There was a period a decade or so ago where I’d listen to Ryan Adams’ Gold double album on a weekly basis. It’s the perfect blend of Americana, singer-songwriter and rock’n’roll and when I discovered his music I greedily digested it all, constantly returning to this album.

Then, in 2019, the New York Times broke a story about a repeated pattern of (alleged) sexual abuse by Adams against a number of women, often following a pattern of him promising them various music/industry-related support in exchange for their favours (and silence). I had to stop listening to Gold.

I loved the Ender’s Game series of sci-fi books, before later discovering that author Orson Scott Card was a card-carrying (sorry) homophobe and apparently missed all the messages of acceptance, tolerance and peace that his own books contained. I won’t even bother listing J.K. Rowling here.

It’s June 2017 and I’m on a work trip to Belfast – it’s my first time in Northern Ireland and I’m feeling a little lost.

The city was beautiful but bruised, and the impromptu history tour we got from a sharp-eyed colleague gave me an insight into the fractured politics and complex divisions that years of news stories about the Good Friday Agreement, or childhood questions to my dad about his Red Hand of Ulster tattoo never quite expressed.

I felt ignorant, implicated, and overwhelmed. Away from the peace walls, the murals and the taxi-cab tours, I needed a drink. I wandered from the hotel and found a likely-looking pub.

The Traitors is on TV again. If you’re a fan of the show and/or already understand the premise, then feel free to skip the next paragraph while I sum it up for everyone else:

A few dozen random people go and live in a remote Scottish castle for a few weeks and embark on mildly trivial “challenges” to add money to a prize pot. 3 of the 22 contestants are secretly “Traitors”: eg. they’re evil, and must choose a victim to “murder” each day. They, and the the rest of the players, must face a daily “round table” where they have to accuse one another of being traitors, eventually voting someone out (“banishing” them). The “faithful” players left at the end of the game can split the prize money, but if any traitors are left unbanished, they take the cash instead.

The third season has just started on BBC1 and it’s already receiving rave reviews. If you’ve ever played boardgames like Werewolf, Mafia or Avalon then you’ll already be familiar the basic mechanics of this kind of game… in which case, this TV show may not be for you.

I'm typing this week's email from a pub table, on my phone, with a roaring log fire while my partner relaxes opposite with a book. Our kids are miles away being entertained by their grandparents, and the only thing I have to worry about today is whether the fancy French cheeseboard we half-finished last night will still be good today.

All in all, it's been a good Christmas.

Last week was a big one for me: I wrote here about my unexpected redundancy, and posted something slightly less specific on LinkedIn. I got such an outpouring of support and recognition from people that I was hugely moved - I should lose my job more often, I thought. A couple of former colleagues (and even strangers) reached out with offers to recommend me for upcoming roles, and I ended the working year feeling positive and even excited about 2025, rather than filled with trepidation and doubt.

A few weeks ago at work, I got called into a short-notice meeting with my boss’s boss. When someone from HR joined the call, I knew something was afoot. Within minutes I was being told that I was “at risk of redundancy”.

It’s a funny word, isn’t it, redundant? Like an appendix, perhaps, or a no-smoking sign on a plane. It’s something we don’t need anymore, a hangover from an earlier period. It’s certainly not something you want to describe yourself as.

Business is business, though, and these things happen. I could quibble and complain about the strategies and decisions that led to this happening, but ultimately it’s a line on a spreadsheet that needs to be resolved, and who am I to argue with the might of Excel?