Beach with other people? Nope. No interest at all.

Deserted beach, where you can roam, explore cliffs and rockpools and so on? Well, they have an atmosphere, so maybe sometime.

Forest? Yes, definitely. Hiking will take you away from anyone else, and there will be plenty of opportunities for wildlife spotting one way or another.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest: Shroud. So far, it hasn’t grabbed me in the same way that Children of Time did, but I’m enjoying it and am interested to see how the worldbuilding goes.

Chumbawamba’s discography - or even just this one on repeat.

Cornwall. Same group of friends as the last 30 or so years, in about 6 weeks time.

I’m in the UK. I worked at a couple of places in the '90s - sysadmin and IT trainer - where this was considered perfectly acceptable at the time, but I definitely wouldn’t now. I’m no longer in IT at all, but I don’t think that it is seen as acceptable very widely anywhere now.

I work for a national charity in the UK. The organisation’s policies have been dragged into the culture wars, but have not succumbed so far.

My role isn’t directly involved with that side of things though. When planning, I am considering things like potential future supply chain issues, security of/access to services, potential threats, likely changes in resource use, likely changes to legislation and so on, all of which can be affected by national and international politics but, day-to-day, politics doesn’t have a great effect beyond those.

During WWII, my dad was posted to guard a munitions factory in Worcester. Mum worked in that factory. Evidently dad was initially interested in one of mum’s friends, but they hit it off shortly afterwards.

After they married, dad brought her back to a smallholding in rural East Anglia, where he lived with his parents and three siblings. They apparently thought that mum’s Worcester accent was Welsh.