On Monday I turned 29, in a week of brilliant sunshine. It is more than halfway through 2025, but my birthday is a good time to look back on what's past and some of the bigger themes that have formed the melody of a bright year.
(I started writing this in August 2025//warning - it is rather stream of consciousness. But as they say, don't get it right, get it written.)
It's been a year where things have felt like they slotted into place at work. I discovered Museum Interpretation, a framework - or philosophy - about communicating the big ideas and information and artefacts to your audience in way that makes sense to them. It's challenged the way I think about museums, and they way I write. When I first joined the museum I had lunch with a colleague who asked me what I think museums are about. "Beauty, order, and truth," I said, with all confidence. That colleague then challenged me on the 'truth' part - how can a museum know everything? What we can offer is just our interpretation of a matter. Today my answer would be very different. I think museums, particularly at this point in history, are to connect, transform (through revelation), and provoke conversation and action.
But I get ahead of myself. That's this year and I'm meant to be reflecting on last year.
Last year was the year of knees and knitting, mountains and moving, surfing and the sea.
Knees and knitting
I completed the knitting project I'd started in - I think - 2022? The one where me, a complete knitting novice, decided that I was going to knit a jumper for my first project. Not any jumper, but a full merino wool with intarsia colourwork. No scarves or squares for me! Inevitably there was much unravelling and the process was slow and Sisyphean. By September 2024, however, I had a fully functional and delightfully yellow and white jumper that is the warmest I have owned. Did I learn to tamper my ambition and perhaps in future choose something a little more beginner-friendly? No, but I learned to knit, and that's what I set out to do. I have since knitted a tank top and a cornflower blue cardigan that is as soft as a cloud.
The knee. Oh, the knee. This is a larger story about running and ambition (herein lies the commonality between the knee and knitting). Jacob and I had signed up for a trail half-marathon in July and we had a training plan consisting of running, more running, and long running. It was the long running that really got to me. I'd been consistently running around 5kms, perhaps pushing to 7km, but now we were going 14kms, 16kms and I just wasn't loving it. It was partly because Jacob, tall one that he is, was naturally faster and stronger than me, adapting to the running load better despite not having run so consistently. I was trying to keep up, and feeling like I was burning out. After one Macritchie run my knee just had enough. It turns out my hips were weak (because the running, running, and long running training plan included no strength training whatsoever) and my knees were overloaded. Jacob and I split our training, and I started on strength training and the enigmatic approach to running that is jeffing (running and walking in intervals) and I managed to get that half marathon done. I learned that not running makes me sad, but yoga makes it feel better. I also learned that Jacob and I need to do some things alone, and this year we have had some runs together (slowly, at my pace) and some apart, as with all things in a good marriage where you are both yourselves, separately, and also one.
Mountains and moving
In June we climbed Mount Rinjani. The knee hurt quite badly coming down it, but this was such a beautiful point of the year. Walking for hours in the day, and nothing to think about except moving forward. We slept in the clouds (not very much on the first night, with an early ascent wake up call) and bathed in a hot spring, and had out meals cooked by two incredible porters who were confused as to why we didn't eat meat but very happily ate it for us and left us with the tofu and tempeh! It was the hardest mountain I've ever climbed, but left me wanting to do more.
More mountains were encountered toward the end of the year when my family moved out of Portsdown, where they'd been for over thirty years, to an HDB flat. The first metaphorical mountain was all the stuff. So much that had to be thrown away, given, donated, and packed. Jacob did lots of the packing and moving, while my job was to take my Dad out and away from the chaos while that was happening - we went for chicken rice and had a nice chat (meaning he ate chicken rice and I chatted about my life and he sagely nodded and asked some questions). The second metaphorical mountain was the sadness of my parents leaving a place they'd been rooted for over thirty years; all my life and more. I remember walking past Block 7, the first home before they moved to Block 9 and then Block 10. I closed my eyes and it was like I was there but in many times. That house changed over time as we all do but I could see the red plastic swing in the door to the green concrete floored balcony, and the red sofa, then the green sofa. The tiny rainbow mosaic tiles of the kitchen, the hallway once covered with family photos. The bunk beds and pull out mattress. I am uselessly attached to material memories and I stood there, eyes closed, grieving. I don't know what I was hoping - I never wanted to stay there forever but I suppose I wanted it to stay forever? And to always be a place to go back to? What else is home?
Now Jacob and I are moving out of Jalan Hang Jebat. I'm sitting on the sofa and the rain is pouring outside and it's the same achey grief I already feel for this place although we only had it for four years. But those four years - Jacob carrying me through the door on our wedding night, the many book clubs and birthday parties, looking out of the window to green, green, green. I will miss it - I'll say that and leave this for now.
Surfing and the sea
In September we took ourselves to England, and went down to Cornwall to be with Jacob's Dad and his family for a while. We surfed, ate Cornish pasties, walked coastal paths (Jacob ran, but the knee meant it was just walking for me!) I wore my merino jumper. I loved getting to know Jacob's aunties, two strong women with an abundance of love and adventure. I laughed and laughed at his Grandma's stories, and saw how Jacob is like his Grandpa, quiet and passionate and steady. There were countless games of Boggle (Izzy won all of them I think?) and Ben and I did physio exercises together, and did I mention the surfing? It was truly wonderful. I told someone I want to live in Cornwall and she laughed and said "Everybody in England wants to live in Cornwall but no one can afford it." So there's that. When we went back to Oxford to see Jacob's Mum the sunflowers were blooming in the fields. There were more walks in less blustery conditions, and Lucy, Dom and Rachel came to stay. Then we went to the Lake District where the inevitable travel lurgy got Jacob for a day, but only a day before we saw Naomi! What I remember of those days was a lot of walking, hot bolognese, Catherine's mind-bogglingly good chocolate bread and butter pudding, and wild ponies.
There were warmer seas awaiting back home in December, when Jacob, Simren, Hannah and I went to Koh Lipe. I'd decided to do my advanced diving course, which means I can now go deeper (and indeed did go deeper in Sabah this year!) When Christian, my instructor, first brought me down he told me to look at the red patches on his wetsuit as we descended. I watch as they faded to grey - it was the strangest thing. A plastic bottle he'd filled with air on the surface was crushed and crumpled at 30 metres - is that what my lungs looked like? If it was, I couldn't feel it. I felt entirely at home, and still feel alive and at home in a very vivid way whenever I am diving.
(This post languished away in my draft folder and, without knowing how to end it but considering it is now 2026 and high time I stopped reflecting on 2024, here it is).
