3rd January 2026

Didn’t do one last year (after 2023), but Struan’s book list got me to promise him a list of mine (whether he wanted it or not), and so here it is with some other bits and bobs.

Web

Made a few random things this year:

• A sunlight optimism calculator, where it gives you some days to look forward to based on your postcode
• A Bluesky bot posting new additions to Theatricalia (which has added another 3,000 productions over the year)
• An HTML version of a 451-page PDF for secondary school admissions to Birmingham City Council
• A website for doing the Scottish Grand Tour by train
• A tool to find the user of a now-deleted Bluesky post that has been quoted in another post
• A proxy at adlegem.dracos.co.uk to make legislation.gov.uk readable on a phone (though it is not currently working)

Also bought the Doctype book, a great idea, and have already persuaded the kid to type in a few :)

Holidays

• Reading in February, to see Night Watch being performed by Progress Theatre, and the Museum of English Rural Life
• Dumfries in April
• Mechelen in June (after helping run mySociety’s TICTeC conference there)
• The Scottish Grand Tour at the end of July; Glasgow to Glenfinnan to Portree to Inverness to Edinburgh.
• Matlock for a weekend in September

House

Some fences broke in a storm. Or were just old. I can’t remember. But anyway, we got some new ones and put them in and then realised they should probably be painted before we went away to Dumfries, but the shop did not have the exact colour it said it had online, but we found one close enough, but then it turns out you need a lot more paint than you think, but then the shop has no more, so you end up catching the train to Redditch because The Range is open there and has some (and turns out it has lots of your original colour but it is too late now), but paint is heavier than you think, but you make it home and get it all painted (just about) in time.

Books

In no particular order (well, I think library books are first):

• Devil and the dark water, Stuart Turton
• Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
• Wolves of London, Mark Morris
• Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, Heather Fawcett
• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
• Momenticon, Andrew Caldecott
• Katabasis, R F Kuang
• Masquerades of Spring, Ben Aaronovitch
• Starling: a biography, Stephen Moss
• Machine Vendetta, Alastair Reynolds
• Stone and Sky, Ben Aaronovitch
• The River has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar
• Pagans, James Henry
• Godkiller, Hannah Kaner
• The Legacy of Arniston House, T L Huchu
• A Morbid Taste for Bones, Ellis Peters
• One Corpse Too Many, Ellis Peters
• A Palace Near the Wind, Ai Jiang

Of these, I would strongly anti-recommend Katabasis, it was awful.

Books I have yet to read but are in a pile:

• Stars are Legion, Kameron Hurley
• Isle in the silver sea, Tasha Suri
• Simul, Andrew Caldecott
• Absolution, Vandermeer
• Secrets of the First School, T L Huchu
• The Everlasting, Alix E Harrow
• When there are Wolves Again, E J Swift
• Ring The Bells, C K McDonnell (my mum and I went to the book launch for this, was great fun)
• Tales from the Stranger Times, C K McDonnell
• Designing Discworld, Paul Kidby
• Among the Burning Flowers, Samantha Shannon
• Slow Horses, Mick Herron
• This Way Up, Map Men
• Star Trek Warp your own way, Ryan North

Cinema

With the kid, I saw Moana 2, Dogman, and Flow, and then for Flow-related reasons have not watched a film since (never have I known a more inappropriate BBFC rating). Without the kid, I saw:

• Black Bag (Royal, Sutton Coldfield)
• Thunderbolts*
• Jurassic World: Rebirth (Royal)
• Fantastic Four (in the posh Everyman with sofas, see picture)
• Running Man (this was a “secret” film, so unknown until it started, though it was guessable)
• The Choral (Everyman)
• Wake up Dead Man (Royal)

I enjoyed all these as well. We also saw the final Dr Who double bill episode at the Mac.

Theatre

• The Effect, Crescent
• Night Watch, Progress Theatre, Reading
• Jurassic Park, Rep
• Merchant of Venice 1936, Rep
• Make your own myth, Crescent
• Marriage Material, Rep
• Cyrano, RSC (the same day as CBSO Shost 5 but luckily that turned out to be an afternoon concert!)
• Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas, Rep
• Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show, Factory

Again, all good. Sorry for the non-existent reviews, but if I am honest, I think I have SDAM and don’t actually remember much/anything about any of these. But I enjoyed them all.

Music

Orchestra had two very different concerts this year, a film music concert in February and Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto and Sibelius 2 in a very hot July. We also played Reispighi’s Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome at a playday, where I got to play the piano part in the Appian Way Pines.

Choir had a Sublime to the Ridiculous concert (John Rutter’s ‘Birthday Madrigals’, George Shearing’s ‘Music to Hear’ settings of Shakespeare and Richard Rodney Bennett’s ‘Nonsense’, alongside madrigals from the 16th century onwards), Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality and Hurd’s This Day to Man, and the annual Messiah, which was Thomas Trotter’s 40th year of playing continuo with us.

I went to about 14 CBSO concerts, including a couple of Mahler, a couple of big choral (Dream of Gerontius and the Creation), the Qawwali project, Shost 5 (which we are performing this February, come along!), and a lovely Northern Lights Scandinavian-based concert (though as above, I could not remember any of the music from it). It would have been more if I don’t always end up double-booking a couple!

Games

Lego

With Brick Borrow, we borrowed the following this year:

• 41703 Friends Friendship Tree House
• 42663 Friends Friendship Camper Van Adventure
• 21058 Great Pyramid of Giza
• 21060 Himeji Castle
• 42167 Technic Electric Garbage Truck
• 31142 Space Roller Coaster 3in1
• 42179 Technic Earth and Moon in Orbit
• 76439 HP Ollivanders & Madam Malkin’s Robes
• 41730 Friends Autumn’s House

And also got some Hallowe’en Lego (3in1 Haunted Mansion, Halloween Wreath and Halloween Barn), a micro space command centre (to remind me of my childhood monorail which I still have in a box) and WALL-E.

Hope you all have a good 2026. If you’re ever in Birmingham, do say hi!