Life

Things that have happened in my life

My favourite things of 2023

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Covers for books I read in 2023, including These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany and Third Eye by Felicia Day

There’s only 32 hours of 2023 remaining in my timezone, so it’s time to review the things I’ve consumed this year and pick out my favourite content.

Note: all links below marked with a * are Amazon referral links, and so I receive a small amount of commission from any purchases. But please feel free to buy these from a local, independent tax-paying shop, or borrow them from your local library, as I did with several of these recommendations.

Favourite book of 2023

So far I’ve read 95 books this year, although to be fair, quite a few of these were bedtime stories for our eight-year-old. Those aside, my favourite book was ‘These Impossible Things’ by Salma El-Wardany*. It tells the story of three young British Asian women, who are navigating the divide between family and cultural expectations, and life as a young person in the UK in the 21st century. It’s very well-written, with very relatable characters. This is El-Wardany’s debut novel and so I’m interested to see what comes next.

Honourable mentions: There were a few books that I awarded five stars to on Goodreads this year:

Favourite film of 2023

We haven’t been able to watch many films this year, and those that we have seen at the cinema have tended to be child-friendly films. We’re also behind on Marvel films and haven’t seen any in a couple of years. Of those that we have seen, probably my favourite was the Barbie movie, which was just hilarious all the way through. We saw it a few weeks after it came out and there were several of us laughing out loud in the cinema.

Honourable mentions: Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves* was fun, and it was good to see Hugh Grant playing an antagonist for once. And it was nice to finally see a sequel to Chicken Run – I had the first film on VHS, which gives you an idea of how long ago since that came out, and meant I’ve had to explain to our eight-year-old what a ‘VHS’ is.

It’s also worth noting that we are planning to see Wonka tomorrow.

Favourite TV show of the year

Again, we’ve not had much time to watch TV this year. When you work full-time in a different city to where you live, and have a child who has school and homework and weekend activities, there’s not a lot of time to keep up with TV. Of the shows that I have seen bits of, The Repair Shop has filled that niche of being interesting, comforting and educational.

Favourite audio series of the year

Okay, so I basically created this category so that I could tell you about Felicia Day’s ‘Third Eye’*. It’s an Audible exclusive, and is more akin to a radio play rather than an audiobook. But, it has a narrator in the form of Neil Gaiman and is split into chapters. Felicia Day wrote the script for TV several years ago, and although no TV channels picked it up, it’s become a very good audio series with Day playing the lead character. London Hughes, Alan Tudyk and Wil Wheaton provide some of the other voices.

So – these are the things that I have watched, read and listened to in 2023. Next year, I’m hoping to catch up with the Marvel films we’ve missed (especially now that the pace of release has slowed down) and continue to read more things. Maybe I’ll manage 100 books across the year this time?

An apology for the pause

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An AI generated illustration of a muslim woman pointing a remote at a TV which says 'pause'

When I started blogging regularly again in October, I planned to post a new blog post every other day (so, 3-4 new blog posts every week). As this is the first time I’ve posted since the 10th December, about my hearing aids, I’ve not managed to meet my own target.

In years gone by, I would publish multiple blog posts every day – but this was in the days before the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, Twitter used to be known as a ‘micro-blogging’ service in its early days. Consequently, Twitter became the place where I would post any thoughts that could be condensed into 140 characters would go.

I then had a few months where I aimed to publish one new blog post every day. Not write a post every day – I would write several at a time and then publish them to a schedule. But that petered out after a while; all it takes is for a busy period at work, or a couple of weekends where we’re away or have plans, and it becomes hard to keep up. And you end up with apologetic blog posts like this one.

Of course, I then didn’t post anything for years, until last year, so there’s that.

The good news is that today I finished work for Christmas, and so I have some time to queue up some new blog posts. I have a list of blog post ideas to work through; it turns out taking several years out from blogging means I have plenty to write about. You’ll start to see some of these appearing every other day over the next few weeks.

The featured image on this post is AI-generated; for diversity, I specified a Muslim woman rather than just ‘a person’, because there are enough images of white men in the world.

I wear hearing aids now

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A photo of the side of my face, showing one of my hearing aids

Last month, I wrote about how I started wearing glasses in the summer of 2021. And, as if there was any further indication that I’m getting older, I wear hearing aids now too.

I’ve been aware that my hearing has been getting worse for some time, and a hearing test four years ago suggested that I may need an intervention. At the time, my GP wasn’t too concerned, and then the Covid-19 pandemic happened which meant that any work interactions were through a pair of headphones anyway.

