Naming a blog post after a whole season might seem overly broad, but this year’s springtime was particularly hectic. During this period of nonstop travels and hangouts with friends, I barely had time to take a photo, never mind a moment to take stock and reflect on everything I’d been up to. Nevertheless, is my attempt to summarise a few crazy months.
Spring really began with my birthday, which I celebrated over in the UK. I had a few days in London with Rhea before heading off for my first visit to Thorpe Park where I bagged some new coaster credits alongside Danni and Abi. I also had my first ever Nando’s at 29, which feels odd to say as a Brit.
Once I was back in Madrid I was joined by my parents, who arrived just in time to celebrate San Isidro and also just in time to have to deal with me being full of a cold. Ever defiant of the mucus, I took some painkillers and we managed to head down to the live band near my house for a boogie a couple of times, which was a lot of fun.
Just a few days later and I was back in the UK, this time back up north to spend some time with the family. I then flew back to Spain just to fly back out to England a month later, this time back down to Thorpe Park, where I celebrated Danni’s birthday with her by re-riding all of our favourite attractions.
In between all this I relaxed around Madrid, where the warm spring weather prompted me to begin frequenting the city’s many parks and green areas, where most of the photos here were taken. Living here, you’ve to do all this before summer arrives, because the heat means you either stay inside or leave the city altogether…
Family Visit
15.04.24 — Madrid
Family Visit
15.04.24 — Madrid
It might seem odd that, given I’ve spent so many years living in Madrid, I’ve never had the chance to welcome both my parents and my sister into my house at the same time. With both my mum and dad still working and my sister fully engaged in her PhD, though, it’s something that had just never happened. Until now.
After picking the three of them up from the airport, the four of us squeezed into my one-bedroom flat ready for the ultimate test of family dynamics. I’d given up my bed to my parents, so me and Eleanor were on the sofa bed. We made it work, though: helped in no small part by Ryanair’s restrictive baggage policy meaning nobody could fill my house with crap…
Jokes aside, we had a fabulous time. We spent the days eating, drinking, and wandering around as a family. We stayed around my neighbourhood and went exploring the posher parts of town. Highlights included a lovely Italian meal that the four of us went for in the fancy Salamanca neighbourhood, as well as a bike ride down to the river to catch the sunrise one morning with Ellie. I’d not been up on my feet that early since suffering from jet lag after my Japan trip. It was nothing a well-timed siesta couldn’t then fix, though.
Ever trying to keep everyone happy, I ensured that we passed by the Mercado de San Miguel for my mum, NAP Pizza for my sister, and did plenty of general wandering for my dad: he can find something to take a picture of in the most unexpected places.
Despite the cold March air and the grey skies that threatened to put a damper on our plans, having the whole family around for a few days was an absolute joy. I might be the black sheep of the family that moved a thousand miles away, but these moments where we can all get together and do something a bit different make the distance worth the while. I hope to have them all back again soon.
Changes
08.04.24 — Madrid
It’s been a while since I posted on here, with my last post going over the fact that I needed a bit of a break to rethink how I manage the decade-long project that I call my website. I’m back today with an update, and this update consists of little bit of good news and a little bit of bad news. Against conventional wisdom, I’m going to have to start with the good and end with the bad, as the conclusion I’ve come to dictates that I go through it in that order.
So, here’s the good stuff.
I think I’ve figured out a way to make my blog much more sustainable in the long term. This consists of reworking the format of posts from the current combination of text and image towards a model with less text and a more curated selection of images. While this may sound like blog posts will be less engaging, I’m excited by the challenge of packing information into smaller and more manageable paragraphs, as well as the possibilities provided by a new way of displaying photos.
Now for the bad news.
In order to make this change, I’m going to have to wait for my new website design to be ready. The new format requires higher resolution images, an entirely new post template, and other technologies that I just don’t have on my current website. This means that blog posts will most likely be on hold until the end of the year. Behind the scenes I’m doing all I can to finalise the new website design and begin technical development, but there’s still plenty to be done before I start coding.
So there’s the update. I’m excited to get back into my regular rhythm of posting with this new format, but both you and I are going to have to wait a little bit before it’s all ready to go.
As I write this, sat on a plane from Oslo to Madrid and watching a very red sun set over the west of France, I’ve had a little bit of a brainwave. In order to keep you entertained until I get the blog back up and running, I’m going to set up a new page on my blog with a comprehensive list of every blog post ever written. That way you can easily look back over the eleven years of content that’s already here. Read on to see if I’ve managed to get that up and running on time…
It’s been about eleven years since I started writing my blog.
I began back in 2013 when I moved to university, as I wanted an online space to show that I was more than just the list of experiences on my CV. I wanted future employers to know that I do other things with my spare time, that I have other hobbies: travelling, cooking, photography, writing, baking, knitting, and so much more.
I started off with the goal of writing one blog post per day, a pretty ludicrous proposition in retrospect. For a while I managed to keep this up, posting a couple of photos with a bit of hastily written text and calling it a day.
Naturally I couldn’t keep this up forever, so in the end I resorted to one per week. Over time, this steadfast rule loosened, and I began writing posts as and when I had something interesting to report back on: sometimes more than once a week, sometimes less.
