bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • Did blogs ruin the web? Or did the web ruin blogs?
    Here are three essays that make very different arguments but are worth reading, and (I think) worth reading together.
    Introspective time for bloggers.

  • Why Women’s Friendships Are So Complicated
    When Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, was in grade school, one of her best friends abruptly stopped talking to her.
    Genuinely offered without comment. Because I … just can’t.

  • HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT IN 4 EASY STEPS
    I’ve spent the past year losing 80 lbs and getting in shape. A lot of people have been asking me how I did it; specifics like what diet I was on, how many times a week I worked out, etc etc.
    Subtitle: Not what you think from the title. If you are in any way looking to get in shape, give it a read.

  • It’s Time to Admit You Love Muse
    Muse is one of the biggest bands in the world today. They’re also kind of a joke. A light joke. A ribbing. For a long time, I identified firmly as a Muse fan, then allowed myself to shed that label and to fade, but I was only kidding myself.
    Fuck yeah Muse!!

  • Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
    In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station.
    1984.

  • You Feel Like Shit Because You’re Drinking Your Morning Coffee Too Early
    I spend every workday bouncing between feeling like I just shotgunned a gallon of crack water and feeling like I need a month-long hibernation period (normally only about an hour apart).
    Important information! Coffee is life.

  • Doctors Diagnose The Injuries In Home Alone
    Doctors explain every way Harry and Marv would have died in Home Alone.
    Brilliant! One of my favourite movies ever.

  • More Recycling Won’t Solve Plastic Pollution
    The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all do more to reduce our plastic footprint.
    BIGGER action needed. Government level action.

  • Stanley Kubrick’s Annotated Copy of Stephen King’s The Shining
    The web site Overlook Hotel has posted pictures of Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel The Shining, which is normally kept at the Stanley Kubrick Archive, but has been making the rounds in a traveling exhibition.
    Peeking behind the curtain is always fun.

  • Use of ‘smart drugs’ on the rise
    The use of drugs by people hoping to boost mental performance is rising worldwide, finds the largest ever study of the trend. In a survey of tens of thousands of people, 14% reported using stimulants at least once in the preceding 12 months in 2017, up from 5% in 2015.
    Hmmm yes. On the rise. So much I’ve not even heard of any of these. Am I in the wrong circle of people AGAIN? Sheesh.

  • Why Does Every Soccer Player Do This?
    Goals in soccer games can be few and far between, which helps explain the delirious nature of most scoring celebrations. Some players yank off their jerseys or drop to their knees and glide across the turf in glee. They all often end up at the bottom of a pile of jubilant teammates.
    But what does it say about the players that don’t do this?

  • Nearly 400 years later, the fork remains at the center of American dining controversy
    When the fork was first introduced to the dining table in the US, it caused controversy. Fast forward nearly four centuries later, and the small-pronged utensil still causes international arguments over dining etiquette.
    Wonderful. Silly Americans.

  • Unicorn Hunting as a Widely Recognized Thing
    Wish we could find someone near [town], NV, there must be a lady out there somewhere that is looking for a loving couple. I see all the other comments from other couples looking for the same situation let me tell you there is probably more chance of you winning the lottery.
    Poly article: doesn’t cover being ‘unicorned’ too much but be alert! (our country needs lerts, hahaha!)

  • “Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language
    There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible to fully translate. Yiddish has the word shlimazl, which basically means a perpetually unlucky person. German has the word Backpfeifengesicht, which roughly means a face that is badly in need of a fist.
    Have I linked to this before? I think I have but it’s deep in the pile of articles… hey is there a word for that?

  • On Semicolons and the Rules of Writing
    Kurt Vonnegut’s caution against the use of semicolons is one of the most famous and canonical pieces of writing advice, an admonition that has become, so to speak, one of The Rules. More on these rules later, but first the infamous quote in question…
    I am fond of the semicolon. But I won’t use one here.

  • Inside the Radical, Uncomfortable Movement to Reform White Supremacists
    One of Shane Johnson’s pals pushed through the front door of his trailer and announced that “a bunch of black guys” had just “said some shit to him.”
    Knowing these people exist is one thing, reading about them another.

  • ‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice
    “Almost all of them raised their hand and got dreamy looks in their eyes,” she told me. They talked about it “like a tidal wave would sweep over them,” he said. Sploosh. Huzzah! It’s accounting! Would they have unlimited motivation for their passion? They nodded solemnly.
    Personal take: those who follow their passion can afford to take that risk. Which means it’s about money (on some level) and emotional ability (on another).

  • A Complete Guide to Getting What You Want
    Note to reader: This is a long post – 2200 words – so bookmark it if you need to, but I think you’ll find it a worthwhile read if you apply this strategy even a single time. It’s not always polite to say it so plainly, but we all want things.
    All. Of. This.

  • The Intersection of Language, Gender, and American Politics
    What happens when the dominant, privileged voice excludes women, LGTBQ people, people with disabilities, people of color, and immigrants? It would be difficult to miss the fight over these issues currently taking place on the national political stage.
    Language is always important.

bookmark_borderWeekender

As previously mentioned, one of my first vinyl LP experiences was the Queen album Jazz and though it wasn’t my first brush with the band it remains in my memory as the gateway to 30+ years of enjoying their music. Sure, it was probably the original Greatest Hits album that I heard first but as good as all those tracks are, it was Jazz that made me realise there was a lot more to this band.

I can remember where I was when Freddie died – in the car on the way to Hospital Radio Lennox – I can remember how it impacted me and how shocking it was. By then I owned all of their albums, and VHS tapes of every documentary and live show that had been released but the realisation that I’d never see them live weighed heavy. I mean, c’mon, YOU saw them at Live Aid, you saw him rise to the occasion and own the day, right?

With that in mind, it’s fair to say that I approached Friday evening with some trepidation. Yes, it was ACTUAL Brian May and Roger Taylor but was it still Queen?

First up, hats off to Adam Lambert. I have avoided Queen ‘live’ for many years now and whilst he is no Freddie, he is quick to acknowledge that and he has a fair old set of lungs on him as well (and is arguably more camp?!). It can’t be easy singing those songs night after night knowing that everyone is still thinking of Freddie so more power to him.

And those songs! They are so deeply ingrained in my memory I kept getting caught out when Adam didn’t match how Freddie sang them but ultimately, standing in the middle of Glasgow on a sunny evening with tens of thousands of other people belting out Somebody to Love brought me to joyful happy tears. Add in some ridiculous guitar solos, many many singalongs and as the closing gong from Bohemian Rhapsody rang out I headed off with a smile on my face.

All in Friday was a fun evening, Texas did their thing, I caught some of Gun’s set, and The Darkness were ridiculously rawk as always.

Saturday was my first Euro2018 Volunteer Training Day. I’ll be driving select individuals to their venues so it was mostly about routes and tracking software and the like. There was also the chance to drive the routes (which I knew most of anyway as I live here) and we even managed a sneaky visit to the Accreditation Centre and picked up our uniforms for the Games! It’s not as big a deal as the Commonwealth Games (which are the second largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics don’t ya know, and no the football World Cup isn’t even close) but I’m looking forward to being part of it for a couple of weeks.

Sunday and I headed back to TRNSMT. As I was there earlier it was a better chance to wander around, it’s a little smaller in terms of performance areas but as you can walk across the entire site in about 10mins I was baulking a little bit at some of the younger attendees claiming this was their first festival! Aye, go to the wettest Glastonbury, spend 2 hours slogging through mud to get from one side of the site to the other and THEN we can talk!

Friendly Fires were first up and played both tracks I know and were a pretty good mid-afternoon kinda band. Then it was time for two local bands, Franz Ferdinand were up first and are now definitely on the list of bands to see when they next tour; good tunes, good stage presence, and a good live act all round. Chvrches were next and to quote someone I overheard ‘for a wee lassie she’s got a fair set of lungs on her!’. Indeed, a great voice and some great tunes that had the crowd dancing.

And then it was time for The Killers and what a show they put on. I’m not a big fan so a couple of tracks weren’t that familiar but there is no doubting Brandon Flowers has stage presence and knows exactly how to manipulate a crowd, what a showman! Needless to say the biggest hits got the big cheers, add to that a cover of The Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys, an acoustic cover of Side by Travis (playing to the Scottish audience much?!), a guy called Tony getting called up on stage to drum for one of the songs and, from the opening ‘Hello Weegies’ welcome to the final hurrah of Mr. Brightside they kept everyone bouncing.

