Tag: life
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Modest 2026 Dreams: my Rangemaster
It has grown bitterly cold in recent days, hovering around freezing both day and night. This short-term shock of extreme cold (by UK standards) and the longer-term chill of economic precariousness have brought the true meaning of “wealth” into sharp focus. It isn’t yachts, private jets, or fleets of luxury cars. Those baubles accumulate in…
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Mastering Shoe Storage: My Personal Journey
I love my shoe room, although it’s been in a fairly dysfunctional state for a while. Some shoes are on display, some boxes have pictures, but around 80 pairs are boxed without any indication of what’s inside. Many of the shoes aren’t in their original boxes, which makes it practically impossible to find a large…
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Mastering Life Organization: A Guide to Freedom
No offence intended, but I believe many adults are still amateurs at life. For many, life is a visible hot mess—chaotic, disorganised, and constantly in flux. And to be fair, there are good reasons for this. Work consumes our time and often feels like an abusive relationship. We’re pulled in all directions by partners, family,…
Dr Martin James 