In my work on Digital Screening at NHS England, I’ve been thinking that there are lessons from this approach that could be applied to how we think about data in the NHS. I’ll call this “Progressive Data Enhancement”.

Design assuming no data first

In traditional Progressive Enhancement, you create the content in HTML first, then add the styling in CSS, then add any interactive behaviour in Javascript.

In Progressive Data Enhancement, you design a working service on the assumption that there is data, but you don’t have access to it. Let’s say you’re building a service that lets someone book in for an x-ray. You don’t know the patient’s name, age, gender. You don’t know if they’ve visited your service before, and what their outcomes were. You don’t know what diseases they have, what medication they’re on etc.

If you can build this service, then you can move onto adding the data sources in to make this service better. You could access your own service’s data to see if the patient has visited you before. You could use the NHS Personal Demographics Service to retrieve their demographic data so it doesn’t need to be typed in again. You could access national data to see if they’ve had another x-ray in the last 6 months. You could access their NHS Login to get their saved preferences so you can send them app notifications instead of letters like they like. You could access the National Disease Registration Service to see if the patient has a relevant disease. You could access their GP records to see if they have already reported symptoms relevant to your service. You could put all of this into an AI model to recommend next steps.

But, like styling (CSS) and interactive behaviours (Javscript) in traditional Progressive Enhancement, you don’t get to play with these toys until the content structure (HTML) works on its own. You build a usable service without the data, and then add the data on top. All of these make the service better, but none of them are allowed to make it exist.

This sounds slow and frustrating, so why should you do this?

Reason 1: You’ll build something useful quicker

Data needs to be collected before it can be used, and your service might be the first to be collecting it. But even if that’s not the case, it might be in a system you don’t have access to yet. You might be waiting for a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) to be completed. The supplier of that may have given you a schema to tide you over, but often it turns out the production data doesn’t match the schema in reality.

This means that “the data” becomes an untested assumption, and in agile software development, you want to be removing untested assumptions as soon as possible. By ensuring your service works without this data, you have removed that assumption.

Reason 2: It will reduce bugs

I have heard of complete, clean and semantic data stores in the public sector, but I have yet to see one with my own eyes. More often you will find data that is out of date, or stored in free text fields, or PDFs, or distributed across regions. If your service can work without having access to this data, it becomes a lot easier to handle the instances when it is wrong.

Reason 3: It ensures more inclusive services

The same data often changes in different contexts. While a user might have told one service a fact about themselves, they may have a different answer for that same question on your service. This may seem surprising, but there are many instances where a fact about yourself changes on the context. For example, while a student may maintain their GP correspondence to their childhood home, they may prefer to put their student accommodation address for an unexpected visit to the hospital. We come across this sort of thing a lot: names, genders, privacy settings, communication preferences can all change depending on the context and for reasons we should and must support. If your service can work without relying on external data, it can better support these cases too.

Reason 4: It improves resilience

There are also lots of ways that a data source can go wrong. A server might go down. A legal basis might change. A user may retract consent. A foreign government bans its export. If you have built your service first to survive without the data source, it can keep operating. The best analogy for this kind of “graceful degradation” is that your service is more like an escalator than a lift: if it breaks, then you can still use it as stairs.

Designing services out of data standards is tempting but risky

There is a growing frustration about the state of data in the NHS: It is fragmented, inconsistent, hard to access, and often unfit for secondary use. Faced with this, there’s a temptation to force the fix at source by designing the data standards first, and then insisting that services are built to produce and consume that data in a prescribed way. You can see this instinct in approaches that start with canonical data models, or in attempts to standardise user interactions through things like FHIR questionnaires.

Progressive Data Enhancement offers a different path. Instead of forcing services to conform to data standards up front, it allows the data to fall out of user needs, rather than forcing users into data standards.

In January, Rina moved in with me. I thought I would never live with a partner, and had organised my life around that fact, but within 3 months of living with her, I was feeling very lost whenever she would be away for a few days, so that’s that then.

In March we drove to Croydon to pick up two kittens, who we called Ginger and Juniper.

In July I proposed to Rina and she said yes.

We are planning on moving to Bristol and getting married in 2026.

Work

I started the year working with FF Studio, doing my favourite work hobby of trying to make arguments via the medium of code. It was lovely being back in a scrappy startup office environment, making tea and prototypes. Unfortunately it could not last.

