Home move

With so much going on, this year felt even shorter than the last. I definitely feel life is racing by ever quicker as each year passes. It began with three months that flew by of unpleasantness chasing solicitors and estate agents to complete the sale and purchase, moving from my countryside abode to the bright lights of London.

Fast-forward to early March, and I moved in to my newish-build apartment in Wimbledon where I've spent the rest of the year settling in. There's a lot I miss about my old home's location, but in balance I prefer the home I have now. I'm better located for my needs in terms of work and leisure access, and although the space I've now, is smaller, it has all the fittings and functional features I need without needing extensive work to modernise.

Travel

The past year I travelled to places not yet visited including Bamberg, Bucharest, Stockholm and Malmö. I returned to some old favourites including Glasgow, Stirling, Edinburgh, Nuremberg and York. Briefly I visited Dublin too, but admittedly I don't really like going there unless I really need to.

Work

My employer's financial performance hasn't been great over the past year following a big recruitment drive in recent years but with fewer big contract wins more recently. This had some impact on my own role, perhaps for the good. Rather than face redundancy, I was moved to another business unit and signed a new contract as an interaction designer. I retained my unofficial role as part-time accessibility specialist. I'm happy to say this change has helped me drive forward with supporting an internal team project to work on an accessibility manual for the company.

Health and fitness

Once again I caught coronavirus. I was probably exposed to it during a conference I attended in Nuremberg. Thankfully, my booster did its job and my symptoms were unpleasant for a week but manageable. I self-isolated for five days, that it seems many others aren't doing any more, sadly.

One downside of moving to London is that I've not been out cycling as much. I still try to keep up with some occasional hiking too with a friend a found through a hiking group that I joined last year. Over the summer I was able to boost my exercise a little and helped out with some dog walking of Pita who I found through BorrowMyDoggy website.

And so to 2024

Looking ahead, in just a few months I'll be heading to Chile, South America with my partner. I'm immensely excited about this and learning a little Spanish in preparation. Hopefully there'll be time and funds to fit a few other smaller trip in 2024 too. I certainly need to restore my routine of being more fit and active in the coming months, and trying to get outdoors more. Fingers crossed that 2024 is the year we say adios Sunak et al!! and to the disastrous 14 years we'll have endured under the Tories here in the UK.

The past couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were fairly quiet and avoidant of the shopping crowds.

I managed to make a rare appearance at Homebrew Website Club Europe online. So glad to see it still going strong after over a year without me!

I spent some time exploring my local area. I'm a recent convert to dockless cycle hire in London, having started using Forest/River bikes which seem super cheap and in reasonably good condition compared to Lime bikes. After a short ride to nearby Putney, I walked a loop of the River Thames path to Hammersmith and back. Enroute, I stopped for brunch at Glasshouse Coffee. Good food and good coffee in the bright, calm surroundings of a garden centre.

Following that, I walked a little further towards Vue at Fulham to see the latest film release, Napolean. Aside from the film, which I rather enjoyed, I'd sadly to share my viewing experience with the typical clientele for Vue cinemas attracted by their relatively cheap tickets. I counted at least three people in front of me on their phones throughout the film.

I'd my first Christmas away from family and in SW19. The day was mainly spent indoors due to the relentless spells of rain in this part of the world. We'd a delicious roast duck for Christmas dinner homemade Calzones Rotes and on the 24th and then spent much of the Christmas Day eating leftovers, baking a delicious pan de pascua, and later streaming our favourite shows on catch-up TV.

Seeing out 2023

That's about it for my weeknote writing of 2023. In the coming days I'll be looking back and writing up my thoughts on a year filled with new travel and food experiences I've had the pleasure of sharing with my partner.

As we enter the final weeks of 2023, we'd our all-staff unconference in Holborn, London last week, in which we were all encouraged to run sessions on pretty much anything we wanted. I proposed a session on discussing the company's accessibility strategy, which I've been helping lead over the past few years since I joined. Thankfully, it was added to the end of the day's schedule, so we weren't too limited on time for a length discussion. We'd around a dozen in attendance, that seemed reasonable for a topic that usually doesn't attract much interest beyond a small cluster of my colleagues.

After that we all headed over to the company's Christmas party near London Bridge where I stayed for a few drinks and canapés before returning home early-ish to get some sleep before an early rise to catch my 8:30am flight from Gatwick the following morning.

Visit to Dublin

I'd a short trip to Dublin on Friday that was even shorter than hoped. My flight there was delayed an hour due to fog, and the bus connection to Dublin city centre took another 45 minutes. I've lost hope Dublin might one day expand its tram and suburban train network to the airport after what seems like countless proposals that amount to nothing over the decades.

I stayed for a night at Dublin One for a quite reasonable rate given the time of year and its proximity to the city centre. Nearby for dinner, I managed to get a table at Wood Fire Café. This is likely one of the best pizza restaurants in Dublin according to reviews and personal experience, although I doubt I'll find much opportunity to try out elsewhere!

2024 travel plans

Looking to the year ahead of travel planning, all my flights are now booked to/from and within Chile. I'm excited to be joining mi amor travelling there on what will be my first ever trip to South America as well as the Southern Hemisphere. We've quite a few places to visit on the three-week-long itinerary to make it worth the long, long flight there and back. During these gloomy, wet winter days in England, that'll certainly be something to look forward to!

There's little to report over the past fortnight's predictably wet and gloomy start to British meteorological winter here in SW19. Mostly I've been in hibernation mode, occasionally pushing myself to do a few virtual miles of cycling on Zwift or walk round the block. I made a brief outing to London's Transport Museum last weekend to see the new exhibition on poster design. It was busy at the museum, predictably full of noisy, undisciplined kids running about. Thankfully, they stayed away from the poster exhibition!

TV audience

Once again, I drew lucky for two tickets to watch The Last Leg live at Television Centre in Shepherds Bush, so took a friend. It was just about worth the compulsory two-hour wait outside in freezing conditions to get a good seat in the audience. Granted, we don't have to pay to get in, but I do wish the BBC would provide a better audience waiting area for what must be one of the most iconic TV studios globally.

Three weeks to Christmas

My compact and carefully packed eight-year old Christmas tree is once again up and looking like new in its new home, fitting in perfectly by the balcony window of my small apartment. I'm holding out a week or two until I resurface my recipe for baking mince pies. This will be after I've returned from a flying solo visit to Dublin this weekend coming, to hopefully stock up on some more Irish Branded Tea plus other uniquely Irish groceries.

After five days of self-isolating due to Covid, it was a relief to finally have a negative test result and be able to head outside for a stroll in the autumn sunshine. I remain of the opinion strongly that anyone who tests positive for Covid should follow the NHS guidelines and self-isolate for as long they remain symptomatic and testing positive.

Hearing difficulties

No sooner had I recovered from Covid, I realised I'd a blocked ear which no amount of Otex ear drops was managing to clear. After a week of feeling half deaf, I was feeling quite frustrated, in need of something better to help clear my ear. Hesitantly, I ordered a cheap specialised camera online for helping to clear my ear. I felt quite tense and nervous during the probing of my ear canal, but with some help from Ximena and the newly acquired camera, we managed to remove the significant blockage in a matter of minutes. All of a sudden, my hearing felt so much better, even more so than I'd experienced in months, if not years!

Out and about

The past week has been rather filled with enjoyable dinners with friends and making the most of short sunny winter days, squeezing in some exercise outdoors between lengthy spells of rain.

I met up with a couple of old uni friends, one of whom recently moved back from a decade of working in New York, where he also met his now wife.

Over the weekend, Ximena and I were invited to a delicious dinner by a friend and nearby neighbour, including a rare opportunity to meet one of my favourite dog friends, Coco the Dachshund. The following day we'd a very pleasant walk in Richmond Park before a relaxed lunch at Bridge & Hill Cafe in Richmond town centre.

During the week, I dropped in at the warm-up event for TechShare Pro accessibility conference being hosted on the 42nd floor of HSBC's headquarters in Canary Wharf. It brought back pleasant memories of pre-pandemic times when there were monthly London Accessibility meetups at the nearby and much shorter skyscraper of Barclays Bank. Sadly, my work schedule was too full to attend the conference in-person, but I did manage to catch-up with some live-streamed content.

At the beginning of the week, I spent the most part of a day travelling back home from Nuremberg by high-speed trains. The journey was smooth and pleasant travelling first class all the way via Frankfurt and Brussels. My planned 4-hour stopover in Brussels was very wet, but did provide opportunity for some shopping and to lounge about in my favourite café chain there, Exki.

Twelve hours after my departure, I reached home with a dry throat. Suspecting something didn't feel right, I did a lateral-flow test to check for Covid-19. The result: negative.

Return of the unwelcome guest

A couple of days after my return, I felt quite short of breath, with a tickling chest and very flu-ish. That morning, I did another lateral-flow result. The result: positive. I followed the official NHS advice to self-isolate for 5 days after a positive test result. I stayed off work for the rest of the week, not feeling great at all and just rested. This time round Covid's certainly hit me harder than my infection last year. Keeping myself cheered up over my week in isolation, I caught up on the latest series of MasterChef The Professionals, the new series, Julia Bradbury's Irish Journey, plus more from Steve Marsh's visit to Wales on YouTube.

Feeling well on the road to recovery now, albeit still testing positive, and grateful to all those reaching out to help me get through self-isolation.

Earlier in the week, I arrived in Nuremberg for Border None conference. My Airbnb was the same as I’d stayed at five years ago. It remained exactly the same, comfortable and conveniently located to the city centre.

Visit to Bamberg

I’d a little time before the conference to explore the wider area, having already explored much of Nuremberg. I decided to visit Bamberg about an hour away by train. Dodging between rain spells, I managed to see much of the old town, which was thankfully spared obliteration during WW2.

The conference

From Thursday to Friday, I attended Border None conference inside a music hall located just a little outside the city walls in Nuremberg. Overall I found it very enjoyable with a good range of talks mostly focused on life away from work and rather than the usual focus on tech and design theories. I particularly enjoyed Andre Jay Meissner’s talk about his family history, that provided an interesting perspective on the life and motivations of his ancestors, who were both on the German side of fighting in the two World Wars.

IndieWebCamp

Over the weekend there was no time for catching up on sleep as I’d also signed up to attend IndieWebCamp Nuremberg. The event had around thirty attendees, which was a pretty good number, plus some attending remotely. I was glad to impart some of my accessibility knowledge in a session I proposed, that drew in about a dozen people, including one of my most respected celebrities of the web industry, Jeremy Keith. For the Create Day on Sunday, I managed to fix some rendering issues for images on my website and partly link my site to Mastodon, and include a new featured photo banner on my homepage.

German dining

I’ve certainly overindulged in local German cuisine over the past week! I visited a Franconian restaurant, with some IndieWeb community, called Hexenhäusle. Their beef goulash accompanied by butter spaetzle and a glass of dark beer was the highlight of my meals out in Nuremberg.