I’ll definitely keep an eye out for next years acts, the benefit of a city centre festival is getting home to your own bed each night, and whilst there was the usual share of drunken Glasgow bampots, I didn’t see any trouble at all as everyone was in such a good mood we were just laughing things off.

Needless to say I was pretty bust on Monday though but it does mean that I’m already on the countdown for Glastonbury tickets for next year, the festival buzz is back with a vengeance!

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • Knitting at the end of the world
    I love this picture of actor Nicholas Hoult knitting on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road.
    As do I. Contrasts are always interesting.

  • Trent Reznor Thinks Artists Should Speak Out
    “Bad Witch,” your ninth studio album with Nine Inch Nails, is the final record of a politically-minded trilogy you began in 2016.
    If you have a platform you must use it, now more than ever.

  • Now is the envy of the dead
    Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away, and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well, and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.
    Trite? Possibly. But live in the now is something I’ve been trying to do more and more. There is nothing else.

  • Tessa Thompson models the season’s statement pieces in #PorterEdit
    Tessa Thompson’s nails are not her own. They belong to Bianca, her singer-songwriter alter-ego in the film Creed II, she explains, as she waggles the extravagant, pink-polished talons at me from across the table. She wrapped filming on the follow-up to 2015’s Creed yesterday, in Philadelphia.
    What a crap title for a great article with a quietly powerful person.

  • Is eating natural food the same as eating what’s healthy?
    What is a ‘natural’ food product? One common suggestion is that ‘natural’ things are not made of chemicals. But the whole biological world is chemicals! Another suggestion: natural products are not genetically modified (that is, a GMO). Alas, that won’t work either.
    Ahhhh food science. The cycle continues. Next up, use more salt, it’s actually good for you!!

  • Science Says That Redheads Are Super Resilient People!
    Redheads are generally maligned by society writ large.  Even though many of the biggest household names out there have red hair, including Prince Harry, Ed Sheeran, and Jessica Chastain, a great amount of conversation does revolve around their hair color.
    I will make a point of asking some of the redheads I know. Some of them are even natural redheads…

  • ‘Taps aff’: the native Glaswegians’ response to a heatwave
    A distinctive temperature scale seems to have evolved in Glasgow caused by recent extreme UK weather patterns. In other parts of Britain abnormally high temperatures such as those recorded over the last week or so are referred as a heatwave. In Glasgow we now call this “taps aff” weather.
    One for non-Glasgwegian readers (also, fellow Weegies, read for that last wonderful pun!)

  • Being Non-Binary in a Language Without Gendered Pronouns – Estonian
    To put it simply, choosing the right pronoun is a big deal. Half of millennials in the United States think that gender isn’t limited to male and female, and in the U.S., Facebook offers 56 custom options to select for gender.
    Ouch. I struggle with English at the best of times and it’s a very flexible language.

  • Not So Simple Living
    I’ve got to level with you. This simple living thing isn’t always so simple.
    I’m not quite at this level of simple living (if that’s what we are calling it today) but even getting to where I am was hard.

  • Your Morning Cup of Coffee Is in Danger. Can the Industry Adapt in Time?
    Howard Schultz wants to know if I drink coffee. The Starbucks boss is sitting on a balcony overlooking the company’s leafy farm in the Costa Rican province of Alajuela, where I’m told the coffee–harvested and roasted on-site–is a must-try.
    OMFG STOP THE PRESS!!

  • A Summer Reading List of Contemporary Books by Women

    No comment needed. I’ve added to my list (I’m currently about 20+ books away from even getting to the START of the list so Summer 2020?)

  • Should you shield yourself from others’ abhorrent beliefs?
    Many of our choices have the potential to change how we think about the world. Often the choices taken are for some kind of betterment: to teach us something, to increase understanding or to improve ways of thinking.
    My take: yes and no. I don’t need to know details of others beliefs but I do need to know OF them.

