If you’re looking for gifts that give fun, laughter and connection this Christmas, you need to be giving games! Most of these …

I went for games that would give your brain just a gentle stretch; that pair well with holding a baby whilst playing and probably not having had enough sleep.

I've come across the advice to write my own job description a few times now. As a sole trader my role includes everything! - marketing, accounting, bookings, stock management, and everything else. I assume it's a way of encouraging people to identify areas of weakness and celebrate areas of strength. I could use this as an opportunity to be reflective and identify on all the things I'd dearly love to delegate (mainly the accounts) but instead I thought I would entertain myself by imagining recruiting my replacement.

Nothing could have prepared me for this exhibition. Hetain Patel said that he wanted to put things together in a way that …

1. Playing games with lovely folk Airecon is a relatively small convention. I’ll happily go along on my own with incredibly vague arrangements to meet people. Admittedly it’s my local convention so I often see people that I know but I also usually manage to get a game in with people who I basically see annually. It’s such a joy for me to be able to connect with people over board games.

We finally got round to playing Subbuteo Angling. It promises a ‘game of skill. No dice. No magnets.’ Plus an authentic experience …

As part of Artangel’s ‘Come as you really are’ exhibition I'm delighted to be collaborating with Barnsley Civic, to display 155 vintage games from the 1940s up to the 1990s - fairly horrified to have included the 90s but here we are! The exhibition opens on the 24th May and runs until 8th August 2025. It is part of a UK wide project led by Hetain Patel and Artangel working with 13 partner organisations including Barnsley Civic. In addition to Patel's artworks such as Somerset Road (2024), a Ford Escort rugtufted in the pattern of the artist’s grandmother’s living room carpet, and Fiesta Transformer (2013); the exhibition will also showcase a wide variety of local people's hobbies, things they have made, crafted, collected, modified - presenting an alternative portrait of the UK.

It is not without a sense of irony that my first pet peeve is those clickbaity negative posts. I really don't get why in a hobby where there are small independent companies creating wonderful games...