Tag: mental-health
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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: 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…
Dr Martin James 