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There’s one thing which beats a weekend minibreak, and that’s a weekend minibreak where someone else has already done all the planning. A few weeks ago, Caroline and Josh invited us to join a small group for the weekend in Whitstable. Airbnb all sorted, Saturday’s pub lunch booked months in advance: all we had to do was hop on the 18.16 from London Bridge on Friday night and relax. So we did!

Describing Saturday’s meal as a ‘pub lunch’ is a little misleading since, in fact, the main motivation for going to Whitstable was the five course tasting menu at The Sportsman pub. Not being a foodie – at least, not being the kind of foodie who would gravitate towards a Michelin starred restaurant, or even know how to pronounce girolles from the menu – I was a little nervous that the setting wouldn’t be for me. But, at the very least, I was excited to build my appetite with a long morning walk along the beach, with gorgeous (albeit alarming, given that it’s November) sunny weather and just the right kind of sea breeze to clear my head after our generous stocks of wine the night before during Articulate.

Happily, once we got to the pub it turned out that the vibe was warm and relaxed, with a delicious set of options (but not too many options!) for each course and some unexpected bonuses, including a series of modestly labelled ‘snacks’ and the much fabled pre-dessert course, which stretched out over about three and a half hours. It was glorious, and very filling, and not at all what you’d expect if you just passed by what looks like a half-forgotten sports pub on the coast.

By the time we were done the sun was almost setting, so Randi and I popped back to the beach to watch and ended up chatting to a local photographer who needed a couple of volunteers to wander up and down the jetty and become silhouettes in the distance of his shots. We were happy to oblige. Back at the Airbnb, after learning a lot about the secret lives of architects, we settled down for a tense game of Trivial Pursuit, in which Caroline and I mostly failed to answer any of the history questions but, somehow, I could correctly name Run-DMC as the group which covered Aerosmith’s Walk This Way in 1986. (I have no idea how I dragged this out of my brain, but I’m still proud of it. Anyway, we still lost.)

Did you know that seagulls will run on the spot as a sneaky technique to disorient the worms in the earth below, and so luring them to the surface with the vibrations? Probably you already did, but I didn’t, and it was part of a long seagull odyssey on Sunday morning which included a pair outside Whitstable Castle devouring the remains of afternoon tea – their beaks covered in clotted cream – with the exception of one of those small jars of jam which they couldn’t figure out how to break. After enjoying this performance we all meandered on to a seaside lunch before meandering through Whitstable and making our separate ways home. Whitstable weekend complete!

A weekend earlier, although we didn’t leave London we did manage to traverse it quite a lot, starting with Friday evening when we made our way all the way up to the Harrow Arts Centre for a ‘surprise night out’ which Randi had planned, which turned out to be the very funny comedian Chris McCausland. It was an unusual structure (or maybe it wasn’t, but I haven’t seen many stand-up gigs in person) whereby the first half was what you might call ‘normal’ standup: a reasonably enjoyable series of jokes and stories which weren’t all hits, but contained enough hits to be enjoyable. But he switched gears in the second half, with a very personal monologue on his blindness, and how it impacts his relationship with the world and especially his wife and daughter, which was both moving and thought-provoking. (Also, shout-out to his warm-up act, Jon Long, for gamely singing songs at the beginning about working at a rubbish tip and the running app Strava. I enjoyed them.)

The next night was Bonfire Night, and so once again we headed up north – very, very north, in London terms – to a fireworks display at Abi’s parents’ house. It was very nostalgic to walk the route from High Barnet station which I remember walking many times during the uni holidays, and equally nostalgic to be back at a real British fireworks party in which everyone huddles in the corner of someone’s back garden and watches in nervous anticipation as the rockets explode (or don’t), the Catherine wheels spin (or get stuck) and nothing burns down (despite multiple attacks on the trees and hedges) because it’s gently raining the whole time. And when we weren’t enjoying the spectacle – or running for cover – we were catching up with Oliver, Abi, Kat and baby Robin, who is wonderful.

