Jon Curnow writes on curnow.org about things that interest him. The site has been around for many years in various forms and he always wants to write much more here than he does.
A festive, food-filled week with minor mishaps and gentle seasonal momentum.
Week commencing Monday, 1 December 2025
Our party wreath brings proper Christmas cheer indoors.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 4/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 3/7. (48%). Morning walks: 0/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 2/5. Total steps: 41,628.
Life
Advent is here. Our calendar contains coffee pods in a caffeine countdown to Christmas.
The work Christmas party was lovely, but the wine kept flowing on our table, and I lost track, so I was well lubricated. The next day was very quiet.
As a result, the office also felt quieter than usual on Thursday, probably because most people had been in on Tuesday for the party.
Thursday’s dinner was with J&J at Rosa’s Thai. My Thai calamari starter was smaller than I had hoped. I had the Pad Kra Prow Gai for my main. It carries a three-chilli rating, but the waitress assured me it was not too hot. She may have been right, although by the end I needed to cool down. It was delicious all the same.
When I sat down at my desk on Friday morning, I discovered that my wireless mouse had stopped working. To get onto the morning calls, I had to dig out a wired one from the cupboard behind me so that I could click the ‘join meeting’ button. No idea why, but it’s a dead mouse now.
When I had a mouse, I wrote a thing inspired by last week’s trip to the Piccadilly Radio exhibition in Manchester.
Saturday afternoon was a very productive clear-out of cupboards because on Sunday I’d reserved a Zipcar to take things to the recycling centre. We have a lot of dead electronics, and the mouse was added to the pile.
We had planned to buy a Christmas tree from the pub on the corner on our way back from dropping the car off. When we looked, the trees were as expensive as the ones we usually buy, which are delivered and placed in their containers for us. PY bought us breakfast at the Raynes Park Tavern while we considered our options, and in the end, we decided to stick with a delivery. It arrives on Wednesday, which gives us a little more time to clear a space.
Media
I’ve seen the London play, but not the previous series, and I am joining PY in watching Stranger Things. I’m not sure it matters that I have no real backstory knowledge.
I’m still enjoying Down Cemetery Road, but we’ve caught up and are now at the mercy of Apple’s weekly drops.
Sunday evening with Russell T Davies, Russell Tovey and Jemma Redgrave in a series. What more could you want? The first two episodes of The War Between the Land and the Sea dropped. Really well done.
Piccadilly Radio: my childhood’s loudest imagined universe set to an 80s pop beat.
Personal memories captured through Piccadilly Radio’s golden decades.
Last Saturday, I took a train to Manchester, walked in the damp to Central Library to look at a handful of cases and a couple of audio pods stuffed with memorabilia from a radio station that no longer broadcasts. I’ve written before about Piccadilly Radio. In the light of last week’s trip, I thought I’d elaborate on how it came to be that a boy who’d never been to Manchester became obsessed with its local radio station in the early 80s.
Some memories are burned into your mind. You might not recall what you ate for dinner last night, but something from fifty years ago still feels real.
I can see the image today: in the summer of 1980 I am sitting on the dining room floor with Mum & Dad’s radio plugged in. We’d just recorded the birthday mention my brother got on Junior Choice hosted, I think, by Tony Blackburn.
For some reason, I was studying the maps in the yellow AA Member’s Handbook and flicking through the gazette at the back. Among the lists was one naming all our local radio stations. BBC Radio Blackburn was probably my nearest, but the stations that, for some reason, fascinated me were Radio City (from Liverpool) and Piccadilly Radio (from Manchester). I tuned around on that radio to find those frequencies and hear sounds from (what seemed) far away. I studied the maps, what roads would take us to central Manchester and which to Liverpool?
I’m pretty sure I know why it’s all etched on my brain: in my newfound fascination with those FM frequencies I taped over the recording of my brother’s name check. I can’t recall whether he had heard by then. I was mortified. But it was the first time I ever taped Piccadilly. I no longer have that tape, but in the cupboard across from me now are cassettes from that era with the sounds of Piccadilly on them. I taped a lot more.
Sometime not long afterwards, I was watching Granada television. I know it was Granada because that was our local ITV station, and there were no other commercial TV channels we could get. There was an advert for Pete Baker’s Breakfast Show on Piccadilly. It was all cartoon; for some reason, I recall a bus, and the soundtrack was a jingle from the show.
