Spoiler alert for anyone who’s still saving the US election night for a streaming binge over Christmas: Trump won. And, as Randi says, if Trump was going to win then we should be glad it was clear and decisive, because it’s always unhealthy when the losing side can sooth itself into passivity because it “won the argument” or wasn’t “really” beaten. There are a million arguments about why the Democrats lost – and I have my favourites! – reasonable people can disagree. What irks me is when people start from the question “…but how could people vote for Trump?”.
The answer to that question is really simple: Donald Trump was the Republican candidate. His voters pulled lever A rather than lever B, and that’s it. It doesn’t work to claim that you’re not allowed to vote for one of the two candidates on the ballot, or that you’re guilty of pathological character flaws if you do. It’s not just that blaming the electorate is a bad idea. It’s also absurd to claim that you’re defending democracy by leaving the voter with only one valid choice. That’s not a vote, it’s a threat.
I know this is disempowering because none of the Democrats chose Donald Trump to be their opponent. So what can they do? Well, one answer is to keep trying to win elections. Political parties which keep getting beaten have a strong incentive to change. But the Democrats do try to win elections, of course. Everyone’s entitled to their own pet theories about how to increase the odds. Here’s my list: Biden announces he won’t seek re-election after the 2022 midterms. An open primary selects a candidate with outsider energy and a popular theme. Internal coalitional groups stop being so self-destructive and weird. You can pick your own list, and it may be completely different to mine. Bernie would have won! Michelle Obama would have won! Taylor Swift would have won!
The point is, believing that Democrats could have done things differently is not the same as believing that victory can ever be guaranteed, especially in a world where all incumbents are losing. ‘Sometimes losing elections’ is really, really normal. I’m not writing this to be sanguine. Trump winning is very bad. But the alternate universe hovering most closely to ours is the one where Democrats lose to someone else, not the one where Democrats always win every election. If you care about a democracy in a two party system, you have to care about the health of both parties, not just your own side. To use an overly British metaphor, they are the neighbouring flat in your terraced house. You should not expect to share their taste in music. A good neighbour is not the same as a good friend! But if they have rising damp, or a leaky roof, it’s going to get you both in the end.
Ranty introduction over! If you made it through all that, I promise I’ll move on to other things too, just after recording how strange my actual 5th November turned out to be. After a day on a stationary boat – for an unrelated work event! – I ended up at a watch party with Randi’s colleagues featuring not just the usual CNN (gotta love John King’s magic wall) but also a dedicated desk of hardcore election analysts just for us. So while CNN cut to commercials, we could just wander over to the number crunchers to get the real story. Sadly, of course, none of this did anything to change the outcome and by the time we got into an Uber home at around 1.30am the trends were starting to become clear. By the end of our ride, it was obvious. Still, I’m grateful for the invite and it was certainly a memorable election-watching experience.
In between all of this Randi and I also did some emergency kitten-sitting for Za’atar at Tash and Cormac’s place in Leyton, where we also enjoyed a very tasty Italian dinner with mum later in the week. That Friday night I was also very excited for a catch-up with Jill at The Island (where I feel like she had to endure an early draft of the opening to this post) and we somehow managed to drag out our last half-pint for nearly two hours.
But, fun things aside, by the end of that week Randi and I were itching to get away somewhere and so we settled on… Bath!
The honest reason why we ended choosing Bath is because at Matt and Rachael’s wedding, several weeks earlier, I had been reunited with ex-Groupon colleague Ben and his wife Steph. When I learnt that Steph runs her own bakery and brunch place – Good Day Cafe in Bath – I sent the menu to Randi as a note for the future, and this seemed like a good time to be sharing some delicious French toast and loaded hash browns. Which we did, for brunch on Sunday, and it was great!
We also arrived with enough time for a long Saturday afternoon walk, which we both found invigorating even when Randi made a rare slip-up in her directions and we had to climb under some barbed wire to avoid a 25 minute walk through a long, dark tunnel. (Which, to be fair, looked really cool. It just wasn’t the outside-in-nature experience we were looking for.)