  • Why We Need to Stop Calling Women Crazy
    In Heart Berries, author Terese Marie Mailhot’s unravelling is rooted in a look. The moment happens not long after Mailhot orders breakfast while out with her boyfriend, Casey. When the food arrives, she discovers that the server has forgotten the toast.
    This ties in with my recent watching of Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (more on that when I figure out how to write it).

  • And How to Stop Right Away
    “Expectancy” is your belief in the outcome of the task you’re avoiding. Expectancy can be either too high (overconfidence) or too low. It looks like you have low expectancy for this task. Maybe you’re discouraged because it didn’t go well in the past.
    The URL helps explain a little. But this is a ‘tool’ to help you stop procrastinating. Posting for a friend, obvs.

  • Astronomers captured the first image of a baby planet
    Thanks to European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, a group of astronomers have taken the first photograph of a planet being formed around a young dwarf star called PDS 70. The planet has been named PDS 70b.
    Awwww loookit, look at the ickle wickle planety… awwwww

  • The Nutella Billionaires: Inside The Secretive Ferrero Family

    Go on, grab a tub of Nutella, a box of Ferrero Rocher, dunk away and read this.

  • ‘It’s nothing like a broken leg’: why I’m done with the mental health conversation
    I am bleeding from the wrists in a toilet cubicle of the building I have therapy in, with my junior doctor psychiatrist peering over the top of the door, her lanyards clanking against the lock. Her shift finished half an hour earlier.
    Linked via many people. This is a hard but compelling read. Mental health is a motherfucker but we have to keep talking about it.

  • Sustainable Fashion: small change = big difference
    Sustainability is such a huge topic that it can be hard to work out what you can possibly do that will make a difference. It’s easy to become disheartened but, as Christopher Raeburn said at the BFC’s London Craft Week event, “We’re all part of the problem and part of the solution.”
    I am not fashionable but sustainability is definitely something I need to be better at.

  • Afternoon tea with Sir James Dyson
    It is rare but refreshing when a technology CEO can explain how their product actually works. Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder, was great at this — the pitchman who could explain deeply why a new device was special; the specific engineering or design trick that made it work like magic.
    Tech wise I like Dyson. Non-tech wise, he’s a bit of a douchebag, no?

  • Homelessness needs a radical solution. This Scottish village may have the answer
    Later this month, 20 homeless people will take up yearlong tenancies in a specially-designed community called The Village.
    Proud to be Scottish (and to have donated a little towards this effort). SO much more needed.

  • Academics Gathered to Share Emoji Research
    Two years ago, Sanjaya Wijeratne—a computer science PhD student at Wright State University—noticed something odd in his research. He was studying the communication of gang members on Twitter.
    [insert *shrugs* emoji here]

  • A Little Chaos with Your Coffee?
    Any serious coffee drinker can offer abundant anecdotal proof of the power of caffeine to boost our information processing abilities.
    Warning: You’ll need to have coffee before reading this. I’m still not quite sure whether I add the chaos before or after the milk…

  • This adopted woman scoured the country for the sister she never met — only to discover she literally lived next door
    Hillary Harris was adopted as an infant. She searched for her birth family as an adult, and after many years, her search was incomplete. She knew she had a half sister, and she knew the sister’s name from her adoption file, but she couldn’t find her.
    No way! Way! etc. Kinda lovely.

  • How Do You Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich? Twitter Has Opinions
    This simple sandwich just got divisive as heck
    First things first, do you add butter/margarine as well…. or is that just me?

  • Maybe We’re All Just Searching For Our Yellow Paint
    I once read somewhere that Van Gogh used to swallow yellow paint because he thought it would bring him happiness. He thought that swallowing something the color of the bright, shining sun would him feel brighter, his disposition shining. But it poisoned him, the toxins flowing through his blood.
    GAH! Baader-Meinhof strikes again. Read this the day before watching Hannah Gadsby… brain melt.

  • Private Telegram, Public Strife
    Telegram, a messaging app with more than 200 million users, is a company known for its rakish independence. Pavel Durov, who created the app with his brother, Nikolai, is a 33-year old from St. Petersburg, Russia, with a taste for dark suits and tax-free municipalities.
    I have Telegram but without more friends using it I’m kinda stuck with WhatsApp/Messenger.

