Second year in a row doing NYD parkrun at this lovely coastal event!
The next one is in two days’ time… and it’ll be my first birthday parkrun in nearly ten years of parkrunning!
Phone Box Thursday: Center Parcs, Whinfell Forest
Here’s one that Bill found in Center Parcs! Center Parcs have repurposed phone boxes to use as contact points next to signposts around the site.
(Coordinates 54°63’63.9″N, 2°65’80.2″W.)
This is a (relatively) recent re-use as this phone box does not appear in the Google Street View image from 2012, linked above.
Race Recap: HogmanHoway 5k 2025
This was the inaugural (I hope) running of this event, held in the evening of Hogmanay in the centre of Newcastle. I never thought about doing a New Year race before but it was a great atmosphere!
Not a PB race – too congested and too dark – but at this time of year we were after a fun run instead, and this delivered.
I am properly hibernating for the rest of the winter now. Training break for two months (just keeping things ticking over via my usual run schedule) and then a baseline half marathon to see where I am, because that will be my main focus for 2026. Looking forward to it.
…and hello 2026!
Happy New Year! Geth and I are at home in Newcastle again for New Year, looking forward to a quiet start to 2026.
This year’s New Year Resolutions:
- As ever: sort the house out. Get rid of the rest of the stuff that needs getting rid of, paint the walls that need painting, find a proper place for everything kept.
- Do more writing (prose fiction, text adventure games, and this blog). More importantly, get it out into the world.
- Overhaul the training plan, make improving in the half marathon the focus for the year, and DO NOT run any marathons in 2026.
- Keep prioritising videogaming, and play more games that aren’t Disney Dreamlight Valley. I love it but I spent far too much time on it in 2025.
- Don’t go on any out-of-town trips in 2026 that weren’t considered by the end of 2025 (barring weddings and the like).
- Make more serious efforts towards the long-talked-about midlife career change.
And today’s the day: happy eighth birthday to my blog!
Goodbye 2025…
Time for the annual wrap-up post. In many ways, I feel a bit blah about this year, though it has still been an important one in the process.
Business is still the same as last year: i.e. there’s not enough of it. I’m really hoping to have the time to do more branching out and make more changes in 2026.
Like last year, I only released two short games, and one of them was a deliberately bad one for the Bad IF Jam. I would love to be able to make more time for game-making and creative pursuits in general, but it just can’t be a priority at the moment.
I’ve been consistent with my running but I’ve not improved this year – I didn’t get any PBs at all in 2025, which is disappointing. I do still feel I have them in me but I think my training needs an overhaul. I’ve done a lot of thinking about that and I know what I’m going to change next year.
I did a bit better with the parkrun goals! I earned my 250 shirt in March and visited another 12 new-to-me venues, achieving my 50th different venue at Ekebergsletta in November.
Music: I listened to a lot of classic pop and film/game soundtracks! I also went to see the Duran Duran Hallowe’en gig (very exciting, review to come soon) and the Boomtown Rats in November (ditto)!
Videogaming: I have done a lot of gaming this year, largely because I have played an obscene amount of Disney Dreamlight Valley (in total: 724 hours and 27 minutes, which is over 30 DAYS of gaming time – meaning I spent an entire TWELFTH of my life in 2025 playing this game). As such, you wouldn’t think I had much time for any other games, and largely you’d be right. However, in addition:
- I have finished Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Etrian Odyssey HD, Disney Villains Cursed Café, Layton Brothers Mystery Room, and Parascientific Escape 3: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon.
- I have continued my years-long journey playing Block-A-Pix Colour and Luigi’s Mansion.
- I have started Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Sea of Stars, and Zombies Run! (all to continue next year).
- I played a few text adventures from the IF community, but not as many as I would like.
- Finally, I have continued to play Wordle, Monopoly Go, and Water Sort Puzzle daily on my phone!
