Gum on My Shoe

Since 2020, I’ve marked the closing of each year by sharing one photo and one blog post for each of the preceeding twelve months. 2020: My Unpredicted Year 2021: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts 2022: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts 2023: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts 2024: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts Continuing the tradition, here’s my look back at 2025 in photos and blog posts. I hope you’ll enjoy looking through it as much as I did putting it together. January As regular followers will be aware I’ve kept a Traveler’s Notebook (TN) for a number of years. I often include it in the photos I share on social media. (I suspect it has more fans than I do.) It holds two inserts and several hand-made folders and pockets. I use it as a memory journal when I’m on holiday and to record other special occasions. Stickers, tickets, photographs, and assorted ephemera cause the inserts to become much thicker than when they were new. The TN as a whole gets impressively “chu...

“Please look after this bear. Thank you.” — Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington . Once upon a few days after Thanksgiving Fran and I were on one of our daily video calls. She mentioned the 2014 movie Paddington she was watching. She’d spent Thanksgiving on her own but had taken steps to make it special for herself, with movies and good food. I don’t think I’ve seen the film but I’ve always had a fondness for the bear from Darkest Peru. I told Fran about my earliest recollections of Paddington on the BBC children’s TV show Blue Peter. The stories’ author Michael Bond was a cameraman for the show. He wrote several Paddington Bear stories for the Blue Peter annuals which I remember receiving at Christmas throughout my childhood. Bond’s inspiration for the books was finding a small lonely-looking teddy bear on a shelf in the toy department of Selfridges store in London on Christmas Eve 1956. He brought the bear home as a gift for his wife. They named him Paddington after the tr...

Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy. — E. L. Konigsburg This post was inspired by a recent video call with Fran. As we were talking I noticed the vitamin tablets I’d set out on my desk earlier in the day. I decided to take them there and then rather than wait until later and very likely forget. “I’m just taking my meds,” I said, swilling them down with mouthfuls of room temperature coffee. Fran waited until I’d finished then asked, “When you say meds you mean vitamins, right?” I figured she just wanted to check I hadn’t contracted some prescribable health condition without telling her. “Yes,” I confirmed with a smile. Her reply caught me off guard. “You call them meds because you want to be part of the club.” I stopped myself laughing just in time. It was neither a joke nor a question. There was no need for Fran to elaborate which club she meant. Our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder is ...

Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it. — Julia Child This post was inspired by two recent conversations in coffee shops. The first took place one Monday morning in Starbucks at Newcastle Airport. I was enjoying a little me time after returning the car I’d rented the previous week. My blogging EDC (everyday carry) kit was set out in front of me on the little table. My Moleskine diary and the Traveler’s Notebook that serves as a memory journal. My new Filofax Clipbook planner, a gift from a friend. My Lihit Lab pen case, my phone on its folding stand, and the larger of my two Bluetooth keyboards. I was working on my end of year blog post, drafting entries for January and February. I’m pretty much in a world of my own when I’m writing but at a certain point I became aware of someone standing just to my right. I looked up to find a young man waiting patiently for me to notice him. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. Moses was fascinated ...

I’m not going to lie, my favourite knitting jokes are just the explanations for how frogging and tinking got their names. — nnaoam on Reddit This post was inspired by a video I came across on social media. Lateral with Tom Scott is a comedy quiz podcast in which three people attempt to unravel a cryptic question or challenge posed by the fourth member of the team. In this episode the question was as follows. Sarah is spending a relaxing evening at home. After a while, she sighs, and decides she needs to tink. After tinking for a while, she sighs again and decides she needs to frog. What is causing her to tink and frog? If you’d like to watch the episode before I let the frog out of the bag, you’ll find the video here . Assuming you’re ready to proceed, I can reveal that tinking and frogging are terms used in knitting. The description that follows is from an article by Pam MacKenzie at My Central Jersey. (Disappointingly, My Central Jersey is a news outlet serving Centra...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. Twelve Songs That Remind Me What Caring Is All About The Box on the Shelf: A Strategy for Handling Difficult Issues and Situations One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: Encounters With the Absurd Man Supportive Disengagement: How to Be There for Your Friend When They Need Space Shhhhhhh! A Friend’s Guide to Secrets It’s Not Enough / Never Enough I’m on My Way: Thoughts Inspired by Ed Sheeran’s “Castle on the Hill” In a Solitude of the Sea: Exploring My Fascination With Disaster Documentaries From Joe 90 to Marty: Celebrating the Boy I Was and the Man I Would Become An Open Letter to My Bipolar Best Friend Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources Our Books News and Appearances About Us Testimonials   Photo of Longbenton, Newcastle by Martin Baker.  

You’ll never walk alone. — Liverpool Football Club motto This post was originally published for International Men’s Day 2025 at I’m NOT Disordered . I’m grateful to Aimee [Wilson] for the opportunity to write this guest piece for International Men’s Day (IMD). For those who don’t know, IMD is marked every year on November 19. The purpose is to acknowledge the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, and raise awareness of men’s health, mental health, and well-being. The theme for 2025 is “Celebrating Men and Boys.” With my best friend Fran Houston I blog at Gum on My Shoe on mental health and supportive friendships. I’ve written for IMD in the past but I was unsure how to approach this year’s theme until Aimee suggested I think back to when I was a boy. What did I imagine my life would be like when I grew up? What did I want to be? It was a great idea and you can read the piece it inspired on my blog here . Writing it was both interesting and c...

This post was inspired by a trip to the coast with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. In what’s become something of a tradition we’d arranged to visit the Christmas Market at Spanish City in Whitley Bay. I was looking forward to the day. There’s always something to take away from our get-togethers, be it a new blogging idea, a collaboration to pursue, or just some great conversation and laughter. We weren’t meeting until early afternoon, so I spent an hour or two at my favourite coffee shop before heading to the coast. I arrived in Whitley Bay with an hour or so to spare. Fran was online and I took her with me on a video call as I set off to explore a little. I pointed out a few places I know including The Fire Station pub and Sambuca, an Italian restaurant I’ve been to with Aimee. I found myself in the vicinity of the Park View shopping mall and remembered a coffee shop I’ve visited a couple of times before. There was one free table next to an enormous Chri...