  • Sublime colours brought back from oblivion – the exquisite effects of natural dyes
    This striking and almost entirely wordless video from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London beautifully conveys the work of Sachio Yoshioka, the fifth-generation owner of the Somenotsukasa Yoshioka dye workshop in Fushimi, southern Kyoto.
    Striking is the word.

  • Francine Prose: It’s Harder Than It Looks to Write Clearly
    If we are hoping to communicate something—anything—nothing is more important than clarity. The dangers of not being clear are obvious.
    Yes yes, I know this blog is evidence of this on a grand and long-running scale!!

  • “I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets
    “For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it,” Tim Berners-Lee told me one morning in downtown Washington, D.C., about a half-mile from the White House.
    But he has a plan to fix it.

  • Can the A.C.L.U. Become the N.R.A. for the Left?
    On the morning of Friday, June 22, the American Civil Liberties Union won a major Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. United States, which was possibly, at least in terms of pure jurisprudence, the most important case argued before the court this past session.
    Doesn’t affect the UK. Right? Wrong. We will follow these trends, so the ACLU is more and more vital.

  • Google Takes Sides in the Scooter Wars
    Silicon Valley investors are somewhat divided over the viability of electric-scooter companies, two of which have now ballooned to billion-dollar valuations overnight. “I want no part in it,” one investor told me last month.
    Not yet spotted in the wilds of Glasgow, but they are appearing in London. One of my favourite muppets too.

  • The Rise And Fall Of CrossFit’s Science Crusader
    As the camera rolled, Russell Berger paced back and forth before a whiteboard in a dark gym. The CrossFit spokesperson talked in somber tones, wearing a shirt with the company’s logo over a pair of crossbones. CrossFit was under siege, he said.
    Definitely one of these expected surprise kinda things. ANYTHING that becomes a religion will have a darker side IMHO.

  • The best Mario Kart character according to data science
    Mario Kart was a staple of my childhood — my friends and I would spend hours after school as Mario, Luigi, and other characters from the Nintendo universe racing around cartoonish tracks and lobbing pixelated bananas at each other.
    I played my first game of Mario Kart a few weekends ago. I won. I’ve now retired. But this might be useful to you lesser players.

  • The Morpheus Hotel by Zaha Hadid Architects: The World’s First High Rise Exoskeleton
    Zaha Hadid Architects has a way of designing buildings so intricate and complex that the photographs look like renderings rather than completed architecture. Their latest unveiling is Morpheus, the flagship hotel for the City of Dreams resort in Macau.
    SUCH a talent, and good to see her work continuing. STUNNING building.

  • Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams to Augment Human Creativity
    Sleep is a forgotten country of the mind: A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a third of our lives are spent asleep.
    Yes. Because we need MORE tech…

  • ‘Everyone is breaking the law right now’: GDPR compliance efforts are falling short
    The arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation a month ago led to a flurry of activity, clogging email inboxes and flooding people with tracking consent notices. But experts say much of that activity was for show because much of it fails to render companies compliant with GDPR.
    File under: No Shit sherlock.

  • The People Are the Problem
    Drew Magary on how, at a rally in Duluth last week, Trump’s supporters showed that even in the midst of historical atrocities at the border, the president is still their guy.
    Yes. A Trump article, but it isn’t about Trump. Those ‘people’ are everywhere.

  • How To Grow Old
    “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.”
    A quote worth living.

  • The heart-wrenching stories behind immigrants’ sand sculptures on London streets
    Sand Men is a distinctly different take on the artisan short-documentary genre. It follows Raj, Neculai and Aurel as they practise an unusual craft that has been passed around the Romanian immigrant community in London.
    A friend was asking why they were always dogs. Sad.

  • Summer of Rage
    It shouldn’t have been such a shock. After all, many of those most painfully poleaxed by the news of Anthony Kennedy’s retirement on Wednesday were the same ones who’d always understood the stakes; we knew that this was the risk, we’ve been scared for a long time.
    Once again, what happens in the US will filter across the Atlantic. The rage is building.

