Mo'menths May 2026: Sink or Swim

May, the month where Arsenal finally broke their 22 year streak, won the premier league title and very nearly also bagging the Champions League title. I am not a football fan but it quite the experience to be around such an exciting moment in football history. The Destiny crew came together to watch the game at a pub in Hackney, and the atmosphere was electric, dampened only by the loss in the Champions League final later in the evening. The celebration on the 31st of May was a sight to behold, with fans taking to the streets in celebration, and the city of London coming alive with joy and excitement. It was a moment that will be remembered for years to come, and it was a privilege to witness it first-hand.

In keeping with the Arsenal opening, the interesting fact this month is that in medieval England, football was so chaotic it was banned for centuries. Matches involved entire towns charging through the streets, breaking windows, breaking bones, and breaking the patience of every authority figure in sight. When it resurfaced in London, they banned it again in 1835 for being just as unmanageable as before. We have come a long way since then, but let’s be honest, the spirit has not changed much. We just have more robust policing in place to keep the chaos inside the lines.

• Almost drowning twice in one morning, and what it taught me about myself.
• Darts, drinks, and food: a networking event with a difference.
• The rollercoaster of emotions that is Arsenal losing the Champions League then celebrating their Premier League win the next day.

The big event of the month was Tough Mudder on the 9th of May. The course was different this year, which was a nice surprise, though there were fewer obstacles than last year — enough variation to make it feel fresh and enough familiarity to make it feel like home. I got there earlier this year and ran it with a friend, which made it so much more fun. We skipped two obstacles (the water was too deep for our liking and we had already done one deep water obstacle by that point), and we didn't fancy coming out of the whole experience with PTSD from repeated almost-drownings. At the end of it, we had a great time relaxing in the sun, eating expensive food, getting free drinks, catching up, and planning how to rope in more people next year.

Coming back to the almost-drowning experience. Last year I avoided every water obstacle that required an ability to swim (because I can't swim), but this year my friend and I decided to do the first one we came across. It involved laying on your back and pulling yourself up a rope through a tube that ends with a drop into the water, with the expectation that you'd land back-first. We deliberated for less time than I would have expected, gave the lifeguards a heads up, and went for it. I definitely needed them, because like I said, I can't swim. What followed was quite a fascinating experience. Past the initial shock and disorientation, I was able to stay calm, assess the situation (which felt a lot like being in the sunken place from Get Out), and work with the lifeguard to get out safely. We did another water obstacle later in the course (shallower, colder, and requiring us to submerge under tires to get through), and while there was a brief moment of panic, I held the hand of one of the lifeguards on the side and got through it without any real drama.
I've always said I'm calm under pressure. It turns out almost drowning twice in one morning is a fairly efficient way to put that to the test. I passed. But I think it's time to finally learn how to swim.

The other standout of the month was the networking event that included Darts, Drinks and Food. I have played darts once before a couple of months ago, so I was very much keen to go back and improve my skills. Let's just say, my skills have improved, I won most of the games to get to the final only to get completely destroyed by the other finalist. It was a fun day, and I got to meet some new people, and catch up with previous acquaintances. I also got to eat some delicious food and drink some nice drinks, so all in all, a great day out.
I also did something else this month in the form of the Traitors live experience, it was a lot of fun, and as someone who hasn't seen the show, it was a great way to get a taste of it and see if it's something I would like to watch. I did much better than expected, in one of the rounds that required us to remember details about what had happend, I answered a lot of the questions right, I wouldn't say I have the best memory, so being a top performer in that round was a surprise. I was killed much later in the game after I apparently figured out who one of the Traitors was, after spending most of the game voting for the wrong person! It was a fun experience, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the show or just looking for a fun night out.

The main thing I worked on this month was pagination, because the more posts I add, the more important it becomes for the archive to feel easy to move through rather than overwhelming. I wanted the Mo'ments page to feel less like a long scroll and more like somewhere you can browse with intention, especially on mobile where too many controls can quickly feel cramped, so I tightened the whole flow with cleaner previous/next movement, compact numbered controls that stay readable, and a fixed three-post rhythm across all screen sizes. That consistency sounds small on paper, but it makes a real difference in use: the page feels calmer, navigation feels clearer, and as the series grows it should stay that way instead of getting harder to use.

