Year: 2025

2025: a year in review

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A photo of some large illuminated letters spelling out 'Bradford 2025' in green, outside Bradford City Hall

It’s New Year’s Eve, and so, as per usual, I review the things I’ve done and written about over the course of the year just gone. You can read my previous posts from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

2025 got off to a slow start, not least because of heavy snow that was around for over a week. Our nine-year-old had two days off due to the school being closed, which saw me take short-notice annual leave. January was also the start of Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture, and so I wrote about that.

It was my 23rd blogiversary, and also two years since we had our solar panels installed. I also wrote a long post about how I’m probably neurodivergent, and whether we could take our house off-grid (short answer: no, apart from for gas).

January also had its goodbyes and hellos. We went to a funeral for a family member, but also re-connected with relatives who we haven’t been on speaking terms for some time, which was nice.

A photo of the outside of Magna Science Adventure Centre

February

February is LGBTQ+ History Month, and I hosted a webinar on the A-Z of LGBTQ+ through work. I think one of my personal achievements of 2025 was teaching the leader of Bradford Council what ‘deadnaming‘ is.

Whilst January was short of days out, in February we went to Magna near Rotherham, and also went to see the Dogman film at the cinema. I also wrote about a crowdfunder for the Bradford Playhouse – this was successful, and it now has a shiny new lift installed, making it fully accessible for the first time.

March

As per usual in March, we went to Sci-Fi Weekender in Great Yarmouth. It was another good event this year and we’ve already booked to go again next year. On the way down, we called at Thaymar Ice Cream, which has a lovely little café and is just off the A1. Sadly, it doesn’t have electric car charging facilities and so we probably won’t be able to stop there next time.

I took our nine-year-old to the Abbey House Museum, which had recently been reprieved from closure. We also visited Tropical World on the same day – we’ve been loads of times and I wrote about it 10 years ago. Christine and I managed to arrange a babysitter, so we had a rare grownup night out and went to see Mickey 17 at the cinema. Speaking of cinemas, I decided to rank six of Britain’s cinema chains in a highly subjective way.

A photo of a hawk with its keeper at the National Centre for Birds of Prey in Helmsley, North Yorkshire

April

We also went to the cinema in April, this time as a family to see A Minecraft Movie. I stand by my review of it being basically fine – great if you’re a Minecraft fan but neither terrible nor a masterpiece.

With the improving weather, we managed a few days out, including RSPB Fairburn Ings, the National Emergency Services Museum and Knowsley Safari Park. As per usual, we went to see my parents in York for the Easter weekend, and from there we also went to the National Centre for Birds of Prey, Ampleforth Abbey and the York Model Railway Show.

May

I wrote about No Mow May at the beginning of the month; as it happens, it wasn’t until this autumn that we got someone in to sort our garden and trim the grass. May is also our wedding anniversary – 12 years this year – and my birthday, for which we went to Beamish to use up our annual pass from last year. We also called in at Kendall’s Ice Cream Parlour in Hipperholme – a favourite of Christine’s when she was younger which sadly closed down later in the year.

On the blog, I wrote the first of our electric car journey blog posts in May.

A photo of the Parthenon at the Athens Acropolis

June

June was a big month in a way that I hadn’t expected at the start of the year. I was given the opportunity to represent my workplace at a summit in Athens, as a guest of PeopleCert who paid for my flights, accommodation and food. They also included a tour of the Acropolis on the first day. Though I have been to Greece before, that was a trip to the island of Crete when I was three which I don’t really remember. Whilst it was a short, intense visit, I thoroughly enjoyed it – especially the food.

June also marked ten years since we bought our house. It’s the longest that I’ve lived in one place since moving out of my parents home aged 18.

July

More travel was to come in July, as we went on our holiday to North Wales. Whilst we were only there for a week, we squeezed a lot in, to the extent that I was still blogging about what we did in September. Our holiday was also a test run for our new electric car that we bought in July. We managed pretty well to say that we’d only had it a week when we set off. We still really like the car, and have no regrets about the switch to electric.

Also in July, we went to an event at the Bradford Literature Festival with Robin Ince and Pierre Novellie. We ended up listening to Robin’s book around Wales, whilst I finally finished Pierre’s book earlier this month.

