Snowflake challenge #6

[fabiadrake]

I’m approaching the snowflake_challenge in a fully haphazard way: at random, and with no cohesive subject matter. Here is a top 10 of nothing in particular, simply things I enjoyed in 2025.

1. I love London museums. I love Greenwich in the spring (home to the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum). I love walking from Borough Market to the Imperial War Museum. I love seeing the development of portraiture in the early modern period at the National Portrait Gallery. I love being a V&A member.


2. I listened to copious amounts of Beyond Our Ken, precursor to the perhaps more famous Round the Horne, over the course of the year. The entirety, in fact. (I have a soft spot for the first series — Ron Moody and Pat Lancaster were lovely.)


3. I fell in love with Sussex and the light on the south-east coast, and the little antique shops.


4. I enjoyed keeping a record of my fiction reads (for the first successful time ever) and decided I must do the same with the rest of my reading, too.


5. Two epistolary friendships were upgraded to in-person friendships.


6. I quite rarely go to see films (something I would love to improve upon but only if my local cinema improves its offerings). However, I was one of the people who liked The Brutalist and I liked seeing it at the Everyman, a cinema that makes film-going feel a luxury.


7. I changed jobs, and I love the work and the people.


8. I loved the RSC’s Titanic-themed Hamlet (despite, frankly, having my doubts about the thematic suitability). It looked extraordinary. The cast were exceptional. (I walked past a few of them — and various other thespians — around Stratford, including Luke Thallon who is certainly destined for fame. Naturally I pretended not to recognise any of them.) And, tangentially, I enjoyed Es Devlin’s interview on Fashion Neurosis.


9. I loved revisiting Haddon Hall, one of my favourite places in the world, and my first visit to Lud’s Church, thought to be the setting for the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and once a secret Lollard meeting-place.


10. I began and ended 2025 in the Welsh borders, another favourite place.

2025 was an intensely busy year for me, personally and professionally, so there are things I am very pleased I did and things I would have liked to have done (or done more of). I hope perhaps to fit in some trips abroad over the year ahead.

Et tu? Tell me some of your favourite things.