annualreview Archives - Neil Turner's Blog

2024: a year in review

December 31, 2024 by Neil Turner

As is traditional at the end of each year, I review what I’ve been up to over the past 12 months.

You can read my previous posts from 2023, 2022, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

January started with a trip to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, to have a look at their Operation Ouch exhibition about food and, um, poo. They have another exhibition about brains and bogeys in 2025 so I’m sure we’ll be back there soon. We also went to Eureka in Halifax; despite having an excellent children’s museum practically on our doorstep, we don’t go there that often. And there was also a brief trip to the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

On the blog, I wrote one of my perennially popular blog posts about installing Home Assistant Supervised on a Raspberry Pi and how I’d switched to using Simplenote for note-taking. I now take many more notes than I used to with Evernote. I also finally started regularly backing up my blog. January is my blogiversary month and 2024 marked 22 years.

February

After the Januariest January that ever Januaried, we made it to February. We had a bat in our cellar, which a kind volunteer rescued for us, and trips to the Trafford Centre and Beaumont Park in Huddersfield. Meanwhile, I cancelled Disney+ as we were no longer using it.

We ended February on our way down to London for a long weekend.

March

Whilst in London, we went to the Bank of England Museum, the Cute exhibition at Somerset House, the Young V&A and the Cartoon Museum. We also had dinner in Chinatown one night, and Christine stayed an extra night to see Book of Mormon in the West End.

As usual in March, we went to Sci-Fi Weekender in Great Yarmouth, although this time we had friends in the car with us. This made the eight hour round trip much more enjoyable. And over the Easter Weekend, we went to East Riddlesden Hall, and went on the Snooks trail around York.

On the blog, I replaced Automattic’s Jetpack plugin with the much lighter Toolbelt.

April

In April, we went to see Unfortunate at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, and I moaned about our car needing more work on it again. I had the car serviced again earlier this month and needed four new tyres, new brake pads and brake discs, and some additional work which was another four figure sum. We probably could have bought a new car for the amount we’ve spent on keeping this one on the road over the past 18 months.

Christine and I had a child-free day out shopping in Manchester, which was nice.

May

May is my birthday month, and I turned 40 this year. For my birthday, we went to Dudley, and visited Dudley Zoo and the Black Country Living Museum. We also had a day out at Jodrell Bank to use our annual passes before they expired, and another visit to the Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield.

I added a newsletter to the blog in May, which is a weekly list of new blog posts. So far, a grand total of four people are fully subscribed, although two were in December so maybe it’s picking up momentum?

I also switched my bank account, but didn’t write about it until October.

June

In 2023, my dad had some health issues which persisted for some time into 2024, ultimately resulting in him going back into hospital again in June this year. Thankfully, this time the doctors treating him seemed to get on top of the issue, and so he’s now much better than he’s been in a while.

Our eight-year-old had an overnight residential school trip, giving Christine and I a rare chance to have a date night towards the end of the month. Meanwhile, we were in the run up to a General Election, and I wrote about the candidates that I could vote for in our constituency.

July

The General Election happened, and for once, the bad guys didn’t win, which was nice. I also made some predictions for 2029, when the next General Election is likely to be.

I fitted my Raspberry Pi with a new case and fan, and started using an SSD with it rather than an SD card.

As usual in July, we went on holiday with my parents. Though my Dad made a good recovery, we decided to have a holiday in the UK, and spent a week in Northumberland. Amongst the places we visited were Bamburgh Castle, The Alnwick Garden, a boat trip to The Farne Islands to see the puffins and seals, Warkworth Castle, Lindisfarne, Cragside, and Beamish on the way home.

August

Writing about our holiday took me well into August, and I also noted all the places we’d considered but didn’t visit. Storm Lillian visited us, cutting off our power for a few hours, and I wrote about our four most-used cookbooks. We also had a day out at the National Coal Mining Museum for England. At the end of the month, we went to Gawthorpe Hall and Mr Fitzpatrick’s Temperance Bar.

August is always my busiest month at work, and this year was no exception.

September

In September, I made Bluesky my primary social media presence and made my Twitter/X account private. Whilst I’ve logged in to X from time to time, I’ve not posted anything since.

Apple announced that its AirPods Pro could be used as hearing aids, and I wrote about how this could be a game-changer for people with mild or moderate hearing loss.

We didn’t have any days out in September (bar a trip to the cinema to see Inside Out 2), but I did write about travel more generally in a blog post about furthest compass points.

A photo of the Royal Iris ferry on the River Mersey in Liverpool

October

Christine and I went back to the cinema to watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, having watched the first film that morning – in my case for the first time. I also got my Covid-19 and Flu vaccines. We went to visit the new Eureka museum for older kids in Wirral, and then took a ferry across the Mersey and visited the Museum of Liverpool.

I had a grumble about parking apps, and why we can’t just have one app that works everywhere, and I summarised my adult life using the various railcards we’ve had over the years. For Halloween, we went to Lotherton Hall, which was full of dressed up skeletons.

November

Another cinema trip, this time to bawl our eyes out at The Wild Robot which is as good as everyone says it is. Our (now) nine-year-old got one of the follow-on books as a birthday present. We also went to Bolling Hall Museum with friends, and had a return visit to the Askham Bryan Wildlife & Conservation Park (which I wrote about in 2017 when it first opened).

America voted for the bad guy again (seriously guys?), and I successfully migrated this blog to a new hosting company, seemingly without anyone noticing. Considering my track record with losing data when doing this sort of thing, I consider this to be a massive win. We did our first Costco visit; we haven’t been back yet but planning a trip in the new year, probably with friends. I also wrote about my home working setup, and how it’s evolved over the past (almost) five years.

December

And so to this month. I wrote a long post about step-free access on the Waterloo & City Line, which pleasingly got picked up by a couple of London blogs and resulted in a few click-throughs. Which I knew about thanks to using Koko Analytics with WordPress.

Throughout the year, I mostly stuck with my target of publishing a new blog post every other day, which I’m really pleased about. I don’t have the time to contribute something every day – I’ve tried that in the past and I just end up writing waffle to fill up space. And, as we’re a family of two full-time working parents, our ability to have fun days out is mostly limited to weekends and holidays. But we did have the opportunity to do a few fun things this year, and have some new experiences. Whilst we didn’t go abroad this year, we squeezed a lot into our summer holiday to Northumberland, and seeing thousands of puffins on the Farne Islands will be something I hope to remember for a long time.

2017 in review

December 29, 2024December 29, 2017 by Neil Turner

It’s time for my annual review of the year. Well, 363 days of it – I’m aware that we still have a couple more sunrises before 2018 rolls in.

You can read my previous posts from 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

Although we did go to a New Year’s Eve party, we were home and in bed asleep when the 1st January began.

We made a return trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is one of our favourite zoos and in within reasonable driving distance of home. We only went once in 2017 but I’m sure we’ll be back at least once in 2018.

Our first child-free day of the year saw us go to the cinema to see A Monster Calls. It’s a great film that gets very emotional in places.

As usual, January is my blogiversary, and in 2017 I marked 15 years of blogging. Whilst I barely wrote anything in the last three months of this year, I’m not planning to completely give up on blogging any time soon. I also reviewed the Google Chromecast that I got for Christmas, and which has seen extensive use throughout the year.

February

We visited the new wildlife park at Askham Bryan College near York – the first of two visits in 2017, with it being literally down the road from where my parents live.

With Donald Trump being sworn in as American president (urgh), I ranted about his travel ban.

We went to the first of two weddings, and saw The Lego Batman Movie on another child-free day.

March

My second Fitbit Charge HR died. I managed to get a replacement but later in the year I upgraded to a better model.

Halifax is home to Eureka, the National Children’s Museum, and I took our one-year-old there in March. This was the first time that I had visited as an adult, the museum having opened 25 years ago when I was a child myself. Other museum visits included the Manchester Museum and Temple Newsam near Leeds.

I contemplated buying into Apple’s updated iPad range. That hasn’t happened yet, for financial reasons, but I am likely to buy a new iPad in 2018. My existing iPad Mini 2 won’t get iOS updates after this coming summer and it needs a screen replacement. I’d rather not spend more money on it if I’m due to replace it soon.

April

During the first week of the Easter holidays, we had no childcare, so I took the week off work and we had several days out together. We went to the National Coal Mining Museum for England, the newly-renamed National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and the Leeds City Museum. Over Easter, we went to Beningbrough Hall with my parents.

May

May is my birthday month, although it was yet another year of insignificant age. In addition to a child-free day, to watch Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, we also had our first child-free night out. We went to see a recording of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in Halifax.

May was also the time for our annual trip to London. It was our one-year-old’s first long-distance train journey, and the first time that we took a pushchair on London Underground. We had hoped to make another London trip in 2017 but we never got around to booking it.

In April, a General Election was called, and the Labour Party (of which I am a member) decided to launch its manifesto in the building where I work. It was good to see the nation’s media descend on Bradford and to see Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues receive such a warm welcome.

And I went on a Stag Do, in Leeds and then up and down the Worth Valley.

June

The General Election took place in June and for once I wasn’t disappointed with the result. We didn’t get a Labour government, but I think the result was the best that we could hope for considering the circumstances and how far behind Labour was in the polling back in April. We had a nice afternoon riding model trains in Brighouse, and a trip to Thornton Hall Farm near Skipton. June saw the second of the two weddings. Afterwards, for the first time in a while, we had no forthcoming weddings in the calendar but we’ve recently had another invite come through for 2018.

