I’m not going to link to every single post that I’ve reinstated, because that would take forever. Indeed, so far, I’ve reinstated 445 old blog posts, compared to the 242 new posts that I’ve written since I restarted blogging in 2022 (including this one). My main starting point has been my year in review posts (see 2024 in review as an example) where I have gone through and reinstated most of the blog posts linked from each of these reviews, going back to 2009.
It’s been a big job; I reinstated 78 blog posts from 2014 alone. My focus now is on blog posts from 2008 and earlier, my aim being to have at least one blog post from each month reinstated going back to when I started in 2002.
Reinstating blog posts isn’t a simple copy and paste job. For each one that I’m bringing back, I am:
Making sure any links still work (and leaving them pointing at the Wayback Machine if they don’t).
Re-adding images – many of these are just links to Flickr, but some need uploading again.
Checking spelling and grammar, because I’ve found lots of mistakes that I’d never previously spotted.
Reinstating any other missing blog posts that are linked, if needed.
Checking and adding tags – older blog posts especially did not have tags, or only had one or two.
It’s also worth noting that some blog posts were not individually indexed by the Wayback Machine, and so I have to try to find them in other ways, such as checking older versions of the home page.
My original aim was to reinstate between 1 and 2% of my old blog posts, and at present, I’m on around 1.5%. The quality definitely declines as time goes on; in the early days (mainly before Twitter), many blog posts would be one or two sentences at most but with several posts in a day. I’ll bring some of these back, but there are also good reasons why I won’t be reinstating everything. You can find these in my Finding peace post from October 2023.
Last week, I ended up at a Five Guys Burgers & Fries again. Whilst I wouldn’t describe myself as a Five Guys regular, I’ve eaten at several of their restaurants over the years. And usually it’s because I’m hungry and it happens to be the least-worst option that’s available.
Ten years ago, there were almost no Five Guys restaurants around in the UK (the first restaurant in London opened in 2013). Now, there are 174 restaurants in the UK, of which 48 are in London. Leeds has four – indeed, what prompted this blog post was that I was eating in the new Five Guys location on the top floor of the Trinity Leeds shopping centre, and it’s a literal stone’s throw away from their existing Duncan Street restaurant. I mean it – you could stand on the roof of one, and throw a stone to the other – they’re that close to each other.
My concern is that it’s growing rapidly, and that the owners and/or franchisees are following an overly-rigid operating model. I’m going to cite two case studies as evidence.
Patisserie Valerie
Firstly, let’s look at another chain restaurant that grew rapidly before suddenly contracting: Patisserie Valerie. Founded in the 1920s, it had eight shops in 2006 and 192 a little over ten years later. It turned out that, underneath that massive growth, was (alleged) financial fraud, and its auditors were fined over £2m for not spotting the errors in the company’s accounts. Now, Patisserie Valerie is back down to 10 shops, with none in the North of England; I walked past the one in Leeds which seems to have closed recently, judging by the Christmas decorations that were still in the window. However, its cakes are now available to buy at larger Sainsbury’s supermarkets.
Now, I’m in no way alleging fraudulent accounting practices at Five Guys, but its growth in the UK followed a similar pattern to Patisserie Valerie. Has Five Guys grown too fast, too quickly?
Five Guys in Bradford
There is (at least) one place where Five Guys opened, and then closed a restaurant in the UK: Bradford. And I want to use it as a case study because I think it’s a good example of where Five Guys didn’t adjust their offering to suit a local market.
Around about one third of Bradford’s population is Muslim. Muslims, in the main, don’t drink alcohol, and will only eat halal meat. Other chains, like KFC, Nando’s and Subway, are conscious of this, and so you’ll often find outlets from these chains will serve halal meat in their restaurants in places like Bradford. Five Guys didn’t.
Five Guys also serves alcohol. Well, a small selection of lager. Like I said, I wouldn’t consider myself a regular customer of Five Guys but I have never seen anyone buy lager from there. Some muslims will not enter an establishment that serves alcohol, so again, you’re alienating a significant portion of your customer base to sell a product that, anecdotally, not many people buy anyway.
It’s also worth noting that Bradford is not a particularly well-off area, and Five Guys is expensive compared to, say, McDonalds. A similar meal at Five Guys typically costs three times more than at McDonalds. I accept that the quality at Five Guys is much better, and the ingredients are fresher, but every time I have been I’ve always felt like I’ve been fleeced.
If you’re wondering, the outlet where Five Guys used to be in Bradford is now a branch of Metro Bank. Also, ironically, it used to be opposite a Patisserie Valerie, which itself is now a Pret a Manger.
