Year twelve.

The Biggy-Smalls

The kids are doing well, small guy completed his first year of school and seems to grudgingly accept the concept. Today he read a dinosaur name out of an encyclopedia of dinosaurs which might be the first time he has ever decided for himself that reading is a useful skill.

Big guy is a voracious reader. We can’t seem to get enough books for her and now have a well practiced routine of going to the charity shops on London road and buying every Tom Gates, Wimpy Kid and Horrid Henry book we find.

This is very soppy but I do just love these two little pickles. I love looking at their beautiful faces and they make me laugh most days.

You Better Werk

In about April of 2025 I decided it was time for me to get a different job. It took quite a while to find one, starting with just getting up to a decent standard of job interview skill to be able to adequately explain what I’d been doing for the past 10 years.

In December I started a new job at Rightmove which is going well so far. Nice people, lots of things to do. It’s really unpleasant changing jobs tbh, I could have just marinated at the FT for another 5 years easily, but it was time to - forgive the linkedin speak - step out of my comfort zone and now, here I am, uncomfortable.

While I was in my job finding era I gave a talk on LDX3’s Director+ track about setting a technical strategy. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise and the research phase - bringing me to Peter Senge’s panpipe garnished audiobook (The fifth discipline) was a particular highlight. This work also fed directly into helping the FT define it’s technical strategy - the resulting work being something I’m really proud of, despite leaving shortly after we launched it.

Everything I Made

I’ve stopped taking photos of things because I don’t enjoy doing it, and maybe this isn’t interesting without something to look at, but here is a list of all of the things I knitted or sewed in 2025.

• M&M September coat - very nice, almost too nice, I find it hard to wear it because I don’t want to get it dirty or get kid mess on it.
• A new M&M TN31 Parka - very nice and does not have the same problem as the September coat
• M&M Winnie Pyjamas - too short in the body, quite a lot of work (uh, obviously). Trouser pattern could do with some side pockets.
• A Curlew top, a lovely pattern but not made for someone with my proportions. I did enjoy making the pattern adjustments though.
• A Bantam vest - A classic. My 5th probably.
• M&M Saltmarsh skirt - Smash hit, very wearable, very nice in summer.
• A Sophie knitted hood in alpaca, which is a bit itchy >:(
• Two hats with ear flaps and bobbles for the kids
• A Petit Knits Friday Knitted T-Shirt which I love
• A Favourite Things T-shirt which is, very annoyingly, also a bit too itchy and I will make again with a less itchy yarn

Everything I Read

I am not good at media criticism, as you will see. I don’t think about things that deeply and I don’t enjoy thinking about the things I’ve read that deeply. I have to say this because you guestures at friends on the world wide web are so good at it and I enjoy reading your reckons.

Paper Books:

• Crying in H-mart - Michelle Zauner. Fine. Learnt a lot about Korean food. ★★★☆☆
• What I talk about when I talk about running - Haruki Murakami. A pleasant and easy before bed read. A different way of thinking about running. ★★★★☆
• Yellowface - R F Kuang. Great holiday read. A bit too inside baseball sometimes (main protag is a novelist sooo….) ★★★★☆
• Pirenesi - Susanna Clarke. Tore through this over chirstmas. I did have to google if it was important to remember all of the stuff about all of the rooms, but it wasn’t. ★★★★★

Audio Books:

Fiction:

• One of us - Elizabeth Day. I really enjoyed the previous in this series - The Party. This was a bit less compelling, but it did get me through a lot of painting my office. ★★★☆☆
• Caledonian Road - Andrew O’Hagan. Shovelled a lot of topsoil to this. Fine. ★★★☆☆
• Fly wild swans: My mother, myself and China - Jung Chang. Not as good as the original but still a great listen ★★★★☆
• Really Good, Actually - Moira Helsey. I can’t remember this. ★★☆☆☆
• The First Bad Man - Miranda July. Grim, couldn’t finish it. ☆☆☆☆☆
• Paradise City - Elizabeth Day. Bit boring. ★★☆☆☆
• All Fours - Miranda July. This Miranda July is why I bought the other Miranda July. This was weird and interesting and a bit gross but mostly good. ★★★★☆
• Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut. Fantastic. Loved it.
• Soldier Sailor - Clare Kilroy. A painful beautiful story about motherhood. Loved it. ★★★★☆

Non-Fiction

• Careless people - Sarah Wynn Williams. An exposé on Facebook. Terrifying but also at times quite annoying. ★★★★☆
• The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge. Lots of things I’m still thinking about. ★★★★☆
• The five dysfunctions of a team - Patrick Lencioni. Good, easy to read. Useful ideas. ★★★★☆
• Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows. I cannot remember this at all although my Audible says I’ve read it… … ?????
• Some kids I taught and what they taught me - Kate Clanchy. I liked the central thesis of the book (send your kids to public school) but the writing is (as has been discussed) at times problematic. ★★★☆☆

Other Events

Class Divide

At the end of last year I said some things about Class Divide, and the work I’d been doing with them. In March I gave a speech at a council meeting in support of the changes. It was extremely nerve-wracking, which is strange because I’ve spoken for longer about more complicated things in front of more people but this… this was a whole different thing.

The changes were voted through by a massive majority. The changes were then challenged very thoroughly by the local parents, and in September those challenges were forensically debunked by the adjudicator.

In the meantime I’ve been doing bits where I can for Class Divide, mostly around getting better transport links for children to whichever schools they end up at.

As a leaving gift I asked my colleagues to send some money over to the Crew Club, a youth club doing amazing work, in Whitehawk. They raised a frankly astonishing £800ish quid, which the FT then matched up to £500.

France 2025

Per my goals described in my last year round up, I did finally manage to get the family on a boat and into the great nation of France. We went to a eurocamp type place with several very good swimming pools. We had a good time, we will go back. Next time I’d like to plan a bit more before we go?

Running

Partly because I knew I was going to move jobs and I wanted to have the stress-outlet of running, and partly because its very obvi that you should exercise, I did couch to 5k again and was quite enjoying 3 5k runs a week until I realised my hamstring was just always sore and getting worse. So I’ve had to slow down on that while I work out why that is. My chatGPT physio says it’s because my glutes aren’t strong enough. I should probably see a real physio.

Some Pics as Proof of Life

Sorry about the broken toe images.

A Review of My 2025 Goals:

1. Get everybody passports and go to France. Eat a baguette! Enjoy a croissant! ✅
2. Continue with the exercise, following a foot-related pause. ✅
3. Keep driving. - ummmmm I mean, yeah but also not as much as I should have done. ✅

My 2026 aims:

Maybe none? Just the obvious ones. Work, happy family, don’t spontaneously give up on running (again).

The End

Here are the rest of my yearnotes: (2024,2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014).