For the first time since childhood, I went to Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire. I was really pleased to get a good photo of a puffin, one of my favourite birds.

July

In July, I started answering all of the questions in Richard Herring’s Emergency Questions book, 15 a week. This lasted until September, when I took an unplanned blogging hiatus. I wrote about the first thing that I bought on Amazon.

We made a return visit to Cannon Hall Farm in South Yorkshire, followed by visits to Quarry Bank Mill and the Manchester Airport Runway Visitor Park for the first time, and I’m sure we’ll go back on a nice day. And we went to The Deep in Hull; this was our one-year-old’s first visit, but I’ve been a few times.

I got a new Fitbit, and our one-year-old got their first passport. We haven’t been abroad yet, but have a holiday to France planned in 2018.

August

We visited Ponderosa near Heckmondwike. I don’t know if we’ll go back, as I wasn’t happy with the way the animals were kept. We also went to the Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Centre – we may go back in a couple of years but I didn’t feel like it was very good value for money.

Another trip to Manchester included the Museum of Science & Industry, which has the benefit of being free and it has a toddler room. Being open on the August Bank Holiday Monday helped too.

September

I suppose the big news in September was me using Bi Visibility Day to come out as bisexual. Coming out hasn’t really changed much, but then I suppose I’m in a committed different-sex relationship and have passing privilege as a result.

August and September are always busy months for me at work, but we did manage to slip in a visit to Harewood House, north of Leeds, and a day trip to Harrogate for Christine’s birthday (including lunch at Betty’s, of course). We also went back to the Leeds City Museum, for a new exhibition on skeletons. As well as being free and easy to get to, Leeds City Museum always has plenty of activities for kids, especially during school holidays.

We also had a nice day out at Kilnsey Park Estate.

October

I published just one blog post in October, about achieving 10,000 steps every day for 100 days. I may try to repeat this in the new year but I’ve had quite a sedentary Christmas break.

October saw visits to the Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield, twice in consecutive weekends. I took our one-year-old one weekend when Christine was working, and ended up going back as a family the next weekend as we enjoyed it so much. I’ll do a proper blog post about it soon.

November

Just the one day out in November, to the Elsecar Heritage Centre near Barnsley. Christine and I had a child-free week off; we had planned to go away somewhere, such as London, but we didn’t get it booked in time. We did, however, spend over £1000 in Ikea, by buying a new sofa and some storage units for the dining room. This ultimately required five people to build.

December

And finally December. We made two trips to Lotherton Hall near Leeds, the second with Christine and my parents. The first was during its Christmas experience, which sees it opening late with extra Christmas activities. It was good value for the £6 per adult entry fee, although I ended up with a filthy car after parking in a muddy field. We also went to the Trafford Centre to finish off our Christmas shopping, where we also saw the Coca Cola truck.

We had Christmas in York with my parents.

So it’s been another busy year with plenty of days out. Hopefully there’ll be many more in 2018.

2016 in review

December 29, 2024December 30, 2016 by Neil Turner

It’s time for my annual review of the year just gone. 2016 was a year that many will want to forget, thanks to the many celebrities who passed away this year (Victoria Wood arguably being the loss I’m saddest about), and major world events like Brexit and Donald Trump’s election. For us, it was a year of adapting to the major changes that took place in our lives in 2015, and coping with a rather limited income, thanks to Christine’s maternity leave and childcare costs.

You can read my previous posts from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Anyhow, without further ado, here’s January.

January

Our baby arrived in the world late in December 2015, and was re-admitted to hospital on the 30th December with jaundice. So Christine and I were apart for New Year’s Eve, for only the second time since 2009 when we first met. Indeed, we didn’t have a great January; an undiagnosed tongue-tie meant a struggle to consume enough breast milk, and so we had to top-up feed with formula. Thankfully, the tongue-tie was picked up, the operation was a success, and 12 months on Christine is still breast-feeding in the mornings and evenings.

I was lucky enough to be on paternity leave for the whole of January. People whose partners give birth are allowed two weeks statutory paternity leave at 90% pay, in addition to any other leave entitlements; I topped this up with two weeks annual leave. A fifth week came about as my workplace is closed for Christmas. I’m really glad that I was able to take more time off – having spoken to other new dads who could only take two weeks, they found it not nearly long enough.

We made some progress on the house, with new doors downstairs. All year, we’ve been close to finishing the dining room by putting up coving and new architrave – but nearly a year on, those two jobs are still outstanding.

Later in the month, I went on the first of two visits to London this year, to attend a seminar on Big Data with my expenses paid. I also managed to squeeze in some time with friends whilst there which was nice, especially as I was on my own. And it was my blog’s 14th blogiversary. At the end of the month, we went to Halifax’s Bankfield Museum, to see the launch of a series of paintings by local artist (and friend of a friend) Kate Lycett, featuring various stately homes in Yorkshire that met an untimely end.

Right at the end of January, I had the first of three job interviews this year.

February

February saw me return to work after paternity leave, and on my first day back I was informed that I had got the job. It was a six month secondment working in timetabling at the university – same office, but different team. It was also quite a good pay rise and the extra money really came in useful this year. I hoped that this would become a new career path for me, but it didn’t really work out – I didn’t enjoy the job as much as I had expected, and other factors came into play in the summer.

Valentines Day was spent at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster. It’s a fantastic open-air zoo, and we’ll definitely go back there again.

March

Onto March. Our baby reached 12 weeks old, which meant that it was time for the first round of vaccinations. This wasn’t fun for anyone concerned, but important and necessary. Another round is due now at 12 months old, joy of joys.

I spent an evening at an arts centre in Sale, near Manchester, for a recording of the Guilty Feminist Podcast. It was good fun, although I wish Christine could have come with me as she would’ve enjoyed it too. Alas, we’ve not really been able to get a babysitter and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to bring a baby along. At least Christine got to listen to the show a few weeks later.

We had a few days out in March – the farm at Temple Newsam, York Model Railway Show and Lotherton Hall, where I was able to make use of my new (to me) Canon EFS 55-250mm lens on my SLR camera. It’s great, and has allowed me to take some brilliant photos this year.

We also took our baby to the theatre – an amateur dramatic production of ‘Back to the 80s’. It was a relief to know that we could still go out with a baby in tow.

April

We started April by making a return visit to Hebden Bridge, for the first time since the devastating flooding on Boxing Day 2015. There was also a day out at Springtime Live at the Yorkshire Showground – a smaller scaled version of the Great Yorkshire Show with a focus on activities for kids and families.

A visit to the Trafford Centre (now much easier to get to as we have a car) saw our first visit to Five Guys, which is still relatively new to the UK. They’ve since opened in Bradford and we’ve been 3-4 times now.

I had a free-standing weekday booked off as annual leave, so we ended the month with a day out at Chatsworth. It was an expensive day, but we really enjoyed the farm.

During April, I managed to hit my 10,000 steps per day target every day. I nearly managed it in December too.

May

May is my birthday month, and was also our third wedding anniversary. At home, we moved forward with a couple of projects – a new boiler, and a downstairs toilet. The new boiler, combined with a Nest thermostat, seems to be saving us money. Which is good, as we’ll still be paying back the cost of the boiler installation (on interest-free credit, thankfully) until May 2018.

I made the decision to suspend my World of Warcraft subscription, after 10 years. I just don’t have the time to play it anymore, nor do I have a computer capable of running the latest expansion. And I don’t miss it.

Another thing I don’t miss is running my own email server, as I decided to re-route all of my email to Gmail. This has been a good decision and made my email a lot more manageable.

Whilst it took me two months to write about it, we had a nice day out at Hollingworth Lake, a reservoir near Rochdale that’s become an inland tourist attraction. At the end of May, we had a day out in Scarborough, including a visit to the Sea Life Centre.

June

June’s big event was the EU referendum. I voted remain, and was devastated when a majority of those who voted chose to leave. I don’t know if we will actually leave the EU – the government says we will, but doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it so far. We’ll see what happens.

In other politics news, I joined the Labour Party. Historically I’d voted for the Liberal Democrats, but following their collapse in the 2015 general election, I felt it was important to support the left-wing party best-placed to form a government in 2020. So far, the regular emails that I get from my local MP and councillor (both Labour) have been useful but I’ve not yet got further involved.

June was my first Fathers Day, which was nice.

July

I started July with three job interviews scheduled, for four jobs (one was for two posts). Restructuring at work meant that my substantive post was being made redundant, and so I needed to find a new post. My secondment was also about to run out at the same time, and the third interview was to continue this on a fixed-term 9 month contract.

I got offered both jobs in the first interview, but failed the second. I accepted one of the jobs, and declined the third interview, as the job I accepted was a permanent post. Best of all, it was on the same wage as the secondment, so I finished the year with more pay, better job security, and, thanks to several workshops, a massively improved CV. 2016 wasn’t all bad after all.

Having booked a Friday off for something that then got cancelled, Christine and I ended up with a free weekend, and so we booked a last-minute impromptu trip to Liverpool. We took our baby with us, and it proved that we could still spontaneously go away even with a small child in tow. It was our first visit to Liverpool since 2010.

Whilst we were there, Christine started playing Pokémon Go, which hadn’t officially launched in Europe but it was possible to side-load the APK on her Android phone. I started playing when the official launch happened, and we both still play to this day. I’m level 27.