In early summer I became the Head of Technology for Digital Screening at NHS England. This is the opposite of small and scrappy: hundreds of people are building software to support the thousands of people who are doing millions of screening events in England every year. I’ve never worked in the NHS before, and the scale is mind-blowing - both in terms of the budgets but also the impact. It’s not a naturally easy place to deliver software, but as well explained by colleague Liz, there’s some fantastic missions, and great people to mission with. I hope to be doing this for a while, if they’ll have me.

Adventures

Cape Verde

Rina and I were keen to go on a sunny winter holiday to a place that neither of us had been before. We found some cheap flights to Cape Verde, thinking we’d avoid the resorts and make our own beach holiday. Once we arrived, and not helped with us both having chest infections, it turned out that on most islands, there’s not much else apart from the resorts.

After a couple of inter-island flights and an hour’s cab ride, we found and settled in Tarrafal, which gave us what we wanted: a nice public beach where we could rotate between drinking coconuts and playing in the massive ocean waves.

Bodmin camping

Our first car-camping trip of the year was in Bodmin. We expanded the ford with an awning tent so we had a kitchen, which was great because obviously it was raining in Bodmin. We had some lovely walks through the hawthorn marshes, which was the most witchy place I’ve ever been, and over the moors.

Lisbon

I loved my first trip to Lisbon: a perfect vibe for eating and drinking. We stayed at The Verse, the first time I’ve stayed at an “aparthotel”. Bank balance willing - I’d do it again.

Burning Nest

This year was the 4th year of Hot Mess being at Burning Nest, the first year that I stepped back from running the camp, and the first Burner event that Rina had been to.

Rina and I contributed by building a photo booth that used propane as the camera flash. It stretched our minimal woodwork, electronics and plumbing skills to the max, but amazingly it all came together and it worked almost flawlessly.

Cairngorms

For the summer solstice we spent a few days in a large house in the Cairngorms with about 20 friends, where we played a multi day version of The Traitors. I was 100% faithful.

As we were so far north during the solstice, it almost never went dark, and we got to trundle around the beautiful scenery all day. Also: living in a house with 20 people is just so nice. You make one round of teas, and then you get 19 teas brought to you.

Epping Bikepacking

I took Rina on her first bikepacking trip, loosely following this route, but popping into our favourite Oyster Shack. It was a great route, and the campsite was really nice - I’d really recommend it for a group of 6-8 friends. Oh, I also proposed to Rina there.

We Out Here

I took Murmuration to We Out Here in 2024 to get some free tickets to join Rina and her friends. It was such a lovely festival to work at that, when they asked me if I wanted to come back in 2025, we put together a little crew of 8 specifically. It hits exactly the right balance of fun and party, but also friendly and bougie.

Suffolk bikepacking

As has been tradition since the pandemic, I’ve done a weekend bikepacking trip with Frank and Louis. This year we went up the Suffolk coast. Suffolk was perfect for cycling along: lots of car free areas, lots of public facilities, and quirky ferries.

Brecon Beacons camping

We took the car-camping setup up to the Brecon Beacons for a long weekend of camping and hiking. Continue to love Wales, looking forward to living closer to it.

Wye Valley

Another big friend house trip, this time in the Wye Valley, which provided a beautiful horizontal wall of autumnal trees, and another quirky ferry between pubs.

Paris

Finally, a trip to Paris for Rina’s birthday. I had never been before, and didn’t expect to like it, but got into the groove of it quite quickly. It’s a lot more like London than I thought it would be. Their dockless ebikes are transformatively nicer to ride than London Lime bikes.

Consumption

• Best meal: Trinca in Lison
• Best album: Metalhorse - Billy Nomates
• Best gig: Mahalia Presents, Camden Jazz Cafe
• Best book: Red Plenty
• Best TV: Shrinking
• Best movie: Superman
• Best podcast: Tifo Football Podcast
• Best exhibition: V&A Storehouse
• Best (only) theatre: 54.60 Africa

Feeling a bit hungover after a day party yesterday in Bristol. Started at 1pm, and was in bed with a cup of tea by 10pm. Probably sensible for someone confused by the fact the kids were drinking Hooch, which is apparently back from the 90s but different now.

