Just this guy, you know?

We recently went on holiday to Scotland and I managed to finish three books that have been in progress for a while.

Crab and Bee’s Matter of Britain, by Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith. Not entirely sure what this is. I got it through a Dan Sumption kick starter, which describes it as

An anarchic retelling of the folk tales of Albion, by noted artists and mythogeographers Crab & Bee. A banishing spell for nostalgia!

[Read More]

In what is now a randomly celebrated tradition it’s time to talk about what my current podcast rotation.

Regular Features - They’re almost at episode 600 and it still cracks me up all the time. Easily the longest time I’ve been actively following a pod. Their Discord is great too.

BudPod - A new entry to the rotation. Phil and Pierre are very funny and have a good vibe. This has replaced the gone but not forgotten Enjoy An Album in the rotation.

A tough but ultimately enjoyable read. Marc Morris covers over 600 years of history in about 500 pages. It’s very dense and people’s names refuse to stick in my head, both of which meant I had to do a lot of back tracking when I lost the thread. It pairs nicely with David Mitchell’s book as a deeper dive into those early rulers.

Probably not the main thing I should have taken away from it but the amount of time people spent going on pilgrimages or popping off to the Vatican to get an argument sorted is mind blowing. Some of these folk spent not insignificant portions of their lives on the road to argue a point. They probably did have a laugh on the way though.

I marked my account as dormant and uninstalled the Instagram app on the 20th of Jan.

I’ve been thinking about removing myself from the service for ages. I am very weak to the infinite scrolling video format and knowing all the memes. It’s fun in the moment but a total waste of my time. The most reasonable justification to stay was that independent businesses use it a lot, I wanted to keep abreast of the goings on of the Stirchley high street.

Man I love learning about submarines. They’re terrifying bits of kit and I couldn’t and wouldn’t get on one. A friend recommended Blind Man’s Bluff and I devoured it in a few days. It’s full of anonymous tales from the USA’s submarine spying programme during The Cold war. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched documentaries about most of the stuff here but I think there are new-to-me details that are anecdotal which didn’t make it into the docs, but such is a book on secret submarines publish in the 90s. It meshes really nicely with Command and Control from last year but is more chest beating and jingoistic. Tom Clancy fans would love this book entirely unironically.

Here are some books that I started in 2024, put down for months, and have now “boshed out”. Bosh.

Perilous Times

This came recommended from a friend describing it as “Immortal Arthurian knights are also spies” which is a great premise to be fair. It’s generally really good but I found the themes of climate collapse & rampant privatisation just a bit too bleak at some times. That’s why I bounced over to Fellowship of the Ring. Definitely give this a go & try to get a copy with the US cover which is far superior to the UK one.

What can I say? It’s great.

This is my first re-read of LotR in quite a while. I think in at least a decade. I have always been nostalgic for the time I spent with my gran reading LotR and that’s only getting stronger. Reading it is like being in a cozy duvet. The prose is verbose, ‘old fashioned’ and a fatherly. I wouldn’t put up with it in a modern book but I will for something so genre defining, so Dave defining.

The idea of Time Compression in memory really hit this year. It feels like yesterday when I wrote my 2024 post. Work was really busy and full of changes. We lost Iolo. Had some nice breaks. We got Enzo. Lots of stuff but it’s all just flown by in a blur.

So how did I do against last years goals?

1. Painting. Didn’t achieve the specific projects listed but I painted loads of models. ✅
2. Reading. Just shy of the 25 target (as measured by blog posts). I read the odd thing that I didn’t post about which would probably tick me over the target. Very pleased with how I did there. ✅
3. Health? Stuffed it. When things got busy this one went out the window. ❌
4. Music practice. A mixed bunch. I have practised regularly but mostly the same stuff over and over. 🤷

A tad over 50% which isn’t bad. 2025 goals will be similar:

A good follow up to Nuclear War. It’s a bleak read in a subtly different way to Nuclear War. It’s also very long and some might say rambling but I think the tangents about various people’s histories. If you did GCSE history in the 00s it fills in a lot of gaps between and around SALT and START. Unlike Nuclear war I had to put this book down a lot, it really did take a month or so to get through the 600-odd pages.

Here we go again. As usual this the highlights of the music I’ve enjoyed this year, not just music release in 2024.

Iron Maiden’s Brave New World has been on heavy rotation. It came out in 2000 which means, to my shame, I’ve never really listened to it properly when I started listening to Maiden with A Matter of Life and Death. Wall to wall bangers. My top track is Dream of Mirrors with The Thin Line Between Love and Hate at a really close second.