Our children grew up in Friary Park. It’s a five minute walk from our home, and it was always our happy place for swings, slides and running around, but when new owners took over the café and introduced shakshuka, hummus and vaguely kosher sausages, it replaced our kitchen as well as our garden in the family ecosystem. We enjoyed years of brunches and kickabouts, a brief and deeply underwhelming geo-caching period, and all our children learned to ride their bikes in lovely Friary Park.

A few years ago while walking Ziggy in the park, it occurred to me that we hadn’t taken any of our children there for quite some time…

This is the story of one man and his dog. It’s not a story that I ever expected to tell, because I’ve never been a doggy kind of guy. Far from it, I come from a long line of dog haters and from an early age my parents instilled in me a strong suspicion of dogs, and their owners. ..

I am a runner. No, scratch that — I am a running bore.

I run four or five times most weeks. I think about running more than any well adjusted human really ought to. There is no new piece of running tech that does not get me slavering at the prospect of “marginal gains”. And when I see someone else out running, I feel a pang of jealousy. Every single time. Even if I’ve just been for a run.

Ridiculous…

20 years ago today, Lois and I eloped. We ran away to Bath and got married in secret…

Lois and I got married 20 years ago today, on 30th December 2001.

My part in the story began with other people’s weddings. Every Sunday, another evening of canapés, sweaty dancing and ‘please God by you’s. It all got a bit much. Not yours, obviously — yours was very special. But by the summer of ’99, as one by one my coupled friends cast their lot together in holy (and generally kosher) matrimony, I concluded that it was time for a change of scenery. ..

The first post…

Covid 19, first hit the scene, towards the end of Jan.

It seemed remote, it was, to quote, “a problem in Wuhan”.

Now two months on, this thing has gone, from something niche to mass.

Although it’s spread, just keep your head. Whisper,

“this too shall pass”.

So, with a long holiday break and nowhere to go, as a man with too much time on my hands and a tenuous grasp of video editing, I’ve put together a short ode to 2020, and to all the things we’ve missed this year. With the vaccination programme ramping up, I can’t wait to get back what we lost, hopefully in ’21.

Orli (my 15 year old daughter) narrates, and makes the words her own…

15th January 1983. 40 years ago today. Phil Collins topped the charts. It was a day of peak Thatcher and ZX Spectrum.

It was also the day of my bar mitzvah.

I’m not sure how much of my recollection comes from memory, and how much comes from the shaky video my parents commissioned, and which I haven’t watched since Betamax died (yes folks, we were that format-impaired family). But I remember so clearly being a shy prepubescent kid, waiting with a mixture of excitement and terror for it all to happen…

Watching Quiz this week (it’s brilliant, do give it a watch if you haven’t already) got Lois and me reminiscing about our very own experience on Who Wants to be a Millionaire just a few months after the Major Ingram coughing incident.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

There’s a street in Glasgow called Otterburn Drive. It’s a road lined with big old sandstone houses built at the start of the last century in the posh bit of Giffnock, a suburb in the south side of the city. The house at number 3 Otterburn Drive has a special place in my family mythology…

The photo below is of a beautiful alcove on the island of Korcula in Croatia. This particular beach holds a special memory for me, because this time last week, I almost drowned in that water…

Lockdown, baby.

So this is how I've amused myself this weekend. Apologies for inflicting my "limited" vocals on you. With gratitude to Ray Davies, and everyone else whose copyright material I have paid tribute to.

Happy Easter, one and all.

This is the tale of a race with no finish line.

Ten years ago, my good pal Greg Swimer came to me with a vision – that we would build a very special 10k race. It was an idea that brought together key themes of our lives – the two of us were both running obsessives, sharing a bit of friendly racing rivalry to spur us on through the years, and each of us is a man who likes a project. Greg’s idea had a lovely twist – the race participants would select a neighbourhood to run for – N2 for East Finchley and N10 for Muswell Hill, introducing that same friendly rivalry on an inter-postcode basis. And so, Race the Neighbours was born…

In June 1998, I joined the army. The Tartan Army. For 2 surreal days, I was one of many thousands of Scotland fans in Bordeaux to march, sing and support our team in the 1998 France World Cup…

It was a beautiful Autumn morning in Hampstead last Friday. I stopped in the car park on the Heath, and as I walked a little way along the path towards Hampstead Village, I couldn’t help but smile as I enjoyed a brief respite from work, the bright sun shining down on me and my feelgood moment.

When I reached the Royal Free, I climbed the stairs to the main entrance, donned my mask, and entered the hospital, navigating through the corridors until I found the usual clinic. A few minutes later, I was back in a hospital gown, ready for my annual skin cancer check. ..

Music matters. This I learned a long time ago.

I received my first forceful lesson in 1983, with the mysterious disappearance of Africa. My Toto record, that is, rather than the continent. ..

We’re coming to the end of our son Avi’s bar mitzvah weekend. It’s an event that we faced with a certain amount of trepidation. Robbed of the ability to watch Avi sing his portion from the torah in synagogue, surrounded by family and friends, and unable to gather together afterwards in a confined space for an evening of sweaty dancing, emotional speeches and canapes, how could it possibly be the same?

The first time I met my future father-in-law, my face was painted blue.

Living the impoverished backpacker life, I was prepared to endure any manner of humiliation (technically known as promotional work) to earn a few dollars. This particular assignment involved raising awareness amongst the good people of Sydney of a new recruitment website, through the medium of my shiny blue face…

This is a photo of my Grandpa Harold, along with his father and two of his brothers.

Our mum’s dad, by the time I knew him, he was a jovial older fellow (in fact, probably around my age – yikes). We bonded over computers and video games (he was ahead of his time on that front, I inherited many of my geekier tendencies from him). And we bonded over his storytelling – he loved to regale all his grandchildren with tales of his extraordinary experiences when he was younger.

Our Grandpa Harold had stories of adventure, of far away lands, straight out of a Boys Own annual, because Harold was a Desert Rat…

Written on 27th May 2020 at the height of the Dominic Cummings scandal

Two men who fed us snappy lines,

To hide the complicated.

“Take back control”, “get Brexit done”,

We swallowed whole, elated.

Odd couple in the thick of it,

A Downing Street sitcom,

PM dependent on his key adviser.

Classic Dom.