But as we started returning to the office, it was clear that my hearing was still an issue. Another hearing test confirmed this, and so another GP referral. This took several months to sort out, and finally in early autumn 2022 I had a follow up appointment with audiology and ENT at one of our local hospitals. I was given the option of having surgery, or hearing aids.

Surgery may have made a greater difference, but I was concerned about the recovery times and how likely this would make a difference in the short term. So, I opted to have hearing aids, and I had them fitted in October 2022.

My hearing aids

The hearing aids I have are very basic, NHS standard issue behind-the-ear models, manufactured by Oticon. This means that the electronics are in a small metal container which sits behind your ear, and then a plastic tube connects to a moulded earpiece that sits in your outer ear. The earpieces are moulded specially for each ear, so that they’re comfortable enough to wear all day.

As they are very basic hearing aids, there’s no Bluetooth support, so I need to take them out to listen out to music. Whilst Bluetooth hearing loop devices exist, they’re expensive (as they’re classed as medical devices) and the sound quality apparently isn’t great. In terms of controls, I can adjust the volume on the hearing aids, and switch them in and out of hearing loop mode, but that’s all. You turn them off by opening the battery compartment. They take small button batteries which aren’t rechargeable, but each battery typically lasts 10-14 days.

What a difference

The hearing aids made a massive difference from day one. My wife no longer has to shout at me to get my attention, and I can hear colleagues across our large open plan office at work. In the car, I can have the stereo at a much lower volume too. The only downsides are:

  • having to take them out to listen to Bluetooth ear buds
  • they can be a little uncomfortable with my glasses after a while, as these sit on my ears as well

Having in-ear hearing aids with Bluetooth would mitigate these issues, but I would have to buy them privately. And they can cost a fortune – a colleague of my wife spent several thousand pounds on hers. Meanwhile, mine are free on the NHS, and even the replacement batteries are free. Maybe if I come into a large amount of money in future, I’ll consider some buying some more advanced hearing aids privately.

Whilst with the audiologist at one of my check-ups, I noticed a poster about the link between hearing loss and dementia. We don’t fully understand why people with hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia, but one theory is that such people ‘tune out’ if they can’t hear. I’m hoping that using my hearing aids and having regular hearing checks will reduce my risk of developing dementia in later life.

If you can’t remember the last time that you had a hearing test, I recommend getting one. Most branches of Specsavers now offer audiology services as well as optics, and they can do a GP referral if they have concerns.

Asking your friends a question every day

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An illustration of a question mark appearing from a wizard's hat. Generated by Bing AI Image Generator

A couple of years ago, I asked my Facebook friends a question – what animal do you think our child wants as a pet? And as an incentive, whoever guessed correctly could nominate a charity to receive a £5 donation. The post got around 60 comments before the correct answer – a parrot – was guessed, and the £5 went to the Bradford Metropolitan Food Bank.

We didn’t buy our child a parrot as a pet – they’re expensive to buy and insure, and can out-live their humans – but it gave me an idea.

So for the whole of 2022, I asked a new, unique question to my Facebook friends. I wrote most of these in an Excel spreadsheet over the course of Christmas 2021, and then added to it over the year. Questions were usually posted in the morning, and all got at least one comment – but some many more.

I have around 300 friends on Facebook and so I tried to come up with questions that were inclusive, or hypothetical, so as not to exclude people. For example, not all my friends drive, so asking lots of questions about cars would exclude people. I also wanted to avoid any questions that could be triggering for people, so most were framed around positive experiences.

I suppose I was taking a leaf out of Richard Herring’s book – I suppose literally because he has published several Emergency Questions books – but it’s something I enjoyed doing. It also meant that I found out some more facts about my friends and got to know some of them better. It also reminded me of the really early days of blogging with writing prompts like the Friday Five.

This year, I’ve asked the same questions, but included my answers in the posts, as I didn’t usually get a chance to answer my own questions in 2022. This has also required some re-ordering of questions, as some related to events like Easter which were on different days this year.

And for 2024? Well, I’m slowly working on some brand new questions, although I’m only up to March so far. And I keep thinking of great ideas for questions, only to find that I’ve already asked them before.

Maybe I’ll publish them as a page on here someday.

I wear glasses now

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A photo of me, taken in July 2021, wearing glasses

There’s a few life developments that have happened in the years since I stopped blogging regularly, and one of those was in July 2021 – I started wearing glasses.

I hadn’t noticed that my vision was deteriorating, but it was picked up at a routine eye test. I had a suspicion that the optometrist had found I needed glasses as he tweaked the lenses, and suddenly the last couple of lines on the eye chart got much more clear. Oh well, I managed 37 years without needing to wear them.

