Happy 2015! or, 2014 in review

Here marks blog entry no. 100. I feel as though there should be balloons. A small cake, at least. My breakfast blog has now overtaken this one as my blog with the most hits though (despite coming into existence a good couple of years after this one), so celebrations will remain muted while I plot how to address this. In any case, it is time to briefly review 2014 and present a couple of lists of my favourite things.

In terms of New Year's Resolutions, I think I failed quite comprehensively. The main two I listed were:

- use this blog to document the progress of my novel, The Final Chapter of Captain Iguanodon
- travel with Claire to as many different Kingstons as possible.

I failed pretty badly with both of these on the surface of things, but the spirit in which these resolutions were made was honoured with other actions during the course of the year.

While I failed to use the blog to document the progress of my novel, I did begin writing for it (the novel) much more frequently. This was helped by my new work commute (more on that later on), giving me a good hour or so every morning in which to carry on with it. I'm hoping to finish a basic first draft within the next month or two.

While we didn't visit any Kingstons, me and Claire did manage to take a trip to Norway. That was very exciting. And wet - Norway is not blessed with the best autumnal weather. Oslo is a beautiful city though, and definitely worth a visit.

New musical discoveries

In previous years I have tried to check out a new band per month. This didn't happen so much this year. Sure, I did find out about some new bands, but possibly not as many as I have done in the past. While I did keep my eyes and ears open for new music, I didn't hunt for it. This is something I will try and address in 2015.

Best tracks:

In leaving my previous job, I also left behind Radio 2. We had a good run; I will always look back fondly on days spent with Ken Bruce, Steve Wright and Jeremy Vine with a smile on my face and happiness in my heart. 2014 could be the final time that my favourite tracks are heavily influenced by MOR radio.

1. Manic Street Preachers - Dreaming A City (Hughesovka)
2. Young Fathers - Low
3. Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
4. François & The Atlas Mountains - La Verité
5. Future Islands - Seasons (Waiting On You)
6. Jack White - Lazaretto
7. Elyar Fox - A Billion Girls
8. Pixies - Blue Eyed Hexe
9. Common Linnets - Calm After The Storm
10. Octopuses - Cool Story Bro

Here be a nice mixture of MOR radio, old favourites and bands associated with The Great Escape. As said earlier though, I didn't actively hunt out new music enough. That's going to change in 2015, just you wait and see.

I should probably just give further mention to Manic Street Preachers before moving on. In 2014, they brought out their 12th album, Futurology, and it proved to be one of their best yet. Every now and then I remember what they've achieved and continue to put out and am in a state of awe. They must be the only band to have played in both Cuba and on Strictly Come Dancing. 'Dreaming A City (Hughesovka)' is unlike anything I've heard from them thus far, and demonstrates that they continue to deserve people's attention, even after more than 20 years.

Best films:

1. The Lego Movie
2. Boyhood
3. Her
4. Pride
5. Mistaken For Strangers

Having been gifted with a Picturehouse Membership last year, I went to see a large number of wonderful films. These five were my favourites, and I probably shed tears for some reason or other at at least one point during each of them. Well, maybe not during one of them. I think I held it together for the duration of Boyhood, though that film was so engrossing that I could quite happily have watched it for another couple hours on top of its 3+ hours running time.

I'd give each of these films between 4 and 5 out of 5, and would recommend them to anyone.

Honourable mentions: 20,000 Days On Earth, Calvary, The Imitation Game, Grand Budapest Hotel

Best gigs:

1. Ezra Furman @ End of the Road
2. Jeffrey Lewis @ Green Door Store
3. Young Fathers @ Green Door Store
4. Manic Street Preachers @ Brighton Centre
5. The Hives @ Brixton Academy

Ezra Furman and the Boyfriends are a great live act in most situations. There was one extra special moment when we saw them play for the second time at the End of the Road Festival, though. Their set was proceeding as normal when Ezra disappeared from the stage. Then they broke into one of the most potent songs in their arsenal; Take Off Your Sunglasses. As harmonica blared out, where was Ezra? We still couldn't see him, and then there was a big cheer from the back of the field.

Turning around, we saw him.

Ezra had scaled an ornamental stage that was situated halfway into the crowd. Somehow he had snuck out and there he was, delivering the song of the set, and this simple surprising gesture was enough to plunge everyone into raptures. Ace stuff.