I know you think TV advertising doesn’t work, but in that moment two decisions were made: I’d be tuning to Piccadilly from then on, and I’d learn more about the little songs used to identify the radio station.
Piccadilly Radio shaped much of my childhood. In a world with only a handful of stations on the dial, it felt both local and impossibly glamorous, a Manchester window that seemed a very long way from Wigan. I wrote years ago that radio was “the best of all media rolled into one universally accessible package”, and Piccadilly was exactly that for me — my station in a way nothing else quite was.
The presenters and characters were part of the texture of school life. Timmy Mallett’s evening show felt huge; everyone I knew listened, everyone talked about it the next day, and I assumed the entire country must know who he was. His madcap features, the daft characters, even the jingles, all seemed larger than life.
My connection to the station went even further. In April 1981, I was taken to visit the studios. I can still picture the master control room, the DJ (Phil Seyer) prepping his show, the carts with their jingles and ads, and the moment the phone-in competition collapsed because somebody jammed the controls. I left with a t-shirt and stickers and told everybody it was the happiest memory I had.
Looking back, the station was far more than background noise. It provided company, excitement and a sense of connection to a wider world. It was a friend, a habit, and a doorway into music and culture at exactly the age when such things take root.
A varied, nostalgic week of theatre, travel, culture, and small amusements.
Week commencing Monday, 24 November 2025
Piccadilly Radio nostalgia preserved at Manchester Central Library.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 6/7. (%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 60,736
Life
Monday, Murder She Didn’t Write (Duchess Theatre) was a one-night-only, improvised comedy murder mystery, structured like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, where almost every element of the plot is created live in the moment. A Whose Line Is It Anyway? for cosy-murder fanatics: genuinely hilarious.
Disconnected ideas: my bank is so concerned about fraud that it flagged a payment from my account to another of my accounts as fraudulent. It then answered with the name of a bank I don’t technically bank with when I tried to call. But at least the team knew I was on hold for 25 minutes.
Related: everybody tells me the last person who tried to ‘fix’ my guttering was a cowboy. They then turn out to exhibit similar behaviours. Ah.
Wednesday, to see Starlight Express in its new Wembley home (again). What I said last time stands. The cast still makes a concerted effort to get the audience to cheer for the trains and clap along, and tonight, just as on the last visit, they succeeded only with a minuscule portion of the crowd. Why they cannot induce more vocal support for the engines is beyond me. But I still loved it.
I avoided a work social because, by the end of the day, I was exhausted.
Forty minutes on hold with HMRC, and I didn’t get the answers I was looking for. At least they’re going to send me a letter.
Saturday, to Manchester mainly to see the Piccadilly Radio exhibition at Central Library. It’s only a small display set across three listening posts in the library’s main entrance. Fascinating to hear and see all about Piccadilly from an audio collection now curated by the library. It took me back to my childhood.
Afterwards, we walked to another library, the John Rylands Library. It’s a beautiful building, one of the finest neo-Gothic examples in Europe, and inside it felt closer to Dracula’s castle than a building of learning.
Lunch in Manchester was at Sexy Fish. It had a great vibe and fantastically friendly service.
Sunday, to the Ideal Home Christmas Show. We ended up with an LED Christmas tree light, and there were plenty of present options: perfume, solar panels, hot tubs, toys, cake mixes, and electronic chopping devices. These shows are always fun, and we did come away with a few bits, but they’re also full of things we would never want.
More episodes of Down Cemetery Road. I’m finding it intriguing and tightly put together. I can see the quirky echoes of Slow Horses, although it’s very much its own thing. Emma Thompson is excellent.
I baked blueberry muffins on Monday, and they turned out edible. Well done me.
I’ve been hunting for Christmas crooners music on vinyl this week. On Monday, I secured some Johnny Mathis albums from eBay, failed to get anything on Saturday as the shop had closed last year, and was more successful on Berwick Street on Sunday.
Our first Sunday record-shop stop was Reckless Records. While I did not manage to find any Christmas music there, I did pick up the coveted 7″ version of one of my childhood favourites: Boney M’s Ma Baker. Don’t judge me.
After I pulled out of giving blood earlier in the year because I was ill, and then they cancelled an appointment, I finally gave blood for the seventh time. This appointment went smoothly, though we both had to complete additional screening due to our trip to Argentina.