  • Trump ‘angry baby’ blimp gets green light to fly over London during president’s visit
    London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Greater London Authority has approved a request for the flight after thousands signed a petition and a crowdfunding campaign raised more than £16,000 to get the six-metre inflatable off the ground.
    A fun story. But I’m more bothered that he is being allowed to visit at all.

bookmark_borderWeekender

Years ago I used to write up posts that recapped my “fascinating” weekend (that’s some ironic quote marks, just to be clear. I used the same title for these – Weekender – and all of them were written in a vague, pseudo diary style which I think fitted the purpose for which I wrote them; I have a crap memory so even now looking back at the last time I published a post titled Weekender I can recall exactly which weekend that was (4 years ago, time flies like a banana and all that) and exactly what happened.

When I sat down to write up my London weekend it felt very much like that, a post for me to remember what had happened and, after another busy, fun filled weekend, I find myself sitting down to write another.

Friday night found me wandering to the Hydro to see Roger Waters do his thing. A friend who works in the industry said he’d heard it was an amazing visual show and the first half proved that completely and utterly wrong. We were sitting up in the bleachers, off to one side and all I could see was the band and a massive screen behind them (admittedly a very high def screen) but… big whoop.

But the second half completely blew my mind. It kicked off with a large long truss that extend out the length of the audience (from stage to the back of the ‘standing’ section for those familiar with the Hydro), dropping down and down and down until it was all of 3 or 4 metres above the heads of the people below. It then unveiled itself to be a series of screens… and sitting side on we had a perfect view. That was pretty WOW but towards the end of the show (and it is a show) the REAL WOW happened.

The Hydro is a large space so the resulting laser prism must’ve been 60 metres on each edge. It then filled with rainbows before the final light beams emerged. A real life rendering of the cover of Dark Side of the Moon, it was stunning in both scale and beauty. Ohhh and the music was pretty fuckin good too!

There was a lot of political and anti-globalisation messaging in his show as well. He is not shy of voicing his opinion and has the same liberal leanings as many, and there was something gloriously uplifting about seeing the words TRUMP IS A PIG across that giant screen, countered by horrific images of war and genocide that had me in tears. I hadn’t expected such a range of emotions and it took me most of my walk home to unpack them.

Saturday, after the usual gym session and a quiet chilled out afternoon, and I was heading to a friends house to drive out to Whitecraigs Rugby Club. Why? To do a firewalk of course!

Firstly, to everyone who sponsored me, thank you. You helped raise over £9,000 which, after Gift Aid, will end up more than £10,000. That money will go to some uplifting experiences for some children who could well do with some cheer in their lives. My friend, who also did the firewalk, is one of the organisers and trust me, she will make sure every penny is well spent on giving the kids a great time.

Anyway, the firewalk was a great experience although I should, at this point, confirm that I have some blisters; about 4 in total, all small and not sore at all after the initial ‘stingy’ feeling faded. Ohhh and I have a small bruise on my neck but that was from something else entirely.

Before the firewalk we were prepped with motivational thinking, mind over matter ideas, and of course we snapped an arrow with our neck. Wait, what? Ohhh yeah, not mentioned at all in the build-up, the firewalk instructor (her actual job title!) casually dropped that into her chat. An actual metal tipped arrow using nothing but your neck. Riiigghhhtttt.

You’ll be pleased to hear, dear reader, that I did not end up with an arrow puncturing my throat as said arrow did snap (I still have the pieces!) and after that the firewalk was a doddle! Top tip, walk with both hands held flat and facing upwards out to your sides, like you are balancing two small trays of drinks and you’ll walk ‘lighter’ (try it, it’s true!).

I was a little nervous as we waited in line but before I knew it, my friends had done it and I was up next. A few steps on very hot embers and it was over. The aftermath was a couple of ‘hot’ spots and it really did feel just like walking on very hot paving stones, not comfortable but not unbearable. Go us!!

Sunday was a lazy day, not just because of the highly emotional couple of days previously, but because it marked the end of a two month walking challenge. I managed over one million steps and, frankly, was glad to NOT be counting my steps at all! Instead I headed down to my see my sister, my Mum and Dad, and the cheekiest little niece an Uncle could wish for. She may be in her terrible twos but one smile, or mention of ‘Unkie Gee’ and I’m putty in her hands (and I think she’s starting to realise it!).

It was a wonderful end to a wonderful weekend… and next weekend is shaping up to be just as good!