I love London, and my family, and chatting to my wife, running along the Parkland walk, walking across Hampsted Heath, chatting to my parents over zoom ...but...

I'd like to be finding secret waterfalls in the wilderness of Keilder Forest, or striding over the heather of the Simonside hills in Northumberland with another family, our homemade sandwiches on our backs all the better for the hunger we are building up

Or with my friends and their families in Devon, running into an Exmoor pub to get out of the rain, ordering the first round of beer and getting ready to watch six nations rugby as our children romp outside.

Or with my wife and her friends and my Barcelona friends (science and not) in the Xampanyet in the Gothic Quarter, fast spoken Catalan, English and Castellano mixed around me, Cava being poured out in wide brimmed glasses and beautiful pinchos being passed around from the bar

Or drinking a Radler in a Neckargermünd beer garden having walked the Philosophenweg with friends and new colleagues, chatting science and life and European politics and philosophy, the sun going down over the Neckar snaking out towards France as we dream new science

Or a tiny resturant - more front room - in Okazaki, fresh sushi ordered in fast Japanese as I absorb more Medaka fish lore from the 100 years of study in the fish; laughing with the chef as he tries to explain which fish I am eating.

Or stretching out in a restaurant in Rome after a day's worth of trying to wrap my head around neurobiology, Aperol Spritz in my hand and Roma's rich life wandering by, settling in for a long, lazy dinner

Or in a Santa Cruz cafe, hipsters coming on their bikes and long hair, bioinformatics and molecular biology geeks almost indistinguishable from surfers and stoners if it wasn't for the MacBooks with stickers under their arms.

Or Helsinki in the endless summer. Or two days in Stockholm watching science blossom and then meeting my family, getting on a ferry to an island and swimming in the Baltic with my daughter.

Or arriving in Paris on Eurostar, throwing myself into a day's worth of science and ending up in a restaurant spilling out into a street with fine wine, sweeping science and French science and politics gossip - only half understood - around me.

Or in a pub in Bristol by the canal, cool beer in my hand, arguing the toss about minutiae of statistical methods, teasing and being teased about British society, wondering how late the last train to London back is.

Or old friends in Oxford at the Cherwell boathouse, watching naive punters trying to leave or start their punting trip (who knows which) as the warm bread, soft butter and fine wine arrives, statistical genetics humming around me

Or rushing to meet friends in London after a busy day, champagne popping to celebrate something, friends that are as close as family, bring old friends along, chatting.

There is only so much of the life I enjoy so much (and I am so lucky to be able to live it) which I can do through a computer screen. One day I hope it will return.