Drinks on Thursday started in a busy pub where we were sat in the draught from the door, and ended in a quiet, cosy pub with heat. And a bus ride to Waterloo gave me plenty of train options.
On Friday, we headed down to Tottenham Court Road to catch Oscar at the Crown. The venue is hidden — a purpose-built space in a basement beneath the shops.
The show is set in a dystopian future under a fascist regime, with the action taking place in a secret bunker. Amid sequins and storytelling, the people hiding there recount the rise and fall of Oscar Wilde, all set to an original electropop score.
Related, when we first arrived, the place was worryingly deserted. I was concerned there would only be a handful of us. Thankfully, just enough people turned up to allow us to move around with the action and still get a decent view of what was happening.
On Saturday, Halfway to Heaven was operating a one-in, one-out policy. We went to the festive bar-tent across the road: a touch soulless. It became slightly uncomfortable when a large group of underage lads arrived, sat down at a table, and attempted to get themselves served at the bar. A couple of them were successful, but the others were left with nothing to do. We all had a passing thought that they might cause trouble, but they became bored and left.
Watched the first episode of Down Cemetery Road on Apple TV. Emma Thompson stars in a thriller by the writer of Slow Horses, so I have high expectations.
The way they film the landscapes in Celebrity Race Across the World is one of the best things on TV.
Busy week of travel, festivities and small triumphs despite winter weather.
Week commencing Monday, 10 November 2025
First mulled wine of 2025 at The Star, Ryde.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 4/7. (62%). Morning walks: 0/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 2/5. Total steps: 62,071
Life
Monday was pub quiz. If you recall, ninth is the place we aim for because the prize is good. We were joint ninth this week and lost at the tie-break (answer: I Will Survive).
Trains and tubes home from the office were overcrowded on Wednesday and Thursday. Despite interesting days in the office, the unpleasant commute makes me want to stay home.
But the train to The Island was not too busy, we made the connection and had a lovely Chinese takeaway.
Friday was rainy, but we avoided storm Claudia, which didn’t make it quite this far south.
And on Sunday, after a walk and Mexican breakfast in Cowes, I broke my rule about not running for a bus when we had just three minutes to make it from the Chain Bridge to the bus stop. We made it.
Is road pricing coming? I’m intrigued by this discussion about the window of opportunity to make a change.
Media
We watched the Only Murders in the Building series five finale. Although it’s all a bit contrived by the end, I think the series may have redeemed itself in my eyes.
OK, I got hooked into the last-but-one series of Slow Horses. Although I think a few things weren’t wrapped up by the end, it didn’t spoil it. I was hooked. Should I buy the books?
And I am back into the groove with the Game Changers podcast thanks to a long train journey on Sunday evening.
Energetic week of great gigs, sharp humour, and cultural reflections
Week commencing Monday, 3 November 2025
Adam Ant commands the Hammersmith Apollo stage.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 6/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 38,773
Life
The average age of the performers at the excellent gigs I went to this week was 68.
Monday, to the Royal Albert Hall to see the last date in Suzanne Vega’s tour promoting the album Flying with Angels. It was a fantastic gig with a very appreciative audience.
Related, I looked it up and was surprised to discover that Luka only peaked at number twenty-three on the UK charts. It’s so ingrained in my memory that I assumed it charted higher. I wonder if twenty-three would be considered a hit these days?
Friday, Toyah was the support act and was brilliant. I loved the autobiographical stories between songs. Also, she opened with my favourite: Good Morning Universe.
She was supporting Adam Ant in Hammersmith. I can see where Johnny Depp stole the look. All the hits, ending with Stand & Deliver.
An email from John Lewis, with the subject line, “Watch our new Christmas ad before anyone else.” It links to a web page saying I need to watch it in their app on my phone. So I went to YouTube and there it was on John Lewis’s own channel for everyone to see. The ad’s OK. Great song. But the drive-me-to-the-app nonsense is marketing madness.
Inspires belief in the confidentiality of it all: “To complete your confidential ten-minute survey, please enter your work email address below.”
Tuesday marked twenty-two years since Channel 4’s Brookside bowed out. Hollyoaks became their main soap. I discovered that, as part of Hollyoaks’ 30th celebrations, Brookside Close was revisited in a couple of episodes. I watched the first crossover episode. I had no idea about the storyline, but it was good to see Sheila, Bobby, Barry, Billy, Sinbad and Tinhead all back on screen — and that little bit of the theme tune. Nicely nostalgic.