Although we’d been to Springtime Live earlier in the year, we went back to the Yorkshire Showground for the Great Yorkshire Show proper in July. Because we were meeting with friends whilst there, it meant that we didn’t see as much as usual, but it was still a fun day out.

At the end of July, Christine finished her maternity leave and returned to work. Our baby now spends weekday daytimes with a childminder, although until September this would only be four days a week. Christine and I took it in turns to take Wednesdays off, and I had my first full day on my own with our baby. It wasn’t a total success but I managed better on later occasions.

August

I started my new job on the 1st August, processing PhD applications. The first couple of months were basically spent firefighting, as I started at a peak time, but things have settled down somewhat and I’ve been able to make some improvements to processes. I’m enjoying the job; I get to work with some of my old team and lots of new people who I get on with well.

We attended a couple of wedding receptions in 2016, but it wasn’t until August that we went to a full ceremony and reception, for two friends from university. It was up in County Durham, in a really nice part of the world that I’d not previously been to before. And we had a day out in Ripon on the way home which is one of Britain’s ‘Cathedral Cities’ – it’s a small town that has city status by the virtue of having a massive cathedral.

On one of my ‘Daddy Days’, we followed the Hebble Trail from Salterhebble into Halifax. Someday, I’ll actually write up the blog post that I’ve been meaning to write about it.

September

We’d finally ‘finished’ the living room – all the paint is on the walls and we’ve installed the furniture that we want. The living room is also a designated ‘baby safe’ room, so we spent some time erecting a TV stand and fixing the TV to it. Indeed, just about all of the furniture in there is fixed to the wall. Our baby had learned to sit up by July and was crawling by this time, and later in September had learned how to pull themselves up on furniture. Still not able to walk independently yet, but not far off.

Only one major day out in September, which was a visit to Cannon Hall Farm, near Barnsley. It’s a great place for families, with an indoor soft-play area, lots of animals to look at (including meerkats, bizarrely) and activities. Our baby enjoyed it, and we’ll be back sometime. Especially as it was quite cheap.

October

We spent a week away from home, with two nights staying with relatives near Oxford and then three nights in a hotel in London. In Oxford, we had a child-free afternoon browsing its museums, and in London we went to the Tower of London, and the Museum of London Docklands.

We also managed a child-free day closer to home. After dropping our baby off at the childminders, we went to see Doctor Strange at the cinema. This was our first cinema visit in almost a year – the last film we’d seen was Spectre, when Christine was still pregnant.

November

America decided to emulate Brexit by electing a man whose surname means ‘fart’ in British English as their next president. I was hoping Hillary would win, and I guess we’ll have to see what happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not still president in four years’ time – whether he resigns due to corruption or boredom, or gets impeached, I don’t know.

Despite not getting as much sleep as usual, I managed to stay reasonably healthy this year, until a bought of gastroenteritis hit me in November. Annoying, I got ill with it again in December, and then had a horrendous cold right through the Christmas period.

As in previous years, we went to the Thought Bubble comic con, this time with our baby in tow. We didn’t have chance to dress up this time though.

December

And so to this month. We haven’t had any days out – it’s winter, and we’ve been spending time doing Christmas shopping. But we did manage another child-free day, this time to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the cinema. We spent Christmas itself with my parents in York. Plans for New Year are sketchy, but shouldn’t involve our baby being in hospital this time, hopefully.

2015 in review

April 27, 2025December 31, 2015 by Neil Turner

It’s time for my annual review of the year just gone. The theme for this year is ‘when I grow up’, for two reasons. One, it was the name of a song that I sang in a concert in April, but also because some major grown-up things happened to Christine and I this year.

You can read my previous posts from 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Anyhow, without further ado, here’s January.

January

We decided that 2015 would be the year that we would buy a house, and January was the month when we started looking at potential properties in earnest. However, it would take until much later on before we’d actually buy a house, and then even longer before we’d be able to move in.

As usual, the 14th January was my blogiversary, marking 13 years since I started blogging. I was also sent a UPS to review; that’s now been passed on to a friend who could make better use of it.

February

February saw the first big step forward in the house-buying process – we had an offer accepted, for the home that we ultimately bought. I also visited the opening of the Bradford Brewery, which later became famous for a Twitter spat with the then-local MP George Galloway, and got a new iPhone after my previous one started to give up the ghost. We went to see the comedian Josie Long in Leeds, and the cabaret act Fascinating Aida in Bradford in the same week.

February also saw the blog move to a new server, for the first time in a few years. I’m now running it on Bytemark’s flexible BigV platform. The server move also meant that I could more easily add an SSL certificate for the site, which went live in the same month.

March

March was a busy month, by comparison. The first week was taken up by being a theatre technician for Moby Dick! The Musical, for which Christine was the producer and also a performer. This was the first of three shows that I worked on this year, all at the Bradford Playhouse. I then had a busy couple of weeks at work, followed by a week away in the Middle East for work. This was my first overseas trip for work, and saw me visiting Amman in Jordan and Muscat and Salalah in Oman, via Dubai and Bahrain. It was a great experience and allowed me to visit countries that I will probably never have chance to see again, but the days were long and I had to work hard out there.

On a sadder note, it was a year since my good friend Dave Jennings passed away suddenly. Christine and I still miss him but we’re able to move on now.

The busy month meant that I didn’t get chance to write about much on the blog, apart from how I wouldn’t be buying an Apple Watch. I still haven’t bought one.

April

The big news in April was me passing my driving theory test – a key milestone in learning to drive. I’d taken and passed the theory test before, back in 2006, but they’re only valid for two years and as I didn’t subsequently pass my practical driving test back then, it expired. Still, it was a big step forward.

Over the Easter weekend, we went on a day trip to Fountain’s Abbey, with my parents.

I don’t often sing in public but I decided to take part in a small concert, at the very end of April. As Christine was organising it, I decided that being part of it would mean that I get to see her more often, rather than spending two nights a week apart due to rehearsals.

May

In early May, we discovered that Christine was pregnant. At the time, we kept it mostly a secret, telling only close family and our respective employers.

I had a fun day out at the Foxfield Railway with my family. My dad turned 70 at the very end of 2014 and his birthday present was to be a train driver for the day, so we spent the day trundling up and down the short preserved railway near Stoke on Trent. His birthday present this year, from Christine and I, was a photobook of the photos that I took on the day. I haven’t seen the finished photobook yet but I gather it has come out well – I ordered it from Apple through the Photos app in OS X.

May is my birthday month, and this time I became the rather unremarkable age of 31. We went to Tropical World in Leeds.

June

We finally completed the house purchase in June, and so we were able to start work on renovating it. We’d originally expected to be able to move in after around six weeks, i.e. early August, but the more work we did, the more we realised that additional work would be required. Ultimately, it was late September before we moved.

I did the second of the three shows in June – a production of Our House, the Madness musical. I got called in at the last minute, but it was a great show to work on.

June was the month when we went public about Christine’s pregnancy (although I didn’t blog about it until July). We kept mostly schtum until after the 12 week scan, mainly because there’s a higher risk of miscarriage in the first trimester, but also because we wanted to be able to show the ultrasound image. Until then, we didn’t have anything really tangible to show, apart from a positive home pregnancy testing kit.

A day out in Manchester gave me the opportunity to write about the renovation of Manchester Victoria station, which was nearly complete in June. I also finally started writing about my middle east trip, over a couple of weeks.

July

I was back in Manchester in July, this time for a stag weekend where I probably drank more alcohol in 48 hours than I did for the whole of the rest of the year. Thankfully, a lot of this was at Brewdog, so it was good alcohol.

We had a free meal out at a local chain restaurant, in a role as a mystery shopper. It was a good experience, although sadly we haven’t had the opportunity to do it again, as none of the visits offered since have appealed to us.

I wrote my first piece on Medium. It got a few views, but I was a bit underwhelmed, if I’m honest. A subsequent post later in the year barely got noticed. I also belatedly updated the blog to comply with the EU cookie directive.

And I bought a selfie stick. I haven’t really used it much though.

August

I passed my driving test! It was technically my third attempt, following two attempts in 2007, but was the first time after a long break, and with only two minor errors. It was a big relief, as I think we would have really struggled with our baby daughter later on, had I not passed by then.

August is always busy at work, thanks to it being UCAS Clearing, so I didn’t get chance to write about much on the blog. We got to end the month with a trip to St Andrews in Scotland, for the wedding of two very good friends, over the bank holiday weekend.

September

Two big things happened in September. The first was finally being able to move into the house that we’d owned since June, albeit right at the end of the month. Since moving in, we’ve done some more painting but renovation work has been on the backburner whilst we got ready for the baby’s arrival. In any case, the work remaining is relatively minor and not urgent, hence why we were able to move in.

We also bought a car. This actually happened before we moved – and having a car made the house move a little more bearable. It’s not a great car but it meets our needs, and I haven’t managed to crash it yet I thankfully. Although the paintwork has gained several scratches and the front right wheel arch needs replacing after I got a bit too close to a metal railing whilst reversing. We need to get a little more money together before we get these issues fixed in the new year.

We went to a couple of stand-up comedy gigs in September – Justin Moorhouse played our local pub on one of the first dates of his UK tour, which was nice of him, and then we went to see George Egg in Bradford as part of the British Science Festival.

