It seems like only yesterday that I was writing a blog post about looking back at 2023 and now, here I am looking back at 2024. I don’t intend to cover everything that happened to me in 2024 but just to mention a few things of interest and of course, a few of my own blog posts.
All the links below open up in a new page.
New Year’s day was a cold and wet one although not quite as cold as I had expected. There were amber alerts on the weather forecasts for rain and wind and although there was a slight spitting of rain here in the north west it was hardly windy. (Well that was the situation outside of my window. Only a few miles away there was serious flooding!) According to the news, New Year Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh were cancelled due to high winds despite an influx of visitors from all over the world. My own celebrations were also curtailed due to a nasty bout of a coughing bug which many other have also experienced. Our visit to the Pier Inn went out of the window as well as another proposed pub visit. Liz and I were so poorly we decided to leave each other to our respective own devices and I drove back to Manchester for a few days. There is a lot to be said for spending time alone. I wasn’t giving the bug back to Liz and she wasn’t giving it back to me. Any coughing and wheezing that kept me awake was my own and not hers and I could eat when I wanted and choose my own TV shows to watch.
image courtesy flickr.com
Not that there was a great menu of new programming to watch. It was the same old tired films and old TV shows that I have seen time and time again. It’s a Wonderful Life used to be one of my favourite films but over this year’s Christmas and New Year period, I’ve have noticed that particular film shown about 6 times on separate channels. I reckon I need to not watch it for another few years so perhaps in 2027 I can finally watch it and enjoy it again. The big Christmas James Bond film was the one they showed last year, No Time To Die, the final film starring Daniel Craig as 007. Sorry but I didn’t like it the first time either.
The Railway Children, that charming film starring Jenny Agutter and directed by Lionel Jeffries was a lovely film shown on New Year’s Eve even though I have seen it before. Another great film was The Apartment directed by the great Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
All in all, New Year’s Day 2025 was pretty similar to New Year’s Day 2024. As a matter fact, on checking my diary I found that I had the same breakfast on both days, egg on toast with beans. Throw in two sausages and that was the exact same breakfast I used to have in my days as a bus driver in the late 1970’s.
Back in January 2024 I published a post about sandwiches, one of my favourite things to eat. In February Liz and I had flown away from chilly Britain to holiday in Lanzarote. The weather back then was probably the best we’ve ever experienced in Lanzarote at that time of the year and hope we’ll have much of the same when we go back there in a few week’s time.
Collectable cigarette item
Being in Lanzarote meant that it was time for another Thoughts from a Sun Lounger post and I must have been having nostalgic thoughts because I wrote another post about my days as a cigarette salesman in Liverpool.
In March technology issues made me write a post called Not Responding as well as giving readers another Slice of My Life.
One of my most successful posts and one that brings a huge influx of readers onto my site is one I wrote ages ago called Manipulating the Image so in April I tried to replicate its success with a post called Manipulating More Images. It was perhaps a little more focussed on graphic design that the original but sadly, it failed to light up the internet unlike its predessor which is far and away the most read post I have ever written. WordPress stats give me a lot of insight into what my readers are reading, when they read it and where they are but using all that data to make even more successful posts sometimes is just a little beyond me.
In May Liz and I were as usual touring the Loire in France in our little motorhome. The weather wasn’t so good in England and in fact, it wasn’t much better in France. Not only that but while travelling my back became really sore and at one point I was in real agony. Not surprisingly, the next post I produced was called Wet Weather, Books and Back Pain!
In June I was writing about dreams and in July I had music on my mind which led to a rebooted post called 20 Outstanding Instrumental Tracks.
In August the UK elections took place and so I wrote a post called Elections and Questionable People. Labour were the overwhelming victors in the election although perhaps everyone knew that the Conservatives were due to be kicked out of number 10. Surprisingly, Labour’s share of the vote, despite their huge win was only 34% and the Reform Party, whose share of the votes was 14% only ended up with 1% of the seats in Parliament. Both the Reform Party and the Green Party have called for a fairer system of electing the government. Personally, I can’t see that happening anytime soon.
In September after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden began to realise what everyone else was thinking, namely that perhaps he was getting a little too old to be the president and so he stepped down as a candidate in favour of vice president Kamala Harris. That inspired me to write a little quirky fantasy post called Becoming Joe Biden.
This year the Formula One World Championship has encompassed an incredible 24 races, far too many if you ask me. At least Max Verstappen didn’t have everything his own way and it even seemed for a time that Lando Norris might be on course to actually take the crown from him. As it happened, Lando’s team, McLaren, won the constructor’s championship but Max became the 2024 World Champion. I didn’t write much about this year’s racing but I did do a post about 7 Great F1 Designers.
In November, I finally managed to get another book together. It wasn’t the sequel to Floating in Space which I still hope to one day finish but a collection of short stories and blog posts with a little poetry thrown in. By the way, Timeline is available from Amazon as a Kindle download or as a traditional paperback.
That brings us round to December when I seemed to have my music head on as I finished the year with two posts about music albums, Slightly Less Than 10 Great Albums, actually 4 and the final 6 albums in last week’s post.
I’m actually starting to feel a little better and hopefully I might be ready to go out and drink some of that beer I’ve been missing over the last week or so.
Thanks to all my readers. Hope you all had a good Christmas and all the best for 2025.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 