I’m writing this on the plane on the wayo Vancouver after spending a wonderful 4 days in Edmonton spending time with family, some of whom I haven’t seen in 10 years.

The flight from Manchester was long. 18 hours travelling and back through various time zones does take it out of you so I pretty much went straight to bed when I arrived at my aunts. I did watch some good films on the plane and my new iPad mini is a fantastic travelling companion.

Edmonton is a city in the state of Alberta. I didn’t see much of the city itself other than through a car window, as I was ferried about trying to make sure I saw all my cousins who are spread across if.

I’ve got 2 aunts and uncles and 4 cousins in total. But there’s now the addition of partners, 4 children (with one on the way), 4...

I’m going on holiday this week, to Canada 🇨🇦. I’m hoping that I will make use of this digital space to record my trip properly, and actually blog something other than sharing what I’m listening to or my inane thoughts. To begin, let’s chat about why I’m going, how I’m travelling, and what my overall plan is.

The Why

It will be 10 years since I last visited Canada. I have family over there and, as my nan has been nearing the end of her life (she’s 95 this year!), my aunts have been making the trip over here each year. My last trip was in 2015 alongside my brother. It was a fantastic trip, and we visited Vancouver and Toronto as well as my family in Edmonton. This time I’m doing practically the same trip, with a couple of changes and an extension to the city of Kingston,...

To paraphrase the song Hurt (the Johnny Cash version)

What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know runs 5km
In the end

One of my goals this year was to run a 5km, something I don’t think I’ve done since I was a teenager. This morning I did my third! I can’t believe doing a parkrun at the time I used to get in from a Friday night session is who I’ve become. But park runs are… good? A few hundred people having a collective jog in the morning sun is… nice? Communal exercise, on public land, feels… right?

I’m not fast, as you can see below.

• 24/05: 34:27
• 26/07: 32:29 PB
• 09/08: 33:00

Average: 33:19

But since I’ve already achieved my goal of running just one 5k, I can set the next goal of finishing one under 30mins.

There’s around 3 minutes to shave off, and 5 months of the year remaining....

A run down of everything I’ve consumed this month, and I have certainly had my fill this month. July… just… disappeared? What happened? Where did it go? What did I do? I guess we’ll find out.

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.

Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England - via Robin Allender

Email is a peculiar thing.

If you’re a millennial like me, you remember the hotmail email we got in our teens (sk8rboi13 or the equivalent). From hotmail, I had an AOL account. From AOL I, like almost everyone on earth, got a Gmail account. And that’s been it for the last decade or so.

And for that decade, Gmail did the job. It handled everything. From newsletters, government logins, gig tickets, junk, and friends, it all went to one address. But like most “free” things on the internet, it came at the cost of becoming bloated, getting worse, and being part of a global mega-corp. I’ve been thinking a lot more about my online life/presence and decided I needed to reclaim control and make it more manageable and importantly, personal.

I’ve had my own website for a while and it seemed a no-brainer to have a custom email linked that can last...

In Sheffield some random homemade stickers were, well, stuck around the town declaring:

Come to Weston Park bandstand on Friday 25th of July at 2:45pm to see two people attempt to eat a whole pack of dry/salted rice cakes each in under 30 minutes.

Sean Morley wrote in Now Then Mag that:

The rice cake eating event is the true face of northern performance art. A radical vision of recession entertainment, it’s literally only advertised to pedestrians, a comment on consumerism and the advertisement culture projecting corporate interests onto every empty space in the city environment. You can project anything you like onto the rice cake eating event. It’s the tabula rasa for a fevered mind. It is both seed and soil. It is rich with nothing.

Well Friday 25th of July happened, and while I wasn’t in Sheffield to see it, it has now been documented for all. It’s wonderfully silly and...

Finished reading 2025: Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1) by John le Carré 📚

Just finished Call for the Dead by John le Carré. Really enjoyed it. It’s exactly my sort of thing: pre-internet England, spies and spycraft, the dull administration and obsessive attention to detail, rather than the sexed-up James Bond version (though I enjoy that too).

I wanted to be a spy when I was a kid. Not sure I would now, but there’s a certain romanticism to it in these books. Late nights, pubs, members’ clubs, codes and procedures. Maybe what I really want is the life of a well-connected Oxbridge graduate with quiet access to secrets. I dreamt of being important, having some kind of hidden status, of knowing things others didn’t. Probably not an uncommon fantasy. I look forward to making my way through the rest of the series.

A run down of everything I’ve consumed this month, and I have certainly had my fill this month. Glastonbury being the highlight of course. I’m sorry but this is a Glasto fan account.

Glastonbury - you’re hard work but you never disappoint.

My 6th time at the greatest place on earth, and the reason to have hope in humanity. I went with a fantastic group of friends who I love and who love music and dancing and wringing every last drop of life out of the 5 days we’re allowed to be free.

The following are all quotes overheard somewhere in a field in Somerset…

The safest way is the tit. Oh no, my water baby. I’ll conform! I’ll take a brown one. Water is wet. I’ve got sympathetic accent syndrome. It’s my job to take the drugs; it’s his job to know where they are. I hope it’s a banana. I’ve just noticed his nipples. My jaw’s going but my eyes haven’t followed. I was doing every single guitar riff with my mouth. I’ve lost my shoe. I thought you asked me if I’d...