I came late to this series of Bake Off, but I enjoyed the final and am reminded that nice people make interesting telly.
They were nice, even though they were Celebrity Traitors. We’d caught up in time to watch the final on the day of transmission. Superb.
A busy October of theatre visits: five very different productions, each a reminder of London’s endless stage creativity.
To see a show or not to see a show? (The answer is always yes)
For some reason, October turned out to be a fantastic month for theatre visits. Some of these were planned months in advance, a couple, very last minute, which meant that I saw five very different productions, from quiet intimacy to loud, inventive spectacle.
Clarkston — 8 October, Trafalgar Theatre
Joe Locke, best known from Heartstopper, starred in the UK premiere of Clarkston, a tender three-hander about two lost souls working the night shift in a Costco warehouse.
Jake, newly employed in the warehouse, is tracing the route of his ancestor, the explorer William Clark, while facing a recent Huntington’s diagnosis; the other lost soul, Chris, is bound to his small-town life by a chaotic mother, Trisha.
It’s beautifully acted — Locke is excellent, but Ruaridh Mollica quietly steals the show with a performance full of tension. I must mention Chris’s mother, played by Sophie Melville, who is also magnificent, injecting unstable energy just as the plot might slow. Overall, a simple setup with quite powerful performances.
It clearly brought a good number of Heartstopper fans to Whitehall for a mid-week performance, which must be a good thing. The Guardian’s review, perhaps less enthusiastic than I would have been.
Still playing, until 22 November 2025.
The Bacchae — 13 October, National Theatre (Olivier)
Euripides reimagined for the modern age: loud, kinetic, and full of swagger. This Bacchae mixed rap, spoken word and pounding beats, transforming the ancient tragedy into something fast-paced and streetwise. King Pentheus branding Dionysus and his followers “terrorists” added a touch of contemporary relevance.
The set — unadorned movable platforms — opened with an unforgettable image: a blood-soaked white horse’s head looming over the stage. It was visceral, fast-moving and utterly gripping. One hundred minutes without an interval flew by.
Time Out gave this one fewer stars than I would have, questioning whether it even works as a tragedy. I would have definitely suggested you go to see this, but sadly, it ended last weekend.
Hamlet — 15 October, National Theatre (Lyttelton)
Two nights later, another National Theatre production — but a different energy entirely. Hiran Abeysekera’s Hamlet bounded across the stage in beanie hats and oversized jumpers, his performance full of humour and restless energy. The costume might have been modern, the setting aiming for some period between then and now, though the language stayed pure Shakespeare.
Francesca Mills’s Ophelia was brilliant, her descent into madness raw and unflinching. The production never quite found a political edge, and I christened it “bouncy”, which feels like the right word.
The Observer, who don’t seem to be giving out stars these days, said what a lot of the reviews have commented on, that soliloquies are gabbled and that rather spoils the effect. Despite the pace of this performance, I think it felt slow. But it was certainly worth watching.
This one is still running, also until 22 November 2025.
The Producers — 24 October, Garrick Theatre
After so much tragedy, The Producers was an amusing tonic. Mel Brooks’s gloriously tasteless musical, now revived from its Menier Chocolate Factory run, remains, IMHO, one of the funniest shows ever written.
Bialystock and Bloom’s plan to profit from the world’s worst musical — Springtime for Hitler — is still hilarious and, surprisingly, hasn’t been cancelled. It’s satire at its sharpest, making me wonder what today’s equivalent might be.
The Evening Standard gave this one five stars; “The line Bialystok quotes from a review of Springtime for Hitler also sums up The Producers: ‘It was shocking, outrageous and insulting – and I loved every minute of it.’”
Finally, Stereophonic: a fly-on-the-wall drama about a 1970s rock band recording an album. It’s definitely not Fleetwood Mac — though the parallels are obvious. The “play with music” cleverly blends dialogue and original songs by Will Butler of Arcade Fire, capturing both the tedium and the magic of studio life.
It’s long, occasionally exhausting, but the second half finds its rhythm. I wasn’t entirely convinced it merited its thirteen Tony nominations, but it’s smart, stylish and very well performed.
WhatsOnStage gave this five stars, as did a number of others, but I agree with The Times, a little editing (in my view of the first half) would have helped.
Another production that finishes on 22 November 2025. I wonder what’s happening after that?