The past couple of weekends have been pleasantly restful with family visiting briefly, a visit to Alfies Antique Market, and dining out in central London at Apula, Belle Epoque and Panton Yokocho.

Mum and myself also fitted in a visit to The Order of Saint John museum in Farringdon which we both enjoyed. It certainly brought back childhood memories for me of my time in the Badgers group learning first aid skills, which I joined shortly after leaving the Cub Scouts organisation – I never took to outdoor camping!

Film & TV

During the opening week of London Film Festival, X and I went to watch the London Premiere of Priscilla at the Royal Festival Hall. We both enjoyed it immensely and had the added delight of Cailee Spaeny making an appearance for a short Q&A before the film showed.

At home, I've been busy catching up with Netflix's Beckham documentary that triggered a few memories from the 90s, albeit I've little interest in football. Alex Polizzi's Brexit supporting views aside, I'm glad to see the return of Channel 5's The Hotel Inspector, which I've been keenly watching for over a decade.

Return to Nuremberg

Later in the week I'm attending Border:None conference in the beautiful city of Nuremberg, Germany. It's five years since I last visited so will be curious to see which of my favourite places to eat have survived the pandemic, and whether cash is still the only accepted payment method in this corner of Germany.

Regrettably, I'm taking the least environmentally friendly route there, by plane from London, mostly due to the cost, but also Eurostar's abysmal queuing time at St Pancras that deters me departing from there if at all possible. I will however be returning home by train.

On Tuesday, I held my first design workshop at work to help generate some ideas from all disciplines across my team. I was surprised by the level of positive feedback and satisfaction from participants, which made for a happy start to the week.

New dining discoveries

The past week was a treat for my taste buds, beginning with the discovery of Little Napoli Pizza Restaurant in Shepherds Bush. Alongside Streatham's Bravi Ragazzi, this is by far one of the best pizza restaurants I've visited yet. I chose the Burratina pizza. It was a quiet night for the restaurant, and we'd a good chat with the friendly owner, who encouraged us to try their delicious Nutella pizza too for afters.

Over this unusually warm October weekend, X and I myself visited Paladar for a delicious selection of Latin American dishes beautifully presented in the tranquil surrounding of their courtyard garden. For starters, we'd the tapioca and cheese croquette dice with guava and balsamic reduction. For mains, we shared a creamy wild mushroom quinoa risotto with crispy plantain, plus Nikkei salmon ceviche. The purple corn churros with coffee dulce de leche sauce were a treat for the eyes as well as taste buds.

Out and about

On Thursday, I joined a friend who'd drawn lucky for a free audience ticket to The Graham Norton Show. After almost three hours queuing outside, we managed to get in and secure some semi-decent seats. The recording lasted about 2-hours with a small hiccup part way through when the performer from Christine and the Queens walked off the show in frustration over his mic not working as expected. We still enjoyed the show overall though, and had a pleasant afternoon break from work.

With another friend, I went out road cycling over the weekend, something I've been struggling to find time for recently. We headed out to nearby Esher to try Giro cycling café, which is certainly up there in terms of good cafés for cyclists. Good food, good coffee and popular with a lot of South West London's cyclists it would seem!

The past week at work was relatively busy, and at times somewhat testing on my skills and nerve as a designer to take on a steady flow of somewhat negative user feedback about changes I've helped to design. I've also been busy preparing my first design-focused workshop to generate some ideas from the team for some upcoming improvements we've planned on part of the UK Government website's publishing platform.

Outdoors

Over the weekend, I ventured outside of London to go walking in The Chilterns near Wendover. My train strike-busting route involved a slow journey via the Metropolitan line to Amersham, far out in zone 9 of London's tube map. Along the walking route, we passed the HS2 construction site, which was deathly silent and sad to see in such an incomplete state. I feel like I'm in a small minority still supportive of the much curtailed railway construction. We're in desperate need of HS2 to tackle the climate emergency, along with relieving capacity constraints for local trains and taking long-distance freight off the roads.

Further along the walk, we also passed the 16th-century manor house Chequers, the official country residence of British Prime Ministers since 1921. Possibly Rishi Sunak was there at some point recently, or at one of his countless other private estates, planning further ways to throw fire on the climate emergency.

Eats

Closer to home, I joined X for another helping of Peruvian food at one of my favourite North London restaurants, Tierra Peru. We also tried another place for arepas at Brick Lane food market, which were fine but somewhat lacking the punch of flavours and dough texture/crispness I enjoyed at Wandsworth's Quinoa Arepa. I hope to have more news on street food finds soon, having recently discovered a few new places near to my client office work location in Whitechapel which I commute to occasionally.

A dreaded letter from my apartment's management company fell through the letterbox this week demanding yet more money. It seems the previous owner of my apartment had some outstanding fees which I'm now expected to pay on top of the exorbitant service charge that's around 1k more annually than I'd expected.

Web conference at the Barbican

For a third weekend in a row, I returned to visit The Barbican in London. This time I was attending State of the Browser conference for its second time in two years at the venue. Aside from a somewhat faulty projector, the event went without a glitch, and with a good balance of talks from different disciplines across the web industry.

I was particularly pleased to see my long-time friend, Ana, give her first conference talk, which was incredibly well-prepared and fun! She's been on quite a journey of personal/professional challenges over the years since I first met her at a Homebrew Website Club in 2018 so it's particularly pleasing to see how far she's come.

It's always a pleasure to attend State of the Browser and bump in to lots of people I've got to know over the past ten years. Since the pandemic, I rarely see many of these people in-person other than at such conferences.

Viewing pleasures

Celebrity Race Across the World made its premier on TV/iPlayer last week after being delayed due to the Moroccan earthquake recently. The show's one of my favourite viewing pleasures, along with many things travel-related on streaming platforms that inspire me to visit new places. I've been catching up with YouTuber, Steve Marsh, on his adventures to the Isle of Man during a stormy week of weather. I'm yet to be convinced a visit to the Isle of Man should be at the top of my travel agenda on places I've never been to!

Quite an unusual time for a heatwave to hit over the past week, which took me by surprise. At times quite unbearable in the heart of London where I spent some time with X visiting the Barbican on a guided tour. On Sunday, I managed to escape the heated pollution of London for a ride out in to the Surrey Hills with a local Columbian guy. He's recently helped me with some furniture installation at my new home.

6 months in Wimbledon

Over the weekend, I celebrated my first six-months living in Wimbledon with X and enjoyed a dinner of homemade tacos and fillings. It sure is hard to go back to shop-bought tacos after making your own! Reflecting on the past 6 months, I'm quite pleased with the progress of making my new home a place I feel reflects who I am and where I feel comfortable living in. I'll no doubt move again at some point in the not so distant future, but for now it will do nicely.

More dog sitting

I've been spending some more time looking after Pita the dog during working hours. The hot weather meant an energetic stroll was off the cards for Pita, so we stayed in the relative cool of the garden while I worked at her home. I'm still exploring possibilities of adopting my own dog later next year, which will certainly see some changes in my lifestyle I'm sure! Whilst I'm not overweight, I've felt recently that I'm not exercising enough compared to a year ago, so could certainly do with a few more motivations.

These past couple of weekends, I've made a couple of visits to The North to visit my parents. It's been a pleasant break from living in the city and being able to breathe somewhat cleaner air than in my recently ULEZ enforced home borough of Merton. The first weekend, I was joined by X and my parents to have a brief day trip to Wales, a first-time in Wales for X. We stopped off at the charming border village of Holt for lunch. We then drove on to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, for a walk and some obligatory photos/Instagram content creation opportunities.

The following weekend I headed to one of my favourite English market towns, Newark-on-Trent, providing the opportunity to visit an old favourite, Gannets Bistro, for lunch with my parents. It brought back fond childhood memories of visits to the town following times we used to visit the International Antiques & Collectors Fair at Newark Showground.

Watching bicycles

Also over the weekend, the first stage of the Tour of Britain cycle race took place an hour's drive from my parents' home. The parents willingly came along to watch the race pass up the steepest hill of the race route at Ramsbottom, just north of Manchester. Over the years, we've all grown quite a fondness for watching cycle sports, and learnt the best spots to choose for viewing the riders slowly struggle up the steepest of hills, which not surprisingly result in the best photo opportunities.

Hidden anxiety

It's now been a year since I'd the first in the series of visits to private dentists with less than palatable news, both for my mouth, and wallet. A combination of over-pressured brushing and awkwardly positioned teeth since childhood has resulted in a few more fillings over the past year, and new lengthier cleaning routines that took some getting used to. This all resulted in an ongoing period of anxiety that I find heard to handle, but am slowly improving with better oral health, confirmed by the dentist on my most recent visit.

Ahead of my trip to Sweden the previous week, I'd a busy time at work, observing some user research sessions on a prototype I've been designing for the GDS Publishing team. The second design iterations seemed to prove a success, so relatively satisfied about that.

New local Peruvian restaurant find

En route to Heathrow last weekend by an assortment of London buses, on a somewhat circuitous route due to engineering disruption on the Piccadilly Line, we discovered Quinoa Arepa in Wandsworth which serves the best arepas I've tried yet!

Nordic adventures

The past week, X and I travelled to Stockholm to visit some of her family there. It was my first visit to Sweden, and I was suitably impressed with how efficient and tidy the country is.

To Malmö

Before we'd time to explore the Swedish capital, we were off south on the classic Snälltåget train to Malmö and Copenhagen to spend a couple of nights. On the way I'd my first experience in a train dining car where I'd a delicious hearty meal of steak with a creamy tarragon pepper sauce.

I'd not been to the coast for several months, so Malmö offered an excellent opportunity to take in the sea breeze and capture some great photos. Although only there briefly, I liked the calm vibe of the city that sets it apart from other parts of Sweden. It's somewhere I'd like to spend more time exploring someday.

Copenhagen via the Øresund Bridge

I'd my first experience crossing over and under the sea in one journey by train via the Øresund Bridge en route to Copenhagen to spend one night there.

It was my second visit to the Danish capital, but my first opportunity to visit the Design Museum there. A fairly contemporary exhibition, but somewhat underwhelmed by the range of exhibits on show compared to other design museums I've visited.

We did a couple of free walking tours whilst there, encouraged by a good experience of one I'd done in Porto last year. The first was a 3-hour Grand Tour of Copenhagen and the second was a 90-minute tour of Christianshaven. Both were thoroughly enjoyable, and I absorbed such a lot of quirky but interesting details of the city and its people.

My visit to Copenhagen didn't go by without sampling a few of the local delicacies, including some of the finest pastries I've tried at Holm's Bakery.

Return to Stockholm

We returned to Stockholm on the slightly quicker and more modern tilting train. We only just managed to catch the train by minutes before it left on the final departure of the day north. That was all thanks to poor platform signage at Copenhagen station.

Exploring Stockholm

We spent a few days exploring Stockholm, beginning with a visit to the Vasa Museum which I thoroughly recommend in spite of it being very crowded throughout. Museumed-out, this was followed by exploring the old town of Stockholm (Gamla Stan) on foot including, you guessed it, some Fika Time to pause for more pastries!