October

Although we were able to squeeze in a short, last minute visit to London in 2014, in October we made proper plans and spent a full weekend in the capital. This also gave me over a week’s worth of content for blog posts, which was helpful.

Whilst I’d decided not to buy a full-blown smart watch earlier in the year, I decided to splash out on a Fitbit Charge fitness tracker. Three months on and I’m still wearing it every day, as it’s a good motivational tool. It encourages me to take the stairs rather than the lift, and to move around more when waiting for things. I’ve even tried its sleep-tracking feature of late, seeing as how sleep is likely to be at a premium for the next few weeks.

I was rather disappointed with the Sunrise calendar app being discontinued. I’m managing with the stock iOS Calendar app for now but it’s not as good.

November

We picked an unseasonably warm and sunny day to visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and specifically the poppy cascade that is there until early in the new year. November also saw the long-awaited opening of Bradford’s new shopping centre, which has been under construction for over a decade. I’ve been through it a few times since and it has always been busy. There’s a handful of empty shops but these seem to filling up quickly – a trend that’ll hopefully be repeated elsewhere in Bradford city centre.

I had a go at brewing my own beer. The beer was okay, although I never drank any more of it after writing the blog post. It’s almost certainly spoiled by now.

We went to two live gigs in November –Dara Ó Briain in Halifax, and Professor Elemental in Leeds – and made a second annual visit to the Thought Bubble Comic Con. And I was part of the technical team for Sleeping Beauty at the Bradford Playhouse, the last of the three shows this year.

December

And so to this month. Obviously the arrival of our baby was by far the biggest news, and we’re all now back at home now having recovered from the birth. In fact, our little newborn poppet was lying on my arm whilst writing part of this blog post, so any mistakes are probably the baby’s fault. As well as worrying about the birth, I was also worrying about the flooding that hit our town – thankfully, we weren’t directly affected but getting to the hospital for the birth was interesting.

We had a quiet Christmas at home, so that we could enjoy some time alone with just the two of us. Tentative plans for New Year’s Eve have been made, but these are very much weather-dependent.

2014 in review

December 29, 2024December 31, 2014 by Neil Turner

This time every year I do a blog post looking back at the year that has just about finished, and all of the things I did (although normally it’s a few days before New Year’s Eve, not on it). So this year it is the turn of 2014 to be analysed. You can read my previous posts from 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

January is my blogiversary month and 2014 marked 12 years since I started blogging. We started January at a friends’ house with a relatively young kitten, some guinea pigs and plenty of food and alcohol.

I went to the Manchester Beer Festival at Manchester Velodrome, which was a really great experience and one that may be repeated in 2015 if my friends and I get sufficiently organised. I also server-transferred my World of Warcraft characters for a second time, taking advantage of a free character migration option so that I didn’t have to join queues when wanting to play.

At the end of the month I saw Robin Ince again (for the fifth time – and I’d see him again later in the year), along with Josie Long and Grace Petrie who were at the same gig.

On the blog, I started a weekly series of blog posts about the projects I backed on Kickstarter, which ran for three months. I may resurrect this year with some of the projects I’ve backed since, but I’ll have to see. January was also the month when I committed myself to posting a new blog post every day – I managed it for several months straight and overall I managed to write more blog posts this year than in recent years, although recently I haven’t had the inspiration.

February

In February Christine and I went on an impromptu trip to London, which I quite literally booked the night before. And despite it being Valentines’ Day we managed to do it without breaking the bank – our transport was via Megabusplus, and we booked a reasonable cheap hotel in Croydon to stay the night. Whilst there we visited the Museum of London to see their Cheapside Hoard exhibition, had dinner in Chinatown where all of the Chinese New Year decorations were still up, and got cheap tickets for We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre – a show which has now finished its West End run. It was our first Valentines’ Day as a married couple and probably one of the best – even though it was rather manic. Oh, and we called in at the Tate Modern on the Saturday too, before heading home.

We had an afternoon of kid’s films, seeing Frozen and The Lego Movie in the same day (EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!), and visited the Doctor Who & Me exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford. I also went on a pub crawl around Leeds and went to a couple of places that I’d never been to before, including Tapped Leeds, a brewpub on Boar Lane.

I wrote about how my dear wife Christine has developed a taste for gin, how I was opting out of the NHS care.data programme, and the various ways you can call freephone numbers for free on mobile phones.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/neilt/13013337513

March

March was marred by the sudden and unexpected death of Dave, one of my closest friends. It really affected both Christine and I, and barely a day has gone by since without something reminding me of him. He would have been pleased that so many of his friends took the time to pay their respects at his funeral, and again at a get-together later in the year. He died a day before he was due to play the role of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, along with Christine and other friends.

It also marked five years since I hit rock bottom – the end of my previous relationship combined with the passing of my grandmother, unemployment and having to move back home with my parents. Thankfully things have improved since and I’m now happily married in a good job that I enjoy.

One Saturday when Christine was working, I took myself off to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester for a day out. It was mostly buses and I’m glad Christine wasn’t with me as she would have been incredibly bored, but I found it interesting. March was also the month where I started playing Hearthstone – I still play it now and again on my iPad.

For the first time I travelled overnight for work, to do a two-day UCAS convention in Bristol. It was my first time visiting the city, although I didn’t really get to see much of it. Christine’s never been so we’ll need to find time to go for a few days to experience it properly.

Towards the end of the month we went to the first of two weddings in 2014, the first being on the same day that gay marriage was legalised in England and Wales. I wrote a letter to myself in 1999 about the internet, had a tetanus vaccination as I couldn’t remember whether I’d had a recent booster or not, and signed up for a new railcard that makes it cheaper for Christine and I to travel together by train. It’s more than paid for itself since we got it.

April

In April Christine and I had a day out in Hebden Bridge, for the first time in quite a while. I also posted a listicle on Buzzfeed, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire, and we saw two of our favourite bands – Within Temptation and Delain – play in Manchester. There was also live comedy – we went to see Gary Delaney at our local pub, The Works, who run a monthly comedy night with reasonably good acts.

There was the fall-out from the discovery of the Heartbleed vulnerability, resulting in many changed passwords, and I posted about disconnecting from work email to better focus on family and recreation time.

May

I became officially middle-aged in May when I turned 30. Christine’s present to me was a trip to Dublin in Ireland, where we visited the castle, the Guinness storehouse, the old Jameson distillery, the jail, the Temple Bar district, the zoo, the natural history museum, the post office museum, and fitted some shopping in to a four night stay. And we did it all just with carry-on luggage.

My parents’ present to me was a new iPad Mini with Retina Display (retrospectively renamed by Apple as the ‘iPad Mini 2’), replacing an increasingly useless iPad 1 which I still haven’t got around to getting rid of.

May was also our first wedding anniversary, although we didn’t really do anything special to celebrate it apart from going to see Sarah Millican in Halifax (third time), and it was our turn to host a Eurovision party.

June

Although it started in May, it wasn’t until June that we started watching Happy Valley on BBC1 – a crime thriller set in our local area. It was a brilliant, gripping series that’s well worth watching if you can – I believe it’s on Netflix in America, or you can buy the DVD from Amazon (sponsored link).

Another work trip came up in June, this time to Gosforth near Newcastle, although it wasn’t an overnight stay this time.

The Bradford Playhouse faced an uncertain future in June, as the building was due to be sold at auction. Thankfully it’s now been saved – a friend of ours who had a fair amount of money from a recent house sale bought the venue and kept the current management team, and now it’s going from strength to strength. I spent quite a bit of time there at various points throughout 2014 and I have no doubt that I’ll be back there in 2015.

Christine and I signed up to Netflix – whilst we probably haven’t quite got our money’s worth we have been able to see a number of films and TV shows that we wouldn’t have otherwise. And at the end of the month we went to Blackpool, including yet another visit to Blackpool Zoo.

July

The big thing that happened in Yorkshire in July was the Grand Départ of the Tour de France, which I watched on TV over the weekend – even though it passed within a few miles of our apartment. Whilst I wasn’t so interested in the later stages of the race, it was great to see so many people out cheering the riders along and Yorkshire looked fantastic in all of the TV coverage. From 2015 onwards there will be an annual professional cycle race in Yorkshire and hopefully it’ll be just as popular.

In May I started taking lactase enzyme tablets to ease my lactose intolerance symptoms, but it wasn’t until July that I wrote about it. It seems to work, as part of a strategy of also cutting down my dairy consumption and eating lactose-free alternatives instead.

In mid-July Christine and I both started learning to drive again. We’ve both had lessons years ago, and I’ve previously failed my practical test twice, but now we really do need to be able to drive and own a car. The lessons are coming on well – we’ll both be taking our theory tests soon (when we book them) and hopefully at least one of us will be qualified to drive by the summer.

I also started going to the gym again after a long break, although that habit petered out recently. I need to start going again in the new year, especially as doing the seven minute workout at home almost killed me (well, not quite…). I cancelled and then un-cancelled my Dropbox Pro subscription after finding it better than the alternatives, and recently Dropbox extended the storage available to a whole terabyte so it’s actually not bad value for money now.

I bought a Roku box – it’s been a great purchase and we’ve used it a lot, to watch programmes on catch-up services or on demand. Christine found it really useful when she was at home on sick leave as it’s really easy to use.

On the blog, the 10,000th comment was posted; there have only been another 40 since as few people bother commenting on blogs these days, it seems.

