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This blog is fifteen years’ old today! Which means, since I am almost-but-not-quite 30, that I have now been blogging for over half of my entire life. (I’m not sure if that’s a cause for celebration or just slightly frightening.) It also means that my blog has now entered a new phase of child development with “a deeper capacity for caring and sharing” and “more concern about future school and work plans”. So in the spirit of caring and sharing, here are a few Easter highlights since arriving back in London last week.

We were very lucky to be able to time our return to just catch Randi’s school friend Melissa while she was still visiting the UK. She wanted to visit Brighton and so we caught the train down for a day trip on Easter Friday, Randi and I both armed with shiny new Railcards which – given the amount of travelling around the UK we’re planning to do – are going to pay off very quickly. We took in all the kitsch of the pier before Randi led us in the direction of Brighton’s “best fish and chips” where she got more fish than she was bargaining for. Later we relaxed in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion. I’ve been to Brighton a couple of times before but didn’t remember how nice these gardens were, helped by the amazing sunshine and enlivened by the bloke wandering up and down trying to sell bird whistles with a practical demonstration.

That night we arrived back at my family home for one of the least convincing Passover Seder nights ever put on by any group of people. I’m still not entirely clear why this happened and Randi was deeply sceptical at the challah bread and salted caramel brownies, but whatever it was it was a lot of fun. One of my favourite absurdities was when I successfully found the afikoman and discovered that it came with a box of Easter eggs.

We also took Melissa to Hampstead Heath (lovely as always) and Camden Market (surely a bad location for climate change protests since the crowd was already so heaving it was hardly noticeable) before she left for Paris, and on Sunday night we moved on to visit Joshua in his new flat in the far-away lands of Kingsbury. I can already tell that moving back to London with Randi is going to inspire me to discover whole new areas of London and I was amazed to discover that a quaint country village – complete with quiet, windy roads – has been nestling a couple of stops up the Jubilee line this whole time. We admired Josh’s huge garden, gobbled up dinner, shared some wine and then fell asleep in his spare bedroom.

While Josh and I have always stayed in touch, I haven’t seen Rishal since… well, maybe 2011 (when he last showed up in this blog) and certainly not since I moved to Chicago. So it was incredibly wonderful to hang out in Willesden’s Beer & Burger (they didn’t have this in my day) and catch up over many years of life developments. Afterwards I walked back to his parents’ house with the hopes of seeing them again, and was rewarded not only with their company but also a large bag of assorted McVitie’s products… just like the old days, when his dad worked for them and would always have boxes of biscuits lying around.

Finally, Randi and I spent a night admiring Tash’s enviable new flat in Shepherd’s Bush over falafel and wine. We’re not actively looking for a permanent home yet, but anywhere we go is being closely assessed for its parks, buses and takeaways…

It’s my last night in London before the first flight on our great adventure tomorrow morning, and I really should pack. Instead, I want to sit and blog about the last two weeks at home, because they have been quite wonderful.

Starting with family, I had a delicious cottage pie cooked for me at Katie’s new flat in West Ham before contributing my Polaroid picture to the fridge and then being beaten very badly at Dominion by Katie and her flatmate Kim. Ouch. On Sunday night, I was back with Tash so that we could all watch Doctor Who together (and a good episode it was too!).

I also scoffed egg sandwiches and chocolate cake at my Grandma’s, lunched with my great uncle Leonard and had dinners with aunts and uncles – making up for my absence at Christmas, hopefully. My mum also got us tickets to see White Teeth at the Tricycle, which was one of my favourite novels when I read it many years ago and was extremely enjoyable on stage, with songs, even if they did rudely relocate some of the Willesden locations to Kilburn.

(“Hey, Dom, wasn’t the Tricycle Theatre recently rebranded to the Kiln Theatre for no particularly good reason?”
“Sure, but I’m still not calling it that.”)

It goes without saying that I invited myself over to spend the night at Cat and Matt’s – largely to watch more unboxing videos, though not before we had a delicious sticky toffee pudding at a fancy pub nearby.

The next night, I caught the train to Chelmsford to stay overnight with Tash at Abbi, Paul and Jack’s house. Jack – who I last saw on the day he was born – is now two and intensely adorable, although not very keen on wearing clothes. He was very excited to show me all of his toys, and Paul was a little less excited for us to watch the sticky sticky stick stick song from Hey Duggee. Sorry Paul.

