Had a nice few rounds of this card game that John was given for Christmas by his brother. It's quite rare we find games for 2 people, so nice to have a little selection of such now. It's pretty simple and straight forward and a great warm up for more taxing games - also really helped that I won 4/5 rounds!

At risk of completing all the less exciting items on my list, I have purchased some much needed new trainers. Being the Temu special that they are, they're a little small, but they'll wear in I'm sure!

One of my sons, at my request, bought me some seeds for Christmas to plant in my new garden. As it was the first day of my week off today, and it felt very springlike, I decided to plant some of them. However, many of them turned out to be better planted in March or April (I thought Feb was the one??!!) so just did the ones I could - Radishes. Hopefully they'll do well in the utility room, but I feel I may have planted way too many. I also potted up a Pine Tree set, re-potted a couple of poorly plants, set up a broken plant to grow some new roots, sorted out the potting shed, and then walked to Tesco and bought myself some flowers. A very nice horticultural day!

A happy accident, really, that I was reading a book (wasn't that bothered by it) and thought, "oh, this book will be right up my colleague's street!" And when I mentioned it to her, she said that yes, it was a book that had been on her wish-list for ages! Was happy to lend it, she was happy to have it; felt like a nice warm and fuzzy interaction.

Every year I have this item on my list. And every year I ask myself "why the f*ck do I always put this on my list?" This year, whilst it was one of the better puzzles I've done, I asked my family to stop me from putting it on my list next year. It's likely it will be on my list again next year.

The first of our Date Adventure book ideas that I got us for Christmas, we took ourselves off to Hollywood Bowl for a couple of games and some food. It was nice to hang out and spend some quality time together but honestly, I really hated the venue. Busy, noisy, and rushed; they were cleaning our lane and taking away my half drunk drink the second we finished playing, and it felt more like a conveyor belt than a fun, relaxed outing.

A pretty straightforward one, this. Went to Ikea for a Kallax unit, came out with a plant. I think it's a lovely one.

A surprise Christmas present from my brother - he had only told us to keep the date free - turned out to be a trip to The Peacock Theatre in London with my parents to see "Bigre" (Fishbowl), a play he and his partner had seen at a Fringe Festival in Brighton. I must admit, rushing to London straight from work wasn't much fun, especially as it was pouring with rain - but my God I'm glad we did it, because the show was absolutely spectacular. Mime/slapstick but with a wonderful narrative, beautiful sets, brilliant and unexpected effects, and some proper ear worms; I actually ended the night crying with laughter. I've never seen anything like this before, and am not sure I ever will again as the whole thing was so unique, but it really has made me think that I need to branch out with my theatre experiences, experiment a bit more, and maybe even add "Go to a Fringe Festival" to next year's list...?

I haven't had a chance to do many list items recently as I have been busy moving house (very exciting!) so it has been really nice today to listen to a podcast whilst unpacking some stuff in the bedroom. Obviously the subject matter is right up my street - female Victorian murderers - but also have been a big fan of Lucy Worseley ever since we watched her series on Agatha Christie. Found the podcast really interesting, and many more to listen to whilst dealing with the never ending list of stuff to do in the house.

I love this list item, but I wouldn't normally complete it this early in the year - for me, it's a bit of end-of-year thankfulness. However, it came up as a daily task today on Happier Kinder Together | Action for Happiness's Happier January Calendar. So two birds, one stone... and feeling super grateful.

3/1/26 - Is this inception? I created a blog. Its is this. I am blogging about it right now.

1/1/26 - Got off to a great start on the first day of the year by hitting my target sponsorship of £150 for my Move for Mind challenge (thanks, friends and family!) What wasn't quite so great was realising I'm DYING of AIDsflu and am now committed to, and have people relying on me to, do some form of exercise every single day of January. BOOOOO!