This has been the format that I’ve stuck with for the past ten years or so, with very little changing. In that time, I introduced the ability to search my posts by destinations and begun peppering my daily updates with the odd more reflective piece and even a bit of prose, but the general idea has remained largely the same.
One thing that has changed has been the amount of detail I put into each post. What were once a few photos with a bit of explanatory text have turned into detailed accounts of my adventures with more carefully selected and edited imagery. I also began posting everything in Spanish too. These changes mean that each blog post now takes me longer than ever to write, translate, and publish.
In short, the blog now takes up a lot of my time.
Recently, I’ve been trying to spend more of this time doing other things. I’m getting into the swing of things at the gym, I’m really enjoying swimming, and I’m making more time to enjoy the simple things like cooking and reading and spending time with friends. I’ve also got a few little side projects on the go which I’m very excited about, but more on those when they’re ready to go.
As you can imagine, I can’t fit everything in all at once. Something has to give.
That’s where my blog comes in. I can’t keep up the scope and detail that I’ve tried to in the past, and so I’m reevaluating the format and frequency with which I post updates on here. This will mean that I post less often, but it will also hopefully mean that I will post better content.
My idea going forward is to not get so bogged down in the finer details of what I’ve been up to, but rather switch to a more entertaining overview of the best (and the worst) moments from my daily life, travels, and shenanigans – of which there will be even more this year!
I do love taking photos and I do love writing, so there’s no risk of my blog disappearing any time soon. I just need to rethink the format a little bit so that I’m not constantly conscious of having a lot of photos to post and things to write about. I want to enjoy writing on here, not be fretting over a growing list of pending posts.
Recently I’m a bit slow with the old blog posts, as I’m busily working away on programming my new website and various other projects that I’ll discuss once they’re a bit further into development. For now, I’ve to get everything here up to speed, and we start that with no less than another wedding!
It was my ex-colleague Teresa’s big day, which brought together a collection of past and present Erretres employees here in Madrid. María and I headed over to Julia’s house in the morning, where the three of us got our glad rags on. I managed to squeeze into a suit for the occasion, with the only drama being the cufflinks I’d bought not fitting into the corresponding button holes on my shirt. A bit of huffing and puffing from Javier and Julia soon got them in place though, and we were ready to go!
Then followed a lovely ceremony at a rather splendid church, after which we all hopped on a bus and up to El Pardo, just outside of Madrid City, where there were canapés and drinks before the wedding meal. This involved a surprise ending, with bingo cards being handed out and Teresa taking the mic to read out the numbers in her best teacher’s voice.
You can then imagine my surprise when I had one number left, number 27, and that was just the number that Teresa called out. I jumped to my feet shouting ‘bingo’, and was then shocked to be presented with a whole leg of cured ham. I’ve never had a proper jamón: it feels like the process of españolización (becoming Spanish) is advancing slowly but surely.
The meal was delicious and the dance after was a great laugh. Teresa told me that she had included a song for me in the playlist after I played it once in the office, but I had no idea which one it could be. I thought it might be Barbie Girl by Aqua, so you can imagine my surprise when it wound up being Tarzan & Jane by Toy-Box. What a random throwback!
The next weekend I was out dancing (read: jumping up and down) once again. Sara, Rocío, and I had bought tickets to the Teatro Barceló, an old theatre which has now been turned into a well-known club. As we’re not drinking, Sara had discovered that they offer an early party from 6pm until 11:30pm which just plays old classics from the 90s and early 2000s. My kind of night!
We had an absolutely fabulous time, dancing along to a mix of Spanish, European, and even British hits from our childhood. I got so into a Mónica Naranjo classic, Sobreviviré, that I didn’t even realise that they’d turned on the house lights and were shooing us all out of the door…
The next day my feet were rather worse for wear, but by Monday I was right as rain and off to a client meeting up in the north of the city. Afterwards, me and some colleagues went for lunch, after which I ran into an enticing looking new job opportunity…
In case it wasn’t obvious, ‘diseño gráfico’ means ‘graphic design’.
I then had a rather busy week between work, the gym, swimming, website development, writing, and reading. It was only fair that I should have a relaxed weekend, and the Madrid weather seemed to agree as it turned cold and threatened to rain. I took the opportunity to do a spot of cooking, making a tortilla de patata with a touch of chorizo, which I must say came out rather well.
Sara and I then met up in the evening to go to the cinema, something I’ve been doing a lot more of recently as my colleague has got me hooked on films. We then wound up in a kaitenzushi restaurant, helping ourselves to plates of sushi and chatting way into the evening.
From Spain to Japan and then back again.
The poor weather then continued throughout the week, but I was way too busily along with my weekly routine to notice. My culinary adventures continued as I made an apple crumble and some vegetable soup, both of which received Pedro’s seal of approval. I also introduced him to proper English butter after I’d had the chance to pick some up when down in Murcia. He was very much sold!
My other weekly outing was for another client workshop, a day which was a lot of fun and took me to a part of the city that I don’t normally explore, but one that I may visit more in the future as I’ve discovered that my gym has another location around that area.
The only thing left for me to do now was to rest. Well, that and clean my house, as I’d a set of very special guests coming for a few days. More on that next time…