That evening, we met up with Randi’s friends Will and Zoë for dinner at an excellent pizza place, followed by drinks elsewhere, followed by an oh-my-god-we-can’t-get-rid-of-them walk back to their house for even more drinks around the kitchen counter. They’re both super fun to hang out with, and when we eventually took ourselves back to our BnB (by phone torchlight) we were both suitably uplifted about the world.
After brunch at Steph’s café we thought it would be silly not to visit the Roman Baths of Bath, which (I later learnt) I apparently visited as a child but have no memory of. There have been no swimmers here since a child was killed by a waterborne infection in 1978, but there is a decent audio guide which guides you through the Roman development of this hot spring into a full-blown leisure complex featuring hot baths, cold baths, gyms, wine and poolside snack vendors.
The best part are the curse tablets: bitchy notes inscribed into metal by ordinary people asking the goddess Sulis Minerva to curse someone else, usually after a theft. For example: Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’ temple. (Very level-headed, Docimedis.) Our absolute favourite author wasn’t actually sure who had stolen his property, but named about eight potential suspects like a stressed-out supply teacher. It’s wild to still have access to this bottled-up rage nearly 2000 years later.
On the way home on Sunday night we had some engineering works on our Overground and did what any normal couple would do: split up to race home via two completely different routes. Sadly, I don’t think this record will last 2000 years, but here’s a teaser in case I can somehow fool the far future into thinking that everyone did this:
Finally, while Randi is in Wales for the weekend, I met up with Josh, Anna and Cora for lunch and a stomp around Golders Hill Park . A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon, even after being magically transformed into a rabbit-frog-tree.
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 😀
Hello from the 17.34 service from Glasgow Central to London Euston. It’s a long journey, but I’m taking advantage of my seat with an odd little work table (room for a laptop, but slotted in snugly behind the luggage rack) to try and clear out my extensive backlog of September blogging material.
From our long list of possible anniversary dates, Randi and I have two to choose from this month. Early on in September we celebrated the anniversary of our very first date by going to Babur, while 24th September marked one whole year since we dragged everyone up to Hereford for our big, beautifully sunny (second) wedding day.
The weather was similarly sunny when we journeyed up to Josh and Anna’s one Saturday for a back garden brunch, followed by a lot of playtime in the paddling pool and (most importantly) a chance to teach Cora to chant “Naughty Aunty Randi!” whenever she did anything objectionable and/or I needed to deflect blame from the consequences of my own actions. So, to summarise for anyone who has (presumably jokingly?) asked how married life is going… it’s going great 😀
As my mum will soon be moving out of London, we hung around North West London for the rest of that weekend to spend time with her, help a little with the clearout and do some panicking at the lack of spare storage space in our own flat to house the things I now needed to bring back from my childhood bedroom. On Sunday we were joined by Tash, Cormac, Katie and James for a ‘farewell to the house’ Sunday lunch, with chicken pie and mash to honour one of the staple weekend lunches of our childhoods.
To be clear, I wasn’t joking when I said that this weekend had thrown me into a furniture-related panic. Fortunately, Randi and I had already been planning to do something to turn our joint office into a real guest bedroom, so this gave us the impetus we needed to start ordering more furniture. As a result the following weekend, while Randi was safely away in Edinburgh, turned into a madly productive spree of furniture assembly… most of which was done relatively correctly, even though there was a moment around 1am when I was trying to manoeuvre a giant bookcase into place and wondered if I would get crushed in the process. Sam, who has been staying with us off-and-on this month, graciously became the first guest to try sleeping in the guest bedroom and check whether the bed would collapse overnight or not. It did not. Hurray!
This month I also visited my Grandma, started watching State of Chaos with Randi (a recap of the last seven years of disaster and disarray in British politics, in which the relatively recent past feels like a lifetime ago), bade a very sad farewell to Jill at work and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with my mum, Randi and Melissa at a delicious Malaysian restaurant in Queen’s Park which is apparently run by a former QPCS student.
Last week, Randi’s parents also arrived in London. Sadly they picked the worst possible moment to attempt the 10 minute walk from Forest Hill station to our house, and so were welcomed back to the city with a hailstorm, but once they dried they were cheerful once more. On Friday night the three of us met up with Andrew and Bonnie for some excellent tapas, while on Sunday we met up with the rest of the family for an afternoon of tea and cakes hosted by Alix and Adam.
