We always used the have a special meal to mark New Year’s Day, like Christmas and Easter Sunday, but yesterday, as big kid was away and I had to go and collect him, we ate leftover burgers, chips, rice, beans and salad.

A wet and wild white-knuckle ride home into driving wind and rain on the London Orbital.

Big kid went home with his Auntie and cousins on Monday night, so later I will go and collect him. Hopefully traffic will be a lot less than usual today.

This year I managed to put up bookshelves and bunk beds, fixed a cupboard door back on in the kitchen with new hinges, replaced the silicone seal around the kitchen sink, and unblocked the kitchen sink and the toilet (several times).

But I’m not your handyman.

…these ideas I’ll turn to gold dust later

3421 isn’t working. Surely he has to try something else?

Man Utd relegation 'a possibility' says Amorim bbc.com

Today we’re expecting our two nieces and their Mum. They’re at just the right ages to play with our boys, so it should be a fun day for them as usual, and a hectic one for me.

Developers: if you really want to help the community

This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.

I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and systemic racism and power imbalances embedded in the local authority planning system.

I’m also concerned about the local power grid. Only a couple of years ago it was reported that Ealing doesn’t have enough capacity to power more new homes that are so badly needed, particularly in Southall which suffers from chronic overcrowding. A data centre requires a lot of power. How will this work?

If you really want to do something for the local community how about you plant thousands of trees to compensate for the fact that Southall has the lowest tree canopy cover in the whole of Ealing?

How about building homes for the street homeless and providing ongoing support they will need to live in them sustainably?

How about building a drug and alcohol rehab unit to treat the ever growing numbers of addicts roaming our streets and parks?

How about using all that information processing power to work out how to provide more frequent, more reliable, free public transport in Southall and to reduce the congestion caused by all the traffic?

How about building a secular community centre, a library, a youth club, a health centre, a school? Southall is so overdeveloped now, and Ealing Labour Council sold off all our community assets to developers.

Oops! Forgot to buy Yorkshires and had to make my own (for the first time).

Looks all right!

Home made Yorkshire pudding in a small black bread tin

Plan for tomorrow:

🥕 Prepare and cook veggies for xmas lunch
🍿 Watch Sonic 3 with kids at cinema
🛏️ Get kids off to bed and sleep early (haha)
🎅 Get my Santa outfit on and deliver presents (which this year are already wrapped)

Big kid has been enjoying CrossFit exercises at school and at home.

Big kid: “Hey Google! What’s an air squat?”

Google: “An escort is a call girl or a prostitute….”

Me: “Hey Google! STOP!!!”