I’m fortunate that I can just wear one pair of glasses for both near and distance vision, so I don’t need to take them on and off for different tasks, or wear bi-focals. And they make a difference – as someone who uses screens all day at work, my eyes aren’t as tired at the end of the day as they were before.

Of course, July 2021 was around the time when we still needed to wear facemasks on public transport, so I got the lovely experience of my glasses steaming up.

You may also notice that I’m overdue for my next eye test, so I promise that I’ll book another one soon. I’ve contemplated getting contact lenses next time, but it depends how much my glasses cost. And I don’t mind wearing glasses too much.

2022 in review

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Seeing as it’s the afternoon of the 31st December, I suppose it’s time to do a review of the year.

Overall, it’s been a good year. As Covid-19 restrictions have eased, we’ve been able to go out and do things, and at home we have a brilliant new kitchen.

Speaking of which…

The kitchen

I wrote in more detail about our new kitchen earlier this month, and now that our new fridge-freezer has arrived, it’s complete. It’s the first time either of us have had a kitchen that has been designed around our needs, and whilst we had to make some compromises due to the available space, it’s a massive improvement.

The kitchen was probably the biggest thing about 2022 for us; we broadly agreed the design in December 2021 but paid the deposit in February 2022, with work starting in earnest in May. This of course meant that April was spent preparing – moving everything we wanted to keep out of the kitchen and stripping wallpaper (I mean, who puts wallpaper in a kitchen? It was disgusting after years of grease and grime).

Work continued for several months and it wasn’t until September that we had our washing machine back; it then took over a week for our decorators to finish painting it. It’s done now, so we can start 2023 with a completed kitchen.

The holiday

In 2022, we had our first overseas holiday since 2019. 2020, and the pandemic, put paid to any holiday plans, and last year we decided to have a holiday in England rather than travel internationally. Note – I refuse to call this a ‘staycation’, which is a holiday you have based at home. Calling a holiday in your home country a ‘staycation’ is demeaning to those who can’t afford an overseas holiday.

We went back to France again, but to Brittany this time. Apart from driving through, I haven’t been to Brittany for many years, and it was Christine’s first time. We stayed at a static caravan site near Carnac on the west coast, and from there explored the area. We benefited from the on-site kid’s club to have some child free time, and a highlight was a visit to Parc zoologique du château de Branféré which is one of the best zoos we’ve ever visited.

We also came across the Museum of the Junkyard Poet, somewhat accidentally when looking for something else on TripAdvisor, and it’s a wonderfully whimsical place made of reclaimed junk and building materials.

It was a good break, and we’ve already booked another trip to France for 2023 – this time staying near Tours.

Work

Work has been busy this year – like most universities, we’ve experience a huge increase in applications from international students and they all need processing by admissions officers such as myself. I’ve had some changes to work – I’ve been able to delegate some responsibilities elsewhere but taken on others.

Whilst we started the year working at home full-time, thanks to scares around the Omicron variant, we were back to hybrid working within weeks and so I now spend a minimum of two days each work in the office. It’s an arrangement that works well for me; being at home some days is helpful as I can do washing or prepare dinner in the time that I would spend commuting, but some aspects of my job are easier in a formal office environment.

Things haven’t been universally positive – I applied for a couple of promotion opportunities and didn’t get them, although those that did are already showing that they’re a good fit for the roles.

I attended the AUA Annual Conference in Manchester in July, and this included graduating from my PG Certificate in Higher Education Administration, Management and Leadership in front of many of my industry peers.

Parenting

This year our child (who has a name and a gender but it’s not public knowledge, sorry) turned seven, and is now in year two (top of the infants). This meant a bigger role in this year’s Nativity play, which we actually got to see in person for the first time.

They’ve also started more extra-curricular activities; swimming, dancing and more recently karate. Considering that myself and Christine are borderline sloths, it can be a little exhausting having such an active child but we’re happy to support them in their own interests.

Days out and weekends away

As we have an annual National Trust membership, and because I’m from Yorkshire and therefore naturally tight with money, I keep a list of where we’ve been so that I ensure that we get our money’s worth. This year, we visited six properties:

  • Dunham Massey
  • Beningborough Hall
  • Tatton Park
  • Speke Hall
  • Hare Hill Gardens
  • Nether Alderley Mill

Dunham Massey, Hare Hill and Nether Alderley Mill were new properties, and Christine went to Speke Hall near Liverpool for the first time. Overall, we almost got our money’s worth from our annual family membership – just down by £6.70. It’s renewed for 2023 although we have visited almost every property within an hour’s drive of home now.