Thankfully on Sunday we didn’t have to go anywhere except the Horniman museum – for the very first time! – and then the Honor Oak pub for a Sunday roast with Matt, Laura and Cress. It was the perfect, chilled-out, we-can-just-walk-home-afterwards end to the weekend, made all the better by the live music at the Honor Oak that afternoon which really brought out what’s best about the right kind of pub. Where else can you finish off your Yorkshire pudding before migrating over to the comfy sofas, sit back and sleepily relax while the local two year-olds dance together (or, more accurately, cautiously alongside each other) to some American roots music? Not in your typical bar, restaurant or café, that’s for sure. Hurray for the pub, whether Michelin starred or not.

Over my adult life I’ve noticed a gradual maturing of our country’s leaders, at least in terms of basic competence and capability. It’s still normal to want a refresh every few years, of course, but nowadays the incumbent usually bows out gracefully into a planned retirement – with a seamless transition so that nothing gets dropped in the shuffle – rather than a hasty switch because suddenly everything has broken. It’s good. It’s nice. It’s maybe a little bit boring, but I guess that’s the price you pay for stable prosperity.

Here, you can see it in these numbers over the lifetime of this blog:

Oh, wait, sorry. Did I say leaders? I meant phones. Here’s the right table:

*shakes head sadly*

Anyway. Armed with a shiny new phone and therefore the potential to take slightly better photos than before (based on the table above, it’s probably been about a decade since my so-so photo composition became a bigger hindrance than any technology limitations) the main outing of the last few weeks was a family trip in Suffolk over what would have been my dad’s birthday weekend. My mum booked us all rooms in Bury St Edmunds – a place we know so well – and on Saturday afternoon we got mildy lost in Knettishall Heath before finding the perfect spot to scatter his ashes. I think he would have approved.

The next morning we played Sardines together in Abbey Gardens, which was an unreasonable amount of fun given that (a) I was stuffed with a breakfast fry-up, so running was a challenge (b) possibly as a consequence of (a) – at least that’s what I tell myself – I lost every time. Including the episode when I accidentally left the grounds themselves and ended up in the Premier Inn car park by mistake, which didn’t do much for my chances of finding anyone. Everyone else had to start doing louder and louder animal impressions to lure me over to the right place, traumatising several dogs and/or children in the process. Sorry, Bury St Edmunds!

Afterwards, since Randi and I were travelling by train, the two of us took advantage of the route home to hop out at Cambridge and bask in the gorgeous sunshine for the rest of the day. We wandered along the river, talked ourselves into Trinity (I mean, we didn’t lie, but the porters seemed to relax when I said I had gone to Caius on the basis that this was too obscure for a tourist to make up on the spot) and revisited the friendly Italian where we’d gone with her parents on our last trip before finally heading home.

Jumping back in time slightly: a weekend earlier, Randi and I completed our second London Loop rewalk (much prettier than the first, and definitely easier when you have a vague memory of where you are) while in the following days I went on a splurge of actual face-to-face work meetups. Highlight: lunch at the Duck & Waffle, where we shook off the waiter’s instructions to share our food and all ordered our own ducks and waffles. Lowlight: probably the moment I ended up throwing two scoops of a collapsing ice-cream cone into Mohammed, like an exploding hand grenade searching for a target. Sorry about that.

We were also thrilled to be able to spend time with Jackie & Jeff on their visit to London – not once, but twice! On Thursday evening they ventured down to our neighbourhood, where I got a little carried away trying to speed march everyone up Blythe Hill but (hopefully) redeemed myself with dinner at Sparsh afterwords. The following night, we headed to my mum’s for a big family dinner to celebrate our continuing Glamily bonds.

