Every now and then, you hear a song that you just can’t get out of your head, don’t you? A song from years ago that’s playing on the radio. Or a fellow train passenger is humming it under their breath. Or you catch a snippet in the background of a film or TV programme. Once they’re lodged in your mind, there’s no getting them out. (At least, not until the next earworm comes along.) Here are four songs that have been on repeat in my head over the past month. Oscar Winning Tears – RAYE Not released as a single. I managed to get to a couple of gigs this month, so unsurprisingly I’ve been listenin ..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 second entry, for March 15th, 2024. I’m not a cool dad. My kids certainly don’t think so. Even I don’t think I am. I don’t have any outlandish or extravagant hobbies. 90% of my wardrobe is plain blues, greys and blacks. I have no notable skills, unless you count a brain full of random trivia that’s useful for Only Connect or pub quizzes and the ability to solve virtually any Countdown numbers game before the clock expires. My musical tastes aren’t parti ..read more

How much has your life changed since Covid? And do you even remember what life was like before then? Four years ago today – March 13th, 2020 – I walked out of the office on a Friday evening. I didn’t return until 31 months later. Life has never been quite the same again. Work life pre-Covid versus post-Covid In early 2020, I worked from home no more than two or three days a month. My regular daily commute involved a 35-40 minute drive each way, At home, my ‘workspace’ was our bedroom. I’d sit on the bed with my laptop perched on my thighs and papers spread out around me and dial into a few cal ..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 first entry, covering February 15th, 2024. A second for me, a first for Isaac and a first for us. Today we flew out to Barcelona for a long weekend, our first-ever holiday as a father/son pair. An overseas trip is always exciting, so the adrenaline rush compensated for the lack of sleep resulting from being on the road to Heathrow by 5am. Settling down to a full English breakfast at Terminal 5 – Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food is my eatery of choice – was a ..read more

Now that I’m refocussing my blog to be more about me than my children, I’m taking inspiration from the recent Netflix series One Day and recording snapshots to capture the ordinary as well as the extraordinary moments in my life. For anyone who hasn’t read the original David Nicholls book, watched the (apparently not very good) 2011 film, or seen the current TV adaptation – judging by my social media, that’s about 16 people in the entire UK – One Day follows the lives of Dexter and Emma on the same day, July 15th, over 20 years. It’s a clever framing concept for a story; I loved it. And so, I ..read more

Happy birthday, Isaac. It’s time for my annual birthday letter to you. And this year it’s not just any old birthday: it’s your 16th. Oh. My. God. Honestly, where has the time gone? It seems like only the blink of an eye since you were setting off to primary school for the first time. Next summer you could in theory walk out of school and never return to full-time education again. Blimey. 1986 vs 2023: The years we turned 16 I turned 16 in 1986. That year, Madonna dominated the pop charts. The UK and France announced plans to build the Channel Tunnel. An upstart tech company called Microsoft st ..read more

And so we’re done. Or Kara is, at least. It’s the summer holidays, and our daughter is no longer a primary school student. Come September, she will start her secondary school career. School’s out for summer School’s out forever School’s Out – Alice Cooper It marks the end of an 11-year association with our local primary school. For two years, it was just Isaac. Then for the next two it was both Isaac and Toby. That was followed by a three-year stint with all three kids. Three became two when Isaac moved on, and finally it has just been Kara for the past two years. The end of an era. A step up ..read more

If you’re at all acquainted with social media, you’ll be aware that Instagram launched its Twitter clone Threads today (July 6th). As a social media manager, I can tell you this is the biggest event in the industry since, well, possibly ever. We’ve seen people get excited over new social networks before: Mastodon, BeReal, countless others I’ve long since forgotten. But while there are no guarantees, there’s reason to believe that Threads could be more than a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Could it be the app that graduates from Twitter rival to potential Twitter-killer? What is Threads? Th ..read more

On this day in 2015, I attended my first parent blogging conference and met hundreds of my peers face-to-face for the first time. I felt like I had officially arrived as a dad blogger. Eight years on, I’m facing up to the fact that – while I’m still a dad and I still blog – I’m not really a dad blogger any more. I first started blogging back in 2007. This blog started a year later, but I didn’t seriously focus on writing about parenting until mid-2014. For a while, I was on fire. I was writing four or five posts here every week. (At the same time, I was both editor-in-chief of an international ..read more

As it’s Father’s Day this weekend, I’ve been pondering about the kind of dad I am – and comparing myself to the father I thought I’d be. As a child – and then as a young adult – parenting doesn’t seem like such a difficult thing to do. Observe what your parents do. Take note of the things they do well. Ensure you don’t do the stuff they do less well. Mould yourself into your vision of the perfect parent. Easy peasy. What’s all the fuss about? And then you actually become a parent, and that all goes out of the window. You make all the mistakes you swore you’d never make. You never have time to ..read more