less fiery variant. (Full disclosure: if you looked through our entire set of photos from this holiday I think we’re holding glasses of glühwein in at least half of them.) We were also delighted to re-encounter langos, last seen during our Austrian Christmas market adventure of 2017, which came in a smaller, denser variant here but were no less delicious. I persuaded the German man behind us in the queue to help me practice saying all of the fillings (sauerrahm, knoblauch, schinken and käse) so that I could buy the one with everything.
During the days we explored a little further afield, beginning with a beautiful countryside walk to the neighbouring town of Bad Rappenau for lunch. Along the way we admired Germany’s well-signposted rural walking paths, admired the extent of the railway system (because of course Bad Rappenau has its own station for a quick journey back) and – in Randi’s mind at least – decided that Germany was much more reminiscent of “the American Midwest, but with trains” than anywhere in the UK. Which makes sense, given the German influence on the Midwest!
The next day we went on a longer journey to Stuttgart. This was less successful as a destination, since by the time we finally got there Randi was starting to feel a bit sick (for legitimate reasons) and I soon joined her (because I foolishly experimented with the glühwein + gin combination at the Stuttgart Christmas market). As a result we didn’t see a great deal of the city, aside from the main shopping street (bland, post-war architecture), aforementioned Christmas market (fine, but not a patch on Bad Wimpfen) and a legitimately nice park. With all that said, what did make the trip legitimately worthwhile was our initial train from Bad Wimpfen, which opted to become a tram halfway through and took us on a street-level tour of all of the local factories. Since it was a Sunday they were all closed, and it all felt a bit like a movie set, but it was a very very evocative German ambience of “look at all the industry we have”.
I’ll save Christmas itself for my next post rather than cramming it into this one too – but suffice to say we both brought back bits of Bad Wimpfen for our Secret Santas!
It’s December already? Wow, OK. I guess I should have known this was coming once I reached 2023’s ‘first mulled wine of the season’ moment (this classic phrase thrown in especially for the dom.blog bingo players) at Beckenham Place Park a few weeks ago. Randi and I were admiring the autumnal scenes (as they then were) together with her brother Alex, who is staying with us in London for a few weeks and is giving us the inside track on what actually happens in the city after we’ve gone to sleep.
If you are playing dom.blog bingo (and if you’re looking for an excellent stocking filler there’s still time to order from the merch store) another phrase you’ll be wanting is ‘trip to Scotland’, so I’ll oblige: a few weekends ago I made another trip to Scotland where political activities included a very well-attended canvassing session in Penicuik followed by a warming round of hot chocolates with some of the other volunteers, an awful lot of handwritten envelope addressing and a group rewatch of David Olusoga’s excellent first episode of Union.
On Sunday, before catching the train home, I popped in on Katie and James’s brand new flat (so much space!) and enjoyed another classic Doctor Who screening: 1967’s The Moonbase. Knowing that Patrick Troughton was my dad’s favourite Doctor growing up always makes these stories particularly special, which was in no way diminished by the fact that two of the four episodes are animated recreations paired with the original soundtracks. (However, the archival-loving tendencies of the original fans who made audio tape recordings from the original broadcasts have my eternal gratitude.) Anyway, The Moonbase was the second Cyberman adventure featuring an attack on an international weather-control base on the moon. In a nice show of slowly putting the continuity together in my head, companions Ben and Polly (along with Jamie) are the same Ben and Polly introduced in The War Machines which Katie and I watched back in 2021. Polly remains very smart. Ben remains infuriatingly stupid.
A few weeks later I went to Amsterdam on a work trip for a couple of days, for which I managed to swing Eurostar tickets rather than flying. This is obviously the superior experience for many reasons, and – as Randi ruefully notes – is actually faster than the train to Edinburgh. The Booking.com event I was there for was really great, although I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even notice the potentially historic (and not in a good way) election day going on around me. If future generations ask me what it was like to be there on that day, I’ll have to tell them I was too busy ordering a large portion of chips (with house sauce ) from Manneken Pis…
And now with Christmas fast approaching it’s time for the usual festive preparations, including this year’s Christmas tree which is an absolute triumph if I do say so myself. Ever since moving to Forest Hill we’ve always bought our tree and then carried it home from the same Christmas tree seller behind the station, and he says that we’re the only couple who ever arrive where both people look enthusiastic for the task. Purists might note that we got a bit over-ambitious with the height and that it doesn’t actually fit the dimensions of our flat, but we regret nothing.