The other big build this month was a full pass on the Film Log experience, I felt it could be better and while I was brainstorming ways to make it better, I realised that there were more films in the RSS feed than I realised, although thinking about it now, I am sure it didn't have 50 films in it but I'm not complaining. The main thing I wanted to do was to keep the initial simplicity of just the poster then expand into more details on demand, but I also wanted to make it feel more alive as the list grows. I moved it from a fixed recent slice into an infinite-scroll flow backed by paged RSS fetching, filtered to film entries only, so list posts do not steal slots from actual watches. That made the feed truer to intent and gave it room to grow without turning the page into a giant initial payload. The hardest part was making infinite scroll feel lightweight instead of noisy. I ended up layering cache in stages: first-page cache through the existing feed hook, then chunk-level cache and per-offset ETag revalidation for additional pages. In practice, that means repeat visits and repeated deep-scroll sessions make fewer network calls while still staying current when the feed changes.

By month-end, the UX side caught up with the data side. The snapshot panel now reads as a utility strip, cards carry quick status badges for likes/rewatches/spoilers, and the end-of-feed experience finishes with a contextual CTA into my full Letterboxd profile. Small details, but together they made the log feel less like a dump and more like a product.

Although by the time this goes live, the Moments page and the Film Log will have had a few more tweaks and improvements, so if you read this and have any feedback on either of those, please let me know!

In films this month, 15 was the magic number, bringing the yearly total to 84. This month was very much centred around horror which has been a genre that have had some really great entries this year. The absolute standout was Obsession, a film that I must admit I went into with lower expectations than I should have, but it blew me away. It was a psychological horror done very well, with a believable story, great performances, and an atmosphere that was as tense as it was unsettling. Backrooms was another good one, very weird and unsettling in its own way, with a great set design and a great use of the found footage style to make the most of its concept. On a lighter note, The Sheep Detectives was a fun and charming film, which reminded me of Knives Out in the best way, with a great cast and a great mystery to solve.

In theatre this month, Hadestown was next at Lyric Theatre and like all the others, it was a delightful experience. I went in not knowing much about the show, only that it's a must see, and I was not disappointed. The realisation that the show is a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth came as a welcome surprise. I already have a soft spot for Greek mythology and musicals, so this was a match made in......hades (I'm here all week). I loved every moment of it, it was also the moment I realized that I need to increase the budget I have allocated for theatre tickets, because the seat I got was not that great and had I paid a little more, the experience would have been better. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves musicals, Greek mythology, or just a good story well told. It was a great way to spend an evening and I left feeling uplifted and inspired.

In books, The first half of the month featured book 10 of The Wandering Inn, The Wind Runner by pirateaba, this one is more of a muted affair, mostly focusing on the fallout from last books events and ends with quite a tearful goodbyes between Erin and her adventurer friends, a good bye that was always going to happen because of the nomadic nature of adventurers but no less emotional. We also went back to other characters and their stories, like Ryoka and the King of Destruction. It was a nice change of pace, and it was interesting to see how the different characters are dealing with the aftermath of the previous book. The second half of the month was Lie to Me by Molly McAdams, a book I bought because I thought it was related to the TV show of the same name, but it turned out to be a romance novel about a woman who grew up with a troubled mother around men that changed her perception of men in general and her relationship with a new man who is everything she has grown to fear and distrust at first glance but turns out to be the exception to her rule, someone who helps her heal and grow as a person. It was a nice read, and I enjoyed it, but it was not what I expected when I bought it, so I can't say I would recommend it to everyone, but if you are into romance novels and are looking for something that is a bit different from the usual tropes, then this might be worth checking out. At the end of the month, I also started reading The Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, recommended by a couple of the Destiny crew, it had been recommended before because of my activity with The Wandering Inn but after the most recent recommendation, I decided to give it a go and I am glad I did. It is a fun and entertaining read, with a great sense of humour and I can't wait to see where the story goes. I am actually almost done with the first book, and I am already looking forward to the next one. If you are a fan of fantasy novels with a good sense of humour, then I would definitely recommend giving this one a try.

In music, this is a short one because Project Hail Mary by Daniel Pemberton, still dominates my listening habit, i'm not sure there's a new observation as to why other than I just love it. I did briefly go back to listening to Hold My Hand by Lady Gaga after going to watch Top Gun: Maverick again at the cinema, but it was not a long-lived affair, I just can't compete with the sheer brilliance of the Project Hail Mary soundtrack.

There isn't much planned for June, but it continues the momentum of May with Avenue Q with the Destiny crew, a show that was recommended by a member of the crew and that I have been looking forward to for a while. In films, I am looking forward to seeing Disclosure Day, Supergirl and cautiously optimistic about Toy Story 5. In books, I am excited to dive deeper into the world of Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Five Mo'menths in and the bar keeps rising. June follows, Champions!