We’ve reached Penrith and I’m close to wrapping up the London section of this post, but first I also need to summarise the rather eclectic collection of shows I’ve seen in the last month:
- Guys & Dolls at the Bridge theatre. This was a last-minute invite from mum to see a new production of the classic Broadway musical, of which I knew literally nothing about a vivid memory of that scene in The Simpsons about a song which (spoiler alert) “isn’t even in the show!”. Anyway, the Bridge Theatre version featured an immersive central stage in which all of the audiencegoers with standing tickets stood and mingled with the cast in a replica New York. I loved this, albeit I loved this from the comfort of our front-row seated tickets which I would not have wanted to sacrifice to contribute to the immersive effect in any way. The musical itself was an entertaining curiosity. Clearly it’s from a very different time and place, with joyously unbelievable characters and a strange ending which seems to skip a couple of crucial scenes in the interests of time… but a good night out nonetheless. Even if they didn’t sing that song from The Simpsons.
- Unbelievable, a new magic show created by Derren Brown for which – in order to buy tickets – you must tick multiple boxes to reaffirm your understanding and agreement that Derren Brown himself does not actually appear onstage in the show. We get it! Who does appear is a troupe of actor-musician-magicians with a series of tricks and illusions. Some are definitely more successful than others but the overall evening is quirky and fun, with lots of audience participation, a Prohibition-era musical routine and a go-for-the-heart ending. I saw this with Tash and Cormac (after some great pizza sharing at Pizza Pilgrims) as a London farewell before they go travelling, and it was a really lovely night – even if we were all slightly paranoid that our every move was being monitored by the theatre for pseudo mind-control routines.
- Finally, we saw Red Pitch at the Bush with Randi’s parents after lunching at Shepherd’s Bush Market. This is the story of three teenage boys whose friendship has been forged on their local football pitch in South London, and is remarkable for the fact that the actors are also kicking the ball basically nonstop throughout the entire 90 minute performance. It’s also super naturalistic – probably too naturalistic, in fact, for my personal preference as, just like in real life, you only get hints about wider themes and character arcs. On the other hand, after the play I described it as “the boy version of Sleepova” (the first thing we ever saw at the Bush) and, just like that show, the acting is perfect.
OK, onto Scotland where I joined Randi and her parents this weekend for a day in Edinburgh and my long-awaited first visit to Glasgow. Originally I was supposed to get the train up on Friday evening, but thanks to my stubborn determination to see a work thing through I made an impulsive last-minute switch to (gulp) a nine hour overnight coach to Edinburgh, leaving at midnight from Victoria Coach Station.
The journey was… fine, I guess? It’s true that I barely slept, arriving the next morning in Edinburgh looking like a zombie, barely coherent and in desperate need of a nap. But on the other hand, it was kinda reassuring to know that I’m not so old to have lost the ability to do this yet.
It was also well worth the sacrifice because we all had a great weekend together. Saturday in Edinburgh was a more relaxed rest/walk/recover/eat/sleep kinda day, but having come all this way I did want to experience a decent chunk of Glasgow before my train home on Sunday, and I wasn’t disappointed. We arrived out of the station into George Square on the day of the city’s half-marathon, which immediately gave everything a buzzy, lively air. From there, Randi had wisely booked us on a walking tour so we could quickly cover some ground, and our guide did a great job in orientating us with some of the basic history and culture of a place which prior to now I’ve known basically nothing about.
Of course, one thing I did know about Glasgow is that it’s one of the three cities in the UK with a subway. So, naturally we had to make a point of riding it. The Glasgow Subway consists of a single circular loop around the inner city, which Glaswegians will try to tell you is “two lines” (one in each direction) even though, obviously, any subway line in the world can be ridden in either direction and by this logic London has 22 lines on the Underground. Nit-picking aside, the subway is delightful. It’s actually the most Tube-like thing I’ve ever ridden (other than the Tube, of course) with small, tube-shaped carriages shuttling along. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it!
