Life Update /009: Yorkshire Edition
On winter roads, old cities, and the slow work of letting go
Quick note: your email might shorten this. Just click ‘view entire message’ if needed, or check it out at Hyperreality—the desktop version is particularly beautiful.
Happy New Year. We are only a week into January, and already the year feels longer than it should. Time does that sometimes at the beginning, stretches unexpectedly, refuses to move at the pace we’ve been promised. Maybe it’s the noise of the world, or maybe it’s simply that 2026 requires a slower entry, one without resolutions or grand statements, just a careful placing of days.
Some New Year’s Days we’ve gone on long walks – six miles or more – our breath visible, the world reduced to hedgerows and footpaths. Other years we’ve cycled to small village pubs, the sort that feel held together by habit and weather. We never take the day too seriously. This year it was cold enough to insist on staying in, staying cosy. And while we’re technically doing Dry January, it hasn’t quite begun yet – Christmas fell on a Thursday, which means the clean lines of intention blur a little. We’re in a new neighbourhood, without a gym membership, without the weights and exercise bike we sold before the move. For now, we’re letting the year arrive as it will, taking things slowly, finding a rhythm rather than imposing one.
The last Life Update was in mid-October. This one includes winter travel across Scotland, Leeds, and the Yorkshire moors; oysters eaten standing up beneath the vaulted roof of Kirkgate Market; long walks where the land feels older than memory; the unmistakeable charm of vintage things already softened by use; a near-lost Victorian pub returned to life; and the reckoning that comes with opening boxes you’ve paid to keep for years – objects heavy with former versions of yourself. It’s a letter about movement and return, about gathering and letting go, about what we carry into a new year and what, finally, we might be ready to set down.