valentinesday

Unblogged February

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Two valentines day cards. The one on the left says 'I'm so glad you seduced me with your charming awkwardness' and is mostly red with a heart at the bottom; the one on the right says 'My sexy husband, I love you with all my boobs. I would say heart, but my boobs are bigger'.

I suppose I can’t really say ‘wow, we’re at the end of February already’ seeing as how it’s the shortest month of the year. Here’s my round-up of things that have happened this month that haven’t made it into core blog posts; January’s round-up was here.

Valentines Day

Christine and I spent a romantic Valentines Day… at the White Rose Shopping Centre. With Valentines Day falling on a Saturday, there would be no hope of us getting a table in any restaurant in the evening. Plus, we had our ten-year-old with us, who’s very much at the ‘ewww, romance is icky’ stage. Instead, we picked up a M&S Valentines meal deal and came home.

Pictured above are the cards we exchanged.

The Boy From Elsewhere by Kestral Gaian

I recently reconnected with a friend from university, Kestral Gaian. Whilst I originally knew them under a different name, they are now an author of several books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Their latest book is The Boy From Elsewhere, a young adult story about a boy who finds himself washed up on a beach in a parallel world version of his home town. I haven’t read it yet, but if you like sci-fi and/or books with queer characters, consider picking up a copy. It’s available direct from the publisher, and from Amazon of course (sponsored link).

A replacement Bluesky pronoun labeller

I’ve updated my how to view and share pronouns on Bluesky post from December 2024. The developer of the original pronoun labeller took theirs offline, and so the blog post now points to a replacement which works in the same way. If you used the old labeller to share your pronouns, you’ll need to subscribe to this new labeller and re-add your pronouns.

And that’s about it for this month. A short blog post for a short month.

27 hours in London

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St Pauls Cathedral

As I alluded to on Friday, I took Christine away on a trip which I planned at the last minute on Thursday night. We’d both booked Friday off work, but had nothing planned for Friday or Saturday, and couldn’t think of anything particularly interesting to do. So, whilst Christine was out on Thursday night, I set about planning something.

Though London has a reputation for being expensive, getting there at the last minute seemed to be cheaper than many other places. A backup plan had been to go to Birmingham, to visit Cadbury World, but getting there by train would have cost a fortune as all of the cheap seats had gone.

We managed to get tickets on Megabusplus, leaving from Halifax, for a reasonable price. Unlike the regular Megabus, you only travel by coach half-way, and then pick up a train for the rest of the journey. I’ll write more about this later this week; whilst it’s slower than a direct train, it’s faster than going the whole way by coach. Leaving Halifax just before 8am, we arrived at St Pancras at around 12:30pm.

Lunch was at Carluccio’s in St Pancras – we decided to have a big meal at lunchtime, as trying to find anywhere for an affordable evening meal on Valentines Day is likely to be an exercise in futility. And then we headed on to the Museum of London, to see the Cheapside Horde. We went to the MoL in September but the Cheapside Horde exhibition hadn’t opened yet, so this was our opportunity to see it.

Afterwards we headed over to Chinatown for some dim sum – despite the large lunch we were peckish – and had a mosey around the shops. Visiting just after Chinese New Year meant the area was covered in Chinese lanterns – one of which made its presence known by landing on my head in the strong winds. We also nipped into one of the theatre ticket agents at Leicester Square, to get some of the last cheap tickets for that evening’s showing of We Will Rock You.

Our hotel was in Croydon, south London, which took about an hour to get to after the show finished, and involved a tube and two trains. We would have stayed more centrally but were limited by what was available on our budget. Still, the hotel was fine, and breakfast was included.

After breakfast we caught up with friends at the café at Tate Modern, then headed back to St Pancras for lunch. Then it was a train, a coach and then a bus back home – and we were back home for 8pm.

Considering it was planned at the last minute, and on a shoestring budget, we managed to do a lot in two days. And, most importantly, we had a good time. Whilst I can’t see us doing this every year for Valentines Day, it was good to get away, even if just for one night.

Valentines Day

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Valentines Cards

Valentines Day

Today is Valentines Day. It’s the ninth consecutive one that I’ve had someone to ‘celebrate’ it with, but the first time that I’ve been able to celebrate it with someone that I’m married to.

By the time you read this, I will be whisking my dear wife Christine away on an impromptu trip away. It was literally planned last night, about an hour before I wrote this blog post. It’s not a particularly romantic trip – we’re going on the Megabus – and it’s only for one night. Oh, and we’d have got up at 6:15am to catch it as well.

So, Happy Valentines Day Christine. Hope you enjoyed the surprise!