Metro station caves

A visit to Stockholm also wasn't complete without a visit to the magnificent collection of underground metro stations with painted bedrock. Sadly, since the pandemic there are no official tours organised to see all the stations, however it's quite easy to travel independently to each station and take photos within the 1-hour time limit of a single journey ticket.

Stockholm's tastiest finds

From a Londoner's perspective, eating out in Stockholm wasn't quite as pricey as I'd been expecting. That being said, the price of alcohol was a little more than even London's eye wateringly high prices. My favourite dining experiences in Stockholm were enjoying a fresh seafood lunch at Östermalm Market Hall and a divine dinner of Swedish meatballs at Restaurant Prinsen. Also on the list of great Swedish cuisine was the café at Stockholm Botanical Garden, finished off with a tranquil walk along Brunnsviken lake.

Exploring the archipelago

Finally, on the Nordic adventure, we boarded a local foot passenger ferry for a relaxing day trip to Vaxholm. The weather was mostly warm but overcast that day, although the scenery was still very pleasant and somewhat reminiscent of the coastal landscape on my visit to Vancouver Island over a decade ago.

Looking forward to my next Nordic adventure, hopefully next year!

I think this week hit my all-time record for the most back-to-back online meetings at work. I was by the end of the week feeling quite fatigued from the level of context switching between different meetings. Added to that, I've been pressed in to handling requests outside my team, predominantly all requiring more tasks and sharing of knowledge around accessibility.

Dog borrowing

I've recently started walking Pita the dog through a connection I made on the BorrowMyDoggy website. So far we've been a couple of walks in the local park. My quite changeable online meetings schedule that suits being in the office some days versus working from home has made it a little challenging to find a regular time to take her for a walk. I'm soon hoping to settle on an after-work routine to help wind down after many a busy day working from home.

Naughties comedy revival

Over the weekend, X and I headed to Television Studios in West London to watch The Last Leg live. We endured a long wait to get in, but overall worth it. The added bonus was seeing a childhood comedian favourite, Paul Chuckle, make a surprise appearance in-person at the end of the show.

The following day I was back in the same part of London to see the premier of Brian Butterfield's new tour. Amazingly, the short sketch out of the 2000s Peter Serafinowicz Show grew such a fond following that it was revived in to this hilarious 2-hour show. The show's format was intentionally reminiscent of a university lecture, and virtually all the audience seemed to be, like myself, a millennial.

Over the past two weekends I joined X in a one-week spread film binge to see the latest blockbuster film releases, Barbie and Oppenheimer. Rarely do I go to the cinema on the day of a film's release, and it was predictably a challenge finding cinemas that weren't entirely sold out. I'd give both films about an 8 out of 10 overall. Barbie was cheery and fun to watch, although as we used to say, I won't be rushing out to buy the DVD! For the full experience watching Oppenheimer we went to the local IMAX cinema where sound levels weren't the best with the almost constant background music a little overwhelming. Nevertheless, the overall direction and acting was exemplary.

Celebrations

Last week was X's graduation ceremony from King's College London which I attended at the Royal Festival Hall along with some of her family. I was reminded somewhat of my own graduation 12 years ago which was in the somewhat less grand venue of Brunel University's indoor athletics centre. We'd a celebratory dinner later in the day at Sketch London where I'd the scallops for starter, a red mullet main and dessert of raspberry mousse. A rather unusual highlight of the visit was going upstairs to the restroom toilet pods, which were more than anything else a hive for Instagramers to show off their latest discovery.

We also went for a second celebratory dinner of a different kind the following day at Elephant Castle's Sabor Peruano. A very down-to-earth restaurant, and the Papa a la Huancaína was the best I tried yet! We'll definitely be back here at some point.

Meeting at GDS

The previous week I'd been to meet my new team at work in the Government Digital Service offices at Whitechapel in London. We'd a good time getting to know each other, including drawing peculiar creatures as part of our team-bonding exercise. The office itself is high above the streets of Central London, affording a great view across The City's landmarks, and toward Crystal Palace tower.

The week got off to a good start with a booking for my next trip with X later this summer to Stockholm. It'll be my first ever visit to Sweden, which I'm rather excited about!

Designing and that

Still things are relatively easy going at work having reached the end of my first two weeks in the new team. The user research side of my new role is quite enjoyable so far, and look forward to getting more experienced in that area of design work.

Cooking for friends

Now that my new home's in a more presentable state to invite guests, I've been busy planning dinner recipes for a handful of summer visits by friends. It's pretty much intended as a house-warming event, but without everyone squeezing in to my small home at once. I'm loving the open-plan kitchen I have at my new home, which makes for easier socialising whilst cooking simultaneously.

Last week's dinner party was my first try at pumpkin-based sopaipillas with a Chilean pebre topping I've mastered over a couple of past attempts. This weekend's offering was an aubergine/lentil lasagne I made, which was particularly well received by all. Next week something from SE Asia in the planning…

I had that new job feeling this week, well somewhat. I started my new role as an interaction designer, mostly reading through countless documentation and attending several meetings on the new team with dxw/GDS. It was also the same week we'd our company's summer party, plus a design team away day. I enjoyed both, and it was great to meet lots of colleagues in-person from all over the UK who'd come to the company events. Our away day event included a visit to the Twist museum, which was a joyful experience of all kinds of visual illusion and also a helpful way to experience being colour-blind.

Railway and accessibility grumbles

My main grumbles of the week kicked off with news about planned closures of hundreds of train station ticket offices across the UK. My social media feeds were awash with concerns across the accessibility community about the impact this will have for them, among many other people, in making UK train travel impossible or even harder than it already is. Also on the topic of accessibility grumbles, Meta's hurried public launch of Threads this week had me very frustrated at how the platform in its current state excludes many users with low vision and other disabilities.

More cycling

I spent part of the weekend doing a couple of laps round Richmond Park with a new local cycling buddy I found, unexpectedly, who I'd initially hired as a carpenter. This was a pleasant find, as I've been on the lookout for a cycling buddy for a while now, up to a similar calibre and living not too far away. Following my outing, I tuned in to live coverage of Le Tour de France on Saturday, to the sad sight of Mark Cavendish sitting in an ambulance after cracking his collar bone. Such devastation his last time on Le Tour ended this way!

Ahead of next week, I've been clearing the decks ready to begin my new role as an interaction designer at dxw. It's a significant change in my work history to date, having spent ten years working as a website developer, primarily on WordPress. Although somewhat nervous about the new challenges ahead, I'm quite excited about the new role, with design being one of the skills of mine that I've had limited opportunity to exercise in a professional context for several years.

Hablo un poco de español

I've taken the plunge and decided to commit myself to learning a small amount of Spanish language that should hopefully be enough for me to use when I eventually plan to visit Chile, likely next year. After having spent a few months on Duolingo with an almost unbroken streak, I've signed up to some 1:1 tuition with a local Argentinian tutor, doing weekly classes over Zoom. So far my progress is slow, just getting familiar with pronunciations and trying to speak in full sentences feels quite a challenge, but I'm persevering.

Cycling season

The weekend welcomed back the Tour of France cycling race on TV, one of the few sports I'm a devoted fan of. In my new Wimbledon home, I've been making the most of the long summer days for evenings out cycling in Richmond Park. It's a pleasant diversion from the busy road I'm surrounded by here, albeit not entirely free of impatient motorists sharing the main road the passes through the Royal park from Kingston to Richmond.

For my post-birthday celebrations, I invited my mum and X to join me on a visit to Hampton Court Palace. The high admission price was a little hard to stomach, so we made every effort to see as much as possible of the palace, including its extensive gardens, over the course of an afternoon. Overall, I enjoyed it and was able to absorb the vast amount of history about the palace without feeling too overwhelmed.

Work reflections

After three months of uncertainty at work about the future of my role there retaining some focus in accessibility, I finally had some clarity this past week about my future in the company. More news on that to come soon!

Exhibitions

Over the weekend, I returned to the annual fixture linked to my university, Brunel, which I graduated from in 2011 and exhibited at, Made in Brunel. As ever, an impressive array of work on show from the graduates of 2023. I also bumped in to my old course tutor there, Steve Cockett, who's still at the university. Somehow he doesn't look any more aged than way back in 2007 when I first met him to get a signature for my Macromedia student license application ahead of starting uni.

Also design-related, I joined X to visit The Design Museum to see Ai Weiwei's Making Sense exhibition, along with a contemporary sari exhibition named The Offbeat Sari. Both extremely thought-provoking exhibitions with a great deal of work put into their curation. Still one of my favourite museums ever visited!

Doggy daycare

I'd the pleasure of looking after a neighbour's dog on Saturday. Their sweet, friendly and very energetic Dachshund, Coco, had a splendid day of attention with X and myself at home in Wimbledon, tennis ball games included. I'm all the more sure from the experience that I'd like my own canine friend one day soon.

Ahead of my birthday, I went with X to Glasgow by train on Tuesday. We were lucky to enjoy fine weather for the whole of the trip there and back. Riding all the way up the West Coast mainline was a joy I've rarely done before. It brought back pleasant childhood memories of my many car trips along much of the same route through the Lake District, Cumbria and southern Scotland towards the ferry for Ireland.

In Glasgow, we enjoyed a visit to the Kelvingrove museum, along with a visit to the Necropolis Victorian cemetery to take in the magnificent clear views across the city. Beside attractions, we found a great choice of breakfast cafés in the Charing Cross area. Top of my list to visit would have to be Single-end at Garnethill, if you can manage the sharp, short ascent with a 20% gradient on the road there.

Birthday celebrations

For my 36th birthday, we visited Stirling Castle and once again faced some steep gradients to reach it. The highly entertaining guided tours are a must for seeing round this expansive castle, as is a visit to the self-serve restaurant.

My birthday meal was back in Glasgow at Kelp which specialises in sustainably sourced seafood. I'd some of their spicy sauce oysters followed by a main of Shetland caught Coley and the most delicious roast potatoes I think I've ever tasted.

Train-strike relief

We were lucky enough to avoid getting stranded in Scotland over the weekend due to the industrial action on the railway, having chosen to return home via the scenic East Coast line instead which still had some trains running. I find the journey to/from a place is an important part of the enjoyment in a trip overall. Passing along the Northumbria coastline by train in such beautiful weather was a treat for the eyes!

Chilean street food and exercising

Back home, X and I went to try another of London's Chilean cafés, this time the Red Lion café in Holborn. I enjoyed the Completo, plus an empanada. Cheap, good and tasty, but have to say not the best quality of Chilean food I've tried.

Burning off the calories from all that food, on Sunday I went for a much-needed cycle ride on the country lanes of Hampshire. This is just an hour away from my new home by direct train, or at least when they run, occasionally on Sundays. A hint that we're all now living with climate change was all too clear on my delayed return train journey, which was held up by track equipment worryingly smouldering as I arrived back at Alton station.