Nuts about
Besides the two case studies, there’s also Five Guys’ attitude to nuts. According to this meta analysis, about 4% of people in Europe report having some kind of nut allergy – so, one in every 25 people. Five Guys cooks all of its fries in peanut oil, and used to have open bags of peanuts in its restaurants. Now, whilst there will be some variation in the severity of peoples’ nut allergies, for some, they literally cannot be in the same room as nuts.
I’m sure that the decision to use peanut oil is related to the fries tasting better that way. But that decision has to be balanced against alienating well over an estimated 2 million Brits who self-report having a nut allergy (assuming the 4% prevalence).
Every Five Guys is basically the same
With the exception of the Five Guys in York city centre, which is in an old building on Low Petergate, every other Five Guys is basically the same. There’s no variation on decor, and the menu is the same everywhere too. Now that’s probably good for consistency, but it’s also, well, boring.
Indeed, I mention the Five Guys in York because we went there on Boxing Day in 2023. Inside, however, you would not know it was Boxing Day, because there was no attempt to make it feel like Christmas. Pretty much every other restaurant will have got out their Christmas decorations, and maybe even added some special items to their menu for a limited time. Not Five Guys. It’s the same menu all year round. And it’s a very limited menu – basically just burgers and hotdogs. Now, I’ve seen enough episodes of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares to know that having a limited menu can be an advantage (doing a few things well), but could they expand it a bit?
Sure, you can have different toppings on your burger each time, or a different flavour milkshake. And there’s the Coke Freestyle machines, which provide one of the few ways of getting Mezzo Mix in the UK. But there’s only so many times you can read a scanned copy of the Nantucket Business Monthly April 2009’s review of their Five Guys outlet on the wall.
What I think Five Guys needs to do
So, to summarise:
Five Guys needs to give individual store managers or franchisees some freedom to adapt the offering for local markets – e.g. halal meat or not serving alcohol.
Add a few more items to the menu. Maybe offer chicken as well as beef?
Offer limited edition items related to events like Christmas.
Are the magazine articles on the walls really necessary now? Many of them are regional US magazines for places some Brits may have never even heard of, and it seems kind-of desperate. Consider taking these down, or limiting them to British magazines.
Consider their pricing, and whether they need to lower prices in areas where the local population has lower disposable incomes.
Consider whether they can reduce their use of nuts in their restaurants.
Overall, Five Guys feels like the sort of place where a very rigid concept has happened to have done well, and so it’s being recreated without any regard for local variations. And, in the long term, I just don’t think it’s sustainable.
Last week, we took our nine-year-old for their first visit to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. Now I grew up in York, and so have been many times over the years, but the last time Christine and I went was in 2012.
Jorvik is undoubtedly one of York’s best known tourist attractions, having opened celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. However, I’m writing about it now because, until the 23rd February, Jorvik is dressed up for winter.
Recreation of Jorvik ride
The main part of Jorvik sees visitors sitting in carriages that move around a recreation of York, or ‘Jorvik’ as it was known in the time of the Vikings. The carriages seat six, and feature a commentary in multiple languages. This part takes around 15 minutes, and the carriages rotate to highlight different parts of the recreated city. The buildings are laid out roughly as they were found when the site was excavated in the 1970s.
As mentioned, Jorvik has been dressed up for winter, so at present there’s snow on all the recreated buildings and on the ground. If you’ve been to Jorvik recently, maybe give it another visit as it looks very different at present. I didn’t take any photos on my visit this time unfortunately.
Accessibility
Jorvik is accessed down some stairs, although there is a lift. If you’re a wheelchair user, you’ll need to book in advance by phone (not online), as only one of the carriages has been adapted for a wheelchair and the staff will need to give you a specific timeslot. However, all the carriages offer a hearing loop for hearing aid users, and subtitles for the commentary. Famously, Jorvik recreates the smells of Viking York and this is worth being prepared for if you’re sensitive to unusual scents. There’s an extensive accessibility page on Jorvik’s web site, detailing what you can expect and how they can help you.
The days of there being massive queues for Jorvik snaking around the Coppergate Shopping Centre are mostly gone, as you now need to pre-book. You should do this online if you can; you can book on your phone on arrival, but be prepared to have to come back later. We turned up without pre-booking and had to return after 45 minutes. However, the following day, there were signs up saying that all time slots were booked up and no more bookings were being taken that day.
I did this last year, and found it interesting to look back at the various statistics of things that I have done over the year. So, here it is again for 2024. It helps that loads of web sites now offer their own version of Spotify Wrapped.
Countries and counties visited
In 2024, I didn’t visit any countries besides England where I live.
