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I would rather do one thing patiently than five things in a hurry, and years of baking bread on Sundays taught me that. Funnily enough, I care about good libraries and honest prices. On a good day at a borrowed workbench I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn to start earlier.

Most of what ends up here starts near the marina on quiet Monday afternoons. I picked up a fountain pen early in 2024, and it has been close at hand ever since. On slow Sunday mornings, there is a cup of coffee going cold somewhere in the small room above the stairs.

This page started in 2021 as a place for recipes, written mostly out by the cathedral, and slowly turned into something other people read. By day I work as a delivery driver; in the evenings I tinker with trail running and reading on the train. Most of what I know about trail running came from railway timetables, my sister and a lot of trial and error. A lot of this would not exist without an old colleague, who patiently answered my questions one Friday in October.

An uncle with a very full shed once told me to write the date on everything, and I still think about it. I am happiest on the train into Lisbon with a wobbly wooden chair nearby and nothing urgent on the calendar. I try to keep things simple, which mostly means tidying up before stopping and reading the manual first. To be fair, visiting a new town, I always look for the old station and a good bakery first, just as I did when I moved to Lisbon.

I keep a list of cookbooks with notes in the margin I would like to find, and a friend from the walking group keeps adding to it. Most of my free time goes into trail running, the allotment and a growing pile of half-finished projects. In 2025 I moved to Lisbon, which made swimming in the river much easier to fit into a week.

Whenever I have a free hour, I usually end up in a corner of the shed with a jar of odd screws. Before trail running it was the local choir, and before that long walks; the habit of writing things down stayed. Most of my reading happens at a friend’s place across town, a chapter or two at a time, with a pile of offcuts close by.

Some of my favourite things, like a shelf of field guides, came from flea markets and were mended at the library in Lisbon. Admittedly, I am not an expert in trail running or anything else here; I just write down what I learn on most Thursday evenings. I have been interested in trail running since a retired teacher down the road showed me the basics one wet weekend in October. Long train rides out of Lisbon are where most of this gets written, with a box of spare parts on the seat beside me.

Patience is the most useful tool in the drawer, followed closely by a cheap desk lamp and an old notebook. I read Middlemarch for the first time during the summer of 2021 and still go back to it every few weeks. The spring light in Lisbon makes everything feel slower than planned. If I am honest, if something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent a good part of 2025 writing letters instead of at a desk in Lisbon.

Weekends are usually split between sorting old photographs, evening classes and whatever is half-finished in the spare room. If we met at a swap meet in Lisbon late in 2021, hello again. People sometimes ask why the pages look so plain, and the honest answer is that I enjoy it.

I have a soft spot for old manuals and field guides. The best ideas tend to arrive by the window whenever the weather allows, usually just after I have put the pencil down.

I still carry an old hand plane almost everywhere, a habit picked up from a neighbour. When I am not busy with trail running, I am usually out walking.

You will not find a tracking script or affiliate links on this site, only trail running and the odd detour. Every August, on the back step, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working.