A photo of Little Moreton Hall, a Tudor house

August

August is my busiest month of the year at work, but that didn’t mean that we weren’t able to have lots of nice days out. We went to the very wonky Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire, Bowland Wild Boar Park and Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. Further afield, we went to celebrate my cousin’s 50th birthday in Oxfordshire, calling in at Cadbury World on the way.

I bought myself a new iPad at Costco, making it my fourth overall and the first new iPad in seven years. Speaking of Costco, we let our membership lapse in November, as we’re pretty well stocked up at present. I imagine we’ll re-join some time in the new year, once we’ve finally used everything up.

September

Though not quite as busy as August, September is still a busy time for me at work. However, we did make it to a couple of exhibitions: The Cat That Slept For A Thousand Years and The Art Of The Brick. These have now both closed.

Christine had her birthday, and so we had a little celebratory meal in Leeds, along with a shopping day out in Manchester.

A photo of the Castlefield Viaduct

October

We were back in Manchester in October, to see the Brains, Bogies and You exhibition at the National Science & Industry Museum. Whilst there, we also popped in to see the nearby Castlefield Viaduct. I also took our nine-year-old to The World of Glass in St Helens.

At the theatre, we saw the Rude Science show – I’m hoping to finish the book before the end of today – and I met the Map Men in Leeds. My copy of the book went to my Dad as a birthday present but I’ve listened to the audiobook.

November

We received a big upgrade to our internet at home after we got fibre broadband installed. A couple of months on, and it seems better than what we had before on the whole. We also put up our Christmas tree super early.

We also managed some days out, to the Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield and York’s Chocolate Story, and had an enjoyable day at Thought Bubble in Harrogate. And we watched the first of two pantomimes at the Bradford Playhouse.

A photo of the top of our Christmas tree

December

Back to the cinema again, this time for the second instalment of Wicked. We also had another family celebration, this time for my cousin who had her 25th wedding anniversary. Dress code was black tie, so I hired a suit for the occasion.

I finished work for Christmas on Friday 19th, to coincide with school holidays, and so we went to Quarry Bank Mill last week – our fourth National Trust property of the year. Christmas itself was, as usual, spent with my parents in York.

All in all

Overall, 2025 has been a good year for me. Going to Athens was definitely a highlight, as was our holiday in Wales. Let’s hope 2026 is just as good.

Reviewing my 2025 predictions

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Back in January, I made six predictions about events that would take place in 2025. So, seeing as there’s just a few days left in 2025, let’s see how I did:

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

This was a 2024 prediction as well. And it’s been accurate again – X has basically stagnated under Musk. Whilst I no longer use X, I’m not really aware of any new features; just a continuing decline as more extreme voices are amplified. I hope that, in time, X will just become irrelevant.

Donald Trump will be terrible in ways we haven’t foreseen

I mean, this is an easy one, but I think one of the worst things he did this year was his comments about Rob Reiner. Reiner and his wife were tragically killed, probably by their son, and yet Trump decided to criticise him. I try very much not to speak ill of the dead (or at least, not the recently deceased).

Trump and Musk will have a public fall-out

Yes, this happened. They seemed like best buddies at the start of the year, but their respective massive egos got the best of them. It hasn’t ended as badly for Musk as it could have done though.

Labour will do poorly in local elections

Yes, although this was an easy prediction. I was still surprised (and saddened) that Reform managed to take control of several local authorities. That being said, their general mismanagement of Kent County Council shows that they may not be a long-term political force.

There won’t be a General Election in 2025

Again, I was phoning it in a bit here. With Labour not doing so well in national polls but still having a parliamentary majority, I expect they’ll stay for as long as they can.

The overall situation in the Middle East will improve

We finally got a ceasefire (of sorts) in Gaza, although I think it’s a case of things not getting any worse rather than necessarily improving. We’ll see what happens in the medium-term but there’s a lot of rebuilding to do.

I think that’s a reasonable success rate, although frankly some of these predictions were highly likely anyway. I’ve now got a few days to think up some predictions for 2026.