We got off near Kelvingrove Park and walked around the park and the area by the University of Glasgow, admiring the beautiful views on this surprisingly sunny day (given it’s now October) and retrospectively approving of where Katie used to live before she left Glasgow. We also took Katie’s recommendation to share a box of doughnuts from Tantrum Doughnuts before heading back into the city centre and going our separate ways. While it was only a brief visit, I was very impressed by Glasgow overall and would definitely be up for a return trip. But, for now, I will sign off with (*checks timetable*) a dispiriting 100 minutes left to go on this train. Next week, I will try and get more sleep…
Every few months I read the same basic article about the ‘rebirth’, ‘rediscovery’ or ‘renaissance’ of the sleeper train, but I’ve never ‘forgotten’ about them in the first place! I’d take every trip by overnight railway if money, time and tracks allowed.
No surprise, then, that Randi got us tickets for the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Fort William for my birthday. We met after work by one of Euston’s unglamarous platforms, stashed our bags in our Club Twin room and headed staight for the Club Car (as you do) for a sumptuous dinner, drinks and dessert while the outside world faded into darkness. I’m not 100% sure if I’ve ever eaten haggis before – this blog doesn’t say – but that evening really kicked off a haggis streak over the next week or so. It was all excellent, as was the Highland Breakast the next morning, by which time the scenery outside had transformed into breathtaking Highlands beauty. Surely plenty more people would ‘rediscover’ sleeper trains if there were more of them.
Our train pulled into Fort William at 10am, after which we checked into our Airbnb and took a walk along the Cow Hill circuit trail, which offers great views from the summit and then a walk through the woods on the way back.
That night we were joined by Katie and James, who drove up from Edinburgh to hang out for the weekend. James had already staked out Steall Falls as a place he really wanted to revisit, so on Saturday afternoon – after Katie, James and Randi ran parkrun in the morning – we set out on this popular hike to the promised waterfall.
The most unusual part of the Steall Falls trail is the option of crossing the river on a wire bridge at the end. This isn’t necessary to complete the walk – it’s a there-and-back, so you can always turn around here – but it is the only way to get close to the waterfall itself. In my case, I took full advantage of the sibling dynamic: clearly, once Katie had decided to cross it, I wasn’t going to miss out and had to follow her. (Everyone we saw seemed to have a different method for moving their feet, but nobody fell in.)
Once we got to the other side, Katie and I enjoyed the close-up views and swapped notes on how badly we expected to be hurt if we’d fallen off the wire. Then thoughts turned to getting back. After my initial suggestion (cross the slippery rocks over the fast-flowing water) was rejected, I was proud of myself for spotting a useful tree further downstream which could serve as a useful river-crossing device. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that this was merely stream #1 and there was in fact another river to get back to, at which point ‘just taking my shoes off and wading back barefoot’ became the chosen strategy. Cold, but effective.
Tash had recommended the Highland Cinema as a good lunch spot in Fort William, and while eating here Randi and I had decided to buy tickets to see Oppenheimer on Saturday night after Katie and James returned home to Edinburgh. I hadn’t actually been all that enthused by the trailer, but Christopher Nolan’s name is a draw and I did really enjoy the film itself. In some ways it has a surprising focus: it’s not really about Oppenheimer’s leadership of the US’s atomic bomb programme, or their use against Japan, and is centered more on his later struggles with the US government and the political manoeuvrings of the Atomic Energy Commission chair, Lewis Strauss. Stauss is the villain of the film and, like all good villians, he makes some good points. But the audience’s sympathy lies, I think, with Oppenheimer – and that’s a strange place for the “father of the atomic bomb” to end up.
Instead of heading staight back to London, Randi and I both worked the next week from Edinburgh, where we were also joined by Kira on her first visit to Scotland. (Shout-out to the lovely American couple from Cleveland on the train back from Fort William after taking a week to walk the West Highland Way. I’m pretty sure they had intended to play a nice game of cards together, but never got the chance as we just kept talking to them.) Other than working, the three of us mostly spent the week walking, drinking and watching many episodes of Scotland’s Home of the Year on BBC Scotland, a show in which one of the three judges pays brief lip sevice to recognising “environmentally friendly” homes during the intro but then always awards the highest marks to the largest, most energy-intensive houses in the middle of nowhere.
Then, on Saturday, we got to Fringe!
