Vishal's 50th!

On January 25th Eva's father Vish turned 50, so hosted a big celebration at his house which I was lucky enough to be invited to. There was mainly family, but also some friends of his including his best mate who came (if I remember correctly) from Kenya just to celebrate. We all went to a local pizza place which he had rented out, ate lots and drank some more. Pictured below are Eva and myself as well as her little cousin Alyssa. I don't have any actual pictures of Vish from the night but this is what he looks like for reference - Vish is a great father and someone I look up to and admire so it meant a lot to be invited to this celebration.

    

 

Sam's Owl Vomit exhibition

 

My friend Sam is very wildlife driven. He recently attented an owl pellet (vomit) disection course in Shrewsbury - for fun apparently - where he learnt how to disect pellets and use them to identify bones, skulls etc of whatever poor mouse, vole or shrew the owl ate. He also films and edits his own wildlife documentaries, as well as spending most of his life either studying or watching trail camera footage. 

He then brought this knowledge to our college where he offered a free dissection seminar for the Biology society. None of our friends were a part of the society, but we went along anyway to support him and it was actually pretty interesting and dare I say fun.

Here is myself, Lachie and Andy working together to dissect one bit of pellet in which we identified Water Vole remains. Probably one of the stranger lunchtimes spent at BHASVIC.

Book Club on Tour!

Heather came up with a Very Good Idea back in the depths of late November: let's take a field trip to one of the Book Club book destinations! And since we had just read the book "All My Mothers", which is set in Cordoba, we decided to go there.  So Susie, Lucy, Heather and I flew out on Friday evening and we all flew back Monday morning. It was mostly sunny but cold during the trip, and we had a wonderful time!

I was so moved by our visit to the Mezquita, which is a cathedral inside of a mosque.  https://mezquita-catedraldecordoba.es/en/  It is a crazy place with a very interesting history.  I loved visiting here.  Then we had beautiful views from the Bell Tower adjacent, looking over at the grand building. 

The rest of the weekend trip we spent poking around Sevilla, which involved mainly exploring some section of the city on foot, then resting for a beverages and food at various spots.  It was a great indulgence to leisurely explore, walk, chat amongst ourselves and enjoy the sunshine.

The Plaza de Espana was a highlight for me. We sort of stumbled onto it, as we had approached from a direction where it just looked like a big brick building. But some steps went up into a dark passage and we saw other people walking up, so then we followed and heard some music, and it was an actual live musician playing very grand theatrical melodies on his violin!  And as we followed the sound of the music, we arrived into the stunning enormous plaza de Espana under bright sunshine and loveliness!

One other memorable moment we had was when we showed up with thousands of local residents to witness a statue of Christ being transported from one church to another.  We happened to know about this thanks to my conversation (in Spanish!!) with our taxi driver from the airport to our flat in the city center, who told me this was happening on the Saturday night, and we managed to find it afterall.

We actually had a pretty good view of what was happening as we squished into the doorframe of someone's house which had a little step up, so we could see over people's heads. When the Christ statue actually came into view, the entire street, literally thousands of people, just went completely silent in prayer. It was an amazing moment to be a part of.

Anyway, it was a fab weekend!

Quick catch up

January 1-15th 2026

Some scenes from Santa Barbara in January:) Lots of hanging out with friends, hanging out in the apartment, great sunsets and beach every day, working almost every day, and school!

After work, after practice, anytime we are all home, we have been trying to do more creative things. We will see how long this goes on.

One of the best sunset spots in Santa Barbara if you want a beautiful view of the hills. You have a couple options you can have a Mountain View over the whole city, an ocean view at the beach or a view of the hills. I love it so much.

Missing Annie so much:( She is getting so cute and in her personality now (except she has not aged out of the grabbing scraps of recycling - and i mean a tiny scrap of cardboard or plastic from a yogurt tub and giving it to you to play fetch with).

Roomate dinners! Feltitsa is on the right in this photo above and Kennedy is on the left in the photo to the right. Behind the scenes, lots of in-apartment dinners with Kate and EJ. 

 

The first few days

Its always a good feeling to start fresh in the year!  I've been enjoying "learning the ropes" of Nordic Life so I can help Rhods out during this busy time. 