PowerCalc for Home Assistant

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Screenshot of the energy dashboard in Home Assistant with some data provided by PowerCalc

One of the features I like about Home Assistant is its Energy dashboard. It can analyse and display various data about power and energy usage in your home – provided that you have the correct sensors available. As we have solar panels, our inverter provides lots of live data via a local API that we can use.

We also have a number of energy monitoring smart plugs that track energy usage. We have a couple of Meross plugs, and a couple of cheap Tuya Zigbee plugs. Home Assistant can then display the power usage of these devices, and so you can see where your energy is going.

But we can’t fit these onto every device. For example, devices like our oven, hub and dishwasher are all built-in, and don’t use standard 3-pin plug sockets. We could have smart relays fitted, but that would be a paid job for an electrician. So, instead, there’s a potential software solution, in the form of PowerCalc.

PowerCalc is a custom integration that you can install from HACS. Once set up, you can use PowerCalc to estimate the power usage of your devices, or use its extensive library where other users have provided this data already. Indeed, when I installed PowerCalc, it automatically added entries for our various Google Home smart speakers. Once added, these appear as additional entities attached to your existing devices, which is nice – they don’t appear as separate devices.

You can then add these entities to your energy dashboard, to see where your electricity usage goes. Here’s a Sankey graph from last week from our house; it was quite a dull day with little solar generation. There’s a lot that we can’t track, but you can see that a significant amount of our energy usage was spent drying clothes.

PowerCalc gets regular updates, with new devices being added all the time. And, of course, you can add these yourself, if you have the means to record the energy usage. The energy usage data also updates in realtime, so you could add the data to a dashboard and see how changing the brightness of a bulb affects its calculated energy usage.

Merry Christmas!

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A photo of me wearing a rainbow santa hat

By the power of a scheduled post that was written last Saturday, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas if you are celebrating today. As per usual, we’re staying with my parents in York for the Christmas period, having arrived last night.

Unlike the past couple of years, my gift to Christine hasn’t been Discworld-related. Instead, I’ve bought her a gift sponsorship of an endangered frog at the Manchester Museum. At the top level, this includes a one hour behind-the-scenes tour of the vivarium for the sponsor and up to three guests. So that’ll be something to look forward to doing in 2026, especially as the Manchester Museum is one of our favourite places to visit.

As for our gifts to family, this year Christine has made most of them herself. She took up crochet in a big way earlier this year, and so our relatives will have opened a selection of blankets, hats and gloves this morning.

Christmas is also an opportunity for us to relax and recuperate. I’m off work for two full weeks, having finished last Friday. As our past two summer holidays have been a single week, this is actually the longest time I have had off work since our 2023 summer holiday. Thankfully, my workplace closed at lunchtime on the 23rd, and doesn’t open again until the 5th, so I shouldn’t have too much work to come back to.

This is the first year where our nine-year-old doesn’t believe in Santa. It means that they know their gifts were bought for them by people close to them, and not just provided by a mythical being.

Once again, I hope you all have a great Christmas.

My best children’s books of 2025

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Having written about my favourite adult fiction and non-fiction books of this year, it’s time for the books that we enjoyed reading with our nine-year-old the most this year. This is a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

The links below to buy the books are all sponsored links to Amazon, but you’re welcome to borrow these from your local library, or buy them from an independent book shop.

‘Murder! by Narwhal!’ by Alex T Smith

This was a Waterstones book recommendation that we picked up last year. Murder! By Narwhal! is, as you may have guessed, a kid-friendly murder mystery book where someone ends up deceased by the way of a narwhal horn. Our nine-year-old really enjoyed it, and there are plenty of twists and turns in the plot. Like all the best whodunnits, the perpetrator will be a complete surprise, and have made sense all along.

An as-yet untitled sequel to the book is due to come out in 2026.

‘Bunny vs Monkey’ by Jamie Smart

Our nine-year-old has been really getting into comic books this year, hence why four of the six books recommended here are comic books. This is book one of the Bunny vs Monkey series; so far, we’ve read five of them together this year, with others purchased but not yet read.

They are very silly books, which makes them perfect for their target age group.