Our most recent date night was a rainy one, and there wasn’t much on so — inspired by Stephen Bush — I booked us tickets for Superman at the Imax in Waterloo. I loved it, and I felt more like a teenager that evening than I think I ever did when I was actually a teenager. The movie hit all the right notes for a blockbuster. Good stuff.

After the film we popped into the excellent The Hole in The Wall to have a pint, and got pulled into watching the quarter final of the women’s Euros, watching England come from behind to win in penalties. Was hooked from that point. I watched the semi finals with Frank and Louis. There’s something incredibly liberating about getting to watch football without having all the school trauma around not being a football boy. Thoughts not entirely about gender, but definitely a bit about gender.

Rina and I went to Jimmy Fairly to get my eye test and replacement glasses. This is my second time with them, and they’re just great. You could definitely do cheaper having the test at a Specsavers and buying glasses at Firmoo, but it is such a hassle and hit and miss. For £320 I got my eye test and two pairs of glasses I’m confident in, in a nice environment with excellent customer service. There’s been a few of what I think as “millennial opticians” pop up, Ace & Tate and Ollie Quinn are two more within 100 meters of the Jimmy Fairly Bristol store, I haven’t tried the others, but I suspect it would be similar. I don’t know what’s fueling them - is it an innovation or venture capital that will enshittify? Optical Industry watchers (👀) please write in.

I have also eaten at Oyster Shack and Seafood Bar (Skate knobs are a delicious new one to me), Panda Dim Sum (good dim sum, less good mains), 7 Floor Malaysia Tea Room (amazing and cheap rendang), Chilli Daddy (The summer noodle salad meal is a great new addition), and a homemade summer pudding.

Garden harvests so far have been candy beetroot, tomatoes, figs, kohlrabi, chard, wild strawberries, radishes, lettuce leaves, peas and the first tiny carrot.

A visit to the physio has given me the damning diagnosis of having a weak core. I now have to lie on my front and wave my arms around every day to improve my muscles, and maybe also my character.

I’ve started a new contract working on NHS Screening. It’s my first time working in the NHS, and so far the IT and bureaucracy is just as bad as you’ve heard, but the purpose and the people are just as good as you’ve heard. Doctors make my kind of Subject Matter Expert: smart, passionate and willing to learn whatever it is they need to do to get the job done.

For Easter, Rina and I drove to Cornwall to MPV-camp for a couple of nights in Bodmin, before continuing on to see my parents in Newlyn.

We’ve added a side-awning to the setup, which enables us to have some kitchen and storage space. This is helpful now we’re going proper camping and I’m not just using the van as a place to pass out in at festivals. It was extra helpful seeing as it was pouring with rain for the first day.

The rain and mist goes with Bodmin through: it’s a very witchy place.

We went to Berut Bistro, a BYO Lebanese restuarant. It was delicious, friendly and relaxed, could not recommend it hard enough if, for some peculiar reason, you are in Marylebone.

I finally visited Moro, the OG for my favourite Morito. It was really nice, but a big plate won’t beat some small plates for this millennial.

Post pub Friday fish and chips from Michael’s were superb.

I tried Yolk for a lunch. Somehow more expensive than Farmer J, but nowhere near as good.

Today was mostly spent weeding the vigorous growth of spring. We ate our first produce of the season: a single radish each.

I bought Rina a pottery course at Turning Earth, and Frank suggested we visit the V&A to see, among other things, a pottery exhibition, so we visited today. We got there and couldn’t find directions to it, so I asked at the desk. They said it was closed. I asked why. They said they had closed the entire 4th floor because it was too cold. There was no information about this anywhere. This sounds made up. I think there’s some deep institutional conspiracy happening on the 4th floor of the V&A.

Anyway, we were then in the V&A without a plan, which is an overwhelming experience. We browsed the casts, the glass and the jewellery. These Korean vases were my favourite thing of the day.

Yesterday Rina and I went to John Lewis to buy some house things, but ended up mostly in the clothes sale, because it turns out the John Lewis clothes sale is pretty nifty when you’re in your 30s.

House things we got and like: skinny food waste caddy, double laundry basket, cotton placemats. Things we liked and didn’t get (yet): tiny filing cabinet, Sabre Bistrot cutlery, Cycloc Hero bike mount.

