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For our first truly post-election weekend, Randi and I… (…drumroll…) headed straight back up to Midlothian for a celebratory campaign party for volunteers. But, weirdly, we weren’t required to spend the rest of the time knocking on strangers’ doors to ask who they were swithering between. Instead, we stayed with Katie and James on Friday night so that the parkrunners could parkrun together in Vogrie Country Park on Saturday morning. Then, Kira joined us from Glasgow for a very quick dip in the Gladhouse Reservoir! Kudos to her magic water shoes which made it a lot easier to run into the water. This brief adventurism was followed by a good gaming session of Cartographer (in which my art style was described as ‘abstract’) and Wingspan (where I did a lot better than my first attempt).

We headed back to London on Monday night, for which I splurged and bought us first class tickets on LNER so that we could see what we had been missing all this time. It’s probably a good thing I waited until the end, because now I have a taste for the luxuriously wider seats, alcoholic drinks and homity pie, so I’m not entirely sure what will happen next time I need to travel to Scotland. In the meantime, back in London we finally made it back to the Bush theatre to see My Father’s Fable after my family WhatsApp chat was all ablaze with praise for it. True to form, the play was gripping and excellent, stirring up the audience reaction into shock and horror as the villain became clear.

It’s been (*checks blog*) six years since I last saw my cousin Jonah, Staci and their kids, so it was great to see them all again at Carolyn’s in the middle of their somewhat eventful holiday. The next day, before trying and failing to give blood, I did “the most you thing ever” (©giantlawnmower) and visited a photography exhibition about Silverlink trains. In case you didn’t grow up in North London during the Siverlink era, these were the worst trains ever, and I visited mostly as a cathartic ritual to ensure the dead would stay buried. That said, there is something weirdly nostalgic about seeing photos of kids who I could have easily been at school with.

There is a bit of bullshit politics involved: if you buy the book (which I did) you learn that the route was “something of a metaphor for New Labour’s ambivalence”, which is hard to fit with the fact that it was a New Labour government which abolished the Silverlink franchise, cleaned everything up, staffed the stations, replaced the trains and generally transformed the whole thing under the London Overground. So then you’re left with a vaguely chin-stroking sense of “but maybe bad things are actually good” vibe (something something gentrification) which is fine until you’re waiting on a cold platform for a train which never shows up. No, the truth is simpler: bad trains are bad, and they should stay confined to historical art exhibitions.

To continue the cousin theme – we were also visited by Julie and Daisy, who we took out for an Indian meal at Sparsh along with Tash and Cormac. Poor Julie had been horribly misled by Google Maps on a journey to the other road in London with the same name as ours (exactly the scenario which Catherine and AJ feared could happen when they visited, to be fair) but thankfully they still made it in time for a lovely evening together.

Now that (a) it’s proper summer and (b) we actually have a nice garden thanks to Pierre’s efforts, Randi and I have been diligently watering the lawn and somewhat diligently cutting the grass. We’ve also been making great progress on our backlog of other to-do list tasks! For example, I made us watch the two-part Agatha Christie adaption of Murder is Easy from Christmas (a bit disappointing) while we caught up with Randi’s birthday by way of a return visit to The Waterside Inn for a long Saturday lunch. OK, sure, this wasn’t the most original birthday gift in the world but that didn’t make the three Michelin star tasting menu any less sumptuous, and – just like last time – we followed it by a delightful walk along the river to Windsor before getting the train home.

Meanwhile, Randi’s birthday surprise for me was a fabulous combination of basically all over the above: The Murdér Express! This immersive theatre combined a delicious three-course meal and cocktails onboard a ‘train’ (to the sleepy French village of Murdér where nothing bad could ever happen, see?) while a 1920s era comedy murder mystery played out around us. It was just a super fun night and I also really enjoyed our table companions.

I also had the chance to make use of the cheese vouchers gifted by Katie – albeit after a significant amount of hemming and hawing over which cheese to order – while Randi and I also manged to catch up with Matt and Laura (and meet Fred!) in their garden one sunny Sunday afternoon. A week later, we also joined one of our irregular but beloved reunions at London’s pioneer provider of Chicago deep dish pizza, Japes, along with Steve, Soo-Jin, Simon, Fleur and their kids. The absolute best part of this whole day – aside from the pizza, obviously – was the discovery that Randi’s personal battle with the chef last time seems to have translated into one item being permanently struck off their menu. We were surprised they didn’t have a warning photo of her at the entrance.