I don’t know when I’ve seen so many shows in such a short time. That’s five shows in one month, showcasing the varied nature of London theatre. Yes, I enjoyed some more than others, but I’m glad I went to them all and would recommend you see any of them (just get into a comfortable position for Stereophonic). There’s so much talent out there, it’s amazing.
Monday, to see Stereophonic, a West End transfer of a Broadway drama that takes a fly-on-the-wall look at a fictional 1970s rock band struggling to record an album. It’s not based on Fleetwood Mac. Honest.
I imagine the playwright felt the best way to convey the endless grind of studio recording was to make the audience feel it too — it was long. But not based on Fleetwood Mac. Honest.
Sad news. Prunella Scales died this week. Loved for Fawlty Towers, but I really warmed to her in the canal journeys she did with her husband, Timothy West — beautiful, slow television that’s becoming rarer by the week.
The new breed of city-haters don’t want us to know that homicide rates in London are lower than all major US cities, and at a ten-year low.
I was in town on Thursday night. All was lovely. The Regent Street Christmas lights might have been under test. Carnaby Street lights are up, but not on.
Relatedly, unrelated: the Amazon Web Services outage shows infrastructure is at the mercy of American Big Tech. It’s bad for us all.
I really want to know if, when launching their newest thing, OpenAI wanted “Vibe Lifing” to become a thing. I suspect yes.
Oh, it’s not just agencies, Steve: “Have you ever looked up during an internal review and wondered ‘who the ✱✱ are all of these people?’”. Yup.
I think we might have had “one for the road” more than once on Thursday night. But Friday was actually a really interesting day at work, and I didn’t notice I was tired.
But then The Producers at The Garrick managed to keep me wide awake: I’d give it all the stars. I thought it was wonderful that it still works as satire. Who’s doing that kind of comedy today?
The Raynes Park branch of Lockdown Bakehouse had a steady stream of customers on Sunday morning. Great to see a new business in the area.
Later that day, quite a bit of “cupboard sorting”. Maybe I’ll start a TikTok; it seems like something that could make me a cleanfluencer.
Media
We are coming to the end of this season of Only Murders in the Building and, while I am still enjoying it, the robotic concierge character has stretched this one a little too far.
We have jumped on the Celebrity Traitors bandwagon—binging four episodes this weekend. I think we both wish there had been a few more hours (even if we did get an extra one on Saturday night). Don’t tell me anything.
Theatre, art, laughter, and music define a lively cultural week.
Week commencing Monday, 13 October 2025
Performers belt out The Boss’s greatest hits with unrestrained passion at The Crazy Coqs’ Bruce Springsteen tribute evening.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 6/7. (81%). Morning walks: 0/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 2/5. Total steps: 62,275
Life
Monday was a day of meetings. Quite glad I finished at 5:30 p.m., as trespassers at Clapham meant all the trains were messed up and we really crawled into Waterloo. Any later would have been bad.
The Bacchae at the Olivier, at the National. Not much ancient in this Greek tragedy: it’s loud, contemporary, and full of attitude. All modern language, plenty of swearing, and bursts of rap and spoken word. I had no expectations going in, which added to the enjoyment.
Back to the National again on Wednesday evening. This time, the Lyttelton, for Shakespeare. Hamlet is bouncy: all bravado, beanie hats and oversized jumpers, a performance full of energy and humour. Ophelia’s descent into madness was raw. But it dragged compared with the energy of The Bacchae.
Who knew that the Lucky Saint company, known for alcohol-free beer, operates a licensed pub in Marylebone called The Lucky Saint? We were definitely on the alcoholic beer: it served a rather good pint of Beamish.
Also, the clock finally got replaced. It’s surprising how often we looked at the space where the clock used to hang.
Sunday, lunch did not have the most auspicious of starts. We had to keep asking, but the food made up for it in the end. Still, a central London restaurant that couldn’t serve coffee at the end—really?
The weekend ended on a high: Crazy Coqs’ Bruce Springsteen night. I hadn’t realised how many songs I actually knew—or how much I enjoyed them all.
The Isle of Wight Steam Railway at Wootton station, where locomotives still produce their own clouds.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 6/7. (76%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 54,220
Life
Monday’s pub quiz was the first we’ve done as a foursome for a while. This week seemed very hard, but with a bit of luck on the wipeout round, we came 3rd.
Sign of the times: the Reform Party are putting electioneering leaflets through the door. What bothers me most is that their description of London is not my lived experience.