I’ve been doing various bits of DIY over the last week: picture hanging, door stop mounting, that kind of thing. Making decent progress. But everything stopped on Wednesday because a knife in the kitchen drawer manage to get jammed in a way that 2 hours of inserting anything that we could find that was thin and rigid enough to try and jiggle it free didn’t work. I ended up having to dismantle the kitchen island to get at it, which was only possible because a critical screw holding the countertop down was loose. If that screw had been put in properly, I think we would have had to either never use that drawer again and sacrifice all cutlery to it, or destroy and re-order at least some of the kitchen island. I nearly had a breakdown.

On Wednesday evening we went to The Shacklewell Arms to see some new music at an Eat Your Own Ears night. The best act was the opening act: Jackson Roy. I appear unable to link to any of the music on the internet, so you’ll have to trust me on this.

On Monday I had morning tea with Simon—who is successfully pursuing his dreams of composing—to try and figure out what dreams I want to pursue, successfully or not. I then went to visit Martin’s new house, which is the exact same council house as his previous one, but in Haringey instead of Tower Hamlets.

I think that’s enough content, and happens to be a week! You’ll notice it’s all quite life, and very little projects. I have been doing little bits of pottering on a side project and started very early planning for Nest, but my main project is settling into my new life and then deciding what the next project(s) is.

This week started with a table full of post-it notes.

Last weekend I finally went on the Mail Rail and it was excellent. It would be my top recommendation for any tourist any age visiting London.

After wearing nothing but Paul Smith Rabbit trainers from the ages of 18-34, my lifestyle changes meant that I started wearing a wider variety of shoes. I have Doc Martens, Clarks desert boots, and some walking boots on their way. Also Paul Smith stopped making the Rabbit trainers.

But I have fallen in love with Adidas Sambas because they are a) the current uniform for people like me and b) essentially the same as the Rabbit trainers I used to wear.

For a classic staple, you would think they would have a simple and clearly documented product offering. They come in some different colours which is clear enough. And they seem nice and androgynous to me.

However, there are women’s and men’s. I dislike this on a societal level, but even more on an administrative one. What’s the difference between the men’s and women’s? Is it just the colours? (Inevitably I prefer all the women’s colours). The website doesn’t say. I spend an hour visiting every shoe shop in Bristol shopping quarter, and get different responses from each sales rep. The women’s ones max out at size 7. Or 9. Or 12. The men’s are bigger than the same size women’s. Or smaller. Or wider.

I met maybe 100 different Sambas that day, but not a single one that I liked and fit on my feet. I think adidas want me to have another little breakdown.

We went to see Confidence Man in Bristol. It was a very fun and slick show.

You may have noticed that I’m writing notes a bit more frequently. Not quite weekly—I wouldn’t be that bold. But more.

This has given me the confidence to see if maybe some people wanted to subscribe to this blog via email, given lots of people don’t know what RSS is any more. You can do that here. Might delete later.

This is my jam

When I complete a post-it note, I scrunch it up as a present to myself. I tend to scrunch up about a third of them on the day that I write them, a third over the next week, and a third get forgotten about.

The Pitch

Imagine walking into your local Co-op and knowing it’s truly your store – not just because you shop there, but because you’re one of 2,475 members who actually own it. Picture seeing products on the shelves made by your neighbors – Audrey’s homemade cakes that you can only get at this specific store, or Jim’s locally roasted coffee that’s become a neighborhood favorite.

This was the heart of my proposal: transforming every Co-op store into a community hub, with membership tied to specific stores rather than the broader organisation. I’ll get to the details, but first some context.

The Co-op’s unique opportunity to help us understand ‘place’ in the 21st Century

Through my work with the civil service, the Labour Party, and startup charity Local Welcome, I’ve learned that what “local” means has changed dramatically since the co-op movement’s founding during the industrial revolution. The internet has collapsed physical distances, and people move more frequently than ever, especially those who are already underrepresented in our communities. Traditional systems and organisations are struggling to keep up and are losing relevance and trust.

But physical place is and always will be important, and the Co-op has something special: thousands of physical stores embedded in communities across the country.

No other organisation has this combination of nationwide local presence and cooperative structure. While other retailers can try to build (or at least appear to build) community through CSR initiatives and marketing, the Co-op can do something more authentic – it can provide the infrastructure that helps communities organise themselves.

I proposed some ideas of how the Co-op could combine these stores with modern software and the internet.

Store-Specific Membership

Your membership would be tied to a single store, but not necessarily by your primary address. It would default to the store you most frequently buy from, and you’d get extra benefits for shopping at “your” store, but you could easily switch yourself if you move or your shopping habits change. This creates a modern, flexible approach to place.