It was wonderful to be reunited, and we all found Paul’s curry so delicious that we completely forgot that naan bread was gently burning to a crisp in the oven the whole time. I also had to admit that the centre of Chelmsford was all festively lit and nicely pedestrianised, although later we did realise that we faced a long rail replacement bus back to the mothership of London the next morning. Some things never change.

The other people I managed to see this time around were Simon (who joined me for an excellent brunch at the Bad Egg diner with a server who was either American or else doing a very good impression), Melissa (not enough time for everything we could discuss, but we tried our best!) and Matt, Caroline and Charles for what I continue to describe as a ‘Themes & Sources’ evening even though it’s been a decade since we actually had that class together. 

But the absolutely best part of this trip was Oliver and Abi’s wedding on Saturday night. Just typing that sentence makes me smile, because I have known the two of them since our first year of university together and I distinctly remember my very strong encouragement to ask each other out when it was so obvious that that’s what should happen. So it was so awesome to see them so happy on their wedding day, hang out with mutual friends until the early hours of Sunday morning and then stay overnight to spend more time together. Thank you and congratulations! 

Also – a special shout out to Jason Budd, who I haven’t seen since QPCS days but was an early friend of the blog!

Finally, I went for a Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea with Catherine and AJ this afternoon, who happened to be in town this week and wanted to sample the fancier end of the afternoon tea market. They were not on board with the scotch eggs, but I was happy to help out.

OK, enough procrastinating – it really is time to pack five months of clothes into a backpack now. Wish me luck! 

When I moved to Chicago in 2014, I rode the Blue Line with Robert from O’Hare airport to the Damen stop, where I got out and waited for Nolan to ride up on his bike and take me to my new home. So I thought it would be appropriate to begin my final Chicago post with this coupley photoshoot picture at Damen which Randi arranged as a birthday present for me this year. And on a related note, I also wanted to give a genuine and heartfelt thanks to the CTA for being awesome over the past four years. Recently I read this New York Times article on Chicago’s public transport renaissance and it made me very proud.

As you might expect, our last week in the city has been very busy with a combination of saying goodbye to people, encouraging those same people to subscribe to this blog for regular updates (hi!) and packing. We shared a tapas dinner with Randi’s bosses and replacement at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, ordered in from Irazu with Jason and Carrie, and then ordered in even more Irazu the very next night at Robert and Julie’s with Todd and Carolyn. (What can I say… Irazu is pretty good.)

We also saw Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald on Saturday with Arielle, although I have to say I thought it was a hot mess. Was it enjoyable to watch? Sure. Did I feel like I had failed to revise for a Harry Potter mythology course and was now doing badly in the exam? Also yes. To be honest, I respectfully request that JK Rowling prioritise writing more Cormoran Strike books. 🙂

Amusingly, my last out-of-Chicago trip with Randi while living here turned out to be to the village of Norridge, a weird little enclave which is surrounded on all sides by the city of Chicago. We went there as part of the paperwork for Randi’s UK visa, which is now (after a last-minute trip to the post office this morning) in the laps of the Home Office gods. If all goes according to plan, we will move to the UK together in mid-2019 after we’ve finished our travelling adventures. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday we had a very potato-centric day making lefse and latkes with First Couple™ Catherine and AJ, before our last Doctor Who Sunday night with Joe, Julie and Amanda. Joe and Julie have put so much effort into making our apartment building a friendly place, where people actually know each other and hang out, which is something I wasn’t sure actually happened in real life but has been really wonderful to experience. And living with Amanda has been so incredibly awesome. A few weeks ago, we started leaving spoof passive-aggressive post-it notes for each other on the fridge because we realised that’s the kind of stuff that never happened in this flat and we wanted to give it a shot. Thank you for being so great.

OK. This post has been gestating for weeks but I’m now sitting at the gate at O’Hare, bags checked and ready to go home, so time is up. Randi has already left for California, and we will reunite in two weeks’ time in Peru.

In the meantime: thank you for having me, Chicago!

Coincidentally, my last day at work on Friday also happened to be Groupon’s 10th birthday. So it was nice to pretend, as 3pm rolled around and the champagne and green cupcakes started to appear, that the party was also for me. Even better was Tiffany Haddish’s guest appearance at our company-wide All Hands meeting the day before. I’ve been at Groupon in one form or another for seven and a half years (despite being rejected for the first job I applied for, fun fact!) so it was a nice note to leave on. I try to keep work largely separate from this blog, but as I wrote in my leaving email, it has been a real privilege to enjoy the company of the people you work with. (Although I was too shy to go up and share the company of Tiffany Haddish.)