Other days out included the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, The Deep in Hull, the Blue Reef aquarium in Portsmouth (on the way to catch the ferry to France), the Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield, Magna, Knowlsey Safari and our first visit to the Great Yorkshire Show since 2016.

We also had a couple of weekends away. November saw the return of Sci-Fi Weekender after a three year absence and it was good to see some familiar faces after such a long break. The following weekend, we had a weekend in London, including a trip to see Dippy at the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum next door, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Health

My health has been good this year, and I’ve had the opportunity to be more active. We agreed a minor change to my asthma medication – same drugs but taken differently, which seems to result in my asthma being better controlled.

When I wrote this yesterday (31st Dec), I forgot to mention that I had Covid-19 in March. It was a minor case and I was able to continue working from home. It was probably the second time that I’ve had it, as I’m pretty sure that I had it in April 2020, but there wasn’t sufficient testing available at the time to check. I had my fourth Covid-19 jab in the autumn.

The big change is I’m now a hearing aid user. I meant to blog about this in more detail, but, you know, good intentions and all that. I have ‘moderate’ hearing loss, and have experienced issues with hearing for a few years now, but it took until this autumn to finally have hearing aids fitted. They’re standard issue NHS models, which means that they’re basic (no Bluetooth or phone connectivity) but haven’t cost me anything – even the replacement batteries are free. They’ve made a massive difference, especially when in the office at work.

Christine had her gall bladder out earlier this year, after suffering with gallstones. She’s doing much better now.

Looking forward to 2023

So that was 2022. It was a good year on the whole. I’ll aim to write more about what we have planned for 2023 – you never know, I may even finish it this side of June. I hope you have had a good year as well, and a good new year’s eve if you celebrate it (we’ll most likely be asleep).

Merry Christmas!

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A photo of some socks received for Christmas as presents

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write a Christmas blog post, what with having taken a few years out from blogging.

I received a variety of presents:

  • A bard outfit for future cosplay opportunities
  • A total of 13 pairs of socks (pictured above)
  • A handmade chopping board made by a relative
  • Plenty of chocolate
  • plus plenty of other things besides

We’re staying with my parents in York, as we normally do.

Christmas past

That being said, I was intrigued by Diamond Geezer’s list of places he has spent Christmas over the years, and thought about my own list.

As a child, from as early as I can remember, we would spend Christmas at my grandparents in East Yorkshire. This continued until my early 20s, when my grandparents became too old to host us and so my parents took on hosting duties. In Christmas 2008, we just had my grandfather over as my grandmother was in a care home by that point; she passed away in 2009.

This arrangement continued until 2012, by which time Christine and I had moved into our rented flat together. As a key worker in the NHS, Christine’s work patterns over the festive period meant that we had our first Christmas just as a couple – neither of us could drive back then so a parental visit wasn’t possible. 2013 was in York again but 2014 was back in the flat.

Christmas 2015 was also very different. By now, we had bought out house and I had passed my driving test and bought a car, but Christine was also heavily pregnant and so we didn’t want to stray too far from home.

2016 through to 2019 were back to normal, albeit with the addition of a small person. But then in 2020, the pandemic necessitated remaining at ours, so we had our second Christmas in our house and a scheduled Zoom call to speak to family.

Thanks to the various Covid vaccines, 2021 and now 2022 have been back to normal. However, I was surprised that I’ve only ever spent Christmas in 4 places, in almost 40 years of life.

If you celebrate Christmas, then I hope you have a joyous and merry one in whatever way suits you.

Parenting a six year old

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So, the last time I blogged regularly, I had a 2 1/2 year old child who had just had their first trip abroad to France. Now, that child is 6 and is in their last term of their second year at primary school.

It’s been an interesting time, not least because a big chunk of 2020 was spent stuck at home. Days before the UK went into full lockdown in March 2020, our childminder closed and initially I spent time at my parents’ house in York for childcare. When that became an impossibility, I had the joy of working at home whilst trying to keep a four-year-old entertained for four months.

In some respects, I was lucky; my child hadn’t started formal education yet and so home-schooling wasn’t required, but it was hard; taking awkward phone calls for work whilst your child is demanding attention isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. A lot of CBeebies was watched, as were various Netflix and Disney+ shows. Indeed, my child watched so much of Jake and the Never-land Pirates on Disney+ that Jake became their imaginary friend for a while. I had to do this on my own as my wife is a front-line NHS worker, and had no choice but to carry on going into work throughout the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, she contracted Covid-19 in April 2020 and was very ill with it, but thankfully made a full recovery.