I designed membership cards that would make this connection tangible. Each card would feature a map of your local area and store details, along with the name and contact information for your store’s Member Pioneer – local Co-op representatives who help build community connections. Each store would also have its own algorithmically generated logo, creating unique but cohesive local identities.

Live Community Dashboard

Each store would display its membership numbers in real-time, a constant reminder that this isn’t just another shop, but a community-owned space.

This wasn’t just about the display. Building systems that could handle real-time membership updates would be a litmus test to ensure that the Co-op had modern software that could support internet-age community engagement.

Local Member Products

Members could sell their products through their local store. These wouldn’t just be local products – they’d be made by fellow member-owners, creating a genuine marketplace for community entrepreneurs.

Local products would only be available at that store, but all products would be indexed and searchable. Imagine viral moments of people travelling across the country to visit a particular store’s Eccles cakes.

Financial Transparency

Perhaps the most radical proposal: complete financial transparency with members through an easy-to-use app. While other retailers guard their performance data closely, the Co-op could share store performance openly with its member-owners. See how your store compares to others, track community investment, and understand the real impact of your membership. This would be a powerful demonstration of what makes a co-operative fundamentally different from its competitors.

Community Group Integration with One-Click Joining and data sharing

Any member could apply to affiliate their local group with the store – whether it’s a walking club, food bank, or tenant association. The Co-op would provide the digital infrastructure to help these groups organise, with seamless joining built in. Want to volunteer for a local litter-picking? Just tap your membership card to share your details, via the co-operative, with the organiser. Change your mind? Use the co-op app to unsubscribe and remove your details.

Organisers would get simple but powerful tools for management and communication, with easy integration into platforms they already use like Facebook and Mailchimp. The Co-op would act as a trusted broker of community data, making it easier for groups to organise while protecting everyone’s privacy.

Starting Small, Thinking Big

The implementation plan was deliberately modest: start with two test stores (one urban, one rural), find some local member-made products, and hold launch events to recruit local organisers. Learn from what works, adjust what doesn’t, and iterate towards national rollout.

The Outcome

I presented these proposals to the Co-op’s leadership team, and I’m glad I took the opportunity to present such ambitious ideas. While I suspected they might be too radical for immediate adoption by the board, it felt important to articulate a bold vision of how traditional institutions could evolve for the digital age. The Co-op movement began as a radical reimagining of how communities could organise themselves. Nearly 200 years later, we again find ourselves at a moment where institutions need to fundamentally transform to remain relevant. Even if these specific proposals weren’t implemented, I hope they contribute to the broader conversation about how we rebuild our civic institutions for the 21st century.

7 years later, the ideas feel more obvious, but yet somehow no closer.

Thanks to Tom Taylor for giving me the opportunity to work on this, Cassie Robinson for working with me and letting me run off with my ideas, and James Barclay for helping put together the visual designs

In August I did a casual 3 day bikepack around Kent with a couple fo friends. This made me finally confront the fact that the bike I got from Tom 8 years ago is too small for me. So after a bit of gumtree trawling, I found another Reynolds 531 frame. I’ve gone from a 55cm frame to a 60cm frame. I should have done this ages ago. I can now look over my shoulder without biomecanically veering in that direction.

Anyway, last week I passed Tom’s bike onto Helen, so very pleasingly it will stay within the BRIG family.

We’ve had a splurry of nice activities to celebrate Rina’s birthday. We visited The Imaginary Institution of India at the Barbican. Despite being handed a literal book to read as you enter, it ended up being a varied but very well constructed and interesting exhibition. The fact that something called The Emergency existed in the real world and not science fiction is a good opener.

We visited Dongnae, and we feasted on expertly fermented, grilled and stewed delights. I’ll be front of line when they inevitably bottle and sell their gochugang and other sauces. It felt intentional that the restuarant was lit like a stadium, but that reason wasn’t offered to us.

I rented the tiny cinema at 20th Century Flicks to introduce Rina to Diva. Fortunately she liked it, and it remains my favourite movie. The main thing that changed in this watching for me was thinking how young Jules is.

And finally we ran away for a quiet few days at The Piggery in Dartmore. All incredibly cute and idylic. I’m not the biggest fan of Devon as a vibe, but driving through the Ambrosia hills is stunning, and even better when viewed from a sauna after an 8 mile(!) ramble through the forests and over the tors.