Other wintery adventures this month have included pizza and homemade gingerbread at Matt and Laura’s – during which we spent many happy hours playing “escape the monster” games with Cress, and I feel like Matt deserves a lot of credit for nobly agreeing to be typecast as the monster each time – plus a really lovely evening of drinks and catch-up with Jill at The Island (which always brings back memories itself) and, of course, the first two Doctor Who anniversary specials featuring the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate. I count myself firmly in the “this is awesome” camp, and I am beyond excited to have Russell T Davies’s vision for the show back on screens again. My only complaint – and here is a mild spoiler for the first special – is that Donna’s daughter Rose, who had literally just saved Donna’s life and is totally old enough to be a companion in her own right, made a polite request at the end of the episode to see inside the TARDIS which was totally rebuffed! The #justiceforrose campaign starts here.
Finally, this weekend Randi and I were invited to Caroline and Josh’s housewarming party in Streatham. As per usual we arrived slightly aggressively on time (3pm on the dot) but redeemed ourselves by joining the speedy chair assembly team. We had a great time, but it was particularly nice to be reunited with the Whitstable group from last year including Hilda the dog! And talking of wonderful groups: on Friday night we assembled Oliver, Abi, Sarah and Kira for a Georgian evening at Kartuli. I was so happy we managed to get everyone together to share several bottles of sweet, sweet Georgian wine and lots of general deliciousness, but I also appreciated the educational value after discovering that Kira and Sarah share an uncanny affinity for obscure animal facts.
I realise these blog posts have fallen into a monthly cycle, which was never the intention! Last time I included a photo of us all at my mum’s house enjoying a farewell meal before she packed up and left for Exmouth… but as it turns out, there have been quite a few bonus farewells at my mum’s since then too. So, a roll call: The One With Beth & Stewart (plus Tash & Cormac as they were just about ready to leave on their amazing world travels), The Brunch One With Sharon (my beloved American adopted-godmother who was treated to lots of arguments over the US constitution plus a trip to the dump Brent Re-Use & Recycling Centre, which are two things everyone wants from their holiday) and last night’s The One With The Neighbours, at which we learnt simultaneously terrifying yet impressive things about how one of us (not me) once caught a rat using a safety pin and some blu tack.
Back in early October, Randi and I were also very excited to celebrate Cora’s third birthday at a rainbow/unicorn/cat-themed party, at which at one point I became the object of a hunt across the garden by an ever-increasing band of young children. That afternoon, Randi and I meandered back home via Brockwell Park (we miss you, Brockwell Park) in order to go back to the Turkish restaurant Saray (we miss you too, Saray) for dinner with Randi’s parents.
A weekend later, after Beth and Stu had jetted off to Spain and Portugal, I spent the Saturday visiting Exmouth with my mum to see her fancy new seaside home with my own eyes. Not only is it a lovely place – with amazing views! – but I also got a chance to chat to the current owner about the oh-so-casual fact that she was part of a world-record beating rowing team which rowed across the Atlantic.
Last month I also caught up with Matt and Clark at a pub in Hackney, where together we solved all manner of global problems before I managed to catapult a halloumi wrap into myself. I was also very excited to stay overnight in Chelmsford with Abbi (with whom I will always share wine and product manager woes), Rob (who cooked us all a delicious curry dinner and then breakfast the next morning) and Jack (who was super-fun to be around as well as patiently answering all of my Pokémon-related questions).
As a surprise one evening, Randi also took me to Immersive 1984, an immersive theatre experience based (obviously) on Orwell’s novel. There are many, many things to say about this. Firstly: it’s set in Hackney Town Hall and a large chunk of the performance took place with us sitting inside the actual council chamber itself, which was a great deal more majestic and impressive than I typically picture English local government to be. Secondly, it really sharpened my concerns that in a totalitarian state Randi is going to get us both killed with her stubborn truth-telling tendencies. And thirdly – without being too spoilery – there was an incredible moment of accidental hilarity near the end where the audience were all asked to volunteer to carry out a brutal and obviously immoral act. Most people sat uncomfortably, looking around at each other, but one guy stuck his hand high in the air with a self-knowing grin, prompting the woman he was with to put her head in her hands with embarrassed mirth. Thanks for taking one for the team!