Later that night, Robert very generously arranged a leaving party for me and Randi at the Revolution Brewery Tap Room. Everything felt like it had come full circle after my London leaving party in 2014, which Robert was also there for. I still have a week left in Chicago before a brief homecoming UK trip, so there are still some emotional farewells outstanding. But things are moving quickly, as they always do. And while I am very, very grateful at how lucky I am to be able to travel and live in different places over my life, it does mean that there will always be friends across oceans.

Our final visitors to Chicago were Randi’s family friends, the Moffitts, who accompanied us to Chicago’s new ‘experimental’ museum, wndr. It’s a quirky and highly interactive blend of art and science which is super-fun to wander through and play about in. Later we went to our last-ever Improv Shakespeare – or at least, our last for a while! – which turned out to be the rather hilariously out-there What I Learned From My Dog. Murderous dogs devouring cheating husbands and a fabulous mud demon for the Scottish mud dwellers… I will miss you dearly, improvising Shakespearians.

Also, it was great to see Mike Fotopoulos again for a Motel visit the other week with Sara and Sam from work. He is an American who relocated to the UK and is now equally (if not more) excited than me about Crossrail. Amanda’s friend Rebecca also stayed with us this past weekend, and we all gathered on the sofa in our pyjamas to drink wine and watch the first romcom which came our way, Crazy, Stupid, Love. The moral message of the film was kinda appalling. Still fun to watch, though.

Hey there, Japanese Encephalitis! After our final round of vaccinations, I’m not scared of you anymore. Come at me, bro.

People at work keep coming up to me and asking if if I’ve “heard the rumour” that I’m leaving. If the answer was no, this would be a pretty awkward way of firing someone. But yes, after over 4 years in Chicago and over 7 years at Groupon, I will soon be leaving both for new adventures. And “new adventures” here isn’t actually just a euphemism for “changing jobs”. Randi and I will be doing some travelling first, which I will be delighted to blog about… later. I will write about Chicago properly, too. Right now I am caught up in a whirl of transition docs, visa forms and vaccinations. I need to ship my giant Dominion board game box to the UK, sign some paperwork to release my dental records (of which I am sure there are a lot) and figure out the train lines in South East Asia. Lots to do!

For a while it looked like I would outlast Motel Bar in Chicago, which would have been sad. But the bar next to our office has now reopened “under new management”, and after a bit of a dry spell I have been making better use of it again in the past few weeks to have conversations with some of the many wonderful people I work with (case in point: Jason and Brigette) before I leave. 

I am even happier, though, that before we left Randi and I finally escaped an escape room together (The Escape Game: Special Ops). We were part of a dream team of CIA operatives assembled by Todd, and I’m proud to say that we saved the world with 10 minutes to spare. We did it! Hurray! World saved!

In the past few weeks we also went back to Spacca Naopli (which is certainly in the running for the world’s best pizza) with Randi’s cousin Arielle, had a birthday dinner downtown with Arielle’s family and ate an awful lot of fondue with Catherine and AJ. Fun fact: Catherine and I got into an argument about the physical nature of post-resurrection Jesus, so I thought it was an excellent moment to ring up the number from those 855-FOR-TRUTH billboards and get an authoritative answer. The operator took my side, naturally. An invaluable service.

This past weekend, Randi’s friend Mike and his girlfriend Melissa finally decided to visit us in Chicago after a bazillion years, so we took them on our patented Chicago tour (there’s a lot of walking involved, but also a lot of cinnamon rolls) which inevitably concluded in Improv Shakespeare. This time the play was Quantum Shark, and between the ventriloquist puppet show, the amazing song of the sailors and the higher-than-average quota of inside Shakespeare jokes it was probably one of my favourites. Don’t laugh at me, but we already have tickets for another show before we go.

If you can’t get to an Improv Shakespeare performance, though, two things recently which I would recommend:

• A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad (BBC iPlayer) charts the story of Bashar Assad from shy London eye doctor to dictator of Syria. The most fascinating character is his British-born wife, Asma, who adopts a delusional posture as ‘First Lady’ of Syria with all of the trappings of an American First Lady (visits to schools, charity events, soft-focus TV interviews) but no seeming recognition of how the Assad family’s power is maintained. 
  

• Free Solo, a documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold who becomes the first person to ascend El Capitan in Yellowstone without any ropes or, y’know, any protection whatsoever if he slips. We saw this in the cinema with Mike and while it didn’t inspire me to do any free soloing myself, it was undeniably beautiful and terrifying and crazy.