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Bjork Utopia

Here's a recipe to use up your turkey leftovers after Christmas.

We left Gulfoss and drove through the countryside to Fluðir where our next hotel stay would be. The hotel had cute little cabins arranged around a central square and the room itself was comfy and warm. Our dinner was nice enough, although we had a bit of a Fawlty Towers moment with Ingrid’s chicken salad. First it went back because they didn’t leave the BBQ sauce off. Then it came back with tomatoes. And then back again with more BBQ sauce. Fourth time lucky.

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In a perfect confluence of last month's album digest, here's an excellent Four Tet remix of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's "I Will Make Room For You" from her album "The Kid". I've put it into a playlist with "Lush" from Four Tet's "New Energy" album and the original version of "I Will Make Room For You."

After I read "Hello America" and "Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun" to Ingrid, it was her turn to read something to me. We settled on Matt Haig's memoir of anxiety and depression "Reasons to Stay Alive", which is as uplifting and life-affirming as its title suggests.

We cook this version of bolognaise with beetroot due to Ingrid's tomato allergy. This recipe is an attempt to capture what we do on the fly. The key to it is using the wine, the Worcestershire sauce and the herbs to even out the sweetness of the beetroot. If you can manage that, it's super tasty. The sauce usually ends up being an unusual but pleasing pink/purple colour, as you will see from the pictures.

I had to compute an indicator this week. It had confidence intervals that relied on taking 100,000 samples from the indicator's approximate distribution. I had to repeat this over multiple GP practices and for twelve different demographic groups.

In recent weeks I have worn a suit to work. I bought a new furry woolly suit a few weeks ago and have alternated between it and my old one. I also bought new shoes that gave me blisters and made me cry. Enough time has passed that by now it feels natural rather than silly and those shoes don't eat my feet as much as they used to.

Mary Epworth "Elytral"

Three years ago today I moved in to my little flat in Chichester, soon to start a new job. I had no money left but at least, after a character building stint of six months sleeping on the floor, I had a bed. In the intervening three years, my job role has expanded, I've done another degree, the flat has become a home, and I've met and married Ingrid. Add to that the fact that it's almost four years since I left for South America and I start to realise that I've done a crazy amount of things in that time. I don't intend to stop.

"Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun" is a novella by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. Of all the books nominated for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, this looked like the most interesting to my eyes. I've enjoyed previous Goldsmiths nominated novels including Acts of the Assassins and Satin Island.