And finally… it’s the Olympics! I really enjoyed the opening ceremony with its procession of boats down the Seine, and have caught a decent amount of athletics and swimming in the evenings. But I’m especially happy that I took the opportunity to grab some tickets back in May 2023, and also that a one day there-and-back on the Eurostar didn’t seem like a totally mad idea to other people either. So, on Tuesday, Randi and I woke up very early (and crossed our fingers that the 5.26 from Catford wouldn’t be cancelled) to join mum, Tash and Cormac at St Pancras for a school trip to Paris!

I had prepared myself for big crowds and long queues, but in fact most of Paris was incredibly quiet: clearly a combination of the usual August holidays plus those not excited about the Olympics just leaving town. We arrived with enough time to pop down to see the Olympic cauldron balloon – sadly not flying during the daytime, but still impressive – before heading over to the Paris La Défense Arena for two quarter final matches in the women’s water polo.

And like a true sports journalist, here are my contemporaneous, unedited Olympic water polo notes:

To explain: yes, having just picked ‘water polo’ from the limited options available without much thought during my online session back in May 2023, it turns out that I had actually been imagining water volleyball all this time, and it wasn’t until we took our seats in the stadium that I realised there was no big net in the middle. But not to worry! Water polo turns out to be lots of fun too, albeit it’s more entertaining when two closely-matched teams play (such as Italy vs. Netherlands) rather than the total annihilation which Spain inflicted on Canada. We also loved the ‘Monet inspired’ lightshow over the pool before they started, and in general the atmosphere around the games – just like London in 2012 – was so warm and lovely.

Shockingly, we were able to secure a table at a nice restaurant just opposite the arena after our session ended, enjoying a long French meal together before catching the last train of the night back to London and some long-awaited sleep. Thank you for such a great Olympics experience, Paris!

This is a blog post in three parts, starting with my final pre-election week in London (which already feels like a lifetime ago!) before I headed up to Midlothian. Monday kicked off with Andrew and some very sweet strawberry cider after work, over which we marvelled at the looming scale of the likely Conservative defeat.

The next evening I was thrilled to welcome Christian, Erica and their two kids to our local area and enjoy a meal outdoors at the Perry Hill pub. Christian is Catherine’s brother and we’d never actually met in person before, so in addition to all the stimulating conversation it was great fun to listen to someone with a very similar sibling version of Catherine’s voice. Also, despite this visit coming at the end of a long trip, Christian was still game to push a double buggy up Blythe Hill so that we could all enjoy the view before sunset.

Later that evening I popped over to see Angela’s new flat, and the following night I spent a wonderful couple of hours with Bill in the pub at King’s Cross before his train home. I felt a little bad because I had saved up about seven years’ worth of questions to put to Bill for our next 1-1 conversation, so it may have felt more like an interview than a relaxed after work chat, but it was lovely to see him and I learnt a lot on all sorts of topics – from the SDP to LLMs by way of Wittgenstein.

On Friday night it was my turn to catch a train from King’s Cross, as I headed to Scotland to help out with Labour’s campaign for Midlothian in the final week before the general election. This was a pretty intense period of all-day door knocking as we tried to speak to as many voters as possible about Kirsty, although one of the most rewarding things was the number of people who said “I’m voting for Kirsty!” before we’d even had a chance to speak! This is all thanks to the incredible campaign which Kirsty, Randi and an amazing volunteer team have been running for the past year or more, and it was gratifying to see it pay off.

Other highlights included Feargal Sharkey’s visit to the constituency to lend his support to the campaign (OK, not particularly exciting for me personally, but others were very enthused to see him!) and then a very long shift leading a team of canvassers on polling day. But the best part, of course, was having the privilege of attending the count itself. As someone who has always loved politics, especially the drama and traditions of a British election night, it was obviously exciting to be there in person, taking part in sampling and looking out for any stray votes in the wrong pile. It was also a reminder of how lucky we are to have a functioning democracy, which – in the end – comes down to anonymous ballot papers, treated equally seriously no matter who cast them or for which candidate.