Having successfully persuaded my colleague Patricia and her husband Tarik to move somewhere within walking distance of us back in the summer, last weekend we reaped our reward by being invited over to play boardgames with them and some fellow Brazilians at their (really lovely) new flat. We started with Battlestar Galactica, and although we didn’t get very far I was excited to have been made a secret cylon (lifetime ambition achieved) and happy to bathe in nostalgia for the days when Katie and I would binge through season box sets and then stick competing BSG-themed posters on each other’s bedroom doors. Later we sped through many rounds of other bluffing games, Avalon and Coup, and I’m very proud of the moment when Randi and I were united in secret badness and successfully took down the group together. It’s the surest foundation of any relationship.

Continuing the nerdy theme, Sunday night was Doctor Who Special night and I thoroughly delighted in Jodie Whittaker’s epic swansong. The Power of the Doctor was filled with so much fan-based celebration that I’m not sure whether it really holds up on its own, but since – spoiler alert – we got to see a bunch of past Doctors and the greatest classic Who companion of all time (Ace, obviously!) donning her 80s jacket and dishing out the nitro nine explosives, I am really not complaining. Plus, Sacha Dhawan is just iconically good as the Master. He steals every scene that he’s in. This hasn’t been my favourite era of the show, writing-wise, but there’s always been a lot to like and I’m very, very excited about Russell T Davies coming back as showrunner next year.

(Tell you what though: nothing in this era was ever as bad as 1984’s The Twin Dilemma, the notoriously awful Colin Baker debut which Katie and I suffered through in our most recent Zoom-based Doctor Who Night. It’s not that it’s actually the worst-paced, or the worst-written, or the worst-acted. But, y’know, making the new Doctor a genuinely terrible person who tries to strangle his companion was not a good move.)

And a semi-related Doctor Who note: in an extreme installment of “Randi and I are very late to watch something”, we’ve just started watching the 1996 drama Our Friends in the North – starring Christopher Eccleston – after it was gifted by Randi’s former boss. It’s good! But intense. I’m not looking forward to the 1980s episodes.

I don’t think I’ve been that fannishly excited about Doctor Who on this blog for a while – because it hasn’t been on! – but in the meantime we’ll always have railways, and on Thursday night Randi and I made our inaugural trip to the long-awaited Bond Street station on the Elizabeth Line, which finally opened on 24th October. We were already drunk on pasta and wine by the time we got there – having stopped first at Padella to celebrate work things – but it was nice to see. “It’s OK… for London” scoffed a random stranger outside the entrance, whose opinion we hadn’t asked. “I mean, in comparison to the Northern line. That’s terrible.” Some real-life random comment trolling!

Hi!

On the off-chance you weren’t there last Saturday, Randi & I successfully got married – again! – under a sunny sky.

Which poses a dilemma.

Most of the time, this blog is an exercise in the preservation of memories which would otherwise be lost. I do something fun, and then I hastily throw some words and pictures together before it all slips into a haze. But, quite wonderfully, with a wedding that’s somebody else’s job – and at some point in the next few months, long after Randi and I have both completely re-entered normal life, our professional photographs and videos will arrive to bring it all back.

So, for this blog, I’m officially taking the day off. I won’t try and recreate our morning walk to Lyde Court, hands held, both wearing the same Settlers of Catan t-shirts from our first Chicago marriage and both trying to slow down our natural city walking paces for the benefit of getting a good shot. I’ll skip my thanks to Cora for being the best distraction as I hid in my little attic room after getting changed, or won’t tell you how shocked I was when Randi’s mother got one of the questions about her own daughter wrong during our mid-ceremony audience quiz and held up my face on the voting stick.

You’ll have to imagine for yourself the pure mixture of joy and terror which a Hora generates, and maybe you wouldn’t even believe that – between the main course and dessert – we snuck out of the venue entirely to go on a mad dash for the sunset with our photographers, speeding up and down the fields of Herefordshire on the back of a tractor buggy until we were high above the spot where, just a few hours earlier, we’d stood before everyone, said our vows and exchanged our mutually owl-themed but entirely surprise gifts.