‘History’s Most Epic Fibs’ by Athena Kugblenu

A non-fiction book! You may know Athenu Kugblenu as an occasional co-host of The Guilty Feminist Podcast, or as a stand-up comedian, or as a contributor to the recent Dead Funny History series on BBC Radio 4. History’s Most Epic Fibs is a kid’s book dispelling commonly believed fake facts from history, like how vikings never war horned helmets, or that Queen Cleopatra was not actually Egyptian. As well as being a source of facts, it’s also a way of teaching critical thinking, and not always taking everything someone says at face value.

We also read this year’s follow-up, History’s Most Epic Fails, about how things went wrong and changed the world – sometimes for the better. I recommend both.

‘Mega Robo Bros’ by Neill Cameron

Our nine-year-old got to meet Neill Cameron at Thought Bubble this year, and so we have a signed poster of one of their favourite comic book series from this year: Mega Robo Bros. Set in near future London, it tells the story of two humanoid robot brothers, who live with their scientist mother and her spouse. Whilst their parents try to let them have a normal life, when a mysterious evil Robot 23 comes onto the scene, their robot super powers suddenly become very useful indeed.

Unlike the Bunny vs Monkey books, which are anthologies of a series of short stories, each book is a complete story within an over-arching plot line. So far, we’ve read the first two books in the series.

‘Cooking with Monsters’ by Jordan Alsaqa

We bought Cooking with Monsters at this year’s Thought Bubble from Vivian Truong, who is the artist behind this comic book series. I should note that this is aimed at young adults, but our nine-year-old enjoyed it and there isn’t much in here that isn’t age-appropriate for younger kids. It’s also quite LGBTQ+ friendly; indeed, one of the main characters is non-binary. We liked the monsters such as the Bull Frog (a frog that is also a bull).

Currently, there are two books in the series – we’ve just read the first so far.

‘Unfairies’ by Huw Aaron

Another Waterstones recommendation, and a sign that comic books are moving into the mainstream, as this is published by Puffin Books. Unfairies is a similar level of silliness to Bunny vs Monkey, and follows the adventures of Pip who works in the storeroom at the bottom of a tree. As he makes his way up the tree, he encounters other fae creatures, all of whom seem to hate each other, until he gets to the top.

We only just finished this book last week. A sequel is due out early next year and was being promoted by Puffin at Thought Bubble, along with a new comic book from Olaf Falafel for which we picked up a free two chapter sampler.

Honourable mentions

We read the first of the Montgomery Bonbon books by Alasdair Beckett-King a couple of years ago, but read the rest this year. They’re good books – all whodunnits.

Playlist of the month: Novelty Christmas

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Screenshot of the novelty Christmas playlist

The last time I did a Christmas playlist, I included my favourite Christmas music. This isn’t quite the opposite of that, but instead it’s 10 novelty Christmas songs that wouldn’t really make sense to play at any other time of year. As per usual, you can listen along on Spotify – many of these songs are mercifully short and so the whole playlist is less than half an hour.

  • “Proper Crimbo” by Bo Selecta. Bo’ Selecta! was a British TV sketch show in the 2000s, which, at the time, I found hilarious but it really hasn’t aged well – especially its blackface depiction of Mel B, amongst others. This Christmas single was released at the height of its popularity where its creator, Leigh Francis, parodied Craig David, and was a hit in 2003. You may know Leigh Francis better as Keith Lemon.
  • “Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo” by South Park. It turns out there’s a whole album of South Park Christmas music, if you like that sort of thing. It also peaked at , in the 1999 Christmas singles charts.
  • “Gift Vouchers” by The Lancashire Hotpots. A brand new song for 2025! It’s all about what to get for someone when you don’t know what present to buy for them.
  • “Once Upon a Christmas Song” by Peter Kay. The 2000s were indeed a weird time for comedy, as Peter Kay dragged himself up to play Geraldine McQueen in a parody of TV talent shows. It reached in the 2008 Christmas singles chart.
  • “We Built This City (On Sausage Rolls)” by LadBaby. In 2018, LadBaby became the first YouTuber to get a Christmas single, and this was it – a parody of the Starship song. This was a feat repeated for four subsequent years, and so LadBaby has now had more Christmas singles in the UK than any other band or artist, beating even The Beatles. At least they were all charity singles for the Trussell Trust.
  • “Last Christmas” by Crazy Frog. Remember the days when people would pay to buy a ringtone? And yet, nowadays my phone is permanently on silent. This is a truly terrible cover version of the Wham! classic, the original of which finally made it to Christmas in 2023 (after the rein of LadBaby) and again last year.
  • “Jingle Bells (Goat Edition)” by ActionAid. It’s Jingle Bells, but made up of samples of screaming goats. Indeed, there’s a whole album of them, from the charity ActionAid who raises funds to provide goats to poor families in third world countries.
  • “The Very First Christmas” by Spongebob Squarepants. This song is awful. Sorry (not sorry).
  • “The Night Santa Went Crazy” by Weird Al Yankovic. We can’t have a playlist of novelty songs without a bit of Weird Al. This is one of his earlier songs, from 1996.
  • “Present Face” by Garfunkel and Oates. This is a song all about the face you have to make when opening a present that you actually don’t like, but don’t want to offend the person giving it to you.