August

August is always a busy time for people like me who work in university admissions, as it’s the time when A-level results are released and universities try to fill up their leftover places on courses through the Clearing process. As usual this meant working long hours and 13 days straight.

Over the August bank holiday I did manage to get out into the countryside – I met up with friends from university and we did a couple of days walking. On the Saturday we did Whernside, one of the Yorkshire three peaks, and then Brimham Rocks on the Sunday.

August was the month when I stopped using Delicious and started using Pinboard instead, and reviewed Alestorm’s fourth (and probably best) album which had recently been released.

September

September saw me being nominated for the ice bucket challenge, which pretty much ceased to be a thing at the time when I did it. I drank some free beer with friends, and had an iPhone 6 to play with for a few days. Which actually put me off buying it because it was so huge, so I’m sticking with my iPhone 5 for a third year on a cheaper contract.

Work was still busy in September so not much else really happened.

October

By contrast October was rather more eventful. We went on a ‘mini-cruise’ to Bruges in Belgium – I’d been 22 years ago but it was Christine’s first visit. We were only there for a day, but managed to squeeze quite a lot of sightseeing in and enjoyed ourselves. Because we went there by ferry from Hull, on the way back we called in at The Deep.

I had the last week in October off work so I went with some friends on a day trip to Hawes, where I ate and bought lots of cheese.

November

In November Christine and I went to Nottingham for the first time, to meet up with friends who had recently moved to the Midlands. It’s quite a nice city with a newly-renovated railway station, expanding tram system, and a good selection of independent shops in the area around the Lace Market. We’ll have to go again some time, though perhaps not by train as it takes about 3 hours each way – which is as long as it takes us to get to London.

We also went to our first ever comic convention – Thought Bubble in Leeds. It was another opportunity for us to get out our Steampunk outfits and spend lots of money on comics and other related paraphernalia. We’ll almost certainly be back again next year as it was great fun.

I visited a great new pub in Bradford the day before it officially opened, and we saw two live comedy acts in the same weekend: Frisky & Mannish and Susan Calman. The following week, we went to see Delain in Manchester for a second time, this time as the headline act, and called in at the Manchester Museum (for which I still need to write up and upload photos for).

The new World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, was released, and I’ve been playing it a lot ever since.

On the blog, I wrote a long post about the history of an under-threat bus route, and how I ended up on the ‘chav’ page on Wikipedia. It was also about this time that Google decided that my blog was reasonably important after all and so my older blog posts started appearing more in its search results, leading to an increase in traffic. Which is paying off financially – clicks on the banner ads have doubled and the amount of money I’m making through affiliate links to Amazon and iTunes has increased. Whilst this still means that the site runs at a loss each month, it’s a smaller loss than before.

December

And finally to this month, in which I haven’t blogged much. I was ill for a week recently – it was a cold, but one that really knocked me back. Christine had it before me and it had also been spreading around at work. I ended up taking two days off work, and probably should have taken more had there not been things that I really needed to be in to do.

Speaking of work, in December we moved to a new office. It’s much bigger as we’re sharing it with a couple of other teams that we already work with, and it has brand new furniture and better facilities. It’s on the ground floor, rather than the eighth floor as before, so no more waiting for the lift – although the view out of the window isn’t as nice. We’ve also been moving to Office 365 over the year: email in the summer, which meant that I stopped using Thunderbird after all these years, and we’ll be moving our calendars out of PeopleCube’s Meeting Maker over the Christmas break.

Outside of work, I went on a pub crawl around Skipton, and we saw Mitch Benn in Hebden Bridge – we’d also seen his show, Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle, in Leeds in June. We spent Christmas with Christine’s mum, and then went to York after Christmas for my Dad’s 70th birthday. No, I can’t believe he’s 70 either – he’s certainly very fit and healthy for his age. But then his father – my grandfather – is still doing well at the age of 94.

We’ll be the ending the year tonight in Blackpool, probably in the same way that we ended 2012. Happy New Year.

2013 in review

December 23, 2024December 27, 2013 by Neil Turner

This time every year I do a blog post looking back at the year that has just about finished, and all of the things I did. So this year it is the turn of 2013 to be analysed. You can read my previous posts from 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

We started 2013 with friends near Blackpool, playing the tabletop game Last Night on Earth (the zombies won). We had a trip to Manchester, to visit the Peoples’ History Museum, and again later in the month to set up our wedding list at John Lewis in the Trafford Centre.

On the blog, I compared my work mobile (a Nokia 100) with my personal mobile (an iPhone 5), m ourned the untimely death of Aaron Swartz, celebrated 11 years of blogging – soon to be 12, and tried out app.net.

February

In February, preparations for our wedding ramped up; we finally got all of the invitations posted out, I got measured for my suit, and we booked our honeymoon. We also went on a day out in Harrogate and I took the occasional day off work to go walking and Geocaching. I blogged about how I’d switched to using Apple’s own Mail client for my email, and how I finally got hold of my Twitter archive, so that I could view all of the tweets I’ve posted since joining in 2007.

March

With two months to go until the wedding, we sorted out the flowers and received the remaining RSVPs from guests. We belatedly discovered The IT Crowd, and have since watched every episode (including the new, final episode broadcast this year). We later moved on to Black Books, and I got the complete box set of Father Ted for Christmas, to complete the Graham Linehan set.

With all of the wedding organisation, there wasn’t much activity on the blog apart from an apology for not posting. However, I was devastated by Google’s announcement that Google Reader would be shut down. I’ve since moved to Feedly (and even paid for a lifetime Pro account) and I’m quite happy with it.

April

At the beginning of April we went to a friends’ wedding in Greater Manchester – literally four weeks before our own. And at two weeks before Christine and I went on our respective hen and stag weekends, which we had been kept in the dark about right up until the day. We both had a good time and weren’t too embarrassed by our friends.

My soon-to-be mother in law gave me her first generation iPad that she was no longer using, which has proved very useful in the time since. However, with it only capable of running iOS 5, and an increasing number of apps no longer working, I may be looking for a newer model in the future.

At the end of the month we came over to York to make the final arrangements for the wedding.

May

Finally we made it to May, and our wedding on Saturday 4th. We both had a lovely day surrounded by friends and family, and the weather was nice enough for us to get plenty of good photos. That being said, we still haven’t ordered any prints, or our album as yet, so that’s a job for 2014. As is sending out the rest of the thank-you cards which we’re still working on.

Following the wedding, we went on honeymoon – five nights in Paris. I’ve been to Paris a number of times but it was Christine’s first visit. It was a relatively modest holiday – we stayed in a Holiday Inn, travelled in standard class on Eurostar and had to budget for meals – but we had a good time.

Other than nuptial-related things, I entered the final year of my twenties, saw The Hoosiers live in Bradford, and started using Instagram again.

June

After the excitement of May, June was a more sedate affair. We went to the recording of Bollywood Carmen Live in Bradford, which was great fun. There was the distressing news that the National Media Museum in Bradford may close – thankfully, it has been saved although some of its facilities may be cut back further. And at the end of the month I bought myself a Raspberry Pi, although I haven’t made much use of it since.

July

In July, my post at the university was re-graded upwards, resulting in a small pay rise. Having still got quite a lot of debt on my credit card from the wedding at this point, this was quite welcome. It was also during July that I discovered that I was lactose-intolerant, and so we started ordering our groceries online from Ocado because of their bigger selection of dairy-free products.

We had a day out at the Great Yorkshire Show – Christine’s first visit but I’ve been several times before – and I spent a day at Ogden Water reservoir. I also got a BT Home Hub 4 to review, and volunteered to be a regular blood donor as part of the INTERVAL study.

August

August is always a very busy month for me at work and this year was no exception. Consequently we didn’t do a lot, but we did go to visit the Calderdale Industrial Museum on one of their few open days, and to the Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester.

September

Christine turned 30, so we had a small party in our flat. Towards the end of the had a weekend in London, to visit friends and a couple of museums, and this included a stay in a lastminute.com ‘secret hotel’ which sadly wasn’t a great experience. The rest of the trip was good, though.

Around the beginning of September, the server which hosts this blog took a turn for the worse. It would be November before I finally got the problem under control, and performance back to where it should be. I made some predictions for Apple’s media event, some of which proved correct. Outside of the world of technology, I wrote about the feral geese that live in our town of Sowerby Bridge.

October

In October we went to yet another industrial museum, this time in Armley, near Leeds, for a Steampunk market. There was also a visit to a beer festival in Huddersfield, and another trip on the Transpennine Real Ale Trail, calling at some different pubs this time. And I went on the third of three stag weekends (the second being my own), this time in Birmingham.

My Mac got the free upgrade to Mavericks, which has been a reasonably worthwhile update on the whole.

November

I decided not to do Movember again this year, partly because in early November we went to another wedding, this time in Hertfordshire. I unfortunately had to miss the broadcast of the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who due to a birthday (everybody seems to be turning 30 at the moment) but thankfully caught up the following morning on BBC iPlayer. Which meant going into complete social media hibernation in the intervening period to avoid any spoilers.

Following my grandfather moving into a nursing home earlier in the year (he’s in his nineties now), we sold his house and therefore inherited a few things. We now have a much bigger dining table and some nicer chairs, amongst other bits.

On the technology front, I upgraded the little virtual machine on my Mac to Windows 8.1, and I switched my primary email client at home to Airmail.