Seriously, it was amazing – and the waves of joy and love and goodwill which keep coming at you during your own wedding are quite overwhelming to even vaguely sketch. So, instead, let’s do something which won’t make the official wedding album and preserve some memories from the other days of the last few weeks…

Randi had breathed a sigh of relief every time we had word that someone else’s flight had successfully landed in the UK, but the first people who made it to us – aside from Randi’s parents – were Mark and Linda Moffitt, who emerged incongruously from Forest Hill station and joined us for dinner before venturing up Blythe Hill for the nighttime views. A week later, we hosted a small group of Randi’s extended family for a really lovely pre-wedding get-together at our place, after which I’m even more desperate to spend a few hours with her uncle Eric following-up on the genius/flaws of the US Constitution in the corner of a pub. (Or a bar, or a saloon, or whatever they have in Texas.)

The next day we spent the entire day with Catherine and AJ, along with AJ’s parents Amy & Scott who – very generously – came along for the ride so there would be extra hands to look after Catherine and AJ’s beautiful, globetrotting baby. (Amy & Scott also looked after me by sharing some pints while AJ worked and Catherine and Randi got their nails done, which was also very much appreciated.) In retrospect, this day became even more magical and special to us because – despite making it much, much closer to our wedding than we did to theirs – they were hit by sickness at the last moment and weren’t able to make the day itself. If any future generations find our wedding albums and conclude we can’t have been good friends: we are! Don’t judge us by the wedding day photos, judge us by the quantity of food we ate together at Dishoom two nights before.

One of the best things about the whole wedding process were the things which started as jokes and then became a reality. Exhibit A: let’s handle tickets for all the Americans going to Hereford on Friday and form a party train!

I can’t tell you how much joy it brought me that we actually made this happen. Apologies to anyone else in carriages B or C on the 11.50 from Paddington to Hereford: you weren’t imagining things, it was definitely louder than usual, although I’m told that Beth successfully bought off her carriage with leftover prosecco and sweet treats from Carmelli Bakeries. Special shout-outs to Abbi and Rob – who as non-Americans found themselves in our carriage by coincidence – and to Simon and Fleur, who could have done but ran away to First Class instead.

After a few hours of stressful but self-imposed ‘rehearsal’ time at the venue – hey, at least we got all the stress out the day before? – we made it back to Hereford by the evening for a really, really wonderful party at Gilbies organised jointly by our mothers. Not only was it so joyous to have a chance to relax with our out-of-country guests before the big day, but all of the staff were so kind, cooked so much great food and, in particular, wowed the American crowd with the deliciousness of halloumi sticks. And all because Beth fell in love with the gin when we first took Randi’s parents here on last year’s Hereford trip!

– Insert cinematic skip forward in time –

Somewhere out there there’s a photo of me taking my first sip of tea on Sunday morning, shortly before tucking into the cooked breakfast I had always dreamed of when we first found a venue able to host so many of our guests overnight in bunk bed dormitories. Fortunately, Randi was still sleeping by that point – I say fortunately because, after heroically holding off sickness for the entire wedding day – by the next morning it had caught up with her, and she needed lots of rest plus an emergency Premier Inn booking for that night in Hereford because there was zero chance we were going to make it onto a train back to London. (Side-note: we stayed at two Premier Inns on this trip, and everyone working there was insanely nice.)

Obviously getting sick sucks, but there were some positives about getting an extra day in Hereford just the two of us, especially since she had basically fully recovered by Monday morning and we could enjoy a long walk around the city before heading home. I think we were also both exhausted, since I managed to get a mild fever later in the week and spent many daytime hours sleeping at home. Note to past selves: you were very wise not to book a honeymoon for the week immediately after the wedding. Thank you.

Despite all this, when we weren’t sleeping we still managed to do a lot of hanging out with people who were still in London over the next few days! On Monday night we ordered Indian food with the Dietzs, Toggolyn, Jason & Carrie (who don’t have a snappy couple name) and Angela, which was really fun. Plus, Bernie and Grant were such big fans of the model 52 bus in our kitchen that they had to take turns. The next evening, we got a chance to show Randi’s brother Alex our flat for the first time walking to East Dulwich and enjoying some khachapuri together.