Special mention also needs to go to Jeffrey Lewis, who was both entertaining and informative throughout his set. He made great use of a projector to present us some comics to accompany songs about the history of Vietnam and a monstrous Creeping Brain (creeping brain). He is certainly someone to catch live where possible.

Best books read:

1. AS Byatt - Possession: A Romance
2. Richard Adams - Shardik
3. Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam
4. Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
5. Neil Gaiman - American Gods

With a new hour-long commute in both the morning and evening, for the majority of 2014 I found myself with a lot more time for reading than I had previously, and for the most part I made good use of this time.

Possession: A Romance has to be one of the deepest books I have ever read. The amount of detail and world-building that Byatt put into this novel is incredible, so much so that I could not discern between her fictional world of poetry and academia and my own. It may be a little dense and take some time to get into, but the rewards are well worth it.

I also read a really terrible book. Ben Galley's The Written was a gift that I received for my birthday. Dad had seen it in a bookshop and thought the cover looked good. I have to agree, it's packaged very well, and even the ideas for the plot and the fantasy world were fun and interesting. Unfortunately, the level of writing was just not up to scratch. Ropy dialogue, questionable imagery, an abundance of cliché, it was all there. The book, it turns out, was self-published, but has still managed to do well enough to make its way into bookshops nationwide. I even found a copy lurking in the Piccadilly branch of Waterstones. Despite being occasionally painful to read, the whole experience has been quite the confidence booster.

Best wrestling matches:

So 2014 was the year I got into wrestling. It all started off as an impromptu and flippant decision to download and watch the Royal Rumble event in January and slowly snowballed into a full-flung addiction whereby me and my housemate Matt watched each monthly pay per view. I plan to write an eulogic piece in praise of the post-modern marvel that is professional wrestling, but until I get round to doing so, these were my favourite bouts that I watched (just in case any wandering reader really fancied seeing what I was getting so het up about).

1. Daniel Bryan vs. Bray Wyatt @ Royal Rumble
2. The Wyatt Family vs. The Shield @ Elimination Chamber
3. The Usos vs. The Wyatt Family @ Battleground
4. Dolph Ziggler vs. Cesaro @ Hell In A Cell
5. Team Cena vs. Team Authority @ Survivor Series

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that Darren Aronofsky intended The Wrestler and Black Swan to be companion pieces.

"I like to look at wrestling as the most artsy of all the martial arts. It's a very creative process, what we're doing is artistic creative combat." - Daniel Bryan, via Alternative Nation.

Achievements:

So, as mentioned earlier, I bailed on my resolutions for 2014. But wait! I reckon my two main achievements for the year cancel out any notions of failure. I have started a new job as a writer for Medical News Today, writing a mixture of news items and information pieces. It has been great fun thus far, both in terms of being able to be creative and learning new things. And while me and Claire didn't visit any Kingstons, we did visit Norway. Possibly more exciting and eye-opening than a trip to Kingston-upon-Hull.

A third and final achievement that I am quite proud of concerns my breakfast blog. During the World Cup last year, I endeavored to prepare, eat, and review a breakfast for each of the countries participating in the football competition. It was hard work and time consuming, but the results were well worth it.

New Year's Resolutions

To keep things simple, I'm going to aim to finally finish the first draft of my Captain Iguanodon novel before my 28th birthday. Hopefully a deadline should give the impetus to get over the finish line. As things stand, I'm heading towards the endgame so this shouldn't be too tricky a resolution to keep.

Other than that, eat more fruit, drink more water and get more sleep. On that note, I should probably get to bed.

Happy 2015! Goodnight 2014!

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

One project for 2015:

My CD collection takes up a fair bit of space in my bedroom and has occasionally made me curse when moving house. As with any collection, what is contained on those shelves (and piles scattered about the bedroom on desk and drawers) is more than just a reflection of personal taste. Each one will have associations with personal history, specific moments in time, places lived and people known.

I’ve decided to embark on a bit of an adventure and appraise my CD collection, diving deeply into those chronicles that sit there stacked up in a flat, circular form. There’s no point having such a collection without making use of it, so I shall also be giving each album a review. Maybe I’ll rediscover some lost loves. Maybe I’ll have some serious questions to ask the James of the past. In any case it will be interesting - for me, at least - to see what I can discover listening to all those songs again. No doubt I will also find some gaps in my collection that need filling too.

Since moving house, my CDs have sat in an unordered mess, bereft of structure or logic. I shall be starting with the first CD on the top shelf of my designated CD shelves and slowly working my way through from there. My aim is to write up at least one review a week.