My best adult fiction books of 2025

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Between now and the day before Christmas Eve, I’ll be posting about the best books that I’ve read (or the best audiobooks that I have listened to) this year, just in case you need any last minute present ideas. On Monday, I wrote about my favourite non-fiction books, and today, I’m focussing on the fiction books aimed at grown-ups that I’ve read or listened to this year. All of these are books that I have awarded five stars on Goodreads.

The links below to buy the books are all sponsored links to Amazon, but you’re welcome to borrow these from your local library, or buy them from an independent book shop.

‘How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying’ by Django Wexler

Cover of 'How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying' by Django Wexler

This book was recommended to me by a couple of people. It’s told in the first person by Davi, who is stuck in a time loop. Every time she tries to defeat the Dark Lord, she ends up dead and back at the beginning of the loop. So, as per the title, this is How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. It’s very funny, with plenty of violence, sex and swearing to boot. Christine and I listened to this together in the car, and the audiobook is very well narrated by Jeanette Illidge.

This book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and so there’s a second book, Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me, which also comes recommended. I think Christine enjoyed both books more than I did, but they’re still amongst my books of the year.

‘Human Rites’ by Juno Dawson

Last year, the other two books in the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven trilogy were in my best of list, so it’s no surprise that this third and final book, Human Rites, is here too. These books almost feel like they were written specially for me, as many of the settings are places around Hebden Bridge that I know well. Plus the various pop culture references.

Dawson manages to bring the overall story arc to a really satisfying conclusion, without making it feel like it was a foregone conclusion. The audiobook is, once again, excellently narrated by Nicola Coughlan, who is able to give each character a unique and distinctive voice.

‘Rule of Cool’ by Matthew Siege

Cover of 'Rule of Cool' by Matthew Siege

This was my first foray into the world of LitRPG – fiction books that incorporate role-playing game mechanics. So, in this book, Rule of Cool, the characters level up, and as events happen, you can read how their stats change. Attacks are on the basis of dice roles. It’s a whole genre of books.

The story is an idea I’ve come across before, in Drew Hayes’ book NPCs. Characters in a game find a way to break out of their pre-defined non-player character roles, and get to be the heroes for once. Whilst Hayes’ book was a little disappointing, I found the story in Rule of Cool much more engaging.

I picked this up on the basis of its narrator, Felicia Day, whose career I have followed since she released the first series of The Guild. Which is approaching its 20th anniversary, somehow.

‘The Fireborne Blade’ by Charlotte Bond

Cover of 'The Fireborne Blade' by Charlotte Bond

I met Charlotte Bond at this year’s Sci-Fi Weekender, as one of the invited authors. She’s from Leeds, and when I read the dedications for this book, The Fireborne Blade, one of those was to a mutual friend. As well as a signed copy of this book, she also gave me some Yorkshire Tea.

It’s a dragon-slaying fantasy book with a few unexpected twists. There’s some humour in here, and overall, it’s quite a short book. Which, if you’re like me and wanting to hit an ambitious reading challenge target for the year, is welcome.