We tried to leave this morning, but the hills are snowed, and the roads are iced. Therefore I am writing this.

In other nice things:

• Runt Of The Litter returned, and I attended as a punter this time, not doing a single bit of voluntering. Always a big fan, but I don’t think I want to see a waterboarding again any time soon.
• Rina took me to watch The Outrun at the Hackney Picturehouse. It is a beautiful, real and delicate movie.
• We watched A Man Called Otto on Netflix which is more cheesy, but successfully made me tear up.
• We watched Fingernails. Disliked everything about it.

I’ve enjoyed being busy as a balance from exessive solo ruminating. The things I’ve been doing have been going well enough to feel productive, and there’s no time to overthink anything. I’m a little stressed at how long my todo list is, and something important falling through the cracks, but all good so far 🤞🏻

I was in Brighton for the wedding on Friday night, and birthday drinks in Bristol on Saturday. I’m used to being charged £45 for a single from Paddington-Bristol, so I thought this journey, going via London and including that journey as part of it, would be even more of a rip off. But I got an advanced ticket for £32.80. Then with a two-together railcard it was £22.96. Then with 10% back for buying it through uber it was £20.66. Then with 1% cashback on my Chase card it was £20.43. This includes the Zone 1 Elizabeth Line transfer! It had to give it to me in paper tickets!

I’m telling you this because it was my main point of conversation at the wedding. It’s good wedding content. It went down well. But only my blogpost readers get to hear the final joy: the final train was 35 minutes late. The Delay Repay claim was approved today. Total cost totals £8.95 each. Hold for applause.

I bought a good chunk of the wood for my workshop from my local independent timber merchant. Only 5 years ago I would have been far too terrified by the whole thing to go into such a place, and although they do have an online booking system I could have used, I walked over in person during a lunch break and did it in person. It was good to have a walk, it was good to look at the wood, it was good to get a sense check from the guy that I wasn’t doing anything stupid, it was good to talk to him about bread sauce at Christmas. Sometimes I don’t know who I am any more.

I did a quick little talk on Retrieval-augmented generation that nobody asked for at the ff.studio studio. Talking about work is fun.

In note 9 when talking about modifying the kitty ai journaling system for my own needs, I said:

Two yak shaves I’m currently resisting: rewriting it in ruby, and moving my todo list away from Apple reminders so I can have an API to feed it.

But this week I realised that I can get Claude.ai to rewrite it in ruby in seconds, and I found this CLI for accessing my Apple reminders, so yaks… lawnmowered?

While in Brighton, we popped in to see Ammonite by Collectif Scale. This kind of large burner-style is usually right up my alley, seeing as I like to do it myself, but unfortunately the Collectif Scale stuff seems to do nothing for me. R is mesmerised by it though. Art huh?

This is pretty much how I spent—and wanted to spend—my teens and twenties. It’s how I managed to self-build a pretty great career out of nothing. I was also seriously depressed. Did being up in my head so much enable me to build this career? Probably more than is good to admit. I don’t think I regret it: I enjoyed it, I think I have done good work, and I have profited from it. But I could have given myself more credit and care for doing that to myself.

One of the main things my brain is spending cycles on is continuing to properly catch up on the Large Language Model news of the last few years. I’ve been wallowing and ruminating and tinkering with the different models and techniques. Putting aside the hype and very reasonable questioning of their value, they are really interesting. I enjoy how repeatedly counter-intuitive they are. It’s fun, and as Simon Willison says: often quite funny.

As a customer of LLMs, I got access to Copilot Workspace this week. I made an issue to remove the broken comments feature from this blog. It did it perfectly first try. So that worked.

OK, so… all of the above is me mitigating the fact that I spent Saturday afternoon in a David Lloyd. There’s nothing interesting to say about that. But it was good, my skin looks great, and it was perfect after all of that braining.

My mental and physical health was so rubbish that I failed to make it to LRUG on Monday, and the Interesting Do on Tuesday. Both things I would have loved to have gone to.

But I did go and see my school-friends The Skints on their unplugged tour. I hadn’t seen them live since they headlined Koko in 2013. That gig was when it was clear that they didn’t need my support any more, and I’m just loitering around while my friends were working. This gig felt very grown up. I liked it.