Wednesday night at the Trafalgar Theatre to see Heartstopper’s Joe Locke in Clarkston. Locke confirms his stage chops; he’s good, even if the character is not a million miles from his Heartstopper role. But Ruaridh Mollica is a revelation as Chris — all brooding tension and coiled anxiety.
Thursday evening to the Isle of Wight. Managed to make the earlier FastCat, which makes all the difference. Why does my Wightlink app continually show an expired ticket pass rather than the active one? It makes the moment of ticket scanning a lottery.
It was the Ryde Beer Festival — although we ended up with cider at The Star on Friday. Sadly, it wasn’t very busy, and as the northerners in the middle had another drink, their conversation became louder than the musician.
Another sign of the times: MTV to axe its music TV channels in the UK. I’m surprised this didn’t happen a while ago. Does anybody watch music anywhere other than YouTube and, in my case, old BBC Four reruns of Top of the Pops (lots of 1990s-era episodes this week).
Media
Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast on the train. Radio 1’s Greg James was the guest, primarily promoting his new book. The overall message is about “not letting go of that inner child” and navigating “how to grow up without growing old.”
Still haven’t heard The Life of a Showgirl, although I did listen to some of the Scott Mills interview with her.
A joyful week of celebration, reflection, and festive discoveries shared.
Week commencing Monday, 29 September 2025
Bantof Restaurant Soho’s Tahini Aubergine.
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 4/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 6/7. (66%). Office days 2/5. Total steps: 52,319
Life
Sad news. Patricia Routledge dies aged 96. Forever etched in my mind as Kitty: A shifty-looking youth in plimsolls came and waggled my aerial and wolfed my Gypsy Creams, but that’s the comprehensive system for you.
Straight from the office on Wednesday to our anniversary dinner — a gorgeous little restaurant in Soho. Our table was on the ground floor; it’s intimate and a bit stylish. PY went to look at the outdoor terrace, which he said was great. The meal was mainly shared plates, which got a bit complex on the small table. We started with English sparkling to toast the years.
Related, the service was exemplary: attentive and efficient.
In the office twice this week. Much excitement about the big party on Thursday night, which I skipped in favour of a train and ferry to the Isle of Wight. The next morning, there was no gossip, but also a very quiet group of colleagues.
So, ID cards are back on the table. I expected more discussion this week. Maybe I missed it, but I did read about how they will work. And I wrote a thing.
On Saturday, we discovered that bacon cooked in the air fryer makes much less smoke and is still delicious. We repeated the process on Sunday morning before the boat returned.
If the Christmas countdown began last week, the Christmas World visit this weekend was good. The lack of festive music made it feel off, but I don’t blame them for not using those playlists just yet.
Engineering works meant the train journey home went the long way round. We stopped off in Woking to see Christine and David on the way.
Only Murders in the Building continues to be enjoyable, but I am wondering how long they can keep the interest with the theme. The robot concierge amused me.
We started watching more Slow Horses, but we are a season behind. Season 4 is, thankfully, still great.
Taylor (at this point, do we need to say Swift?) released her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, and managed to appear on most of the major breakfast music shows on radio. Although not with Scott on Radio 2 — he’s on holiday, so she’ll have to wait for that interview to be played next week. I wonder how the PR negotiations went on that one? I haven’t heard the album yet.
But when do you start counting? PY and I go right back to the beginning, because when we met, there was no possibility of marriage. We still get lovely anniversary cards celebrating a different date (albeit yesterday) because that’s when we had a partnership.
The option of marriage came many years later, and by then, we were already counting, so we weren’t going to go backwards. But given the amount of time people live together before marriage these days, even those who have always been able to have a ceremony, I wondered if there was any data on the trend. So I had a quick look to see where Google may point me.
The Office for National Statistics suggests that over the past 30 years, British couples have waited increasingly longer before marrying. In the early 1990s, many couples wed within a couple of years of meeting, often without living together first; only about 60% cohabited before marriage in 1994. Today, over 90% of couples cohabit before marrying, and surveys show the average relationship lasts around 4.9 years before the wedding.
I found an article on brides.com which summed up the very modern problem of which date, “Deciding which anniversaries to celebrate as the years go on is very partner/marriage specific”.