There’s a follow up – The Bloodless Princes – but I haven’t started this yet.

‘When The Moon Hits Your Eye’ by John Scalzi

Cover of 'When The Moon Hits Your Eye' by John Scalzi

Last year’s best of list featured two honourable mentions by John Scalzi. As with Human Rites, mentioned earlier, this is one of two books that I read which were actually published this year.

In When The Moon Hits Your Eye, the moon suddenly turns to cheese. The book is essentially a series of short stories, where different characters all react to the same events, including teams of scientists, eccentric billionaires, and cheese shop owners.

Whilst my favourite John Scalzi book remains Starter Villain, this is good, and what you would expect if you’ve read Scalzi’s other books. The audiobook is once again well-narrated by Wil Wheaton.

On Tuesday, I’ll focus on the best kid’s books that I read this year with our nine-year-old.

Fritz! Repeater 3000AX

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A photo of our Fritz! Repeater 3000 AX

When we signed up for Zen internet last month, we also signed up for Zen EveryRoom. This is an additional monthly charge to cover the cost of a Wi-Fi repeater device, and, as our new router is a Fritz!Box, we were sent a Fritz! Repeater 3000 AX.

Our house is actually two smaller properties that were knocked through years ago. That means it’s a long, narrow house, and whilst we have our optical network terminal and router in a relatively central position, the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t reach the whole house from the router. Initially we used a little Netgear Wi-Fi Range Extender, and then a few years ago I replaced this with a Google Nest Wi-Fi 5 mesh system. Mesh Wi-Fi works better, as all devices use the same network name (SSID) and so mobile devices can seamlessly move between your router and repeaters without needing to re-connect. It’s how most corporate Wi-Fi systems work, but consumer mesh devices aren’t as common.

Design

Like the Fritz!Box router, I’m not a massive fan of the design of the Fritz! Repeater either. Whilst it looks better, it still feels a bit like a cheap plastic box. Furthermore, unlike the router which is in our spare bedroom, this is in quite a prominent place in our dining room.

On the front, there’s a Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button, a power light, and a light to show that it’s connected to Wi-Fi. On the back, as well as the connector for the DC adaptor (a non-standard barrel plug), there are also two gigabit Ethernet sockets. I’ll come on to those later.

Setting up the Fritz! Repeater is as simple as plugging it in, and using WPS to establish the connection with your router.

Operating modes

The Fritz! Repeater can operate in different ways, depending on what other hardware you have:

  1. It can work as a simple Wi-Fi repeater with any other brand of router, or an older Fritz!Box.
  2. With a new Fritz!Box like ours, it can form a Wi-Fi Mesh.
  3. You can also use connect it to either a Fritz!Box or other router using an Ethernet cable as a LAN bridge

We’re currently using it in the third way, with our Powerline network acting as a back-haul. Therefore, there’s an Ethernet cable running from the Fritz! Repeater, via our Powerline adaptors, to the Fritz!Box upstairs. I figured this would be more reliable and stable, but it turns out that it’s actually slower. When doing speed tests, I get around 60-70 Mbps using Powerline, but the full 100 Mbps when using Wi-Fi to reach the internet. It’s odd because the Powerline connectors reckon they’re working at 400-500 Mbps. I’ll need to try running the Fritz! Repeater just on Mesh Wi-Fi to see if it’s faster, but it’ll need reconfiguring to do so; simply unplugging the Ethernet cable isn’t enough to get it to switch operating modes.

Range and performance

The range seems pretty good – there’s a reasonably strong signal even in our cellar. Certainly, between the Fritz!Box Router and the Fritz! Repeater, there are no dead zones inside the house.

Both Fritz! devices support Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax, hence the ‘AX’ in their names. This should offer better speeds for those devices that support it. Neither supports Wi-Fi 6E, which offers enhanced speeds using the 6 GHz frequency band.

Compared with our previous Google Nest Wifi mesh system, the coverage seems better. Previously, we were also able to use the Google Nest Wifi Point in our dining room as a Google Assistant smart speaker, and the Fritz! Repeater unsurprisingly doesn’t support this. That’s not a major issue as we had a spare Google Nest Mini to use alongside it.

