Will Webster

This beauty (what I’ve learned is a push plate), found on the door to the living room of my very ordinary Victorian terrace house, makes for a tough argument.

It’s stunning. And, hilariously, it’s only there to protect the door…

There’s a lot of talk about how the things we make today have less detail, character and quality than what we still have from bygone times.

I get it. But I don’t think the reasons why are as simple as people like to say.

HOWEVER

If you ever struggle to feel proud of your accomplishments, remember Royal Huddleston Burpee.

A man who, upon creating the world’s most diabolical exercise, thought 'you what what, I'm gonna put my name on that'.

Being able to react to an email with an emoji is one of the all-time great tech time savers.

Right up there with that phone feature that lets you automatically fill in verification codes.

How losing my sight helped me see productivity differently | Caitlin Rozario | TEDxBeckenham YouTube video by TEDx Talks

Earlier this year, my very talented wife had the opportunity to do a TEDx Talk.

She decided to lay herself bare and talk about the most challenging, traumatic event in her life.

I may be very biased, but I think there’s lessons for us all in what she shared!

m.youtube.com/watch?featur...

St John's church, Glastonbury peering out of the mist. Photograph taken this morning from Glastonbury Tor on Michaelmas day.

We should all be allowed to hope that, like Robert Redford, when we eventually leave this world we’re remembered as:

1. Good
2. An owner of ‘weapons-grade good looks’*

*Stolen from my favourite obituary so far

What‘s popular at the moment, Gareth?

With a touch of Leandro Trossard

My life ambition!

Is ‘did this need to be a book?’ the new ‘did this need to be a meeting?’

Amazing photo!

It doesn’t seem fair that one place can be home to a land’s best beaches and tallest mountains.

But I guess nature is famously cruel.

A large open plain, before County Kerry’s MacGillycuddy’s Reeks mountain range.

It’s said you’re either a beach person or a mountain person.

Well, I say you can also be a Kerry person and have both.

😍

Taking the Ancient Pass Through Ireland’s Highest Peaks A short history of the famous shortcut.

On our honeymoon in Kerry, my wife (still odd to say) and I accidentally stumbled on the Gap of Dunloe – the coveted mountain pass through Ireland’s ceiling.

Naturally, I got home and started writing about it substack.com/@willwritesw...

The front cover of the book, ‘Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War Two’ by Robert Kurson.

And now I’m onto this.

A slight change of direction, but I don’t know if I’ve encountered a book more up my street.

Recommended by Ryan Holiday, so already off to a very good start before getting to page one.

Is VAR football’s Brexit?

It’s made everything worse, most don’t want it anymore and yet we’re seemingly stuck with it forever 😐

A large oak tree in the middle of parkland

Tree of the day – at South London’s best kept secret, Beckenham Place Park.

Would recommend reading this twice…

This is a real problem

*30 seconds into the book title brainstorm

"Yeah, that'll do."

2025 has taught me that rain hits different when you have a garden.

Perhaps the greatest present a boy could get on his 32nd birthday

‘Hog not included’

Subscribed! Looking forward to reading this

A pride of cats!

Or technically – as I’ve just learned – a ‘clowder’

It’s cool that Vienna and Belgrade began life as Roman settlements, when the empire used the Danube as its northern frontier.

It’s cooler that, if you look at a map today, both modern cities still mostly sit on the river's southern bank – just like the Roman sites they grew from.

And it seems like 'A Philosophy of Walking' is perhaps next...

I'm already sold!