2026-13

I missed a couple of these so here’s some edited (by my poor memory) highlights of the last few weeks.

I had a great trip up to York for the weekend. My brother and a group of friends have turned it into an annual ritual now - the focus being a York City home game. This year we saw City beat Brackley Town 4-0 in what is turning out to be a real battle for automatic promotion.

While in York I enjoyed a trip to the excellent Making Waves exhibition at the York Art Gallery. The exhibition did a good job of putting wood block prints into their (sometimes problematic) context, explaining the process of making them and included some contemporary work too. I was happy to see David Bull’s work featured, as one of his prints (of a Hiroshi Yoshida design) has pride of place on my desk at home.

I also made sure to have at least one curd tart a day (as per doctors instructions (probably)), some pints of Slow Loris a curry at The Viceroy and a mooch in Monk Bar Model Shop and Travelling Man.

We took the kids to see Your Toys at The Unicorn. It was a fun, semi-improvised show that featured the toys that kids (and grownups) took with them. The 5-9 suggested age range seemed worked for our two - it was sweet with just the right amount of scary monsters.

I saw Stornoway’s 20th anniversary gig at the Royal Albert Hall with my brother. While nothing can quite compare to their “last ever” gig at Oxford’s New Theatre they seemed appreciative and somewhat awe-struck by their surroundings, filling the hall with lights, field recordings and a full choir.

We finished work on a project at GDS. Chris wrote about that on the GFR blog. The project was a little directionless at times, but I got to do a bunch of things I haven’t done for a while - “data science” and giving presentations in particular. A new project with a new client kicks off next week which I’m always a bit nervous about, but these seem like good people doing good things so I’m hopeful it’ll work out OK.

Continuing in the Western theme A- and I watched Godless (2017) featuring a brilliantly awful Jeff Daniels. I particularly enjoyed Merritt Wever as the intelligent, gun-toting and sweary Mary Agnes.