But the highlight of October was definitely last weekend’s three day triathlon (© Robyn) of family events, kicking off with a big celebratory lunch for my aunt Carolyn’s very well-deserved CBE. It was especially wonderful to see the Canadian branch of the family (Josh, Cindy and Isaac) in town again, plus I enjoyed some great conversations over lunch with Advia, Tessa, Jackie, Sharon and others. Afterwards, Katie joined me and Randi’s family for an elongated wander around Kensal Green Cemetery (elongated only because one of the gates was unexpectedly locked!) before the four of us walked down to Shepherd’s Bush to see Elephant. This is a semi-autobiographical one-woman show about race, class and Empire, written and performed by an extraordinarily talented Anoushka Lucas who sings, plays the piano and gives a powerfully physical performance throughout.
Then it was back home to rest in preparation for the big event on Saturday: Alix and Adam’s long-awaited wedding! All of the people above – plus many more – were there in Hammersmith to cheer and dance and celebrate together – so hats-off to Alix and Adam for providing a ‘menu of people’ cheat sheet over dinner as a quick-reference to everyone else in the room. Everyone had so much fun together, and many of the people who couldn’t make this last-minute wedding (12 years in the making but only 12 weeks in the planning!) were represented in spirit in a big-screen video montage. Particular highlights for me included: the spectacular brass brand, the beautiful speeches, the saxophonist accompanying the DJ on the dancefloor and the very tasty Victoria sponge wedding cake.
As you can see, I hung around in North London for a bit after the wedding, staying overnight at my mum’s (really making good use out of it while I still can) along with Katie and our American cousin Sharon (but not the American adopted-godmother Sharon from earlier). This meant that Katie and I got to engage in some classic Worms Blast action in the morning – which I miraculously got running again on my laptop – before heading over to Carolyn’s official post-wedding Sunday lunch, where there was quite some variation in hangoverness.
I wasn’t hungover, but I was tired – and yet it was important to muster some energy for the afternoon because Randi, Beth and I had an important date in the diary: The Gunpowder Plot. This is another immersive experience running in London, which was a birthday gift from Tash & Cormac and takes place in the vaults beneath the Tower of London. I was both excited and a little nervous (there is such a thing as too immersive) so was relieved when our group included a boisterous set of kids who could take the lead on deciding whether or not to assist Guy Fawkes with his treasonous plot. Quite a lot of the script – which takes place across a mixture of VR and real-world actors while moving from room to room – aims to ignite an ethnical debate about ‘terrorism vs. freedom fighting’. Rest assured that none of the 8-year old boys with us had even a glancing interest in this question, and just wanted to blow stuff up as quickly as possible. Fair enough!
The VR stuff was fine – especially at the end, when there was a brief amount of full 360° immersion – but the in-person interaction with the actors was better. Also, I was very amused at the mum who suddenly realised during the ‘intermission’ at a seventeenth century tavern (contactless cards still accepted) that there probably wasn’t any minimum drinking age in 1605, but sensibly resisted trying to put this to the test. For me, the most daring piece of immersion was being forced to hide in a priest hole at a Catholic safe house – alone, and in the dark – while the King’s agents raided the place. For a piece of touristy entertainment with lots of families involved, they didn’t pull their punches.
Finally – this week, Randi and I enjoyed a celebratory Georgian dinner at Kartuli, while the night afterwards Randi cooked up a batch of cheesy pasta for Reema and Sam while we all drank wine and argued about the ‘right’ way to do trick or treating. (This year, as every year, I refused to give out treats until at least one child in the group was brave enough to ring the spooky doorbell with the dropdown spider and deep bellowing laugh. Those are just the rules.)
See you next month…? [Editor’s Note: Yes, of course there are more photos from the wedding. But if I waited to get my hands on them it’d be 2024 before I could post anything.]
Beth on Bergen: “It’s always fun to see you two having such a great time exploring a new place!” Apr 7, 15:05