Around 3.30am we had the official declaration – although the result was clear from early on – and I know everyone in our team was incredibly proud to watch Kirsty give her acceptance speech. This also meant we could finally relax and celebrate the national picture which we’d all seen from the moment the exit poll was released at 10pm!

Thankfully Randi and I could take it easy the next day and barely left the sofa, with Katie making an impromptu visit around lunchtime with some freshly made baps. Finally, on Saturday we headed back down south to King’s Lynn for the third part of this post: Cat and Brian’s wedding!

Happily, we had booked into the same hotel as Josh, Anna and Cora for Saturday night so got to enjoy a meal together (and prove to Cora that Randi is still a real person) before getting a full night’s sleep and then heading to Pentney Abbey for the wedding on Sunday. It’s a truly beautiful venue, with all the history which travelling Americans deserve if they’re going to be forced to visit the UK, and after a wonderful ceremony – first time I’ve seen a poem read at a wedding by its actual published author – we basked in the sun playing lawn games before dinner. (Well, strictly speaking, we watched as Randi and Christa challenged each other on the wedding-themed crazy golf.)

After an evening of roasts and rainbows, plus plenty of dancing, we retired to our fancy tent on the campsite. The whole day was perfect, and I’m so grateful that Cat and Brian were able to include us and co-ordinate the scheduling of their wedding with Rishi Sunak to avoid an unpleasant election clash. Thank you guys!

Finally, on Sunday we shared the train journey back to London with Amy and Craig – and reminiscing about Groupon days gone by – before Randi finally got back home after six weeks in Scotland. In some ways, we’re both sad that the campaign is over as we both got to work with some truly inspiring people. But thanks to their hard work, there’s now a hell of a lot more for the country to look forward to. Onwards!

When I left off on my last post I was down in Exmouth visiting my mum, and after hitting publish (and waiting for my team of proofreaders to spot all my typos – thank you!) we decided to pick a random film to stream together. After a random browse we ended up watching/slating The Outfit, a ‘psychological crime drama thriller’ (supposedly) set in 1950s Chicago and starring a fairly tedious English tailor (who insists of being called a cutter, not a tailor, but I’m not playing along) who monologues a lot.

I had much more emotional investment in The King of Kong, a quirky 2007 documentary which Katie recommended about one guy’s attempt to challenge for the world record Donkey Kong high score. The reason it’s so gripping is because although this man – a maths teacher named Steve Wiebe – comes over quite well, almost everyone else from the 1980s arcade gaming world seem like absolutely terrible people. They’re either cheats, sycophants or sanctimonious self-appointed referees, and you’ll want to chuck barrels at the lot of them.

The weekend after Devon I went up to see Oliver and Abi in their new house, albeit before they’ve really moved in for real. This meant we were a bit short on pens to our Wingspan scores, hence the silverly splodges, but I enjoyed my first ever game (despite losing badly) and wanted to record my performance so that I could discuss it with Wingspan experts Katie and James the next day. Saturday evening also included a walk around their shared garden/lake area – complete with majestic but sadly fallen tree – and a ton of tasty tapas at their local tapas place.

The next morning, after staying the night, I headed up to Cambridge to enjoy a stroll along the river and pub lunch with Peter Mandler. It was a stunning summer’s day and we were both in cheerful spirits, especially with Labour’s pledge to end the tax break on private schools generating some public discussion on a topic which is dear to both of our hearts. (In case you think I sound complacent, a few days later – after watching the first debate between Sunak and Starmer – I had a genuine nightmare that the Tories won another term unexpectedly and woke up in cold sweat.)

As part of the summer birthday season™, my mum also visited London and took me and Tash out to see Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). This is a delightfully fun and uplifting musical romcom in which a naïve, perennially optimistic (but also somehow wise and grounded) Brit, Dougal, lands in New York for his estranged father’s wedding and is very reluctantly shepherded around by his future step-mum’s siter, Robin. Both performances were excellent, and a couple of the songs have since entered heavy rotation on my Spotify playlists. Tash and I did have a few quibbles about certain plot details, which resulted in elaborate WhatsApp discussion threads and me reaching out to every New Yorker I could think of to clarify key details about Flatbush in Brooklyn.