What is notable is that the Wi-Fi signal from the Fritz! Repeater seems to be strong than the Fritz!Box; devices in range of both seem to connect to the repeater more than the router. That could be to do with where the repeater is placed, but it looks like it could have larger internal antennae.

Mixing and matching Mesh Wi-Fi products

As we’ve moved from one Mesh Wi-Fi system to another, it’s worth noting that mesh products from one manufacturer aren’t compatible with those from another. In other words, we wouldn’t be able to keep our Google Nest Wifi Point, and have it mesh with our Fritz!Box. Whilst there is a standard, 802.11s, only a handful of manufacturers support it; most use a proprietary meshing protocol.

In any case, our previous Google Nest Wifi system used Wi-Fi 5, and this is a Wi-Fi 6 system.

If you have a very large home, then you can buy additional Fritz! Repeater devices to extend the signal even further; all the devices should mesh together.

You can buy a new Fritz! Repeater 3000 AX from Amazon for around £135 (sponsored link). We’re paying an extra £9 per month from Zen, for which there’s a 12 month contract and a £9 upfront charge for postage and packing.

My best non-fiction books of 2025

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Between now and the day before Christmas Eve, I’ll be posting about the best books that I’ve read (or the best audiobooks that I have listened to) this year, just in case you need any last minute present ideas. Today, I’m focussing on the non-fiction books that I’ve read or listened to this year. All of these are books that I have awarded five stars on Goodreads.

The links below to buy the books are all sponsored links to Amazon, but you’re welcome to borrow these from your local library, or buy them from an independent book shop.

‘You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here’ by Dr Benji Waterhouse

Cover of 'You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here' by Dr Benji Waterhouse

Released last year in hardback, You Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here is written by psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse. He writes about his first few years in psychiatry, both in hospital and later in community roles. We are introduced to some of Dr Waterhouse’s more notable patients and their struggles with poor mental health. It’s funny and heartwarming, but also lays bare some of the challenges in psychiatry and health and social care as a whole. I really enjoyed it, although my wife, a healthcare worker, found it hit a little too close to home in places.

I picked this up as an Audible daily deal back in July; Dr Waterhouse narrates the audiobook himself and does an excellent job of it too. I also listened to this Richard Herring interview with him back in January.

‘Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things’ by Pierre Novellie

Cover of 'Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things' by Pierre Novellie

A second mention for this book this year, as we went to see Novellie discuss this book with Robin Ince at the Bradford Literature Festival this summer. I have now finished this book (it took me from June to November), and have shared many quotes from it with friends. The book is subtitled ‘A comedian’s guide to autism’, and it follows his diagnosis of being autistic in his thirties and how this has informed his comedy.

As you’d expect from a comedian, it’s a funny book, but I also found it useful too. I’ve previously blogged about how I’m (probably) neurodivergent, and reading this book has certainly reinforced that.

I’ll also offer an honourable mention for Robin Ince’s Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, which Christine and I listened to as an audiobook whilst in Wales and enjoyed. It gets a strong recommendation from me, especially as Robin was forced to quit the BBC’s Infinite Monkey Cage as studio executives were not happy about his views on social media about trans people being deserving of dignity, respect and inclusion.

‘My Thoughts Exactly’ by Lily Allen

Cover of 'My Thoughts Exactly' by Lily Allen

Another Audible Daily Deal, but one I picked up way back in 2019 shortly after the paperback was released. I now regret that I left it six years before I read My Thoughts Exactly, because it’s excellent. It covers Allen’s early life – I had no idea that Harry Enfield was essentially her step-dad for a while – and how she was one of the first major artists to use MySpace to break into the mainstream.

There’s also a lot about her personal life in here, including how she handled a stalker (subsequently convicted) and her relationships. Indeed, I finished it just before she released her latest album, West End Girl, with some very raw lyrics about her latest partner.

‘Brutally Honest’ by Melanie Brown

Cover of 'Brutally Honest' by Melanie Brown

This isn’t the first book from Mel B from the Spice Girls, but Brutally Honest is a really important read. It’s her account of her relationships with Eddie Murphy, and her second husband, Stephen Belafonte, who she accuses of emotional, financial and physical abuse.