Hiking

Last weekend I joined a friend for a somewhat delayed walk along a disused railway near Harpenden called the Nickey Line, just 25 minutes outside London. We'd a pleasant Spring time stroll along part of the route and then looped back via the vast and pretty spectacular Rothamsted crop research institute. We'd originally planned to cycle the route further, alas there'd been a miscommunication between us in planning to meet and hence not enough bikes for both of us.

Sports and Classique

I'd some rather pricey private tuition in tennis earlier this month, which went ok, but I'm still struggling to hit the ball with much if any accuracy. At least some improvement from past attempts when I didn't even manage to hit the ball!

The World's female cycling professionals came to the streets of London this weekend for Ride London, and I went down there with a friend who'd never seen a race before. The great thing about this race was being able to watch the riders pass several times along The Strand and then 10 minutes later along the Embankment, a short walk away.

London's best pizza

Still in search of the best Neapolitan-style pizza here in London, my friend joined me after watching the cycling to venture out to Streatham's tiny, but atmospheric, Bravi Ragazzi. The wait for our pizzas was long due to a lot of takeaway orders all at once, but worth it. Definitely the best we've found so far, and just 20 minutes by train from my new home.

Not quite tired enough yet with pizza, I joined X and some of her friends in North London for a garden feast of my own making on Bank Holiday Monday. It's the first time I've scaled up the recipe to make three large deep pan pizzas using a healthy mix of plain and wholemeal flour with a mixed pepper and onion/tomato sauce topping. Thankfully, everyone enjoyed it.

Finally, almost a month since being delivered a collection of new bedroom furniture which turned out to have the wrong parts, a courier turned up, to take it all back to JD Williams (avoid!). Thankfully through some coincidence, and a generous friend of X, I was able to find an alternative fabulous looking wardrobe for free in a short space of time, less the cost of having it transported. My bedroom is finally feeling more organised and more liveable, two months since moving in!

Green oasis

The green themed highlights of the week were my first visit to East London's Columbia Road Flower Market for new plants to fill my new home with, preceded by brunch at a rare Chilean café located in Paddington's Harrison's Coffee. X and I shared a divine culinary experience, trying palta (crushed avocado) with marraqueta (a dangerously addictive soft bread roll), and possibly the best Chilean pino empanada I've tried this side of the ocean with a spicy pebre condiment.

Eurovision

Back in Wimbledon for Eurovision final night I cooked up a favourite lentil dahl recipe of mine for X, which combined red lentils and roasted aubergine, plus a fresh mint raita. I was glad to see Liverpool didn't disappoint in hosting Eurovision on Ukraine's behalf this year, and echos of the city's rich music scene past and present. Not surprised to see that the waffle/toasty maker effort from Sweden won, a decent song overall.

Food-wise, the Romanian capital didn't disappoint! The highlights of eating out in Bucharest included Neapolitan style pizza at PizzaMania, a fine dining experience at the ARTIST Restaurant, and delicious traditional Romanian cuisine in the characterful cellars of Lacrimi și Sfinți which included Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale).

We ticked off quite a few things on the tourist trail. Early on we'd a walking tour focusing on Bucharest's communist past, and made a visit to Primaverii Palace, former residence of Romanian president Ceausescu. Top of the Instagram must-shoots, we also visited the beautiful bookshop in the Old Town, Cărturești Carusel, and The Romanian Athenaeum.

Of course, we couldn't go without a tour of The Palace of the Parliament, which is one of the three largest buildings in the world. Security was airport-style, including passport checks to enter, but worth the hour wait, although sadly not enough time to see all 3000 rooms! 🙃

The return trip to London wasn't the smoothest, since the airport bus hit something significant just 15 minutes shy of the airport and punctured. A nearby Bolt taxi was our saviour! The BA flight back to Heathrow left rather late due to slow loading and failing to anticipate that everyone might have more than one item of hand baggage.

Bis bald Düsseldorf!

The week began with my time spent mostly at Beyond Tellerrand conference in Düsseldorf. Once again a great event with such a great range of speakers, and the company of many familiar people I’ve known for many years from across Germany and beyond. I also met up with my good friend Dave Letorey, organiser of State of the Browser in London, who’d never been to btconf before.

Salut Bucharest!

After a short hop to Dortmund airport on the train from Düsseldorf, I made my way to Bucharest for my first ever visit there with X. The flight with Wizz Air was just about bearable for the two-hour duration. I’d not been feeling well, and the cramped seating, plus restless kids in the neighbouring seats, didn’t help make for a relaxing flight.

Some ups and downs so far staying in Bucharest, but mainly all positive experiences, including good food. More news next week!

My week started off on Bank Holiday Monday with a road trip joining my uni friend to tour Surrey's best pizza restaurants. Since last April, my friend and I started going in search of the best pizza restaurants London and beyond has to offer. Our winner of the three restaurants visited in this single road trip was Reigate's Monte Forte which did an authentic Neapolitan style pizza. Next stop for our pizza road trip, Naples! 🙃

More furniture news

Back at home with the help of X, I've been busy taking delivery of more new furniture for my new home. This week, my sofa-bed arrived. I'd a local carpenter modify my giant-sized IKEA Ekedalen bar table down to a more comfortable height for anybody of average height. After next week, I should finally have the new wardrobe and drawers I've ordered to finally move everything out of boxes since my move last month.

To Germany

Once again, I made my way to Düsseldorf by train ahead of Beyond Tellerrand conference starting next week. On my way there, I made a detour and stopoff to Aachen due to track work closures. It made for a pleasant lunch stop to sample the local speciality bratwurst on a slight detour from my flexitarian habits of the past.

Await next week's news of my trip to Bucharest…!

After a busy week at work, finalising things before I move teams, I ventured over to Heathrow on Good Friday to meet X after her five weeks away in Chile. Before making the long trek back to her North London home on the Piccy line, we sampled the lesser-known theme park-like attraction of Heathrow's Terminal 5 car park, otherwise known as the Heathrow Pods. The joyous 4-minute roundtrip is entirely free for anyone outbound from the terminal but £7 if arriving inbound by car… quiet, don't tell anyone!

Furniture

With X back, we set about looking for some more contemporary furniture to suite my new home this long weekend. We made quite a flurry of purchases including a new sofa bed, wardrobe, and drawers. It's going to be a busy week ahead before I head off to Germany next weekend receiving and assembling everything! Making space for it all, I swiftly advertised my IKEA sofa bed for free on Freecycle and Marketplace which received numerous replies with minutes and thankfully someone who could collect the same day. Await next week when I've news on my Ekedalen bar table modifications…

Dining-out explorations

The long weekend also included my first visit with a friend to a local Venezuelan restaurant full of atmosphere and a warm, welcoming owner at Liqui Liqui. For my starter and mains, I'd the delicious papas locas with cheese and spicy guacamole, followed by arepas pabellon with shredded beef.

One of my nearby friends/neighbours at my new home is also well versed in making great cocktails and this weekend I was delighted to try their new creation named Coco. Appropriate cocktail glassware yet to be acquired!

Almost two weeks without my new internet provider, Community Fibre, lifting its finger to sort out my new fibre connection, I decided to ditch them and get Hyperoptic immediately on the job without issue, thankfully!

Spring walks and cycling

With Spring arriving, albeit without the ideal weather to match, I've been making a slight return to more frequent hiking and cycling outdoors. From my new base in South West London I've been exploring more of the Surrey Hills on foot, and also closer to home a cycle ride to Bushy Royal Park.

Work anniversary and changes to come

It's been a busy few weeks at work, with changes to my role and move to another team likely to happen soon. The end of March also marked my three-year anniversary of working at dxw. The monthly Champions of Accessibility Network meetup happened online last week, and I volunteered some of my time to talk about my efforts at work to run regular accessibility workshops.

Cat sitting

My cat sitting responsibilities from home continue. Unfortunately, Couscous the cat has had some behavioural issues over the past week at the expense of my floor and necessitating a cautionary visit to the vets to check she'd no serious medical problems. Fingers crossed the calming medication prescribed and extra comfort facilities purchased will keep her from a repeat of last week.

Coffee and food explorations

In search of good coffee shops locally, I tried a couple in my new locality this week. So far Bean & Hop fits the bill in terms of atmosphere and decent quality coffee, although I'm yet to sample its food offering. The 20-minute walk there from my new home along the River Wandle is a pleasant retreat from the busy roads of South West London.

Nearby, I also went with a friend to try Summertown's Figli Del Vesuvio for an authentic Napolitano pizza… delish!

Broadband woes

The past week I've been let down considerably by my new broadband provider, Community Fibre. Firstly, they installed a fibre connection to my apartment, but couldn't get a connection to the internet. They then pretty much ignored my case for days and mistakenly sent another installer a week later without the skills to solve the issue. Thankfully, I'm not without internet… yet! The previous owner of my apartment left behind their router with a few days remaining on their contract. Meanwhile, I'm not getting anywhere with Community Fibre's customer service, so swiftly looking at alternative internet providers.

Cycling

Finding areas round here to cycle safely and free of motor traffic populated by mostly impatient, horn-honking addicted drivers is somewhat harder. I did however manage to navigate my way safely to Richmond Park via some half-decent cycle lanes out of Wimbledon and alongside the A3.

Almost a year since I signed up with an estate agent to sell my home, this week the move to London finally took place, and I'm happy to report it all went without a hitch. It hasn't quite sunk in that it's actually happened after all this time, expense, uncertainty, and stress. I'm back to being a Londoner!

My modern Wimbledon abode, built in 2008, is a stark contrast from the 1960s-build apartment I left behind in Tonbridge with its creaky floorboards and aged heating system. The SML removal men did a sterling job of moving everything over to London from Kent without a single breakage in less than an hour each end.

I've spent the first few days mostly unpacking and exploring the local superstores, which are so much bigger and better stocked than what I had in Tonbridge! Besides that, I made a visit to IKEA to browse new wardrobes, but nothing floated my boat, so back to looking at a few other options online suggested by my interior design guru, X.

Cat sitting

Barely 24 hours into being at my new living space, I welcomed the cat of a friend X has, Cous-Cous, to stay with me for a few weeks. I've not had my own pet for over a decade, so it's a pleasant new experience to temporarily have a four-legged friend around whilst I settle in to my new apartment and area all alone. Admittedly, I'm more a dog person, but cats will do perfectly well given the choice between a lonely few weeks without X whilst she's away in Chile.

For a few weeks now, I've been enduring an almost endless back-and-forth chasing my unresponsive solicitor and pushy estate agents for both my purchase and sale. Finally, after much stress, delays and uncertainty, I exchanged contracts on Wednesday, with completion set for next Thursday.

Goodbye Tonbridge

Eight years ago, I moved by myself to the leafy commuter belt town of Tonbridge in South East England. In that time I've mostly enjoyed the quiet surroundings and space to ride my bike, go for countryside walks, plus its relatively close proximity to London: about one hour door to door for The City or West End.

Despite all this I've lived mostly a lonesome existence for much of my time in Tonbridge and at times regretted my decision to move there. London is where most of the people I know best and enjoy spending time with the most are based. I've grown tired of the expensive commute from Tonbridge, endless train strikes, and a mostly older population of loyal Conservative voters, still in support of Brexit.