- Enquiry Concerning Hereafter – a loving tribute to the friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith, set in Smith’s old house and with very intimate staging. Objectively, I didn’t think it was the greatest drama in the world because the problem with “you’re brilliant because of this” and “no, you’re brilliant because of that” is an obvious absence of dramatic tension, a problem not fully ameliorated by adding Charon (y’know, the guy who ferries souls to the underworld) to the mix. Subjectively, stuff all that because I obviously loved it. It’s a play about my two favourite philsophers talking about their philosophy! If you are already a fan of something, there’s nothing wrong with fanservice. And the best part was Adam Smith’s interrogation of Charon on the monopolisitc practices of his boat service.
- Shamilton – you know what this is, because we saw it last year, but for the record: an improvised Hamilton-esque hip-hop musical about a public figure nominated by the audience at the start of the show. This time we got the (slightly sanitised) life of Kanye West, with a healthy dose of Taylor Swift rivalry. It was fantastic, as usual, and inspired us to book a showing of Improv Shakespeare for our upcoming Chicago trip.
- What The Veck? Songs in the Key of Strife! – to almost exactly replicate our pattern from last year, the five of us (Katie, James, Kira, Randi and I) decided that we should squeeze in one more show, chosen semi-randomly from the Fringe app just a few minutes before it was due to start. This turned out to be the low-key but delightful Tom Veck singing silly songs and handing out naff raffle prizes (the naffle) from which our group won repeatedly.
Back in London, Kira had persuaded me and Randi to see The Pillowman with her on Friday night. My expectations were very uncertain not because I thought it would be bad, but because with my history of going blind triggered by certain types of content I might only get to enjoy the first few minutes of this “gruesome”, “macabre” play about torture and mutiliation. I prepared myself by booking a seat at the end of the row with the perfect escape route, and we had dinner together first at Toyko Diner (where my mum took us before seeing Patriots) so that, y’know, we’d still have had a nice evening.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried because I really, really loved this play, and the dark comedy style was – for me – hilarious rather than panic inducing. This production is a revival of the 2003 original, which starred David Tennant as a short-story writer with the silly name (Katurian Katurian) who is interrogated by two agents of the unnamed totalitarian state in which they live when his terrible tales seem to have been the spur for real-life copycat incidents. In the revival, Lily Allen plays a gender-swapped Katurian, while Steve Pemberton and Paul Kaye play the good-cop/bad-cop policemen Tupolski and Ariel.
Obviously I would love to pop back to 2003 to see Tennant’s performance, but having read some negative reviews about Allen I have to say that I thought she was great. Yes, Steve Pemberton is amazing and steals the show with some of Tupolski’s lines, but the whole cast was excellent and I’m very grateful to Kira for including us in her London theatre spree. Randi and I have spent a long time talking about this play since!
It’s been a busy few weeks! A few weeks ago I attended Booking.com’s annual partner conference in Amsterdam, held on a grander and flashier scale than last year and – most excitingly – included an appearance from 2014 Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst at their big party on Wednesday night. I think I actually missed Eurovision that year, so I’m glad I finally got to see her perform, although it was her cover of the instantly recognisable Everyway That I Can (Turkey, 2003) which was the biggest crowd-pleaser of all.
Amsterdam itself was as lovely as ever, even in drizzly March. Public service announcement: the trains accept contactless card payment now, so the “standing confused beside the ticket machine” phase of your trip is now a thing of the past. Hurray!
After getting back home on Thursday night, Randi and I finally made it to Tash and Cormac’s new flat for a wonderful ‘London Supper Club’ Friday night with my mum and Cormac’s dad Brendan. Alongside a true feast of Indian cooking we enjoyed a riotous night of poetry, songs and one interpretative tin whistle performance (you’re welcome) which really buoyed us up into a cheerful mood for the whole weekend. It also inspired me and Randi to read The Importance of Being Earnest aloud together one evening a few weeks later. Who needs Netflix, really?
Talking of readings – a few days later, at the stone setting service in memory of my great uncle Leonard, many of our family dug deep into our email archives to perform some of Leonard’s famous emails from years gone by. For most people this would probably be pretty dull, but Leonard’s emails were certainly flights of storytelling… even if the story he was telling was normally a tale of trial and tribulation. Thanks to my friend Simon for inspiring us with his Charles Dance-esque interpretation of Leonard’s writing a few years back.