I also had a really great time at our work summer party held at Lord’s Cricket Ground, although you won’t be surprised to learn that I did not opt-in to the ‘cricket taster experience’ and stuck with the beer & Pimm’s taster experience instead. Aside from being able to be outside in the sunshine, the other big benefit of throwing a summer party rather than a Christmas do is that staff could bring their families, and it was really nice to see lots of kids running around and playing together!

Last weekend I made my penultimate pre-election trip up to Scotland to see Randi and get stuck in to a full weekend of canvassing. I know I’ve said this before, but it really is so rewarding to talk to voters on the doorstep, especially when they’re genuinely undecided. (On the other hand, it’s significantly harder to efficiently whip out leaflets and post-it notes in the pouring rain, and given that it’s June I think we’re due for some relief.) I can now also say I’ve been to the famous National Mining Museum, albeit only for a quick bite to eat at the café between sessions. Randi and I also took an evening off to go to the pub 😀

I’ll be back in Scotland soon for the election itself, but in the meantime I was delighted to be joined by Angela and a very enthusiastic Conor for some local leafletting duties, during which I tried to explain the concepts of unions, elections and MPs to a six year old. I may not actually be the most qualified person to do this, because I also managed to mess up my own postal vote by posting the two envelopes separately rather than together! Thankfully, the Electoral Commission has a whole flowchart which explains how they compensate for idiots like me, and the nice woman at Lewisham’s electoral services confirmed that I haven’t accidentally disenfranchised myself.

In my defence, I was actually just excited to vote on my birthday, but my decision making was impaired after a really lovely birthday evening with Tash in an outdoor pub garden followed by outdoor pizza garden. She very kindly came to Forest Hill after work bearing cake and gifts and word puzzles, adding to the birthday puzzles which I’d already received from Katie in the morning. Suffice to say I’ve made good progress but have still not completed them all…

And finally – yesterday was the Doctor Who season finale, and I’ve absolutely loved the twists and turns this year. It was also a bit surreal – but very sweet – to have Beth and Stewart message me as they caught up on each episode too! I can’t wait to watch it all over again with Randi post-election. In the meantime, today I also spent a very happy afternoon catching up in Abbi and Rob’s garden: basking in the sun and drinking wine while Rob spoilt us all with an assortment of delicious burritos and accompaniments. I always feel slightly bad visiting a professional chef (it’s not as if I’m expected to product manage for guests) albeit not bad enough to stop coming. Thank you both!

It’s unexpected election season! On Wednesday, at 12.18, Randi messaged me with “okay ppl are saying an electin is going to be called” and from then on the nervous atmosphere inside our flat grew and grew until Sunak’s rainy announcement outside Downing Street made it official that evening. (Dear Americans: you have no idea what kind of emotional rollercoaster you’re sacrificing by sticking with fixed election dates.) Now we’re off! Obviously this election is about the country, but it’s also the unexpectedly early culmination of a major subplot of our lives over the past year. In short, Randi will be in Scotland for the rest of the campaign and I’m going to include “REMEMBER TO WATER RANDI’S PLANT” in capital letters in this opening paragraph in a desperate attempt to remember it.

Back in the misty pre-election days of early May, the big family news was that Tash and Cormac had returned from their world travels! So I had a lovely Early May Bank Holiday afternoon catching up with Tash, starting with a haggis toastie lunch (just to further the Scottish theme, albeit at Deeney’s café in Leyton) before continuing at the pub opposite. That Saturday, my mum gathered the whole family for her newly-traditional ‘Birthday Season Kickoff Meal’ which – following a ranked choice voting mechanism which some of us slightly gamed – was held around a lazy Susan at Pearl Liang in Paddington.

That evening, Katie and James stayed at ours for a bumper evening of Doctor Who and Eurovision, the latter accompanied by Randi’s incredibly tasty halloumi fajitas which were a big hit. To start with Eurovision: as usual, the semi-finals had inexplicably booted out some of the best songs, but nothing compares with Europe’s desultory reaction to Finland’s Windows95man. Sadly, I guess people simply don’t share my nostalgia for old operating systems. On the other hand, this was the first time in a while where I thought the actual winner deserved it. Switzerland wasn’t my favourite, but it was a good song and a good performance.

