• The grotesque contents of the various jars reflected in our eyes as we briefly stopped at the Spirit Collection in the Natural history Museum. I’d been volunteered by the eldest to be a parent chaperone with their class on the trip. My group, Sam’s Six (or Seven including me) had a wide range of different opinions about the Spirit collection. Some finding the giraffes head in a jar one of the high points of the whole museum. Others, visibly compressing as they read the description “partially digested squid head recovered from stomach of sperm whale”.
• I was initiated into my group of six 8-year olds by playing an extended version of rock, paper, scissors which included an elaborate hand-slap prelude and multiple verses of zany rhymes. Even after learning this routine I lost all 6 of my matches.
• We returned to Knightsbridge on Tuesday evening to watch the eldest perform in her choir at the Royal Albert Hall. The singing was incredible. Even more impressive than the feat of keeping thousands of Haringey’s primary school pupils awake past 10.30pm.
• I’ve recently decided my tee-total lifestyle should probably include healthy screen habits (especially following my as-yet-unpublished 2025 goals…) Looking at my weekly phone screen-time it averaged more than 5 hrs over a week, pretty impressive as we’ve already banned phones in our bedroom. The first step of controlling this has been to add a screen time widget to my home screen. This week I managed less than 2hrs per day. I think the aim will be less than an hour.
• What if the apps on your phone were created to do the thing they do with as little screen-time use as possible? Messaging apps that allow us to understand and reply supafast, social apps that give us all the updates in a single snapshot, Shopping apps that minimize our time spent on them.
• Went to the St John with some lovely friends and ate various bits of dead animal, some fresh welsh rarebit, and an incredible eccles cake that needed cream.