December

And finally to this month, which has featured three separate trips to York – one of which was a pub crawl, and another was for Christmas. I donated my fifth pint of blood, and somewhat surprisingly managed to get our Christmas shopping sorted quite early this year, in comparison. We also went to see The Hobbit Part 2 at the cinema, which I enjoyed despite some of the mixed reviews it got.

On Sunday I’ll post about what 2014 is likely to have in store.

2012 in review

December 23, 2024December 28, 2012 by Neil Turner

It’s time once again for my ‘annual review’ of how the past year has gone for me – you can also read 2011, 2010 and 2009.

January

2012 started in our flat, with friends. For once, Christine and I managed to stay living in the same place all year after finally finding a flat together that didn’t have any problems.

The first weekend of January was spent in Newcastle, with short visits to Carlisle and Tynemouth as part of a two week break from work. As odd as it may seem to go on ‘holiday’ to Newcastle, we were able to find enough things to do to keep ourselves occupied and it was a cheap and enjoyable holiday.

Later in January we had a family meal and what is, to date, the most expensive restaurant I’ve ever been to – Gaucho in Leeds. The food was very good, but it’ll be a long time before we can afford to go there again. We also visited the Hebden Bridge Picture House, a lovely community-run independent cinema, I spent a day finding geocaches on the Spen Valley Greenway, and we had a nice afternoon at Manor Heath Park in Halifax.

February

In February we booked our wedding, which will take place in May 2013. This was followed by visits to a couple of wedding fairs, where we prompted multiple times to surrender our contact details for freebies, competition entries and all sorts. We also managed a trip to Ikea without a car, and instead using buses and walking. It’s possible but I wouldn’t recommend it. And I went to see one of my favourite bands, Alestorm, at The Well in Leeds, which has sadly now closed down.

February was 29 days long in 2012 but I spent the extra day ill in bed.

March

In March we went to the closest thing Leeds has to a zoo – Tropical World in Roundhay Park. It’s not very big, but then it’s not expensive either and there’s quite a variety of animals there. This month’s live entertainment came in the form of Fascinating Aïda who had a minor YouTube hit with Cheap Flights, a sketch about the experience of travelling with a certain notorious low-cost Irish airline. Our group, consisting largely of students, probably made up the youngest members of the audience but it was really good nonetheless.

Along with seemingly half of the internet, I discovered Draw Something in March. After playing it almost religiously for a few weeks, after a while I lost interest and I’ve since deleted it off my phone. I’m guessing quite a few other people did too.

March ended at my first visit to Bettakultcha – one of three trips this year.

April

In April I took part in Hidden Bradford‘s #bradfordphotoaday – or rather attempted; I only managed 12 pictures over the 30 days. Outside of Bradford we went to Meadowhall for a shopping trip and I had my first experience at a garra rufa fish spa, which, to be honest, was rather underwhelming. Last year this was all the rage but we were one of only a few customers when we were there.

I responded to the Home Office’s Equal Civil Marriage consultation – pleasingly, it was announced this December that in response the government would also allow religious same sex marriage for those organisations that wanted it. Hopefully this will become law in a couple of years.

We saw two live comedy gigs in the same week – Mitch Benn at the wonderful City Varieties in Leeds (although we did turn up a day early…) and Robin Ince at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield; yes, the same Robin Ince we saw three times last year.

May

In May we visited Newby Hall for a day out around the gardens. I returned to the gym after a 10 week absence; however, I would later have another long, and indeed ongoing absence in the winter months. I suppose it’ll have to be a New Year’s Resolution for 2013.

More live stand-up comedy came in the form of Dara Ó Briain and Paul Merton, both at the Victoria Theatre in Halifax, and both very good in their own way with Merton’s show including various improvised sketches.

After just shy of 5 years on Twitter, I posted my 10,000th tweet. Hopefully some time in 2013 Twitter will let me download all of my tweets (it’s been promised and is gradually rolling out) so I can see how embarrassing I was in the early days. I also took out an Audible subscription, and listened to a grand total of two books before cancelling it.

We made more wedding progress – we formally gave notice to marry and arranged our photographer. Christine also bought her dress.

May is my birthday month, and I spent quite a bit of it on a train down to London, for a short stay with friends. Whilst there we saw Matilda The Musical, visited London Zoo to do the bits we missed in 2010, called in at the humorously-named Horniman Museum and strolled around Kew Gardens. We picked a good weekend to go – the weather was nice and London was all decked out for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with Union Flags draped everywhere. A stark contrast to the actual Jubilee weekend when it rained heavily.

June

June, by contrast, was much less eventful. Christine and I spent a long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales National Park with several friends, and I went to RailFest at the National Railway Museum in York for a geeky train-related day out. Despite this, I managed to blog something pretty much every day in June.

It would seem that Leeds has been assimilated by the Empire...

July

July brought with a visit to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, which despite being quite local and free I’ve not visited properly for several years. There was also a weekend in Blackpool, including my visit to a nightclub in several years and a day out at Blackpool Zoo; counting Tropical World in Leeds, this was zoo visit 3 of 4 this year.

At home I upgraded my Mac to Mountain Lion, which was a largely uneventful process which made minor changes. I suppose you could call it the most underwhelming update to OS X in its history but then it was also by far the cheapest.

The Calder Valley, where I live, was hit by very serious flooding – the worst for many years – in July. We weren’t directly affected, living as we do in a flat several storeys up, but the towns of Hebden Bridge, Todmorden and Mylthomroyd further up the valley were badly hit.

And right at the end of July I discovered a song called ‘Gangnam Style’ by Psy, stating on Facebook that it was South Korea’s answer to LMFAO. I didn’t expect it to have over a billion views by the end of year and be a number one single in many countries including the UK.

August

In August we went to Halifax Agricultural Show again, after the Great Yorkshire Show was cancelled due to the aforementioned bad weather. I also paid passive attention to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London, mainly because they were on whilst I was in the gym, but also because Team GB did very well this year coming third overall.

Not a lot else happened in August as it’s always a very busy time at work – this year saw a 13 day period where I was at work every day including two consecutive Sundays.

September

The past couple of years has seen us spending the first weekend in September at Bingley Music Live, but a lacklustre line-up, increase in ticket prices and last year’s awkwardness when trying to get home put us off. Instead we stayed in our home town for the annual Rushbearing festival where a cart of rushes is pulled between the various churches and pubs of the town over two days. It was quite a lot of fun, actually.

September also featured a day out at the RHS Garden at Harlow Carr – it wasn’t the nicest weather but I enjoyed it. This is coming from someone who doesn’t really ‘do’ gardening.

Live entertainment was for the unexpectedly brilliant Frisky and Mannish, at the Alhambra Studio Theatre in Bradford which I ashamedly visited for the first time despite living in or near Bradford for 10 years. Frisky and Mannish sadly aren’t currently touring, bar one rescheduled date in Portsmouth in February, which is a shame because they were utterly brilliant. Their YouTube videos do not do them justice.

The fourth and latest World of Warcraft expansion came out, although massive server queues (over an hour) meant that it was really October before I was able to play it. I’m not sure if it’s my favourite expansion ever (I loved Wrath of the Lich King) but it’s better than the previous Cataclysm expansion. There’s enough to do at maximum level to keep me logging in regularly, which is a nice change.

Finally, in late September, I replaced my iPhone 4, which was having major battery problems, with a brand new iPhone 5. It was a few days late, and wasn’t the model I originally ordered, but meant that I got the 64 GB model for the price of the 16 GB one, which was nice. Christine also upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy S to a Galaxy S III which she much prefers.

October

October saw Bradford’s new City Park illuminated on an evening with some really nice light sculptures, so I took a few photos. We also made more wedding progress – I arrange suit hire for myself, my best man and ushers, and we chose the all-important wedding cake.

There was another weekend away – this time to Chester. I’d never been, but Christine went a couple of years ago. It’s a really lovely city with lots of character – and I say that as someone who spent 18 years living in York. We also had a day out at Chester Zoo whilst we were there – our fourth and final zoo visit. And we spent Saturday night drinking cocktails in a swanky hotel bar to celebrate three years of being together.

Stand-up comedians once again entertained us this month, with two in the same week – Marcus Brigstocke at City Varieties, and then Andi Osho at the Alhambra Studio. Marcus was brilliant, and Andi wasn’t bad although her humour would work better in London in my opinion.

Finally, at the end of the month, I installed Windows 8 Pro on my Mac, which was an interesting experience to say the least.

November

In November I donated blood for the first time, and found that I have one of the more rare blood groups, which means that I’m likely to be called up for more donations quite frequently in future. I already have my next appointment booked for 2013; as a man, I can give every 3 months.

At work, I joined a trade union. I’m lucky to work at an organisation that recognises unions for all staff and should any problems arise, I’ll have more backup.

In the middle of the month we went to Northallerton, and popped into Betty’s, meaning that we have now visited every branch of Betty’s. We didn’t have a meal there but did buy some treats from the shop.

We made another London visit, this time to see the Cabinet War Rooms where Winston Churchill led the UK’s forces during the second world war. It’s a good museum, if rather dark, claustrophobic and on the pricey side.

Once again, stand-up comedy was on the agenda – this time a ‘work in progress’ gig by Sarah Millican ahead of her full tour next year. We saw her last tour show last year and it was ace, and this was just as good. Even though a couple of jokes feel flat (which is to be expected at such gigs) she was absolutely hilarious. Less hilarious was trying to get home from Leeds at 11pm on a Sunday night by public transport.

