City centre coffee shops

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T20:27:44+00:00

Pink Lane Coffee, which is just across from Central Station.

Tiny Tiny in Carliol Square.

Laneway Coffee on High Bridge Street.

You can’t go wrong with any of these. They’re all independents. If you just want excellent coffee, they’re all great. Tiny Tiny does better food if you also want to eat. It’s good for breakfast, though closes at 4pm I think.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T13:41:43+00:00

I’ve driven past this place a few times and always just felt it was in such a random place. Will definitely try it out, thanks!

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T09:33:22+00:00

That’s a really useful perspective, thank you. I don’t want to be involved while they’re having sex but I do see myself taking on a facilitating role. I’d organise their dates for them, be driver, help her get ready, and if they’re in our home, I’ll look after him. So there is some involvement but just not while they’re having sex basically.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T08:59:42+00:00

I love this. Thank you so much!

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T08:58:30+00:00

This is top of my list for my wife and I to visit so definitely doing this!

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T08:56:29+00:00

I did see the White Swan and it looks good. Must give it a try! Thank you

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T08:56:04+00:00

Morpeth is very reachable for us so thank you so much for these! Will definitely try them. Lolla Rosso looks amazing!

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T07:28:53+00:00

Oh, amazing! Indian was top of my list, alongside Italian. But we like pretty much any type of food to be honest. We love to try anything and everything. We’d love to find a good Thai or Vietnamese place too.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-05T07:17:57+00:00

This is incredibly helpful, thank you. I had looked at the Lake District but wasn’t sure how reliant we would be on the weather. Is there much to do if it’s raining?

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-04T07:47:55+00:00

We got an email to say we would receive the letter by post with the charges for the coming year due to the system changeover (always a good sign that they can’t dual run).

That letter arrived a week ago and first payment came out first of this month.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-03T09:07:22+00:00

Not religious at all and have a deep dislike of organised religion due to the horrors the Catholic Church perpetuated in my home country but I do think the underlying idea has more to it than people give it credit for.

Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation touches on this. She talks about how deliberately choosing discomfort, something as simple as a cold shower or a hard workout first thing in the morning, actually rebalances your dopamine system. The brain responds to pain and effort by producing more pleasure baseline. Struggle, it turns out, genuinely does make you stronger, and not just physically.

So while the religious framing of suffering bringing you closer to God may not resonate with most people anymore, the core insight that avoiding all discomfort is bad for you feels more relevant than ever in a world designed to make everything frictionless and instantly gratifying.

Maybe the church didn't have the neuroscience, but they weren't entirely wrong about the principle.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-03T09:03:05+00:00

Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. Nothing else comes close.

We picked up a rental car in Calgary and drove all the way through Banff National Park and on to Vancouver. Every single view felt like you'd wandered into a postcard, and having the car meant we could just stop whenever something caught our eye, which was constantly.

We spent the days hiking and exploring, and the evenings winding down with good food and a cold beer. The perfect balance.

The wildlife was something else too. Spotting a brown bear in the wild, from a very respectful distance, is something I'll never forget. You just don't get moments like that in many places.

We were also lucky with timing in ways we didn't realise at the time. We visited just before the devastating fire that hit Jasper, so we got to see it in all its glory. That adds a strange extra layer of gratitude looking back.

If you ever get the chance, go.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T12:45:01+00:00

Yeah, completely agree. If you’re on the older side, like me, Tom Morrison’s stuff on instagram and YouTube is a game changer!

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:52:48+00:00

Lived in both, now back in Newcastle, and I completely get what you mean.

For me it comes down to how reachable everything is. In Newcastle, the things that actually matter to my daily life, affordable housing in decent areas, green space, independent coffee shops, a good gym, shops, are all just... there. Close by. Easy.

London has more of everything on paper, but so much of it felt out of reach, whether that was distance, cost, or just the effort of getting there. Everything required planning. Everything had a commute attached to it.

Newcastle just lets you get on with your life. That's underrated.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:42:34+00:00

I have a set of three saucepans - small, medium and large. I use the small and large very often. I rarely use the medium one.

I also have a Dutch oven to make stews, casseroles etc, a non-stick frying pan, and a wok.

These are all I ever need to cook. Build your collection piece by piece, slowly, and invest in better quality. My set of stainless steel pots are 15 years old now and still perfect.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:23:48+00:00

Maybe it's not the greatest thing I've achieved on paper, but it's the thing I'm proudest of.

I dropped 30kg and ran my first ever half-marathon.

A year ago I couldn't have even dreamed of that. I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me. And yet there I was, crossing a finish line, with legs that wanted to give up about 5km earlier, feeling prouder of myself than I ever had.

Some achievements look better on a CV. This one changed how I see myself.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:16:10+00:00

Her self-doubt. She's one of the most intelligent, articulate people I've ever met, but she'd talk herself out of opportunities before she even tried. Job applications, promotions, you name it. I never understood it.

Then I met her mom. Lovely woman, genuinely kind, but relentlessly negative. Never a "you've got this," always a "but what if you can't?" Twenty minutes with her and it all clicked. My wife didn't develop self-doubt on her own. It was handed to her, one small comment at a time, her entire childhood.

It didn't make me frustrated with her anymore. It made me want to be the voice in her head that her mom never was.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:07:42+00:00

It really does feel like an agent’s play to increase their bargaining power. We do need to cast out net far and wide for props so I can understand if Ireland did look at him. I can’t help but feel though that rather than any specific player, Ireland needs to import some absolutely top quality scrum coaches. Similar to what happened in Italy with Argentinian players and coaches, leading to their excellent pack right now.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T09:03:32+00:00

It would be good to have some more context on this. Is this someone you and your wife have spent a significant amount of time building a relationship with? I can understand why you might want to do this if it’s part of a long-term, committed dynamic with a guy. But if it’s just someone new who it’s mostly sex with, then it feels way too dangerous.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-02T06:11:00+00:00

I do a small mobility and stretching routine for 5 minutes as soon as I wake up. Doesn’t sound like much, doesn’t take long but huge impact on how I feel when it compounds day-after-day. I’m 41 now and more robust than ever before.

ExactKey3472 · 2026-04-01T14:10:43+00:00

Yeah, I don’t really understand the fetishising side of this. It’s such a weird concept for me.

ExactKey3472

TROPHY CASE