Garden 2026
Outside of hiring a team of professionals and spending a small fortune, you simply can’t take an average garden and turn it into a mini paradise in a few weeks – or even a few months. In the real world, where you’re chipping away at things around a full-time job, it takes years (and, thankfully,…
Backwater to Tropical Island
My property’s number one eye sore and developmental opportunity upon purchase was the decking area at the back of the house. In my first year of ownership I didn’t get round to it but having cleared higher priorities, I was confident I would get around to it this summer. I always forget “before” pics, so…
Looking Back V: Fifth trip of 2026 – Bilbao and the Basque region
Having not been to mainland Spain for around 30 years, I had mixed feelings about returning. On the one hand, I was curious to see how it had changed. It had been a long time, and I wondered whether my mental picture of the place remained in any way valid. On the other hand, after…
Looking Back IV: Forth trip of 2026 – Malta
I’ve worked for the Maltese government since 2024, so you might assume I’d visited before. I hadn’t – at least not until this year. The irony is that I booked this trip entirely on my own dime after deciding I’d probably never get to Malta through my contractual work. About a month later, I was…
Looking Back III: Third trip of 2026 – Iceland
Iceland gets rave reviews, so I knew I had to see it for myself eventually. As it turns out, every one of those reviews was deserved. This became one of the best trips I’ve ever taken. Nature feels wonderfully raw here. The island’s volcanic and tectonic origins aren’t hidden beneath the landscape—they are the landscape.…
Looking back II: Second trip of 2026 – Kosovo
Tiny Kosovo has played a greater role in history than many in the West can imagine. In 1389 King Lazar of Serbia halted the march of Islam into central Europe on Kosovo’s battlefields. Were it not for this, Western history may have been unimaginably different. More recently, the meltdown of the former Yugoslavia started with…
Looking Back: First trip of 2026 (Sibiu, Romania)
As a full-time academic, I had my busiest semester yet in the first half of 2026: four modules in total, leading three of them and playing a major role in a fourth. In all my years in academia, I’ve never encountered a workload quite like that. I’ve survived — and in fact, I’m proud to…
Brightening things up a bit
Like everything else at my house, the garden is a perpetual work in progress — probably still a few years away from matching the picture in my head. The challenge is that every improvement comes with a trade-off. Prioritise one thing in 2026, and something else slips down the list until 2027. Two steps forward,…
My “OG” house in a wonderfully green estate
I’ve lived in my house in Rugby for a year and a half now, and it’s slightly embarrassing to admit that in all that time I hadn’t properly explored the area on foot. The estate itself has grown in phases over the last twenty years, and my house is one of the “OG” properties, built…
Poland’s National Philharmonic Orchestra
Poland’s premier orchestra is currently touring the UK, and by happy coincidence their schedule aligned perfectly with mine. They opened the tour at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall today with a programme pairing lesser-known Polish works with Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven’s exhilarating Seventh Symphony. It was a pleasure to be back at Symphony Hall…
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Dr Martin James 