And I've been fortunate to have several encounters with old friends lately

Polly stopped by for an evening on her way to collect her kids from Gatwick (Jan 3rd)

And I met up with Gill at a fancy restaurant in London (Jan 6th)

and Caroline and Locko stopped by on the way to their latest adventure (Jan 15th).  It was raining pretty hard but we still had a great time out with Annie.  I'm so grateful to have such wonderful friends who come and visit!

The Hob on a whim

 To kick off the year in style, an impromptu trip to the Hobgoblin pub in Brighton. Eva was away visiting grandparents so Oscar, Dan and I made do and hung out with some of her friends. 

Last trip to the Hobgoblin for a while, as Christmas is coming to a close, and A levels are about to get serious so strap in everyone (not to say we didn't just go to other pubs).

Up: Poppy, Eloiuse, Jess, Hettie and Oscar (left to right)

Right: Oscar, Dan and myself 

Snow at last

We were hoping it would snow over Christmas, or at least New Years, but it wasn't until January 2nd that we woke up to snow. It was beautiful light, and our girl has gone back to California but I know she wishes she was still here to enjoy the glorious white stuff!

I went for a walk with Anne Marie and our doggies. They loved racing through the snow.

Changing things up

 This year we have decided to do things differently but still keep it going.  I'm writing in late July but will post date this to Jan 2nd 2026 so that our readers know what is happening!

New Years Eve

December 31st 2025

So a new version of the blog - we are all writing our own posts! SO I shall start at the very beginning of 2026. New Year's Eve (a day that changed the entirety of the rest of my year).

Well, the day started out wonderfully; I got to take Annie for a walk (one of the things I miss most about being away), and then I got to see Aggie! (A consistent blog character for a long time, but usually we never get pictures together, so I made it a point to get one this year). 

New Year's Eve was a big night. I met up with soph and two of her University friends, who happen to also live in Sussex, and we went out in Brighton! The Tempest was our grounds for the night (a seafront club built into the cliff). 

January 1st 2026

However, it was after leaving the club that a silly little accident occurred. BIG TIP: do not wear stiletto heels on cobblestone streets when coming back from a night out because let me tell you it does not end well. Long story short, I had a little fall and fell hard on the side of my foot. It did in fact, fracture in that moment (I did not find that out until a month later); however, I had a flight back to Santa Barbara, well... a couple hours after we got back from the club, so I had to troop on! "One foot in front of the other" as my dad likes to say in hard times. Longest journey of my life. 

 This was the photo I sent to the family group chat after having finally made it to LAX, just missed the bus to Santa Barbara by 15 minutes because my bags took an hour to come out and I was walking slower than a snail (a toddler with their grandparents passed me), feeling utterly defeated and in an overwhelming amount of pain, waiting 2 hours for the next one. Not fun. But finally made it to 601 at 2AM.

New Years Eve and New Years Day

December 31st started clear and cold, with a layer of frost everywhere which was lovely.

Rhiannon got to see Aggie and prepare to head back on Jan 1st, and of course had some elaborate plans involving a party in Brighton and staying the night a Sophie's friend's house in Lewes.  

Meanwhile, Rhods and I went to Leigh's house for a party and to watch the Jools Holland Hootenanny which had our friends Emma and Adam in the audience. 

I picked up Rhiannon from Lewes at 08:00 on New Years Day to take her home to shower and regroup before we drove her to Heathrow.  Wish I had a photo of her limping, disheveled, to the car from the friend's house in Lewes because she was in quite a state! Its always tough saying goodbye and leaving home, but today felt especially difficult because we had all had such a full and wonderful holiday period together.  It just felt so right and good to have all of us under the same roof for this stretch of days, and I couldn't help feeling sad when it came to an end.  

We are so blessed.

In London, Christmas lights

Rhiannon got to meet up with her friends on Dec 28th and 29th, though we dont have any photos to share from those moments except for this one with Sophie..

But Rhiannon and I did go into London today to do some shopping and general exploring the city in the gorgeous festive lights.

It was so fun to walk around with my girl, it felt so incredibly precious to be by her side.  We went up to the Nest (where i had gone in the summer with Deanna), and that was a highlight too because of the ambience and the view.  Later we met up with Evie in a fun cocktail bar underground

..and then we were starving so got some sushi at the counter of some really good place i forgot the name of, and then we headed back on the train to get home.