December

We went to visit family in Oxfordshire in December, which included a frankly scary visit to Bicester Village where we bought very little.

Christmas this year was at our flat – the first year where I haven’t spent it with my family. Work schedules and trying to organise two sets of parents got the better of us, but we still had a nice, albeit quite and more sober, time. And we’re planning to spend New Year’s Eve in Blackpool with friends.

Which bring us to now. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, as it’s taken me the best part of three hours to write and I’m not feeling very well at present (typical me to be ill when I’m off work). I’ve also probably forgotten a few things as I’ve been utterly crap when it comes to uploading photos from day outs to Flickr, making it harder to remember what we did, but Facebook and Foursquare between them have been useful aids.

I hope that you had a great 2012, and I wish you a fun and prosperous 2013. It’s certainly going to be a big year for us, with the wedding on the horizon.

2011 in review

December 23, 2024December 27, 2011 by Neil Turner

As with the past two years, I’m going to take a few moments of your time to review the goings on of the past twelve months.

January and February

January started with a trip to Blackpool – despite going to Blackpool regularly in 2010, this would be our only trip now that Christine and I both live in Yorkshire – to see friends and visit Blackpool Zoo again. We also had a flat-warming party with friends, despite it being almost two months after we’d moved in. Blogging wise, January was a quiet month – I only posted twice: a quick guide to restarting frozen iOS apps and my ninth blogiversary.

In February I managed 9 posts, or a post every 3 days, where I wrote about which web browsers university students use, the rise of Serco and the first in an irregular series of posts called Foursquare Thursday. Back in the real world, Christine and I had a day out at MOSI – the Museum of Science and Industry – in Manchester.

March

March brought the first of our two short breaks – four nights in Edinburgh. This included visits to Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh Zoo (you may have noticed that we both like visiting zoos), Surgeon’s Hall Museum, Museum on the Mound, Museum of Scotland and some casual sightseeing and shopping. Back at home, we saw the musical Spamalot in Bradford, and I replaced the hard drive in Christine’s laptop after some worrying startup problems.

On the blog, I made the first major change to the content management system for this site in over 8 years, abandoning Movable Type for Melody, which was a community fork of MT. This turned out to be the first of two major changes. Content-wise I wrote about enabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, which remains one of the most popular posts on the blog, and the start of the 30 Day Song Challenge, which saw me post about a new song (almost) every day right into April.

April

April was quite a big month – we moved flats again, after encountering problems in the previous one. Thankfully we’ve had no such issues in this one and are still happy there 9 months on, which is good as moving twice in 5 months is not fun. Trust me. Especially when you have problems getting the phone line moved across, although to BT’s credit it’s working fine now and we have very good speeds, despite being in a small semi-rural town.

April also brought unseasonably good weather, so we made day trips to Sheffield and Hebden Bridge, as well as some time in York over the Easter weekend. I concluded the 30 day song challenge and stated why I was voting Yes in the AV referendum (remember that?).

May

Naturally, as we had a new flat, we needed another flat warming party, which came in early May, shortly followed by a trip to Manchester to see Uncaged Monkeys at the O2 Apollo. May was also my birthday, which was celebrated with a trip to the Victoria Theatre in Halifax to see Ed Byrne (who was painfully funny). And the second of our two short breaks saw us in London for four nights, staying in a Premier Inn in Collier’s Wood to keep costs down. This time, our itinerary included being in the audience for a recording of Jo Brand’s Big Splash at the Hackney Empire (free tickets), Covent Garden, the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, watching Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, shopping on Carnaby Street, Camden Lock Market, the Natural History Museum, V&A Museum and a trip out to Greenwich.

On the blog it was another month. March’s move to Melody had left me underwhelmed so I made a much bigger change and switched to WordPress. 7 months on and Melody has only had one minor update, whereas WordPress has had two point releases with new features, and overall I’m much happier with WordPress.

June

In June, more day trips followed, including a visit to West Yorkshire’s only commercial vineyard (probably) at Leventhorpe and the newly opened Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, plus a weekend spent walking in the Yorkshire Dales. Christine and I also went with friends to see Avenue Q when it came to Bradford – I’d seen it a few years previously but Christine hadn’t. On the blog, there were several entries about changes to the blog and general tweaking as I adjusted to the new CMS.

July

Despite having walked past a gym on the way to work every day since November, it wasn’t until July that Christine and I finally joined a gym. 5 months on and we’ve been generally going once or twice a week, although I’ve only been once this month (December) due to being either busy or unwell. It has improved my overall body tone, stamina and reduced my asthma symptoms, but hasn’t really shifted much of the excess fat around my waist. This Christmas’ excesses and lack of exercise will have only exacerbated that, so a new year’s resolution will be more time in the gym.

Also in July I started playing World of Warcraft again – well, I’ve been paying my subscription continually for five years but had lost interest – which included moving a couple of my characters to a new server. Whilst this has meant I’ve been able to play with more of my friends, unfortunately it happens to be one of the most popular EU servers with queues of up to 20 minutes to join at peak times. I also upgraded my Mac to Lion, WordPress 3.2 came out and I joined Google+. Offline, I went to the Yorkshire Show for the first time in a few years, and Christine and I went to Hebden Bridge to see Robin Ince do his Bad Book Club show, who we’d also seen in May at Uncaged Monkeys. I’d see him again in December too. Not that I’m obsessed or anything.

August

August, by comparison to the months that preceded it, was uneventful bar me being very busy at work, as usual for that time of year. We spent an afternoon at the Halifax Show, which was somewhat smaller than the Yorkshire Show but still good fun, and I went on a walk over the hills from Hebden Bridge to Marsden. In regular shoes, I might add – which led to some impressive blisters on my feet. This wasn’t deliberate – in the rush to leave I forgot to wear my hiking boots. I also started Geocaching, which I’m still finding fun although I’ve now found all of the caches in easy reach of Halifax, Sowerby Bridge and Bradford so future finds will have to be further afield.

September

As with last year, Christine and I started September by going to Bingley Music Live. This was the only major thing we did that month, as once again I was rather busy at work, although I managed a few further geocache finds. On the blog, I changed the theme to the one you see now. I’ll probably stick with it for now but may adjust the colour scheme sometime. On the job front, my contract at work was made permanent – and thus became the first permanent job I’ve ever had. After several years of uncertainty (see 2009), this is very welcome.

October

And then came October. By far the biggest news of the month, and indeed the year, was that Christine and I got engaged. We’ve been together as a couple for two years, and it was just the right time to do it. The wedding is likely to be in 2013, and although we have talked about it we haven’t yet sorted a venue or a date. Those are jobs for next year.

October also brought a trip to Saltaire and Salt’s Mill, and quite a bit of drinking in Huddersfield, on a pub crawl and subsequently an Oktoberfest beer festival. I also upgraded my iPhone, now over a year old, to iOS 5.

November

In November, I went to a live gig and three comedy shows. The gig was for the band Within Temptation – arguably my favourite band right now, and their show in Manchester was absolutely amazing. It was their first UK tour for several years and this was one of only four nights in the UK, so as you can imagine it sold out weeks in advance – we bought our tickets around 6 months in advance. Thankfully there’s a chance they’ll be back this way next year; if you like their music, please go and see them as they put on an excellent show. As for comedy, I saw comedians Sarah Millican, Chris Ramsey and Milton Jones, all of which were very good. Chris Ramsey has done many gigs at the university over the past three years and is finally getting his deserved share of the limelight – I’d recommend seeing him if you get the chance.

I also attempted Movember, although cheated a little by growing a goatee beard, rather than just a moustache. It lasted until the evening of November 30th, and I’m glad to see the back of it. Christine started blogging again, this time about her recipes.

December

And to December. As mentioned I spent some time feeling ill – it was just a cold but it hit both Christine and I like a fully-loaded freight train and saw me taking a rare day off work on sick leave. My dad passed his Canon EOS 450D down to me, so I had a new camera to play with, which I took on a wet afternoon at Lotherton Hall Bird Garden. We also went back to Manchester to see Uncaged Monkeys again, which was great apart from a rather sub-standard stay in a Travelodge.

Christmas, as usual, was spent in York. Christine went back to Sowerby Bridge today, as she’s working; I’m here for another couple of days.

So that’s 2011. It’s been a good year on the whole – we visited some nice places, saw some brilliant shows and took our relationship to the next level. Later on, I’ll write about what 2012 will have in store.

2010 in review

December 22, 2024December 29, 2010 by Neil Turner

Like last year, I’m going to use a few minutes of your time to summarise my year, and what’s in store for 2011.

January

As I wrote last year, I had two interviews lined up in January. The first one I didn’t get, which I was rather gutted about as I fully expected to get it (and it was well-paid). The second interview was for a temporary job working abroad, which I decided not to follow up in the end.

The weekend after the unsuccessful interview Christine, myself and some other friends had a long weekend in Scotland, near Stirling. It was during some of the snowiest weather that I can remember, but thankfully the Scots are used to snow so it didn’t stop us from doing anything as the roads were clear. We toured the Glengoyne whiskey distillery, ate deep-fried haggis and posed for pictures in front of a highland cow called Morag, amongst other things.

