Journal

Enjoyed the lively little party-not-party at Jason and Lydia’s last night.

I didn’t manage a whole lot of time chatting with either of the busy hosts, especially as I kept It sensible and didn’t stay too long. But they seemed in good form and Lydia seems well recovered from last year’s shoulder operations. I did managed to catch up with Craig and Anna, Mick, Aldo and Ritchie amongst others. Mick was telling me about how many gigs he has lined up this year (including The The and Jane Weaver) and making me jealous.

The hosts’ new kitchen and living room layout was looking really great too.

Had a great little post-Xmas catch-up and blether with Simon last night. We had a chance to trade stories of Christmas hosting – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Simon filled me in on how his kids are doing – a joy and a handful in equal measure just about sums it up – and how his work situation is changing and will lead to more travel and responsiblity this year.

He also shared a few funny stories of holiday adventures – he and Nathalie love nothing more than an unplanned night out with absolute strangers!

It’s always entertaining to hear about his golf trips with a motley crue I know all too well.

Brilliant to catch up, and I hope we do it more often.

Prior to Christmas we’d been talking about giving ourselves the present of a trip to London. However the train prices were pretty offensive so we opted for a different type of weekend trip – one that was rural, cosy and Rudy-friendly.

I just deactivated my Twitter (X) account. Within the wider current context of other small, positive changes I’m making, it feels like the time is right.

I gave it a little thought, but not much. There were plenty of reasons to deactivate (for my own good and because X under Elon is x-crutiating) and not many good reasons to stay.

I used their download your archive feature before deactivating.

I guess I might lose a bit of touch with some web and music folks but I’m sure I’ll catch up with them in other ways.

And I s’ppose someone might try to get in touch via Twitter and find I’m no longer there, but if they want to find me online, I’m sure they will.

One less avenue for procrastination!

I’m starting 2024 as I mean to continue – by seeing and hanging out with friends more often. Yesterday Tom and I had a great day moseying around Edinburgh.

My generous nieces and nephews clubbed together to give us the Christmas present of a voucher for Ox and Finch. Keen to use it, we got together with James and Grant for a lovely Sunday dinner.

At work today I mentioned Mr Scruff’s tip for quick tea-making. My teammates laughed and said they felt like they were on an episode of Would I lie to you? I had to prove I wasn’t talking rubbish and went looking for the tip online. It has all but disappeared from the web but thanks to Wayback Machine I was able to find a cache of the page from 2007.

So here is the tea-making tip, listed in full for posteri-tea! (Sorry…)

How was 2023 for you? For me, it was like this.

David cleverly uses CSS alone (and only a few lines) to show a “back to top” link only after the user has started scrolling, then pin its position to the bottom-left of the screen.

Clair and I just rounded off the year in style with lunch and drinks at Bar Brett on Great Western Road. We had a bird’s eye view too, sat overlooking the pass watching the chefs at work.

Between us we enjoyed a variety of small dishes including oysters, sourdough bread with chicken fat butter, cod toast, smoked beetroot with tahini, clams, lobster ravioli, mushroom XO linguine, Peterhead Coley with curried mussel sauce and a Basque cheesecake.

We tried a few glasses of wine: Veiled Vineyards Old Vine Semillon (white), a Delamotte Blanc de Blancs (champagne), and Le Grand A (Burgundy white) – all lovely.

Brett is fantastic and the staff made us feel very welcome.