Fortunately, in September 2020, my child was able to start school, and settled in well. The school wasn’t our first choice – indeed, it was actually our third. Our top two choices where schools that were more convenient for us, being as they were on our commute to work; this third choice of school was further away in the opposite direction to our workplaces. However, whilst it may not have been our first choice, in retrospect, it was probably the best choice for our child as it has much smaller class sizes due to it being comparatively under-subscribed. We were also fortunate to get a place in the out of school club.

We were also blessed with good fortune in January 2021, when the country went back into lockdown and the schools closed. This time around, the government widened the categories of key workers, meaning that I qualified as well (and our HR department responded very quickly to my request for a letter confirming as such) so we were able to get a key worker place and avoided two months of home schooling. Thankfully, apart from short periods due to possible exposure and ‘having a cough’, there’s not been so much disruption to their education this year.

Despite a rough time in 2020, I’m still enjoying being a parent and we have a lot of fun as a family. We have regular days out, and our child now has regular out of school activities on Saturdays too. Most importantly, they’re happy and healthy, with a group of friends.

We still only have the one child at present; that could change in future but we’re still waiting for my wife to take her driving test before we consider having another.

What’s this? A blog post?

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Well, hello. This is my first blog post in almost four years.

I last wrote a post on here in September 2018, and then took an un-planned break from blogging. This was exacerbated at the end of 2018, when I attempted to upgrade the server that this web site runs on, and ended up wiping everything. And I mean, everything, including the backups that I thought I’d saved elsewhere but hadn’t.

Just like that, 16 and a half years of blog posts were gone, along with all the comments. Now, it’s possible that I could have re-built most of the blog posts, using things like the Web Archive and help from others, but between working full-time and being a parent, I just didn’t have the time or the inclination to do so.

Furthermore, I was beginning to become uncomfortable with how much I had shared about my life over the years. Back when I started the blog, aged 17, I had a tendency to over-share. Over time I reigned that in; I was in a relationship with someone between 2005 and 2009 where I agreed not to share her real name on here, and though we’ve both moved on I’m keeping that commitment – not least because we’re still in touch and actually met up recently.

But I also wanted to reign in how much I talk about my child, who is now six. I’m happy to share their age, but I’m afraid you won’t be knowing their name or seeing recent photos, and I’m even keeping their gender off here now too. It’s about consent and privacy – as a parent, I want to protect my child, and they’re too young to really know what a blog is, never mind have lots of information about their life made public.

I am hoping to get back into the habit of blogging regularly, though not on a daily basis as I had aimed for in the past. Initially I’m aiming for twice a week, as there are four years of news to catch up on, but my minimum aspiration is for one new blog post per week.

Why now? Well, I’ve wanted to get back into writing for pleasure again. I’ve written a few things on Medium, but it feels like writing for a magazine; I’d rather stick to somewhere more personal that’s just about and run by me. I feel like I have things to say now, and hopefully the time to put those things into written words.

If you’re an old-time reader of my blog, welcome back, and I hope that this wasn’t too much of a surprise when it popped up in your RSS reader. And if you’re a new reader, hello. You can read my very dry ‘about me‘ page which is more focussed on my work, but I hope you’ll stick around and will get to know me better.

It’s been a while, again

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As usual, I didn’t intend to leave it two months between blog posts, but life got in the way again.

The main reason for my absence is that we actually went on a proper holiday for the first time since our two-year-old was born. We accompanied my parents for 10 days in France, including a visit to Mont St-Michel, pictured above. This was at the back end of June, and I still have over 100 photos to sort. As well as Mont St-Michel, we visited the chateaux at Chenonceau and Chambord, Zooparc Beauval and the Jardin de la Source near Orleans.

This week I’ve been at home with our two-year-old whilst the childminder is on holiday. We’ve been to The Deep in Hull, Stockeld Park and a repeat visit to Ponderosa (which has improved significantly since our last visit). Right now, they’re asleep, so I have a rare chance to write a quick blog post.

After a long break, we’re finally moving forward with the house renovations again. I did some tiling for the first time in the downstairs toilet, which is now (mostly) painted and just needs flooring before it’s essentially finished. The next big project is our two-year-old’s room, which we’re hoping to get finished by the time they turn three in December.

On the technology front, I’ve replaced my iPhone (in addition to the new iPad in May). I had been planning to wait until the autumn, but the battery in my old iPhone showed signs that it was about to fail. I’ve upgraded to a Product(RED) iPhone 8, which is lovely and fast when compared to my iPhone 5S.

I’m hoping that I’ll have time to write at more length about what I’ve been up to; I have around 30 bullet points in my ‘blog post ideas’ note in Evernote.