Over the course of the year, I have spent at least some time in the following English counties:
West Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
Lincolnshire
Greater Manchester
Lancashire
Cheshire
Norfolk
Northumberland
County Durham
Merseyside
Greater London
West Midlands
This doesn’t include any counties that I have passed through without stopping. Compared to last year, I didn’t go to Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey or Hampshire, but I did go to Northumberland, County Durham, Merseyside, Greater London and the West Midlands which were all counties that I didn’t go to in 2023.
For context, I went as far east as 2023, but further north and (slightly) further west. However, as we didn’t go to France this year, I went significantly less far south.
Methods of transport used
Because we didn’t take our car to France, I didn’t drive as much this year – about 8000 miles, or 20% less than last year.
However, I have done more train travel. As well as my commute to work, we took the train to London in March. I have driven once in London and vowed never again; not least because our car is a diesel and therefore subject to additional charges inside the ULEZ. I also took our nine-year-old to Leeds last week on the train.
We’ve also been on trams a couple of times in Manchester – we tend to drive to Hollinwood tram stop and use Metrolink as a park and ride service. And whilst we didn’t cross the channel by ferry this year, we did cross the Mersey by ferry instead. Once again, no aeroplane flights in 2024.
Music listened to
Over the year, I scrobbled 12,671 tracks on last.fm, so slightly down on the 13,194 from 2023 (and 13,447 from 2022). That’s almost 35 songs per day, again down by about one a day from 2023. Assuming an average song is around three minutes, I listen to almost two hours of music every day on average. Spotify reckons that I listened to 436 minutes, or just over 7 hours of music on the 25 October.
Whilst I don’t exclusively listen to music on Spotify, on there, pop was my top genre, following by trance, rock, pop dance and Europop this year, according to my Spotify Wrapped. My most-listened to song was ‘React’ by Switch Disco featuring Ella Henderson and Robert Miles, which I listened to 14 times. Which is unsurprising as it’s one of our nine-year-old’s favourite songs, and samples Robert Miles’ ‘Children’.
My top artist was Armin van Buuren, which surprised me but there’s almost always one of his songs in my weekly Release Radar playlist. The rest of my top five were Patty Gurdy (blog post), Madam Misfit (blog post), David Guetta and Dua Lipa. I listened to 4,235 different bands and artists over the course of the year.
Books read and listened to
According to My Goodreads Year in Books for 2024, I read 77 books this year – 16 fewer than 2023. This amounts to 17,845 pages (although many of these were listened to as audiobooks).
The shortest book I read, at 32 pages long, was ‘The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me’ by Roald Dahl(sponsored link) – clearly, one of the books that I read to our nine-year-old this year. Meanwhile, I listened to 15 and a half hours of Nicola Coughlan reading ‘The Shadow Cabinet’ by Juno Dawson(sponsored link), which translates to 528 pages and the longest book. That’s longer in terms of pages than my longest book last year (‘What Just Happened?!’ by Marina Hyde(sponsored link) – 472 pages) but shorter in terms of listening time (17 hours).
Overall, the average length of book that I read was 231 pages, which is 11 more than 2023. Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’(sponsored link) was the most popular book that I read last year.
Beers and ciders consumed
I log the beers and ciders that I drink using Untappd, and these stats are from my year in beer. However, I only logged 11 such drinks this year (compared to 58 in 2022). I just haven’t been particularly interested in drinking beer and cider this year, and it’s notable that my favourite style was ‘non-alcoholic’.
Steps taken
My total steps taken was very similar to 2023. Overall I took 3,526,369 steps, which is 5% less than 2023 and means that, on average, I walked just under 10,000 steps per day. Overall that’s almost 2,600 kilometres (again down by around 100 compared to 2023). These are all tracked using my Fitbit Versa 3.
Time spent learning French
I started Duolingo’s French course on the 1st January 2022 (so I have a three year streak now), and in 2024, I spent 4,228 minutes learning – that’s 70 hours or an average of 12 minutes per day. Again, slightly down on 2023, but then we didn’t go to France this year. I also managed to remain in the Diamond League for the entire year, and successfully completed every friends quest and monthly challenge.
My Duolingo Score for French is 100, which means that I’m in the low B2 level (‘vantage’) of the CEFR for French. Currently Duolingo’s maximum score for French is 130, which is high B2 level and should be sufficient to study a university course taught in French. I’m hoping to achieve that by the end of 2025, although there’s a possibility of us going on holiday somewhere else which may see me switch languages for a bit.
Podcasts listened to
I listen to the majority of my podcasts through Overcast (with the remainder in BBC Sounds). My most listened to podcast was RHLSTP (RHLSTP!) with 78 hours over the year. The Guilty Feminist, The Comedian’s Comedian, The Bugle and The Infinite Monkey Cage make up the rest of my top 5. ‘Reasons Revisited’ is the now defunct podcast which was hosted by Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd; now that Ed is a government minister again, there are no more new episodes.