More importantly – Doctor Who is back! Yes, the space babies in the opener were creepy, but the second episode was much better and Steven Moffat’s Boom was exceptional. It always takes a little while in my brain for any new Doctor to mentally click into place as The Doctor, but this time around – without doubt – the definitive moment came as Ncuti Gatwa perched precariously atop a landmine on Kastarion 3. I’ll remember this one for a while.

Last week was Randi’s birthday, but (fun fact) one year + one week ago it was also Randi’s birthday, and that’s when Reema had gifted us a voucher for cocktails and cake at Cahoots London with a one year expiry date. Due to all of the London/Scotland hopping we’d struggled to book a lot, but thankfully Randi remembered just in time and we enjoyed a great afternoon at this meticulously WW2/London Underground-themed bar. (To demonstrate the power of psychological expectation: I was genuinely thrown into confusion when my cocktail served in a tea cup wasn’t hot.) Thanks, Reema!

For Randi’s latest birthday, I travelled up to Midlothian so that we could walk part of the bittersweet Penicuik-Dalkeith Walkway together. The route is a beautiful nature reserve, but at the same time it’s yet another example of a former railway killed by the Beeching cuts, and by rights this should still be a railway. The 1960s robbed us of a lot! Still, it is a very nice walk, from which we eventually veered off to visit Rosslyn Chapel.

Built in the 15th century and now a bona fide tourist attraction (probably because The Da Vinci Code filmed scenes here), Rosslyn Chapel was on our list because Kirsty gifted us a voucher for tea and cake here. (We’re very easy to buy presents for, clearly.) But after enjoying our afternoon treats on the visitor centre’s sunny balcony we did appreciate our visit to the actual chapel, in large part because of the entertaining stories about its deranged stonemason. According to legend, this guy was so enraged by his apprentice’s superior stonework that he smashed his skull with a mallet.

While this story might not actually be true – in the sense that there’s no evidence whatsoever that it happened and it’s almost certainly made up – it is true that one of the columns is significantly more impressive than the other one. So, draw your own conclusions. And talking of murder: during this trip we were also made encouraged to watch Channel 5’s documentary Murder in a Small Town on the horrific killing of a Scottish teenager in 2003, for which her boyfriend was convicted under somewhat ambiguous evidence. Frustratingly, however, the documentary also simply ignored a lot of obviously pertinent facts, casting some doubt on the idea that the My5 streaming service (which is terrible, btw) is really the best way to uncover miscarriages of justice.

The following evening, Kirsty and Roger very generously took us to dinner in Edinburgh to celebrate Randi’s birthday, followed by drinks at the bar of The Scotsman Hotel. This is a beautiful Edwardian building formerly occupied by the newspaper back in the days when newspapers could afford beautiful Edwardian buildings. Oh, and after much cajoling encouragement we also finally spat on the Heart of Midlothian too. It was a wonderful night. Finally – as usual – on Sunday I slipped away from this world to go watch classic Doctor Who with Katie and James. This time it was the turn of 1979’s The Power of Kroll, which has an abysmal reputation amongst Doctor Who fans but was actually not terrible. And now Katie and I have an excuse to chant “Kroll! Kroll! Kroll!” at each other.

Back in London, I’m very excited that after years of procrastinating, Randi and I finally got our act together to fix our garden. And sure, by ‘fix’ I mean we asked Angela’s incredible friend Pierre to de-weed everything, followed by a not-very-subtle “so, how difficult would it be for you to lay turf as well…?” and before you know it we have an actual lawn! I will save the triumphant photo until the next post – once it grows in a bit – but we’re already looking forward to cosy post-election lunchtime picnics.

Finally, after parting drinks in central London on Thursday night, she went up to Scotland while I headed down to Devon to spend the long weekend with my mum for her birthday. (In fact, I’ve commandeered her desk to write this very blog. It’s a great desk!)

Yesterday we celebrated her birthday with a long walk along the coast from Sidmouth towards Exmouth, although it should be noted that neither of us have a stunning sense of direction and spent part of the walk going the wrong way along a road away from any coastline. Still, it was a stunning day, and in the evening we toasted getting back to Exmouth eventually with a delicious dinner at The Chronicle.

The next six weeks are going to be hectic, even at a distance. But we’re on our way. Let’s go!