All being well, next week I'll be moving to London, stay tuned for how that goes…

Preparations to move are well underway, with my living room slowly accumulating full or half-full boxes. Most boxes remain unsealed until I've a confirmed date for exchange and completion. House move stress levels are gradually increasing day by day as my conveyancing process drags on yet another week. It's fair to say I'm generally not in my happiest or relaxed frame of mind currently.

In the kitchen

The kitchen remains one part of my home where packing hasn't commenced just yet. Hence, all my kitchenware remains unpacked and the full menu of my weekly usual dishes remains, such as homemade pizza and Indian tapas. In addition, X has been helping me learn to cook up some Chilean additions for my menu, including sopaipas with a delicious topping of homemade pebre.

Spa-themed weekend

To take my mind off all the stresses, over the weekend I went with X to visit the Tunbridge Wells Spa Railway for a steam train ride south to Eridge. The journey was a little under 30 minutes each way, with pleasant scenery along the way between Kent and Sussex. We paused for lunch and some locally produced alcoholic beverages at the cosy and very characterful Huntsman pub.

Concluding our Spa-themed weekend, we indulged in a visit to London's Old Hammam & Spa for a full Turkish body wash and foam massage. Feeling cleansed and somewhat more relaxed after that, ready to tackle another week of home move stress.

Things are finally looking hopeful for more my house move on the not so distant horizon. A whole bunch of packing, organising and other related preparations beckons. Add to that a heavy dose of stress and slight sadness about leaving my current abode, neighbourhood, and countryside lifestyle of almost eight years.

Delicious dining discoveries

Following my painful visit to the dentist last week, some comfort food was in order. Disappointingly our intended choice, Sabor Peruano, was unexpectedly shut for the day at Elephant & Castle, so we instead opted for Guasa at Mercato Metropolitano. I think I may have discovered my newest favourite comfort food there, beef filled Arepas with Yuca frita. My flexitarian diet preference certainly hasn't been much evident in recent weeks!

Over the weekend we discovered Viet Soho for its no-frills but delicious phở, plus a wide choice of side dishes. Bear in mind the service here isn't the friendliest, but worth enduring for the quality of food.

El Dorado is a Columbian restaurant somewhat hidden away in Seven Sisters, which we also visited over the weekend. The atmosphere there for a Saturday evening was certainly lively, and the food even more so. Their starter of papa a la Huancaína, was the best I've tried yet. For mains, I'd the mixed ceviche bursting with fresh seafood flavours, followed by a sweet treat of lucuma and pistachio cheescake.

Winter party

The somewhat later than usual Christmas/Winter company party took place on Thursday in Camden to accommodate Neontribe joining dxw the family earlier this month. The day began with an unconference, which provided a good opportunity to meet everyone in person. Unfortunately, it wasn't easy to hear what everyone was saying in each session due to having them all concurrently in the same enclosed space. Nevertheless, I managed to meet a few new recruits and enjoyed chatting to some colleagues I'd not seen in a while.

The new year didn't escape yet more dental woes, this week I'd yet another non-routine trip to my new London-based dentist to identify another filling required 😬. At least this dentist seems far friendlier than my last.

Working-weekend at UKGovcamp

At the weekend I attended my first UKGovcamp, which was good fun and I saw quite a few familiar faces of past, beside my colleagues at dxw. Such in-person events are relatively rare in the calendar in this post-pandemic world. Hence, they're worth making the effort and building the courage to attend, whatever your motivations to go are for, you always learn something new, and make new connections along with rekindling old connections.

It was great to see Molly Watt there leading on a session about accessibility, beyond compliance. I learnt there's more than one screen reader preinstalled on Mac.

On the matter of accessibility it's been a busy week, running a new series of accessibility workshops for dxw colleagues that received some heart-warming appreciation from the participants. I've also ended up taking the lead in organising a company-wide talk from accessibility specialist and speaker, Gareth Ford Williams for next month.

Empire of Light

At home, I've been re-watching Andrew Graham-Dixon's 2016 documentary series, Art of Scandinavia, which I thankfully kept a screen record copy of after BBC Store disappeared without any alternative to access lost purchases. In cinema land, I went to Picturehouse to see Empire of Light, which itself was set in a cinema on Margate's seafront. Maybe too early to say, but definitely my favourite film of the year so far!

Without any completion date confirmed yet for my house move, I hesitantly decided to start planning and booking for some trips over the next few months in Europe. Gone are the days, it seems, of bargain deals outside the school holiday season with train and plane departures available at semi-sociable hours ☹️.

Work team expands

At work, we welcomed new team members from another agency, Neontribe, who dxw recently acquired. Looking forward to hopefully meeting them all, among many other new dxw recruits, at next week's work Christmas (Winter) party.

Trip t'York

Over the weekend, X and myself visited York which was pleasingly sunny for most of the time we were there, albeit seasonally cool. The River Ouse was almost literally beside our hotel due to the heavy rainfall this month. Thanks to the minor flooding of nearby ground, riverside walking certainly wasn't an option for this visit, so we settled for exploring The Shambles on foot with it's many quant shops, restaurants, and cafés. The two dining highlights of the visit were Dough Eyed for some of the best pizza we'd ever tried.

For Sunday brunch, I found the impressively characterful interior at Dyls café bar to relax and dine in. Just outside the city walls, look carefully for this hidden away iconic Motor House tower on Skeldergate Bridge. Advisably, try to build up a good appetite before arrival and prepare for some large-ish portion sizes here and French (Yorkshire) fries with most dishes!

Easing into the first week of the new year, my week began with a visit to The London Transport museum with X. My last visit there was almost thirty years ago, accessed with free admission thanks to my Blue Peter Badge. Alas, I paid for admission this time since I couldn't find the badge this time, plus I'm somewhat past the age of validity now! There's comfortably enough to see and explore within three hours, although I'm somewhat disappointed that much of the exhibition only seems to focus on buses and the Underground, rather than the entire range of transport modes London benefits from today.

London eat outs and comedy

Turkish cuisine was the pick of the week for dining out at Hala, Harringey. Go here only if you've a big appetite, since the portions are generous! That said, the food was delicious, and I managed to finish both courses of filled aubergine for starters and main of grilled whole sea bass.

Later in the week, I joined a friend for Wolf and Owl Live, giving me a good reason to make my first ever visit to the Royal Festival Hall to watch something. Despite having never listened to the Wolf and Owl podcast before, I found it great fun in spite of one or two disruptive members of the audience shouting out humorless nonsense.

 Do like to be beside the seaside

I made a beeline for the breezy coastline of Bexhill at the weekend in need of some fresh sea air, biryani at Desi Bites and a small helping of sea-themed art at the De La War Pavilion gallery. It's by far one of my favourite small free galleries in the UK, and Bexhill a seaside town that's rarely too crowded but still has a good vibe, with some decent shops and cafés.

2022 was the year I decided to make some big changes in my life, partly through the help of some life coaching, new people I met and through my own decisions and willpower. I've experienced some of my lowest and highest levels of morale. Overall, despite all the terrible goings-on in global politics and the environment, things are looking much better for me on a personal front than this time last year.

Coronavirus

With the Omicron variant sweeping through much of the population, 2022 was the year I'd my first infection of coronavirus at Easter. Thankfully, my symptoms were fairly minimal, and self-isolation restrictions had been lifted, but nevertheless I still self-isolated whilst testing positive for over two weeks, only just in time for my trip to Germany in May.

European Travel

My Irish passport saw some good usage over 2022, with trips abroad to Germany via Belgium, The Netherlands (twice), Republic of Ireland and Portugal. Except for my EasyJet flights to and from Portugal, all these trips were taken by ferry or train.

Going to Galway, Ireland with my parents and visiting the Wild Atlantic Way coastal route for my thirty-fifth birthday was a most memorable and enjoyable experience. Also, over the summer my solo Portuguese trip to Porto and Lisbon was great fun and a treat for my eyes along with a daily indulgence of pastéis de nata.

Work

Included in my trips abroad, was my work-related conference, Beyond Tellerrand. I like this event so much that it's become a yearly fixture in my calendar, as it is for many of the attendees, some of whom have been attending over a decade! Closer to home, I finally made it to Brighton's dConstruct conference in the autumn, which was fabulous, albeit the last one ever sadly.

Back at my work desk, it was a busy year for accessibility training, in which I voluntarily created three workshops to teach core skills in web accessibility for my GovPress colleagues. This was also open to the wider dxw team I work with, which attracted a small but satisfactory take-up of willing learners. The workshops were received well, and admittedly I do enjoy teaching somewhat, despite dreading doing it beforehand.

My fears of catching coronavirus from sitting in a shared office all day reduced enough in 2022 for me to make the decision to use my company's shared office more regularly. Whilst not many of the team I work with daily are there often when I turn up, it's still nice to have a little in-person contact with my other colleagues on a more frequent basis. I grew somewhat tired of the isolation, working for home all the time. Our new London shared office in King's Cross is bright and spacious, which definitely feels like more of an appealing place to go and work in than the small dark room we previously had in Moorgate.

Speaking and events

I didn't fulfil my hopes for doing any public speaking in 2022 and was rejected for a couple of conference events I sent proposals to. Sadly, many of my favourite local meetup groups to attend, socialise and speak at haven't returned since the pandemic. I've mixed opinions and hopes for what the future holds in terms of this so-called post-pandemic situation, where in-person meetups are far and few between for a variety of reasons. Many of my friends and colleagues no longer all work in the same city. Whilst we learn to live with Coronavirus, it remains the case that many vulnerable people and their relatives simply cannot take the risk of attending crowded in-person events.

The IndieWeb

With some sadness, 2022 was the year I ended my six years of co-hosting Homebrew Website Club London in June. I did this to give me more time to focus on other things in my life. I'm glad to say James and Mark are continuing in my absence to host the event regularly and attract a diverse and global attendance. It was a pleasure to join as an attendee for the last event of the year in December 2022, and I hope to join future ones occasionally.

I managed to attend and help organise IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf back in May which was great fun, and as ever the Germans did a great job of hosting the event including a great venue and catering.

Health, fitness, and life coaching

Besides my brief spell of coronavirus, as mentioned above, my year didn't get off to a great start healthwise. I'd more than my usual number of visits to the dentists. I was also unfortunate to have two bouts of tonsillitis. Fitness wise, I kept up with my road cycling over the Summer and joined my hiking group for a handful of walks in the South East of England during the Spring.

With some money leftover from my employer's learning and development budget, I did a few sessions of life coaching from two coaches. I didn't know quite what to expect from life coaching. Both coaches had their own approaches, which varied hugely in what ways and how much I should change my approaches to life. I'd my doubts early on if either were of much help. I like to think each benefited in me different ways over time with my own efforts to follow up on their advice.

