Rain falls as I sip A dram of Islay whisky Dusky Cardiff skies

Sunday night (relax!) The weekend draws to a close Calm liminal space

I'm currently reading Jade City by Fonda Lee, having picked it up in a 99p deal through my Kobo e-reader. I haven't written a book review since I was a kid and won't do so here but will say that it is one of the most complete contemporary/urban fantasy worlds I have been thrust into. The author has clearly put a lot of time into thinking about how the East Asian inspired society works.

I have the apartment to myself this afternoon, The Canadian and the babe having gone off to see our friends and their little one now that we can resume our social bubbles here in Wales. What to do, what to do?! Well, I'm kicking off by sitting on the rocking chair with a mug of black coffee, my Linux Star Lite laptop in my lap, blogging away and listening to Whitesnake's Greatest Hits album on the CD player. Old-School I know – but there is still something rewarding and pure about listening to an album you physically own from start to finish.

A few nights ago I had my first glass of whisky in 8 weeks. And it tasted good! When my daughter was born, I celebrated with a dram of 16 year old Lagavulin (naturally), a favourite of mine as well as Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec. Then came the whirlwind of 8 weeks of newborn during which I pretty much scaled back to low abv beer to survive. Finally, with my wife and daughter asleep I turned the lights down low, put on some chill-out music (Air) and poured myself a finger of Kilchoman matured in a Red Wine Cask (Douro Valley, Portugal) that I picked up from the distillery on Islay when we visited in 2018.

This is my /now page. For me, it is a place to return to when the world gets noisy and complicated and I need to remember what's important. What I should be doing now. You can find out more about /now pages at nownownow.com with links to many other examples.

Updated Monday 22^nd February 2021, unpinned/retired Thursday 6^th January 2022

I've not been sleeping well recently. Some combination of lockdown cabin fever, racing thoughts about the excitement and challenges of impending fatherhood, random middle-aged worries and musings (not a crisis yet!), and the inevitable mental and physical clutter that always seems to come with the process of de-cluttering.

I may add a search bar at some point but for now, you can also navigate posts according to hashtags, grouped below in a way that makes sense to me and evolving as I post more. Expect a mixed bag. Some of the posts will feature the tagged topic as the central focus of the post, others will merely touch on it. If you'd prefer to scroll through a timeline of posts, head to my Archive.