2024: a look back

2024 was a busy busy year.

Singing(!)

I and a couple of friends from an old drama youth group had the amazing privilege of being asked to sing at a wedding of one of the group leaders. It was really fun to flex some muscles that I hadn’t used in a while and of course to be part of such a huge part of someone’s life like that.

Coupled with the 24-hour charity perform-a-thon I did with the same group back in 2023 (to unfortunately mark the closing of the drama group), this has been a great reminder to revisit these creative outlets wherever I can find them.

Live Music

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a couple of live acts this year. In no particular order:

• Tom Harris
• Tinariwen
• Iron and Wine
• Ruth Goller’s Skylla
• Nilüfer Yanya
• Charli XCX

Visiting Portugal

Find some other pictures here

I travelled to Portugal with some friends in August. All of us had previously been to Porto with different groups of friends at differing times, but this time decided to go with each other.

Porto

I love Porto. It’s a lovely city which seems to maintain so much of the cultural character of Portugal: Terracotta roof tiles; steep and criss-crossed roads; busy and cobbled avenues that lead to squares with their own little green spaces. The River Douro runs through the city, separating Porto proper and Villa Nova de Gaia on the south.

A special mention has to be given to the port wine, picked from grapes in the Douro valley upriver, and held in casks in various distilleries throughout the city. We had the opportunity to visit a major port distillery, tour their cellar and go for a tasting. It was wonderful to hear the history of the wine and the distillery (and it’s moody cellar). Port wine is sweeter and richer than standard varieties of wine, we were provided with ruby, tawny and tawny reserve ports, all of which were lovely. We also got a tour along the Douro, seeing many of the bridges that cross the river.

After a few days we hopped on a train down to Lisbon.

Lisbon

The train was uneventful. We curved wide around the central city of Coimbra, so the journey was three hours of coasting through mostly rural Portugal, with few small train stations dotted between our two stops. One thing was experiencing the setting sun as we travelled – dancing a warm, reddening light across the short grasses. Another was the various tiled murals on almost all of these small train stations we paused at.

We arrived at Lisbon in the night. What met us were even steeper cobbled roads, and a surprising meeting with one of the old trams still running as tourist attractions.

Lisbon itself feels much more of a ’normal’ European big city: geography and history cut through a grid-like layout. Tall yet traditional buildings line long and wide avenues. The capitol seemed a lot more sprawling and grandiose than Porto, with large monuments nestled everywhere. The River Tagus runs right by the city and the past and current effect of it on Lisbon can be seen by the heavy port infrastructure that hides further up-river.

The National Tile Museum was tucked away in an unassuming part of the city. A hugely interesting place, it documented the rich history of tile-making in the Iberian peninsula through Moorish influences and up to the more modern era.

Working in the Midwest

I’ve spent just under five months in total living in the Midwest US for my PhD this year.

One thing that strikes me is the sheer flatness of it. No mountains, few hills and very long, shallow elevation changes leave your calves yearning. The only climbing I had was either on resin handholds during bouldering or panting my way up a scalding dune at the Indiana Dunes State Park.

While the Midwest has it’s own undeniable character – I found myself quickly missing the quaintness of Britain, where aged towns and villages can be walked between (with an appropriate amount of calf-aching), and communities feel a lot more connected simply via lack of distance.

Although one thing I missed out on was seeing some of my bucket-list locations in the US. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to go back and see those places.