Mel B wrote the book in conjunction with Louise Gannon; she mentions a midlife diagnosis of dyslexia, and the audiobook is also read by a professional voice actor, albeit one with a Leeds accent. The audiobook also features a bonus interview with Mel and Louise at the end. Anyone in a relationship needs to read this to know what not to do.

‘Tits Up’ by Sarah Thornton

Cover of 'Tits Up' by Sarah Thornton

Yes, a book about breasts is in my top five best books that I consumed in 2025. Tits Up starts with a discussion about Thornton’s own breasts; removed to avoid breast cancer, and replaced with prosthetics that ended up being larger than her previous natural breasts. There’s also a discussion about the phrase ‘tits up’; Thornton is Canadian but has spent time in the UK, and it means different things on either side of the Atlantic. In the UK, if something has gone ‘tits up’, it means it’s gone wrong, but in the US, I gather it means something on the lines of ‘put your big girl pants on’.

What is notable is that almost everyone interviewed for this book is a woman – you won’t find anything about men publishing topless photos or producing porn in here, although there are interviews with sex workers themselves.

Honourable Mentions

As well as Robin Ince’s and Mel C’s books above, I also enjoyed these books this year:

Next time, I’ll be writing about the adult fiction books that I’ve most enjoyed this year.

Pressidium Cookie Consent plugin review

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Screenshot of the home page for the Pressidium WordPress cookie consent plugin

Someone anonymously emailed me recently to advise that my cookie consent banner was not compliant with current privacy regulations, and so I’ve swapped it for the Pressidium Cookie Consent WordPress plugin.

To date, I’ve been using the cookie consent banner component of the Toolbelt plugin (my review). As much as I like Toolbelt, it’s getting a bit old and it’s been almost five years since its cookie consent module was updated. As such, it basically says that ‘this site uses cookies, deal with it’, rather than giving users a choice to opt-out.

I’m a relatively privacy conscious person, to the extent that I tend to browse the web in Firefox with Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled alongside Privacy Badger. This extends to this web site – where possible, I avoid using third-party services. Indeed, the only cookies that you should experience are session cookies whilst browsing, that are deleted when you close your web browser, and Pressidium’s own cookie to remember your consent. For analytics, I use Koko Analytics (my review), which doesn’t need to set any third-party cookies.

Setting up Pressidium Cookie Consent

I deliberately went for this cookie consent plugin because it’s lightweight, and doesn’t need to use a third party web application. I’ve previously tried the CookieYes WordPress plugin, which is much more powerful and will auto-detect cookies to add to its consent forms. But it’s a big plugin designed for big sites that use lots of third-party tracking scripts. And as mentioned, I don’t.

Once installed, Pressidium Cookie Consent is relatively easy to set up and configure. You get a moderate amount of control over how the pop-up appears, and in turn the Cookie Settings box that users can view if needed. I like that it defaults to ‘accept all’ and ‘accept necessary’ – it annoys me when sites make you go through settings to reject all cookies and have you ‘object to legitimate interests’. In terms of its appearance, you can have it appear as a box or a strip, and control the colours.

In terms of specifying the cookies that users can consent to, this is where you’ll need to spend some time browsing your site in Private Browsing with Developer Tools open. Unlike the aforementioned CookieYes plugin, there isn’t a way of automatically detecting the cookies your site uses. Cookies can fit into four categories: necessary, analytics, targeting and preferences. Unfortunately, you can’t hide these categories, even if your site doesn’t use targeting cookies, for example.

If you use Google Tag Manager, then you can integrate this – I don’t. You can also include translations of the cookie consent popup and settings, and if you have API keys for OpenAI or Google Gemini, then it can use AI to generate these for you.

Free and open source

As it runs locally on your own WordPress instance, Pressidium Cookie Consent is free with no premium tier. The source code is on GitHub under the GPL 2.0 licence, and it’s in active development with a recent release for compatibility with the latest WordPress 6.9 release. Whilst it might not be as powerful as some WordPress cookie plugins, it should at least make your site compliant with GDPR and the like.