Tracking my podcast listening is a relatively new feature in Overcast and so this is a new statistic that I didn’t track in 2023.
Photos taken
Another new statistic that I didn’t track in 2023 was number of photos taken. It’s an estimate – basically it’s the total number of images backed up from my phone to Dropbox over the year. That could also include screenshots, memes and a few videos. Overall, it was 1,813 in 2024, compared to 1,417 in 2023. So whilst I may have been less active, listened to less music and not been abroad, I did take around 28% more photos in 2024.
So, that’s 2024 quantified, and a useful summary of the statistics from various web services that seem to spend their December telling me data they hold about me but in a nice way. I suppose I need to get a bit active in 2025 then.
I’m recycling this prediction from last year, as it didn’t happen then, and I doubt it’ll happen in 2025 either. Elon Musk is apparently going to co-lead Donald Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ or ‘DOGE’, the name presumably chosen because Elon’s sense of humour hasn’t caught up with his age. So he’ll have more on his plate, and at a time when large numbers of people have left X which will affect advertising revenue. Remember that a lot of the money Elon used to buy Twitter (as-was) was loaned, and he’ll need to start paying those loans back at some point. Having briefly looked at Twitter again this morning, the adverts I saw were for mostly unknown companies, some of which had Community Notes attached to them basically stating they’re a scam. So that’s going well.
I still don’t think Elon will sell X this year, but I expect it’ll largely stagnate again.
Donald Trump will be terrible in ways we haven’t foreseen
But I also expect that there are things we don’t yet know about that Trump will react to in the worst way imaginable.
Trump and Musk will have a public fall-out
Musk’s control of X, and massive donations in the run-up to the election seemed to have allowed him to curry favour of Trump – hence Musk being allowed to co-lead DOGE. But I also expect that their egos will clash, and only one of these two people will be President. What the impact of this will be remains to be seen but I can’t help but see Elon as something of an Icarus character at present.
Labour will do poorly in local elections
There’s a likelihood of local elections on the 1st May 2025, although most of these are for county councils which the government is proposing to abolish, so some areas may have elections after all. Labour’s popularity has dive-bombed since winning the 2024 general election, as the government has introduced some unpopular policies. It’s a tactic that may pay off – the next general election may not be until 2029. But I imagine some people who voted Labour last time may be tempted to vote for other parties. And most of the council seats being defended are currently held by the Conservatives.
Reform UK, the party led by Nigel Farage, managed to return five MPs last year and is hoping to make gains in the local council elections too. And there’s a possibility of a massive cash injection from Musk to give them more resources to do this. I can see Reform putting up a strong challenge to Labour and the Conservatives in some seats. Whether they’ll win any, or just split the vote, remains to be seen.
There won’t be a General Election in 2025
Okay, this is a very easy prediction to make. General elections in the UK need to happen approximately every five years, and so the next one isn’t scheduled to 2029, as mentioned above. But governments can call early ones, and indeed this happened in 2017 and 2019.
The overall situation in the Middle East will improve
I don’t know if there will be a ceasefire in Gaza this year; I hoped for one last year, and it didn’t come to pass. But the situation in Syria is, at long last, encouraging, and I hope that the region as a whole stabilises.
Well, we’ll see what happens at the end of the year.
Good grief, has it really been 25 years since the Millennium?
As per usual, we didn’t stay up to see in the new year – that’s a thing we would have done years ago, but Christine and I are both in our forties now. I’m back at work tomorrow, but Christine has the rest of the week off.
January will be my blogiversary month again, and this time it’ll be 23 years (minus the four year hiatus) since I started blogging. Over the Christmas break, I reinstated over a hundred old blog posts from the 2010s from the Web Archive, so at least it looks like I’ve been regularly blogging throughout most of those 23 years.
My plan for 2025 is to carry on posting new blog entries every other day, as this seems like a manageable amount. I kept it up throughout most of 2024.
Things that are currently in our calendar include Sci-Fi Weekender again in March, down in Great Yarmouth, and our summer holiday in July. We’re not currently planning to go abroad again this year – instead, we’re off to Wales for a week. The last time we went to Wales was in 2018, back when Sci-Fi Weekender was hosted near Pwlleli, so although all three of us have been, our nine-year-old was only two and probably doesn’t remember it.
At some point, we’ll probably also go to London again, but we haven’t planned or booked it yet.
I also have some big admin things, as my passport needs renewing – technically it’s in date, but was issued more than 10 years ago which means it’s not valid in many countries. Like I said, I’m not planning to travel abroad, but passport renewal turnarounds seem pretty quick at the moment, and then it’s done. I’ll be keeping my current passport safe though, as it has some interesting stamps in it from my 2015 work trip to the Middle East.
