This (otherwise ideal) London hotel has always has a slightly unhealthy obsession with cushions, but this just takes the biscuit! Let’s hope it’s a one-off, and not a new policy for the new year!

When my brother came to visit at new year, he couldn’t understand why I had supermarket coupons for Dr Beckmann products.

Well, as Wendy will testify, working in a hospital can lead to all sorts of weird and wonderful stains, which somehow find their  way into fabric no matter how much protective equipment is employed! Luckily, we’ve plenty if products on hand to deal with all eventualities…!

Yum!

These are Sommarfint straws, bought last week from IKEA. They’re very colourful!

Glitzen, who lives at the Metrocentre, is preparing for hibernation until November next year (or thereabouts).

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Sir Simon Wessely – a renowned British psychiatrist. He’s exactly as lovely as he seems in his writing!

On the same day that I met Sir Simon, I had been discussing the challenges of publishing ‘lost’ clinical trials with someone else. I wish I’d discussed it with him, because then I could claim some sort of tangential influence on his decision to write my recommended read for this weekend: a blog post in which he describes a ‘lost’ trial involving him.

It is easy to claim that non-publication of trials may be result of deliberate decisions, such as a wish not to publicise negative results, and we know this does indeed happen. But probably more common is a more understandable and human sequence of events. A first attempt at publication fails. Teams break up. Some leave academic life and start families. Others move into busy clinical posts, or take on new demanding projects. And time marches on.

As you see, it adds a neat anecdotal riposte to the growing clamour of voices which seem to claim – intentionally or otherwise – that non-publication of trials is always a function of ‘evil’ people working for ‘big pharma’. It’s well worth a read.

This is the oak-lined avenue at the Gibside estate in the Derwent Valley, with the column of Liberty in the background.

When I did photo-a-day in 2012, I got a lot of stick for the number of times I featured the Ouseburn… so where better to start a new series! Today’s photo shows the Ouseburn as it flows through Jesmond Dene.

I’d like to wish all of my readers a happy and prosperous 2014!

As it’s a new year, I’m making a couple of changes to the site. In 2014, I won’t be publishing any 2D posts. I think the last few posts demonstrate that I’ve really lost interest in that format after almost a year, and it has become increasingly difficult to make anything other than tenuous links between recommendations as my archive has dwindled.

So “out with the old”, and in with the… old. In 2012, I did a very popular series called photo-a-day, and I’ve decided to resurrect it for 2014, starting later today.

Weekend reads will continue to be published each Friday, and book reviews on alternate Wednesdays. And I’ll try and do a bit more ad hoc blogging, too.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great 2014.