Inspired by the Netflix series One Day, I’m recording the events of my day on the 15th of every month. Here’s my entry for July 15th, 2024. This isn’t just your common or garden entry for the 15th of the month. July 15th is St Swithin’s Day. Legend has it that if it rains today – which it has – it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights thereafter. I very much doubt it will, but there you go. But July 15th is also One Day Day – the day in the lives of the book’s two protagonists, Dexter and Emma, that the story revisits every year. So it’s a special day, at least in terms of the book. For me, howe ..read more

Writing a social media post that goes viral is something a lot of users aspire to. But is it really all it’s cracked up to be? I had a couple of surprisingly popular posts on Threads (of all places!) over the recent Glastonbury weekend. The first was a quietly joyous moment seeing the two most famous members of 1980s band The Housemartins – Paul Heaton and Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) – reunited on stage. I have around 1,000 followers on Threads. Most of my posts receive single-digit engagements. This one got 447, having briefly been picked up by the Threads algorithm and causing a minor rip ..read more

Certain songs at certain moments get stuck in your head. It might be a song you love. Sometimes it’s one you can’t stand. Either way, they end up on constant repeat for hours or even days afterwards and no matter how hard you try, you can’t dislodge them. Last month brought us the 2024 edition of the Glastonbury festival and its heady mix of both contemporary and legacy acts, from huge global heavyweights such as Dua Lipa and SZA to more niche or up-and-coming performers who you may not even know. I don’t follow the charts or listen to the radio as much as I used to – I’m rooted in the eightie ..read more

Inspired by the Netflix series One Day, I’m recording the events of my day on the 15th of every month. Here’s my entry for June 15th, 2024. Normally when writing a diary entry such as this, I’m looking backwards on the events of the day. This month, however, I can’t help but look forwards. Tomorrow (Sunday) is Father’s Day. Normally this would be an excuse for a lie-in, a ‘humourous’ card and a small gift. Not this year. Tomorrow my alarm is set for 4:30am so I can drive to Heathrow and catch a flight to St Paul for a week-long work event. I’ll spend most of Father’s Day in a metal tube with w ..read more

Generative AI is rapidly replacing (or at least supplementing) humans when it comes to creating both text or visual content using tools such as ChatGPT or Midjourney. It can be a huge time-saver, producing output that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from human-created content. But, even though I use AI at work, I won’t be using it to help me write blog posts in the foreseeable future. Here’s why. Don’t get me wrong: it’s tempting to use AI. I have less and less time for blogging these days. At my peak, I was writing 20-30 posts a month; now it’s all I can manage to do two or three. Wr ..read more

Certain songs at certain moments get stuck in your head. It might be a song you love. Sometimes it’s one you can’t stand. Either way, they end up on constant repeat for hours or even days afterwards and no matter how hard you try, you can’t dislodge them. Here are four earworms that have been living rent-free in my mind over the past month. All Along the Watchtower – The Jimi Hendrix Experience Released 1968: #5 UK, #20 US. Written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan, for me – and I suspect many others – All Along the Watchtower is most closely associated with Jimi Hendrix. It was his only to ..read more

Inspired by the Netflix series One Day, I’m recording the events of my day on the 15th of every month. Here’s my entry for May 15th, 2024. Just another Wednesday. And yet there’s a lot on my mind at the moment. With my work hat on, it’s very much situation normal. I’m in a perpetual state of being slightly behind on everything – too many projects, too much complexity, overly ambitious timelines, urgent issues that hurl themselves into my path from left-field – but that’s standard. In the modern corporate world where everyone is doing what used to be two or three people’s work, the notion of ‘i ..read more

Hi Kara. Another year, another birthday letter. You turned 12 on Sunday, and yet again I can’t believe that a year has passed so quickly. Perhaps more than any other, this has been a year of significant change and growth for you. So here are a few reflections on the past 12 months in your life. A bigger pond The single biggest thing that happened this past year was your transition from primary to secondary school. It’s a big step, not just because you have to learn to be much more self-reliant but also because of the big size difference. Your primary school had three classes per year group; yo ..read more

Certain songs at certain moments get stuck in your head. It might be a song you love. Sometimes it’s one you can’t stand. Either way, they end up on constant repeat for hours or even days afterwards and no matter how hard you try, you can’t dislodge them. Here are four earworms that have been living rent-free in my mind over the past month. Go West – Pet Shop Boys Released 1993: Number 2 (UK). Originally a top 20 single for Village People in 1979, the Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 cover version is still their last top five single to date. It’s also a tune familiar to fans of several European football cl ..read more

Inspired by the Netflix series One Day, I’m writing a regular series of posts about the events of my day on the 15th of every month. Here’s my entry for April 15th, 2024. My intention for this project was to focus on a set date each month – I picked the 15th simply because One Day visited the characters on July 15th each year – and capture ordinary life in all its randomness. And then my entries for February (travelling to Barcelona) and March (RAYE gig) coincided with days that were anything but ordinary. That’s not the case this month. April 15th has been a day of epically ordinary proportio ..read more