Tuesday Ten

Ten trips I'm looking forward to this year

1. Skiing in Sauze d'Oulx. I've been there five times but only ever at Easter and only with a coachload of teenagers. So excited to ski to France and back! Plus we're going by train so we have a stop in Paris each way. 

2. Edinburgh for Steps the Musical. Fetch my sequins and 90s make up. 

3. Mallorca with the fam, Easter weekend. Sib has rented an AirBnB with a heated pool. I've never been there before and it will be a good short break. 

4. Sheffield, for a geography conference. This might not sound too exciting but I have never spoken at a geography conference before (obviously) and my friend/colleague and I will be co-presenting. 

5. School trip to Iceland. I feel a bit guilty about staffing this one as I have already been to Iceland on a school trip, back in 2011 I think, but that was a Feb trip and it will be fun to go later in the year. 

6. Wonderwool. Obvs. 

7. Newcastle for another conference. I'm giving the same talk as in Sheffield, should make for a much less stressful prep. Plus I am flying there - the cost of a return flight was too good to pass up. 

8. The summer tour with Zoe. We are going to Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. We booked it all in about two days over Christmas, clearly we are both living several months into the future already. 

9. Hythe, Kent, for another family trip. Mother Hand grew up in Hythe and wants to go back so the grandchildren can see it. We've rented a place opposite the beach, so exciting! I remember those beaches so well from my own childhood. Haven't been back in years. 

10. I'm leaving 10 open for now. I've got a couple of trips to Oxford booked in and Sib bought me a very generous gift voucher for a local spa that I might manage to get Mr Z to go to with me, we'll see. There will be some kind of London visit at some point. I might head to Leeds for another conference. The world is my oyster, clearly. 

Late Autumn Goals

Honestly very much enjoying this list thing. It definitely helped me to do some things I would have avoided otherwise. 

I can't really be blamed for that fact that SLT did not go out for a festive evening. I tried, several times, but have started to suspect it's not to everyone's tastes. Unfortunately I did not make it to the faculty team night out, which clashed with an exam board meeting day...I could have gone afterwards. I should have done. But it was belting down with rain and I went and had dinner with my exam board boss instead. 

All the other usual seasonal treats made an appearance. Strictly and Chinese with Kaff, an old colleague I have managed to maintain a friendship with. The opening night of Bath Christmas markets with other ex-colleagues now friends. The Gurt Lush Christmas choir concert and the December haircut, along with other festive treats and another catch up. 

I really went wild on the Advent book and baked a lot of recipes from it. I went even further down the rabbit hole, buying some gingerbread moulds to use for Springerle (aniseed biscuits that are moulded and then dried out a little before baking, so when you cook them they have a little foot, like macarons) and even buying a biscuit press, only naturally I had to have the good one so I ordered it from a German company who shipped it directly from Italy. It took so long to arrive we'd broken up from school and I didn't have anybody to bake for, so I only managed one batch. It is like magic though and enabled an entire batch of cookies to be whipped up in 10 minutes. Rolling and cutting is so last year. 

Anyway. I have convinced at least three more people to buy this book now so I feel very virtuous. 

The five house clean jobs would definitely not have been done without the list, but they were all deeply satisfying. I've tried to be a bit more specific with my Spring list, though, as I was getting a bit of decision fatigue. 

And the gym! I was going to be content with 12 visits but then I decided it was OK to extend the list completion to NYE and managed to squeeze in an extra few and, very pleasingly, this made a total of 52 visits for 2025, which just about warrants the subscription fee. To this we can add five PT sessions, five yoga sessions and one hot yoga session - yes, I finally went back. I am in the best shape of my life.

Weird gym man has been haunting. He might get his own post this week. 

Here's my list for the coming half term:

• 15 gym visits (six weeks until skiing)
• Try the ski machine thing in the gym (terrifying, nobody ever uses it)
• 6 sauna visits
• 2 hot yoga visits (bought a multi-class pass, didn't I, sigh)
• Get a pedicure
• Use up all the Lush bath products I have accumulated
• Weekly skin/hair treatment
• Take Mr Z to the secret surprise thing
• Clear out all the little drawers in the living room
• No Facebook on the phone. I've actually put 'Facebook only at weekends' but I think this might be too challenging. Instead, I've deleted the app off my phone. I hovered over Insta as well but, well, I can't quite everything all at once. 

2026 Week 1

I barely made it to midnight on NYE this week. I was prone on the sofa at 10.30, almost unable to keep my eyes open. I am not one for big NY festivities for the sake of it, but I draw the line at missing midnight. The last time I can remember missing a NY midnight was in 1999, a truly depressing NYE that began with Mother Hand coming in to tell me she and her mother had decided it was cold enough for thermal vests and I should wear mine also. A horrifying foreshadowing of a future I had absolutely no interest in pursuing. 

Anyway. Happily, this week, I rallied and managed to stay awake until the end of the London fireworks. I still get a little kick out of shots of the London Eye, remembering seeing in the millennium from underneath it, after enterprising revellers including myself collapsed the barriers to get to the river's edge. I saw on TikTok that it now costs £45 to stand there, you have to be in by 10.30 and then you're not allowed to leave for two hours. Ghastly. Push the barriers over, guys. 

(Just went back and re-read the blog post about the millennium night and it seems I crawled under one barrier and pushed over another. I was a regular little hooligan in my youth.)

There hasn't been much else to this week, really. Lots of sleep, lots of lounging. Many episodes of the Sopranos and a catch-up of the entire series of Celebrity Traitors (Alan Carr, what a legend). We completed Super Mario in record time and have basically finished the Luigi version as well, unprecedented. Turkey melts. Cheese boards. Gym visits. Sauna visits - I managed to get to the newish local community sauna twice. Some bits and pieces of work, in a very relaxed fashion. I knitted half a mitten and then ripped it back after trying it on with the thumb opening because the gauge was too tight - very mandala. I worked on my 'Spring 1' list of nice things to do and it turns out to be a very worthy and nourishing sort of list, which I suppose is OK. Probably right for the time of year. 

This time last year I was preparing to fly home from Kazakhstan. That was a great holiday but I don't think I appreciated how much I need a quiet Christmas break. It has been a really long time since I did nothing much at all for several days in a row and I have found it very rejuvenating.