February

In February I went into hospital for an operation to remove what I’ve affectionately called ‘the arselump’ – a pilonidal sinus on my natal cleft. This was also my first time under general anaesthetic. Whilst I was only in hospital for a few hours, I did have to take the next week and a half off work as I couldn’t sit down for long periods – and as I was being paid on a casual basis at the time, I had to take unpaid sick leave, which was a shame. I would like to say the operation was a success but the site of the operation has become infected twice since then and the sinus may be regrowing, so another operation may be necessary in 2011.

In better news, February was when I bought a new computer – a 2009-era Mac Mini. The near-£600 cost of it would have been more difficult to stomach had it not been for a 0% on purchases deal for 3 months on my credit card, allowing me to stagger the payments. I also moved hosts, to one that allows me greater freedom over the site; of course, with power comes responsibility and it’s been a bit of a learning curve, but the experience has been useful.

March

March was a good month job-wise. I was moved to a different department at the university where I work, to cover for two part-time posts which had been recently vacated. Later in the month, I was formally interviewed for the post, and this time, I was successful – so I’m now on a salaried contract (with sick pay and annual leave). Though it’s not a permanent role – the contract is until the end of October 2011 – it is the longest employment contract I’ve had. The pay is also a lot better and allowed me to finally clear my overdraft, and spend £56 on a computer mouse.

April

In April, Christine spent Easter with me and my parents, which probably counts as some kind of relationship milestone. I also ran an April Fool’s Day joke about me running for parliament (the UK had a general election in May this year), which some people actually believed, at least for a short while. I’ll have to think of something to top that for April 2011…

Talking of the election, in April I publicly announced my support for the Liberal Democrats. Alas, I didn’t predict what would happen after the election and how the leaders of the LibDems completely sold themselves out; had I known this, I would have probably voted for the Green Party as in 2005.

Also in April we went to the first of two weddings – we’re now at the age when our friends are getting married – and Christine and I went on a day-trip to the Lake District.

May

May was my birthday month, and to celebrate, Christine took me to The Box Tree in Ilkley – a Michelin-starred restaurant. The food was absolutely amazing, but to someone not used to it, the experience was rather intimidating – at least until we’d drank most of a bottle of wine. Not something we’d do regularly but worth it for the food.

June

In June, we went on a day-trip to Morecambe, a seaside town that I’d only fleetingly visited some years ago. We also went to the Bradford Mela, an annual festival of Asian culture; despite having lived in Bradford since 2002 this was the first time I’d been. It was a good day out and we may well go again next year. Finally we spent an evening in Manchester watching the Amateur Transplants in concert – it was partly a combined interest in the comedy duo that brought us together.

July

July brought the first holiday Christine and I had together, which was a weekend in Liverpool followed by a week on the Isle of Man. We had a really good time, despite the crossing from Liverpool to Douglas being delayed a day. We also went to Whitby, which is one of my favourite places – Christine had never been before.

August

Work-wise August was very busy for me; as part of my new job in university admissions I had to oversee Clearing for several courses, which included working 12 days on the trot, sometimes until 7pm. When not at work, we had more days out: to Hull, to visit The Deep; and to The Trafford Centre in Manchester.

September

September was also a busy month, but thankfully not in terms of work. It was Christine’s birthday, and our first ever music festival – Bingley Music Live – which was good fun. Later in the month I finally got myself an iPhone – I’d been waiting until I could find an affordable deal and had the financial stability to see a long contract through. Three months on and it really is one of the best purchases I’ve made – it’s so useful. I’m also impressed at the network coverage I get from 3 – their record in the past was rather poor but it’s rare not to have a signal and most of the time I have 3G internet.

October

October was our first anniversary, which we celebrated with a meal out. Later in the month we went to stay with friends in London, although I ended up spending quite a bit of time ill in bed. Still, we managed to see half of London Zoo and bits of the British Museum, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

Christine also found herself a new job in Yorkshire, so October was latterly spent making arrangements for moving in together; primarily by me as I was nearest.

November

We moved to a flat in Sowerby Bridge in November. Although we haven’t unpacked everything yet, we’re probably about 90% and the remainder is stuff that can remain in storage like ornaments. November saw the second of the year’s weddings, this time in a lovely country house in the Conwy Valley in Wales; and my grandfather reach the grand old age of 90 with the resultant birthday party. For a nonagenarian he’s not doing badly.

December

And finally to this month. We went back to London, for one night only, for a TV recording at BBC Television Centre. The programme wasn’t broadcast; it was a pilot for 10 O’Clock Live which starts in January on Channel 4, but it was a good opportunity to see Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Lauren Laverne all in one go, and it was funny to watch. Plus, there aren’t many opportunities in life when you get to be in a TV audience – I’ve only managed it twice. And one of those times was on French TV.

We spent Christmas at my parents. It’s the first time I’ve spent Christmas with a significant other and thankfully it was a good experience.

All in all, 2010 has been a good year. Apart from moving house there hasn’t been any major upheavals like in 2009, and my job situation is much improved which has provided some stability.

So, 2011. Potentially I’ve got another operation coming up, but we’ll see. My first trip to Blackpool since November is coming in early January, to visit some of Christine’s former colleagues. In March, we’re going to see the musical Spamalot in Bradford, and hopefully in the summer we may be able to go on holiday abroad.
Hope 2010 has been good for you, and that 2011 is a good year for you too!

2009 in review

December 22, 2024December 27, 2009 by Neil Turner

Around this time last year I wrote a somewhat optimistic post about what had happened in 2008 and what I expected to happen in 2009. While I was right about there being a lot of change, 2009 proved to be a very eventful year and not always in the good sense.

January and February

January started well, despite my unemployment – I went to Edinburgh for a job interview and took a few photos while I was there. The interview sadly didn’t lead to a job, but upon my return to Bradford we ended up with a houseful of people – Hari’s little sister and her then boyfriend, and one of our friends from World of Warcraft. As it happens, World of Warcraft would be the thing that would keep me sane for the first few months of the year.

February was when things started going downhill. I was still unemployed, and was struggling to find work, despite being registered with two temping agencies. Then I heard that my grandmother, who had been ill since September 2008, had passed away. While it was somewhat expected, as she has been very ill, the funeral was a big shock. I didn’t write about it publicly at the time but even 9 months on I still miss her. She was 86, and is survived by my grandfather. Also during February, Hari went to Scotland for 2 weeks.

March and April

In March I went on a weekend trip to Dovedale and Sherwood Forest with the University Hiking Club – despite no longer being a student or member of staff there I was still involved, and my parents offered to pay for my place on the trip. As I was still unemployed, the Bank of Mum and Dad came very much into play at this time. To pass the time while unemployed, I started walking more often on my own, and did a couple of canals and disused railway lines near Bradford. Hari was still in Scotland, and eventually came back after 4 weeks. It was then that we agreed that things weren’t working and that the time we had spent apart only came to prove this. On Saturday 21st March, after 3 years and 5 months together, we split up.

April, May and June

During April I tied up the loose ends at the flat Hari and I rented in Bradford, and I moved back in with my parents over the Easter weekend. The loss of independence took a lot of getting used to and I can’t say I enjoyed it a lot, especially as most of my friends were still back in Bradford.

Come May, and things started brightening up. I managed to get a new short-term employment contract back at the University in Bradford, so spent a couple of months staying in people’s spare rooms. I also reached the grand old age of 25, and spent my birthday up a mountain in Wales.

At the end of June I moved to where I live now, in the Undercliffe area of Bradford. While it’s a bit further away from the University, I have good housemates and the house is very nice (and cheap!).

July, August, September and October

The first 2 weeks of July were spent on my first foreign holiday in 6 years, which was in France, around La Rochelle. I really enjoyed the break, which after the ups and downs of the preceding few months was very welcome. There were some really memorable moments, such as riding on a tandem and seeing Fort Boyard.
While my employment contract was initially quite short, it was extended a few times (and now runs until the end of February). August and September proved to be very busy at work, although the latter month resulted in a 23″ screen which I posted about quite a bit.

In October, I visited a friend who had recently moved to Blackpool (she was my travelling partner in France and had been a shoulder to cry on over the preceding months) who introduced me to one of her new friends, Christine. A week later, and Christine and I became an item. We went to see Ash play in Bradford, which was awesome, and have since tried to spend every weekend together.

November and December

A sign that the job market was improving was that I started getting interviews again – one in September and another in November. Despite getting very positive feedback, neither resulted in a job, unfortunately. Also in November I visited Halifax town centre for the first time – not a very interesting event but it’s somewhere I’ve passed through a lot but never really visited.

And finally in December I was diagnosed with an arselump. December was also the first month for several years where I wasn’t overdrawn on my bank account – just in time for my bank to raise the overdraft charges to £1 per day. While I’m not rolling in cash at present, I’m much better off financially than I was in 2008. Christine and I are planning to spend New Year together in Blackpool.

And as for 2010? Well, I’ll be starting it on better footing than last year, with more money and a job. I also have 2 interviews lined up for January, and a weekend break in central Scotland. If all goes to plan, I’ll be getting myself a new computer (probably a Mac Mini again but still not fully decided), and a new mobile phone (probably not an iPhone as they’re expensive, but maybe an Android phone). And hopefully Christine and I may be able to afford a weekend trip somewhere outside the UK, such as Paris, later in the year.

Hope you all have a wonderful new year and that 2010 brings you everything you could ask for.