People

In 2022 I made new friends and rekindled one or two existing friendships which had drifted, with varying success. Having more people I can trust as true friends in my life has been an important aspect in my efforts to improve my overall happiness and motivations over the past year. I've come to the realisation that it's just too draining to keep putting effort in to maintaining some friendships and friendship groups. Many of these were ones we'd established over a decade ago, where all the efforts to maintain them seem to be on my part alone.

Looking forward to 2023

My hopes are the New Year will bring some good news for my moving-in date. I've been wanting to move house since before the pandemic, but for one reason or another, it just wasn't a good time for me to move before 2022. Without doubt, it's no lie that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do in life, and I haven't even completed on this one yet!

I've pencilled in a couple of trips in the year ahead to distant places beyond Europe which I've never been to before. Neither will be feasible to reach without taking a plane, but I'll make every effort to keep any other trips closer to home plane-free.

For the year ahead in work, I hope to continue in my plans to broaden my knowledge of accessibility, as well as share it in a format everyone can understand.

Finally, I want to say a big thank you to every one of you reading this and wish you well for the year ahead, whatever happens! There are at least a couple of you I know who read this who've helped make a positive difference in my life over the past year, no matter how great or little, for which I'm so grateful!

Christmas work wind down

Leading up to Christmas Day, work was mainly winding down, although I was one of the few on my team at work to be working the days after the national bank holiday period here in the UK. The reduced team size for the holiday period meant I was covering support, which is somewhat more unpredictable than my usual workload, with many tasks and questions beyond my skill set.

Cosmetics warts and all

These week notes are admittedly sometimes warts and all – this week literally! Since a few weeks, I'd been suffering increased discomfort from a skin growth on my back, which I've had as long as I can remember. Availability of GP appointments in my local surgery has been abysmal ever since the pandemic, with almost a month to wait to get examined. Instead, I went to a local cosmetics surgery and almost painlessly had my unwanted growth removed in minutes, albeit for a small fortune.

Listening and watching

My latest podcast recommendation is Kathy Burk's hilarious Where There's A Will, There's A Wake. On Apple TV, I've been rewatching The Long Way Up with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding electric Harleys through spectacular scenery in South and Central America to Los Angeles. Keeping with the Latin America theme, I've been tantalising my taste buds with Netflix's Street Food: Latin America.

A long awaited white Christmas arrived a few weeks too early for the festive holidays in London and the South East over the past week. Luckily, I'd a day of annual leave booked the day after snowfall, providing the perfect opportunity to enjoy the winter wonderland of Finsbury Park and help contribute in making a snow person.

Meanwhile, on one of my most loved/hated social networks, Nextdoor, my local neighbourhood in Tonbridge was debating the all important topic of salting or gritting of paths, rather than its regular topics of hating cyclists or where's the cheapest place to fill up your fuel hungry SUV. The icy paths debate quickly turned in to a heated argument over who might be liable for injuries if some unfortunate soul falls on a less than sufficiently salted path!

Events and conferences

I was reminiscing this past week on my first attendance to a UK web conference ten years ago at Handheld 2012 in Cardiff Bay. Prior to that I'd been to the free conference, Multi-Mania in Belgium, where I first discovered such inspirational speakers as Jeremy Keith and Jan De Coster. The year ahead in 2023 I've booked for my fifth Beyond Tellerrand conference in Düsseldorf and my first UK Govcamp unconference in London.

Breakfast heaven

As I edge somewhat closer to my move to London next year 🤞🏻, I've been discovering more of its best dining options. Last week I enjoyed a spectacular and heavenly sweet serving of French Toast at one of my new regular visits, Abraço in North London.

The past week I've felt more unwell than in many years. Initially, I shrugged off my feverish symptoms as a just a seasonal cold or flu, having tested negative for Covid-19. A couple of days later little had improved, and I'd also developed intensely uncomfortable mouth sores, making it torture to eat and brush my teeth.

With no GP appointments available for a fortnight, I'd no option but to visit A&E. Four hours later after sitting in a grim, overcrowded waiting room, and almost fainting after a blood test, I left the hospital with a diagnosis of tonsillitis, for the second time in 2022, and thankfully a plentiful supply of penicillin doses.

Survey good

Second-time round with attempting to buy a new property, things are finally heading in the right direction with a satisfactory survey result. All that's left now is a mountain of work to be completed by my solicitor and hopefully a completion date later in the New Year.

Fifteen secs of fame

My claim to fifteen secs of fame once again entered the personal record books when I'd a brief appearance at the start of The Last Leg thanks to Mike the Cameraman. It's almost always an exciting, satisfying experience to attend a TV audience, better than watching on the TV, and I thoroughly recommend SRO audiences if you've never been and best of all, it's free!

The dreaded words of “possible asbestos” came up on my survey more than enough times to comfortably ignore for the 1980s ex-housing association flat I'd intended to buy. Somewhat regrettably, I decided to withdraw my offer on the property last week. My plan B was swiftly implemented to offer under the asking price at a nearby pricey but new-ish build property still on the market with allocated parking and a balcony. Luckily, the offer was accepted! It's hopefully only a small set back in the house move progress, but overall I'm happier to be moving to a modern property that looks and feels like a place I feel I can happily one day call my home.

London eats and reads

Over the weekend I ventured to North London and went for a divine three-course dinner at Tierra Peru accompanied by a zingy Pisco Sour. It's hard to pick a favourite out of the three courses, including Peruvian sweet potato fritters! 🤤, but the starter of papa a la huancaína definitely hit the spot in terms of flavours I'd never experienced anything like before.

Sunday brunch included a visit to Harringay's very popular Dusty Knuckle for coffee, fresh pastries and some of the best deep filled sandwiches London has to offer. I went for the roasted squash and Labneh cheese sandwich.

Meanwhile at home I've been reading my latest book purchase, London Feeds Itself, which is opening my mind to many interesting and undiscovered architecture and culinary spots in preparation for my move to the Big Smoke, hopefully early next year.

Something good

I won't say more than this for now, but… thanks to someone very special in my life recently, things are finally looking much better for me: I'm feeling more content, and having a positive outlook of life challenges and opportunities ahead, despite what horrible things may be happening in the World right now I have no control over.

Hesitantly, I announce the news that I've found a new home in South West London. After three weeks of dithering and or forgetfulness from the seller, my offer was finally accepted. Three months or more, who knows, of probable house sale stress and uncertainty awaits!

Furniture shop adventures

Ahead of next year's hopeful house move, I've been touring IKEA and other furniture stores online, whilst also selling things that won't fit in my new home physically and appearance-wise.

Viewing & listening

As the nights draw in, the weather becomes more inclement, and so the inclination to go out to town lessens, I've been enjoying the latest instalment Louis Theroux on TV with his new series of celebrity interviews. On the TV culinary front I've been enjoying CNN's Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy, currently back on iPlayer. You should have been here is my latest podcast subscription with regular contributions from globetrotters Mick Webb and Simon Calder.

Away from home I joined a friend to see The Banshees of Inisherin which brought back fond memories of visiting the West of Ireland earlier this year. It certainly goes down as one of my favourite Irish films along with 1990s classic, Into The West.

Twitter exodus

No I haven't decided to leave Twitter yet. Whilst I continue to feel enraged with Musk's actions in its takeover, I feel I've too much too loose in terms of friends and connections I've made on Twitter over the past twelve years since I joined. I'm continuing to post most of what I have to say and share there from my website. I've yet to fall in love with Mastodon, it's a hell of a complex platform to understand for many not involved in tech. I'm currently on the toot.cafe instance, but tempted to try another instance since it's often painfully slow to use.

Saturday saw the return of one of my favourite web conferences, State of the Browser. This year it was hosted at London’s behemoth brutalist venue, the Barbican Centre. After a week of feeling pretty low, it was a good morale booster and antidote to meet up and socialise again with many Twitter folks and industry celebs I’d not seen in-person since pre-pandemic! My friend Dave Letorey never fails to make this event a success and attracts a diverse audience, not all dominated by privileged white guys.

Re-Tour de Ned

Made a pilgrimage north to Buxton’s Opera House on Sunday to see TV’s cycling pundit, Ned Boulting perform his fourth show in five years. Ned never fails to make the topic of French cycling sport, primarily the Tour de France, into an entertaining two hours of history lesson combined with an incredible solo act full of comedy and passion for sports road cycling.

Back in Brum

Heading home after my visit up north, I took a little extra time out this Monday for a brief visit to Birmingham. It remains one of my least loved UK cities: strangled by express ways, motorways, and HS2's Curzon Street construction that's currently carving a gaping hole in the city centre. On the culinary front, Brum’s a lot more favourable, with no shortage of inviting contemporary cafés and restaurants. I tried out Medicine Bakery & Kitchen for elevenses. For lunch I discovered Tamatanga which is the Midlands' answer to Dishoom or Mowgli.

They'll be better times ahead. I never give up hope and determination to get through these tough times, to improve myself and overall be a better person on the inside and outside.

Sale and economy blues

In terms of good news, I finally found a purchaser for my flat who's a first time buyer. The bad news, I don't know yet for sure if my purchaser will secure a mortgage they can afford given rising interest rates. The chaos in the economy here in the UK, and yet another hopeless, careless government, is just the recipe I need for high anxiety and continual pessimistic thoughts.

Flat hunting

Leading on from the good news part of the previous week, I've been busy filling up my browser history with Rightmove property searches and thought about little else but the economy and property. So far I've done a handful of viewings, mainly round South West London, and made one offer that's been conditionally accepted. As ever with property selling/buying, some communications seem to take forever, things are far from certain yet, but I'm hopeful I might just have secured somewhere already.

No Netflix and chill here, but instead Moving Home with Charlie is now one of my new frequent most watched channels for insights on where the housing market is actually heading versus what many estate agents claim.

LFF

London's Film Festival returned this month. Most years I leave it too late to find anything much left really worthwhile booking, though this year I struck lucky in snatching a ticket for Lars Ostenfeld's Into The Ice. Highly recommended viewing also on BBC Four later this month! The film reveals just how little time's left, perhaps just ten years, before we face a point of no return in saving the planet from irreparable damage.

Over the past week, I joined and assisted my parents on their first trip to abroad in Central Europe since 2019.

Outbound we took the eco-friendly route via overnight ferry direct from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. I can highly recommend this option for smooth sailing, stress-free, flight-free travelling, and without the long security queues we experienced taking Eurostar from Brussels on our return journey.

Delft's Hotel Vermeer was our choice of accommodation, which was a characterful accommodation choice beside the canal and right in the heart of this beautiful Dutch city.

There's no shortage of great dining options in Delft, and for our first night we chose Spijshuis De Dis. I'd the Brammer dish consisting of a creamy fish pie and an exquisitely presented garnish of steamed veg, spinach tart and potato presented in three ways.

Gouda was our first day-trip destination on the second day of our visit, followed by Rotterdam. My foodie highlight of day two was a visit to Gouda's Van Vliet's Siroopwafels café for coffee and their delicious coffee bread, which is similar to France's pain aux raisins but ten times better!