For some professional entertainment, Randi and I also saw Sleepova that Saturday at the Bush Theatre, a play about the enduring power of teenage friendship as four girls go through life’s ups and downs during their GCSE years. Everything about this play just worked for us: serious themes, but always funny, warm-spirited and life-affirming at the same time. I’d never been to the Bush Theatre before but it’s as close to perfect a venue you can get, with strong vibes of the Tricycle in its glory days. All four characters felt real and relatable, albeit with some subtly different attitudes to the generation I remember (because I’m old now) but always played with warmth and humanity which kept you rooting for them all. You really know a play is working when one of the characters tells her parents something that she shouldn’t, and the audience all instinctively sighs together with frustration. Highly recommended. (I mean, the run is over now, but in theory at least: highly recommended.)
Even more culture: a week earlier Randi and I had a very rare movie night in and watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, the Oscar-winning universe-hopping surrealist sci-fi comedy centered on a Chinese American immigrant family and their quest to save the multiverse and/or save their laundromat from an IRS tax audit. Unlike Sleepova, you’ve probably seen this already and don’t need me to describe it to you. But it’s very good, and a real delight to see a film so brimming with creativity and imagination. Also, I should note that we finally finished Our Friends in the North after I (falsely) promised to Randi that the final episode must be more uplifting than those couple leading up to it. It was a promise made with the best of intentions, but sadly proved inaccurate.
Recently, while having brunch with Josh, Anna and Cora, we learnt that Josh and Anna were planning a romantic couple’s getaway together to Thorpe Park. Unfortunately I didn’t mask my excitement at the idea, nor the fact that I still had a day of annual leave to burn before the end of March, and that’s how I ended up inviting myself along to Josh and Anna’s rollercoastery day out. Of course, it was totally worth it, especially as it included a sleepover of our own the night before so I got to spend even more time with Cora (who now talks all the time!).
The next morning the three of us set out for a day of rides and ride analysis, of which my main conclusions are (a) Saw is probably Thorpe Park’s best all-round rollercoaster now, but (b) I’m really glad I went off to ride Stealth again because – although Josh and Anna aren’t fans – it’s up there as one of my favourite rides of all time. It’s been years since I was last at Thorpe Park and investment (along with visitor numbers) has fallen away since I was a teenager, but they are now finally working on a new rollercoaster so I guess we’ll just have to go back again once it opens…
Finally, in exciting and still slightly surreal news, I’m very happy that my friend and colleague Kira has just successfully made the move to the UK. By a weird twist of fate she’s spending her first few weeks in Willesden Green, so on Friday night we celebrated her arrival at the excellent Beer + Burger. But by Sunday the wheels were already in motion for Randi’s South East London sales pitch, and together with our colleague Patricia we enjoyed a great shakshuka and challah brunch at ours before playing some energetic rounds of Cobra Paw and a good game of Citadels. Then, since we’re all still excited by the novelty of it being light and sunny outside, we walked over to Crystal Palace together for ice creams and dinosaurs. More South East London at its best! And all part of Randi’s plan.
Randi and I already had plans to to visit Bristol this Easter weekend, since – although I’ve heard many good things about the city – my only actual experience of it was a brief (and very odd) day trip for work back in my Groupon UK days, and that was to an offensively ugly office building which I hoped wasn’t representative of the whole place. Happily, once we knew Kira would be in the country by then, we managed to persuade her to join us and so the three of us took the train up on Friday and stayed in an Airbnb loft in the fancy Clifton area. (Yes, as in the Clifton Suspension Bridge – which is indeed very cool to look at and walk over.)
I really, really liked Bristol from what I saw. Because it’s so hilly and green, and because so many of the buildings are built from Georgian stone (and on roads which refuse to form straight lines but instead criss-crossing crescents at different levels) there’s just a lot to look at and admire as you walk around, without mentioning the colourful houses, beautiful artwork and harbour area. We basically did a lot of walking – including through the expansive Leigh Woods – interspersed with a lot of eating, from authentic Cuban food to a proper pub roast on Easter Sunday itself, plus a very healthy number of Easter eggs. We also enjoyed Victoria Park and the M Shed museum, rewatched Free Solo together and played a couple of big-money games of Dominion Prosperity.
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