My successes and failures regarding last year’s New Year Resolutions:
- Finally finish my de-hoarding in the house and get started on the decorating. I CAN do this. De-hoarding I didn’t have much time for this year (the house is manageable, so I tend to forget about it, but there is still quite a lot to get rid of). Decorating… well, I did at least get some painting done! (It was just anti-mould paint, but still something I’d been putting off for a long time!)
- Put some work into getting my creative energy back (largely by taking some downtime from my race training every now and again, which didn’t happen last year). I did take occasional training downtime, and the creative spark has returned at times, but I’ve not been able to make time to be productive with this.
- Run PBs in all four main running distances – they don’t have to be big PBs seeing as I’ve already improved so much over the last two years, but I do want to keep improving! Complete fail. No PBs this year.
- Make time for videogaming like it’s part of my job. It’s really important for my mental health. I did make a lot more time for it this year and I do feel happier as a result.
- Live a slightly quieter life again – fewer trips, fewer races etc. I thrive on daily/weekly routine and get distressed if things disrupt it. Special occasions are lovely but they need to be rare or I start to resent them rather than appreciating them. No more than two events/trips per month. This is really difficult to do as Geth and I both get so excited about the idea of doing things that need to be booked many months in advance. What I have realised in 2025 is that some times of year are better than others for being a little busier.
- Don’t go back to regular scrolling of social media. I am so much happier since I took a permanent break from it. I’m nowhere near as bad as I used to be but it has crept in now and again. I really wish it weren’t the default way of keeping up with people.
2026 resolutions coming up tomorrow!
Gig Review: Pet Shop Boys at Newcastle Arena, 27th May 2022
This was one of the many rescheduled gigs post-COVID. 2021-2022 ended up being a bit unplanned and manic with all the rescheduled events falling where they fell! As such, I’d been looking forward to this gig for a long time, having originally booked it in 2019. I love Pet Shop Boys and I’d never seen them live before.
There was no support band for this one. This meant more time for more hits! My main memory is that they played absolutely everything – all the hits from the ’80s and ’90s – and there was very little more I could have asked for. Some of the less known ’90s stuff like ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ and ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ maybe? Or some of the more recent stuff with which I’m familiar? But I didn’t miss it. This was a bit of a bucket list gig for me, so the hits were what I was there for.
Setlist posted by a setlist.fm user here, which shows you how comprehensive the set was!
One of the recent songs they didn’t play was that ‘Purple Zone’ song that they’d done with Soft Cell (see the Soft Cell review)!
Afterwards, we bumped into our neighbour Mandy walking back from the metro – she’d been to the gig too, so it was great to chat about it on the way home.
A really great experience.
parkrunday: Meadowmill #257
Ticked off an Edinburgh NENDY this morning! Meadowmill isn’t the prettiest parkrun or the easiest underfoot, but it has a lovely friendly vibe.
NYD parkrun up next this coming Thursday (though there may be a race before that).
Merry Christmas!
A lovely day for us with family, presents and food (and a parkrun in my case).
Have a wonderful day, everyone!
parkrunday: Holyrood #154
My second year doing a Christmas Day parkrun!
After last year (featuring a less-than-straightforward drive back from Edinburgh parkrun) I wanted to avoid driving on Christmas morning, but did want to do a parkrun if possible and still make it back in good time for French toast with the family. There is only one way to achieve this if you’re staying in Morningside (which is a bit of a parkrun black hole in Edinburgh terms): a nearly ten-mile parkrun sandwich to Holyrood and back. I certainly needed to spend Christmas Day replenishing some calories after that!
I’ll be parkrunning again in a couple of days, but no idea where yet!
Phone Box Thursday: Merry Christmas!
A few years ago, a fellow user on FetchEveryone (knowing I was a phone box fan) notified me of a phone box near her that is always specially decorated for Christmas. I realised I’ve never posted about it here, so here’s the BBC article about it.
(Coordinates 52°41’70.6″N, 0°34’37.7″W.)
Anne also sent a Facebook link to this lovely one earlier today.
Hope to see some more Christmassy phone boxes out there!