On the final day of our stay we visited the delightful cities of Harlem and Leiden. Both had their own charm for exploring and easily worth another visit to see all their museums and attractions. Most of the Netherland's are somewhat pricey, and it's probably worthwhile committing to a museum pass if visiting museums is your main reason for going there.

Our final evening's dining out choice in Delft was at 't Postkantoor where I'd the vegan option, Vegetable Garde, which is made of marinated artichoke, crispy black bean risotto balls and grilled asparagus. All in all, a perfect end to our short trip in Delft.

Mood and mental health

Most of the trip went well, although the ongoing sh*tstorm in UK politics, an economy in depression and consequential feelings of low morale back home did take its toll on some of us to the point of breakdown. Overall our trip was a pleasant respite away from the UK in a country somewhat more sane in its political direction and generally much better off as a consequence.

For over a decade, I'd visited my increasingly oversubscribed NHS dentist near my family home each year, which was quite a long and expensive trek for an increasingly shorter and less than comprehensive checkup. This week, I finally took the plunge into private dentistry following the alarming discovery that my mouth had rather resembled that of a vampire each time I went to brush my teeth for the past couple of weeks. My new private dentist discovered a large cavity, which of course left me with little option but to make a relatively large hole in my finances to get it filled.

Foodie discoveries

After a day of much brushing and flossing, I'd recovered enough from the strenuous trials of dental drilling to go out and eat delicious foods again. First up was a visit to Camden for Afghan street food at Two Lads Kitchen. I'd the signature dish, an Afghan veggie wrap of smokey spinach, mashed chickpeas and a zingy secret green sauce. This was easily one of the best wraps I've eaten, step aside Tex-Mex burritos!

After that I'd still room for a fluffy mango chiffon cake at another new discovery, Kova Patisserie.

Closer to home, on Sunday I went to try out a new vegan café in Tunbridge Wells for a brunch of paprika spiced tofu, black beans and spinach with avocado and potato rosti at The Plant Base.

Frameworks work

The team I'm on at work has been devoting time away from client work to find a suitable frontend framework. It's hoped this will help us all as a team to make websites using a more consistent approach, besides GOV.UK's Design System. A few days of technical research sped by, and I think few of us were fully decided on which approach was the ideal solution for the array of frameworks out there.

Post-pandemic cooking routine

Ever since the food shortages and lockdowns early on in the pandemic, I've followed more or less the same schedule of meals throughout the week to help me with meal planning and avoid food waste.

Gloomy Mondays are almost always brightened up with a coupling of flavoursome and often spicy home-cooked Indian/Pakistani vegan dishes. For my side dish option this week I experimented with a new recipe for naan bread. I firstly used my bread maker to handle the kneading more vigorously than I can ever achieve. Then I decided to pan grill the flattened dough rather than oven grill it. Texture-wise and taste-wise this had much better results than my previous approach, almost restaurant style.

dConstruct

Early Friday just as the autumn sun rose around 6am I headed to Brighton for dConstruct. Arriving early gave me the time to visit one of my favourite breakfast cafés in Brighton, Bread and Milk.

Back to the main reason for my visit, dConstruct, and in terms of the talks they were all incredibly thought inspiring without fail. It was my first and sadly last chance to see dConstruct which has been running for ten years. I didn't get a chance to say hi to him there, but my Dutch friend, aslo working in web accessibility, Hidde wrote all about the talks, plus some great photos!

It was also great to see so many great friends there I've met over the past ten years at other tech conferences and meetups. I joined long-time good friends Ana, Paul and Nick for lunch at a nearby vegan café, Smorl's Houmous for a veggie burger.

London Bridge down

A day before on Thursday, news filtered through at work of the imminent possibility to implement Operation London Bridge, the funeral plan for Queen Elizabeth II. I helped our team hurriedly put in place website notices announcing her death for the many government-linked websites we help build, and maintain. Shortly after finishing work that day, the Queen's death was announced.

As a mark of respect, much was cancelled over the past few days, including a much anticipated TV audience I was due to attend with a friend for The Last Leg 😢.

The wall-to-wall television coverage devoted to the Queen's death and proclamations of King Charles III wasn't top of my viewing list over the weekend. For those that know me well, it's possibly no surprise that I'm no monarchist. I nevertheless respect the Queen's passing feels a great shared and personal loss for many, and it will take some time to adjust to a new head of state after the so many years she served.

Theatre

Thankfully, my booked visit with my parents to see Walking with Ghosts in London's West End didn't fall victim to the mark of respect cancellations. The show was a hilarious and heartbreaking delight, showing off the full talent of Gabriel Byrne performing alone live on stage.

Home in Cheshire

Over the past week I spent some time back at the family home in Cheshire. Every time I return it feels like the town as grown at least another soul-less housing development in place of the open countryside I used to traverse for exercise and dog-walking. The town's now almost unrecognisable! It's incredible how many long-term memories are triggered whenever I visit home. Despite over a decade since my dog passed away, I still half expect her to come running up to greet me at the door whenever I arrive.

Adventures north

Over the first weekend visiting, we drove up to Lancashire's foody and drink capital, the small town of Clitheroe. We explored its many independent shops and cafés, including the Holmes Mill food hall that's a treat for the eyes, let alone your taste buds! Lunch included freshly prepared sandwiches and ground coffee, much coffee! Our chosen coffee blends from the menu included Columbian and Kenyan choices, which were served up in generously sized and filled cafetières at Exchange Coffee Co.

We also made a brief stop after at the very upmarket village, Whalley, taking in Whalley Abbey and the spectacular Whalley Viaduct built in 1850 with no less than 48 arches.

Adventures west

We made a couple of visits to Wales and Shropshire over the two weekends. First up was a hike up to Montgomery Castle with its free access and uninterrupted views over the Welsh borders. Nearby we also explored Presteigne. This quaint little border town in Wales has a rich music and arts scene, with a vibrant range of independent shops, cafés, restaurants, and pubs. Fun cycling-related fact off Wiki: Presteigne hosted the World's first competitive electric bicycle race.

Returning to England, next on our day trip agenda was Shrewsbury. I've been here dozens of times before throughout my childhood. I always find it pleasantly nostalgic to visit Shrewsbury. On this occasion we'd lunch at the recently opened, award-winning Ginger & Co where I'd the Nourishing Bowl of flavoured humus with a mixed salad including chilli edamame beans and tahini sauce followed by raspberry oat delight.

Shrewsbury's held up quite well to past and present recessions. More so now than ever before, the town has exploded with new cafés and restaurants in place of chain stores. The coronavirus pandemic of the past two years gave us one good thing, and that's more street space for eating and drink on in many towns and cities, which has thankfully been retained here on a permanent basis.

Anglesey adventures

Retracing part of the route we took to Ireland earlier this summer, we once again made the two-hour journey along the A55 west to the Welsh island of Anglesey, but only for a day trip. We stopped for an afternoon refreshment of tea and homemade cakes sitting outside at the very atmospheric Ann's Pantry in Moelfre.

For most of the day we drove the full circuit of the island and made some stops along the way to admire the beautiful coastline, beaches, and rich geology dating back hundreds of millions of years ago.

Already with withdrawal symptoms after just a few weeks since Le Tour, thankfully the television coverage of La Vuelta returned this weekend. There were some pleasing and familiar sights of Utrecht and The Netherlands from my visits in recent years. Closer to home I cycled a roundtrip of 55 miles (90 km) to the quaint village of Northiam just over the county border into East Sussex. I went there with the intention of a café stop at Will's which was a good find for good coffee and a large range of sweet pastries, plus savoury snacks with a continental feel.

Thanks to a continuous wave of rail strikes in the UK this summer, I'm finding fewer opportunities at weekends to explore distant places, as well the opportunities to go cycling further away from home, taking my bike on the train. Given the current political climate here, it seems like we'll only see more strikes to come as our country descends into ever greater chaos and economic decline.

Job reflections

It's been a busy couple of weeks at work. I spent time on a spread of website improvements, accessibility auditing and chatting with a few external people on bringing in more accessibility skills and knowledge for the company. All in all feeling positive about how things are going there. As ever, it's wise not to be complacent and accept there's still much that needs improvement on the accessibility side.

More art

Over the previous weekend, including yet another rail strike, I joined my parents in the car for a visit to David Hockney’s latest art exhibition, Hockney's Eye, at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The artworks on display ranged from a variety of canvas paintings, 3D modelling and iPad paintings, all focused on how artists see and depict art.

We also had some time to see round Howardena Pindell's A New Language exhibition at Kettle's Yard. At first glance, the abstract canvases there were a little challenging to depict and understand. The video interviews with Howardena from past and present revealed a lot about the meaning behind them, with the context set of racism, police brutality and violence towards Black and indigenous people.

The past weekend I decided to give paddleboarding a try. The nearby River Medway is the perfect location for water sports novices like me to ease into such activities as paddleboarding. Balancing my knees on the board wasn’t too much of a difficulty. For standing up, I managed to do this first time without falling in. Ten minutes in, my wobbling legs had stopped and I was calmly navigating the Medway… until a fellow group member inadvertently collided with me and splash into the river I went! Luckily I managed to climb back on-board quickly and graciously without too much embarrassment. All in all a good experience I wouldn't say no to try again sometime.

Games in Warwick

Ten years on from watching my first cycling road race on the Surrey roadsides for the London Olympics, I followed the anniversary with a visit to Warwick for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. The three-hour train journey north from my home in Kent was well worth it for the experience of excited anticipation and happy vibes cycling races bring to the people and places they pass.

Location scouting East

Last weekend I continued with my location scouting for potential places to move to. This time I decided to explore East London. Beyond the colourful, spectacle of unaffordable tower blocks in London’s Docklands, I was met with a sprawl of post-WW2 terraces in varying levels of dilapidation. There were a few scatterings of new build flats from the 2010s of somewhat better appeal, but on the whole the area isn’t my first choice for places to consider moving to.

Personal reflection

My weeknote writing energy has taken somewhat of a dip recently, since I’m also trying to put into words a longer article on something that’s been dominant in my thoughts recently. The TL;DR of it is, I'm autistic. I knew for almost two decades I possibly was autistic, but I tried to struggle on without trying to admit it for a variety of reasons emanating from a desire just to be treated as normal and equal to others. Since my life coaching a few months back it's refloated as something I want to be more open about. I hope it will help me to understand myself better and consequently help others to understand me better.

I've recently decided to try out working at my employer's co-working space in London to give me a chance to get out of the house once a week and meet in-real life with a number of my work colleagues. I feel since the lockdowns of the past two years, that much like any muscle not exercised enough, my self-confidence and social skills have slipped somewhat in this time. We're all still working remotely for most of the time in different parts of the country. Particularly for those of us living alone, no amount of virtual meetings or Zoom calls is enough to keeps these strengths and skills in top form.

Heatwave

I just about endured the heatwave here in Kent where temperatures peaked at almost forty degrees Celsius on Tuesday. I'd a surplus of sheet materials, from a previous DIY job, to create some makeshift window blinds and keep my flat as cool as possible for the three-day heatwave. That, plus a good quality desk fan and a ready supply of homemade deep-frozen caffè lattes kept me just about chilled enough.