This week was also my Grandma’s 90th (!) birthday, which we celebrated not once but twice, and with a very large number of cakes. Beth, Stewart and Alex were still in town for celebration #1 so, although my Grandma wasn’t able to make it to the wedding, she did get to spend time with Randi’s family before they left for their own European adventures.

Meanwhile, Randi and I spent a touristy morning with Jason and Carrie walking around London on Thursday – including an odd detour into an NFL Super Bowl exhibition – and, finally, were delighted to have the chance to take Todd out for dinner on Friday night as a small thank you for the massive role he played at our wedding. On that rainy night we were the only people in the Ethiopian restaurant, which felt more like the cosy living room of a travellers’ inn, and was the the perfect place to relax and reflect. It’s been a long few weeks, but I’ll remember them for the rest of my life… blog or no blog.

Tonight Randi has popped out to Valencia, and I’m supposed to be joining her tomorrow with a fully caught-up blog, so what you’re reading now are the panicked writings of someone trying to keep his promises intact. Let’s start by rolling back a few weeks to a Friday night at Paddington station, where – after teaching Randi the trick to coax free tap water from the vending machine which is desperate to upsell you on a water bottle – we joined my mum on a delightful journey to Hereford. Originally we had planned to go on Saturday morning, but made this last-minute change to avoid the strike… and after all, as someone once said, nothing beats the Friday evening feeling of catching a train out of London to begin a weekend adventure. (Me. I said it. Last post.)

We had a few small wedding errands to run, but mostly the trip was just an excuse to hang out and enjoy spending more time in the place where we will soon be getting married (again). In fact, the other night we had our first stab at the part of the process I’ve been most looking forward to – the seating planning – and I can confirm that few other moments in my life have given me the almost-godlike feeling of shuffling people around the Google Sheet to produce the perfect arrangement. Would recommend.

On Sunday we made it home in time to watch the Euros final at my mum’s, which was a good mixture of genuine excitement plus not-actually-having-to-watch-penalties plus actually managing to squeeze onto the Jubilee line home afterwards, despite everyone coming out of Wembley at the same time. (Apropos football: Randi and I were also strangely captivated by the first episode of a new Channel 4 documentary series, Football Dreams: The Academy, following the children and young adults going through Crystal Palace’s Academy system… worth checking out.) Later in the week I popped back west for drinks with my uncle Andrew near Imperial Wharf station, although – as you might expect – we talked mostly politics over football, with occasional overlap.

Since then we’ve just had a fun couple of summer weeks, including a lovely Saturday afternoon playing boardgames with Kira. This included, amongst others, our old favourite Carcassonne and new favourite Welcome To – the latter having a very satisfying feeling and a format which is competitive without being in-your-face competitive. We also spent an evening hanging out at Canary Wharf – lured there by the Elizabeth Line, obviously – and spent a more philosophical night closer to home drinking wine till late in our neighbour Angela’s back garden. (I mean, to be clear, Angela was also there with us… we didn’t just break in.) Incidentally, for anyone trying to relive their uni years, spending time with your neighbours is the best way of conjuring that feeling of being able to end an evening and go to bed without travelling anywhere.

On Sunday, we spent the day with Josh, Anna and Cora in their glorious garden – thrillingly equipped with a paddling pool – and I taught Cora the game of “wake up sleeping Dom with cuddly toys over and again” which she fully enjoyed. But I want to conclude a week earlier, on the Sunday before, when Randi, Simon, Fleur, Cleo, Steve, Soo-Jin and I gathered at Japes for a symbolically important order of deep-dish pizza. This place is seared in my mind because, back in March 2020, it was the last totally normal social thing we did before lockdown, so it felt good to all be together again, laughing at Randi’s attempt to order a deep-dish pizza without any of the mozzarella. (“The chef sent me back to say it can’t be done! It will burn!” “Tell him it can be done… he did it two years ago!”)