So, the trend is rising marriage ages and the normalisation of long-term cohabitation. In that case, the date of any ‘anniversary’ that may be celebrated is likely to change to reflect better how long people have been together. In the end, I guess an anniversary should be what the couple define it to be – a personal milestone worthy of a big celebration or a quiet meal in Soho. Perhaps, PY and I are right. It’s when you met, not when you signed the paper.
UK’s digital ID revival rekindles old doubts about trust, privacy, and control.
A relic from the UK’s 2004 biometric identity card trial – an official demonstration card complete with chip that served no purpose beyond showing what the future might have looked like, had it ever arrived.
Back in 2003, I wavered. The government wanted us to carry ID cards; I wasn’t convinced, but I wasn’t completely against them either. My main worries were privacy and the lack of proper debate. It felt like something too important to be slipped through quietly. I did take part in a 2004 Passport Service trial of biometrics, which I imagine paved the way for the biometric border controls we have today. But, they did give you a little identity card: it couldn’t be used for anything, but it might have been the start of something.
Now, more than twenty years later, here we go again — but this time it’s not a plastic card in your wallet, it’s a digital identity on your phone. The sales pitch is familiar: security, fraud prevention, migration control, efficiency. The packaging has changed — “digital wallet,” “verification services,” even the cheerfully tabloid nickname “BritCard” — but the underlying tension is the same. How much do we give the state in return for the promise of convenience and safety?
I can’t help but notice the parallels. In 2006, the Identity Cards Act reached Royal Assent, yet the scheme collapsed under its own weight: too expensive, too intrusive, too unloved. Today’s plan is billed as leaner and smarter: no centralised biometric database (at least not yet), a free app instead of a paid-for card, targeted use cases like “Right to Work” checks rather than a universal compulsion. Progress, of sorts.
But the old worries remain. Function creep is the classic risk: once the technology is there, the temptation to expand it will be irresistible. And for those excluded — the people without smartphones, the ones who struggle with digital bureaucracy — “alternatives” often mean long queues and clunky paper processes.
That temptation to expand is not theoretical. We’ve seen how governments argue for back doors into encrypted messaging or demand that companies like Apple weaken their security “for national security reasons.” If a digital identity scheme exists, the same logic applies: today it’s Right to Work checks, tomorrow it could be banking, housing, or even access to encrypted communications themselves. The concern isn’t just about convenience or cost; it’s about whether a tool created in the name of efficiency slowly becomes a lever of control.
We don’t even need to speculate to see how this plays out. In Spain, where the FNMT digital certificate has become the de facto way of dealing with the state, the risks are clear enough. Citizens have been tricked by phishing emails promising their certificate was “ready” — only to deliver a Trojan instead. Trust has also been shaken when FNMT itself let key certificates expire, triggering browser warnings on its own official pages. A system sold as frictionless, in practice, adds its own layers of risk and dependency — and once embedded, it’s very hard to opt out.
So, two decades on, has my thinking shifted? Maybe only slightly. The technology is better, and in theory the safeguards stronger, but my scepticism hasn’t gone away. If anything, the experience of the last twenty years — hacks, leaks, surveillance scandals — makes me more cautious. A shiny app doesn’t change the fundamental question: do we trust the state with the keys to our identity? Or are we just being asked to trade the old plastic for a sleeker way of showing our papers at the digital border?
Still, at least if it all goes wrong, we won’t have to cut up a plastic card — we’ll just delete an app and hope the database forgets us too.
Good news: British Airways have already confirmed they are paying out for both the lost baggage and the flight. I wrote-up the second-week of the holiday. It was probably all in last week’s notes, so you might not need to go and read the new words.
Thursday: “Fancy a quick drink after work?” turned into a mini product team evening—and maybe one too many. A good night after all.
Friday dinner in Woking with family was from the nearby Lebanese restaurant. What appeared not to be enough food turned out to be too much.
Caterina’s birthday drinks were in The Crosse Keys in the City. The cavernous ex-banking hall turned Wetherspoons was a very impressive space. Lots of prosecco made for a lovely afternoon.
Sunday, we were volunteering at the Vitality London 10,000 run. We gave finishers their medals. A lot of ribbon and metal needed unpacking from boxes, separating and stacking even before the first runners commenced. Some of those who had opted out of medals were not happy when they couldn’t receive one, but they can apply afterwards—and there were spares. Much fun congratulating people who’d finished.
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Only Murders in the Building is back for season 5 and, so far, I am still very much enjoying it.
