In recent years it seems like the world is in some kind of permanent mardy-bum space where everything has been gobbled up by someone else (insert your nemesis ‘other’ here) and the future is bleak. I find it a bit boring after a while and devoid of hope or encouragement, so I find I revert into classic movies or literature and other creative pursuits. Honestly, it has kept me relatively sane I think.
2025 was a challenging year personally. It threw up a lot of things that weren’t on my bingo card this time last year, while we were enjoying a prolonged stay in Agadir. Most obvious was the change in job. I left Bournemouth University in May after 10 years. It was the right time to leave and I have no regrets but I didn’t have any inkling that it would have happened this time last year. Most of my effort in the last few years has been at reducing the amount of work and trying to build up my creative output. I have gone back to work full time in the same year that I managed a book, an album and some film. I am keen not to lose this much fought after momentum.
None of these projects set the world alight. Indeed, that is part of the mardy-bum space that we live in. All the attention has been gobbled up by someone else (insert the nemesis that eats all your time and attention here.) It doesn’t really concern me, as I am in it for the creative expression rather than the public attention so I’m delighted with the outcomes. My hope is that I can make more music/film and writing in 2026, but am promising nothing after years of these resolutions falling flat and then depressing me.
Since I restarted this blog in 2018, I have taken up the ugly habit of listing my reading and viewing each month. I have debated with myself on whether to stop on many occasions, cringing that the blog is just a wanky piece of culture signalling nonsense. Each time I have ploughed on, convinced that it holds me accountable to myself, may be of curious interest to some others (especially in the absence of social media) and in some way provides a present to a future me, who probably won’t remember any of this and may appreciate the reminder. Incidentally, although here is largely inane lists and some pictures of recent stuff, I do journal privately and it contains things that I wouldn’t want to necessarily share with the wider world. That’s right, I’ve learnt that not everything needs to be published online. Well done me.
So, drum roll for this year’s masturbatory quantified-self statistics. Improved on reducing coffee but still need to go further. Convinced it is agitating a skin irritation and inflammation. This should motivate me to reduce it significantly. Diet needs to improve next year, so fruit and veg intake will get counted from now on. Duolingo is still going strong on my French, although I’m not convinced it will help me when I actually visit next week, as it didn’t help much in Morocco for last couple of years. Need to be using it in conversation methinks. I read more than previous years (69 books, but fewer pages than last year, so not really read more.) 160 films, most since the pandemic (170 in 2020, amazingly 185 in 2019?!) Fewer steps again (average 11000 per day). These have decreased year on year, especially when Jaffa passed away. More days of writing and music, which has resulted in some creative output and I hope to have more next year, so these numbers must be maintained!
So, best books and films that I have encountered this year. Warning to any newbies, I don’t tend to keep up with the latest fashionable stuff, so these will be new to me rather than ‘new’ to the world. Boring, but I found the hype to be tedious and spent too much time in the past watching shite on Netflix and feeling depressed that it hadn’t contributed to a sense of anything meaningful in my life. I enjoyed Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation, Peter Bogdanovich’s Who The Devil Made It? and Asterios Polyp. Films would be Rocks In My Pockets, Barking Dogs Don’t Bite and the many Buster Keaton/Fatty Arbuckle shorts that I saw. They’re so prolifically excellent.
Again, not a vintage year. So few have been recently. I have no resolutions for 2026 beyond being a better version of myself than I am today. More cheese than a cheeseburger with extra cheese.
READ: Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys, Asterios Polyp – David Mazzucchelli, Goodbye to Berlin- Christopher Isherwood, The Book You Want Everyone You Love To Read – Philippa Perry, The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
WATCHED: Duck Soup, Sons of the Desert, I Walked With A Zombie, The Unknown, Prizzi’s Honor, The War Game, Vampyr, The Santa Clause, Top Hat, Animal Farm, Spartacus, Vij, Gabbeh