Viewing and listening 🚴‍♀️

My TV viewing habits for the past three weeks took somewhat of a detour to make room for daily Tour de France highlights. Such a worthy win for the Danish rider by Jonas Vingegaard! Aside from television, I've been listening to a couple of podcasts, including Never Strays Far and started on a few older episodes of Out to Lunch with Jay Rayner.

Grayson's Art Club

Over the weekend, I joined up with my parents in Bristol to visit Grayson Perry's Art Club exhibition. We also had sometime leftover to visit Bristol's beautiful waterfront and its M Shed museum, which has a really engaging and well curated social history of the city, its numerous communities, Brunel's engineering and of course Banksy!

Time and budget constraints deterred me from taking my favoured zero-flights option to Portugal entirely by train. My friend James and his wife did try this option a few years ago by taking a Eurostar, TGV and sleeper train as written about in his series of posts. Reluctantly, I took easyJet instead. This was my first flight experience in almost three years and my goodness it was a hectic and crowded experience at little old Gatwick with so many queues for everything!

Porto

Arrival at Porto was on time and I swiftly passed through border control waving my Irish passport whilst the Brits queued up for their Brexit souvenir EU admission stamps. Travel in to Porto city centre on the metro was just 2 Euros for a half hour journey! My stay at the Hotel Ibis in São Bento was up to the usual standards: quiet and comfortably air-conditioned. My only criticism is that their Wi-Fi wasn't great, which precluded me from catching up much with Le Tour highlights.

The first night I spent some time exploring the Jardim do Morro beside the River Douro and iconic Luís I Bridge. I wasn't too hungry that night, but did make room for a veggie version of their steak sandwich at a fairly casual restaurant called Venham Mais 5. The meat alternative was a sloppy mess of cheese and roasted seitan.

The following morning I came across one of Porto's seemingly most hidden but popular breakfast/brunch cafés, Do Norte. There'd I'd a generous portion of their cheese and spinach filled pancakes, including yoghurt and a spicy fruit sauce.

For my first full day in Porto I came across a free (pay what you like) walking tour by Fiel from Porto Walkers. The 3-hour tour began with a visit to the spectacular São Bento train station, decorated throughout with 20,000 azulejo tiles depicting scenes from Portuguese history.

We proceeded up and down Porto's steep, and often very narrow streets, taking in the views over Douro and Ribeira river front. All in all a great tour and I'd highly recommend it for your first visit to Porto!

Not every shop or restaurant is open on Sundays and Mondays in Porto, so on my last day in Porto I made a beeline to the popular but very small Taberna Santo António. There I joined a couple of German tourists who I met in the queue and offered to share a table with them. We shared a couple of the local specialities from the simple, but cheap menu of stews and speciality meats.

Guimarães

I also had the great pleasure of meeting someone in-person from the IndieWeb community whilst on my trip. Paulo kindly invited me to visit his hometown, Guimarães, where I was given a personal guided tour of the town listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.

The small town was an unexpected pleasure to see for an evening out of Porto, and definitely somewhere I'd like to revisit with a full day or two.

Paulo and I enjoyed a large meal in the main square of Guimarães at Restaurante Buxa including a main of baked cod and maize bread gratin.

Lisbon

For the second part of my trip I took the pendolino train from Porto to Lisbon which took about 3 hours and cost just 27 Euros in comfort class! Arrival was perfectly on time and just 15 minutes from my Airbnb guest house right in the heart of Alfama next to many bars, restaurants, and Lisbon cathedral. It was a cheap, clean room without air conditioning or an en suite, but good enough on my budget for this short trip.

On my first morning in Lisbon I explored Alfama, taking in a visit to Pastelaria Alfama Doce for at least one Pastéis de Nata and a selection of other sweet pastries washed down by a strong long espresso. After that, I visited Lisbon's beautiful Romanesque style Cathedral just as it had opened at 10am, so I'd the place pretty much to myself.

To burn off some calories I then explored the main vantage points looking over Alfama including Miradouro das Portas do Sol. Then further up the hill I visited Torre da Igreja, the bell tower, where 5 Euros gets you access to a great vantage point high above Alfama, plus a glass of Vino Verde, or soft drink of your choice.

For lunch, I opted for a contemporary vegan restaurant at The Green Affair. There I'd a stunningly presented starter of green gyoza and a delicious main of katsu curry with tofu and courgettes and in a crispy breadcrumb coating.

In the afternoon I joined an Airbnb booked experience with Free Tours Lisbon (not free) for a 4-hour tour taking in plenty of Lisbon's top attractions including: Lx Factory, Time Out Market and Pink Street, the iconic Vasco da Gama Bridge, Jerónimos Monastery, and finally Belém for yet more delicious Pastel de Nata.

The second afternoon of my Lisbon visit, I joined another Airbnb booked experience, this time taking in the best restaurants of Alfama to try a range of different tapas dishes. These dishes included locally caught sardines, octopus, Chouriço à Bombeiro (a flame grilled chorizo), pastries, plus a selection of Portuguese wines.

On the final evening of my trip, I enjoyed the best meal of it all at Solar 31 Alafama. This included freshly prepared clams in a garlic dressing and then a mains dish of grilled octopus with roasted potatoes, washed down with a glass, or two, of Vino Verde.

On my return journey, I briefly explored Lisbon's spectacular Oriente train station before proceeding to the nearby airport.

Unfortunately, anyone flying with easyJet or Ryanair to the UK is in for a big disappointment! Neither seem to use the main terminal much, but instead passengers are bussed over to a supermarket-sized annexe on the other side of the runway with just a handful of facilities.

Until next time...

I left Portugal feeling like I could have spent at least a month there, with so much to experience. The wine, food, the scenery and the overall vibe of its cities combine to make this one of my favourite corners of the world to visit. I anticipate my return there soon to experience more!

This past week was a reminder to me of just how dependent I've been the past few years on a frequent, reliable train service in to London and beyond. I speak none other than of the British rail strike, which resulted in a complete shutdown for most of the railway network, including here in West Kent.

Prior plans I'd made for going to a comedy night with Kevin Bridges at the Soho Theatre, before the strike was confirmed to take place, meant I'd to make alternative arrangements. This included a pricey hotel stay in London, plus taking the only public transport alternative of a once-daily commuter coach to Canary Wharf. Thankfully, despite there being a tube strike too, there was a minimal service running on the Elizabeth Line for me to reach Central London in next to no time from Canary Wharf.

Work social

Later in the week I was able to reach Central London again by a rare running train service to meet up with my work colleagues for a day of internal process discussions, drinks, food, and lawn bowling. I do so miss these opportunities to more regularly meet in-person with the people I work with day-in day-out. Lunch was at Dishoom. I'd forgotten just how good it is there for the choice of drinks, food, and atmosphere, like few Indian restaurants I know within London or much further afield.

TV viewing

Following a busy few weeks out and about, my regular television viewing resumed this week with the welcome return of The Hotel Inspector and watching through a couple of episodes from Conversations with Friends. Glastonbury on iPlayer also didn't go amiss, with me watching live performances of the Fouls and a brief sample of Bonobo's new album, Fragments.

Accessibility writing

Over the weekend I put the final touches to my accessibility culture talk I'm hoping to give at a couple of conferences this year as well as at work. Finding the right frame of mind to write any kind of talk is most of the challenge, along with a location away from home and full of the right vibe for writing and presenting ideas.

This past week began with immense frustration over my current estate agent's attempts, or lack of, to market and sell my property. I won't bore you with the detail of their incompetence, but let's just say I've decided to change to one seemingly more able at selling properties like mine in the area. This, however, won't be immediate as I've to wait another frustrating couple of months to respect the current agent's contractual agreement.

Personal reflections

My mental state took a strange turn since my birthday, anxiety hit big time and I made a rushed unjustified decision, skewed by previous experiences, which I now deeply regret over someone I met recently. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be, but in hindsight, I now regret what I said and not persisting longer. Last weekend I went on a couple of 45-mile long cycling trips to try to calm the mind back to a state I could think more clearly and find a way forward.

Goodbye Homebrew Website Club

After almost exactly six years to the day, this week I finally handed over organising responsibilities of the Homebrew Website Club (HWC) London meetup to Mark and James. It was a difficult decision to let go of something I've spent so long building up interest and support for over the years, both in-person and online, since the pandemic began two years ago. My energy and focus in life has taken somewhat of a different direction in the past year, which has left me struggling to keep the bi-weekly event going with sufficient enthusiasm. I hope to see it continue with the support of others, and shall remain a long-term supporter of the independent web and IndieWeb community when and where I can.

Made in Brunel

Rounding off the week, I made a brief visit to my university's annual graduate showcase exhibition, Made in Brunel. There was, as ever, a high standard of student projects on display. Being a Sunday, not many of the students were around to talk to, but I did get a chance to speak to Gabriel Britton, designer of EcoClear, a recyclable COVID-19 lateral flow test.

Property location scouting

Though I'm not in an immediate position to move, I am continuing to explore different corners of Central London for potential locations to move to. So far I've come up with a couple of good possibilities south of the river, in the vicinity of fairly decent, speedy transport connections (for London), plus good shopping and food outlets.

City of Galway

Beginning the week we spent the day exploring the City of Galway under somewhat damp weather conditions. In need of a caffeine fix and to escape the rain, we went in search of a decent coffee shop. The Little Lane Coffee Company is small, but cosy and has probably the best coffee in town from what we tried. After taking in Galway's touristy hotspots, including the Catholic Cathedral, we headed for a delicious light lunch at Tartare where I'd the Durrus cheese and creamed leek sourdough toasty.

Atlantic Coast

The Weather Gods made good work of ensuring my birthday on Wednesday had the perfect conditions of warmth and sunshine. We spent the day exploring Ennis and the West Coast of Ireland, taking in the spectacular Cliffs of Moher. That evening for my birthday celebratory meal, we had the most beautiful of locations to dine out at in The Pier Head, Kinvarra.

Lough Derg

The following day we endured spells of rain with brief intervals of sunshine for much of the day. Lough Derg was a delight in spite of the damp conditions, and still clearly visible from a distance. We stopped by for lunch in Nenagh at the The Pantry Café where I enjoyed a generous portion of chips, salad and freshly made salmon fish cakes. On our journey back to our Airbnb we encountered traffic of the mooing variety, thankfully with some encouragement from the farmer and his Collie dog, they pulled over to let us through after just a five-minute hold-up!

Limerick

For the final day of our road trip, we headed straight down the motorway, so new it was missing from our car's GPS, for just over an hour to Limerick on the beautiful River Shannon. It's Ireland's third city and certainly felt much more city-like compared to Galway City, with its grand Georgian terraces and grid road layout, rarely seen in much of Europe. Toasties are quite the trend for most Irish café menus, and Limerick's Sodalicious had a fairly good choice of options, although somewhat lacking many vegetarian/vegan choices.

Overall, I loved the past week exploring Ireland and for the most part we had very dry weather, which is a rarity for Ireland!