MMXXVI

Happy happy happy happy New year! Fingers crossed all comes true for you or ar least it's peaceful.

X

Wednesdays

Goring you had a great wednesday. 

Carrying on from music I was looking at the CD racks in charity shops if you like Simply Red you're in luck because they're all there and you could fill shelves with copies of Stars of you wanted to. Though like Queens Greatest Hits and What's the Story (Morning Glory) nearly everyone in the country has one and a spare copy for the pet goldfish. 

The last time someone got on the bus obviously worse for wear they promptly fell asleep unfortunately this time he caught my eye and proceeded to talk away mostly unintelligibly while I knodded away while everyone else had their heads down stareing intently at their mobile.

Backup

Busy at the moment end of year work and I fell down a rabbit hole trying to back up my MP3s. Several thousand spread across many drives over the years trying to bring it all across into one and fiddling about with tags just because it all has to be totally neat. 

I must sometime in the new year get round to sorting out all my photographs taken across several phones and cameras over the years. Which will probably provide a few new posts if ever anything and of course being a bit of a cliche not an inconsiderable amount of selfies taken. 

Having been burnt several times with cloud providers I now only store a few for ease of grabbing and store the rest on physical media.

Hits

A list of 21st century Christmas hits based on streams, fortunately no Ladbaby but does have several issues. Hallelujah by

Alexandra Burke and Lilly Allen's Somewhere Only We Know are not Christmas songs. The former I find unlistenable, sure the performer deservedly won X factor and has gone on to a decent career but it's soleless and dead inside. 

Overall it's hard to see any challenging Mariah or Wham! in the future. Still I like The Darkness' fun tune.

 

Rage

The word slash expression rage bait has been called as the word of the year by the Oxford university press for stop it is the top find as the following:

"Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account."

I was trying to come up with my own example the best was "why tiny cute baby kitten should be shot". Yeah, I kind of haven't really got the hang of it unfortunately far too many people have.

Certainly is everywhere even from outlet's the even a few years ago you would think would know better. Back in the day it was enough to just not read the comments. In the past 12 months I've kind of disengaged from such slop my social media presence is kind of scaled back or on some abandoned and I will update my own side bar of shame, someday.

Actually the thought of kittens being shot is making me angry and upset mostly upset.

And a Happy Blogmas to You At Home

It's the start of December and changes are in the air our cat has long since gone from being stretched out in the garden to being curled up on the bed. It's also time for my annual miscellany of posts throughout the month.

Swindon and Wiltshire pride 2026

During the past fortnight I went to Swindon Wiltshire pride as you can see you from the level collage I put about it was probably the most attended local pride I've been to it's also very well organized myself I was toned down as I was going with my nephew for his first pride everything is just wow and new and exciting putting this aging cynical person in their place. 

We All TV Stand Together

Walking round the past year or two and studying charity shop windows you come across many like the the above TV stand which it felt like during the 2000s almost every home had one, but now like the CRT TVs that stood on them  thrown out.

There is something very naughties aesthetic about the silver columns, almost as if you go near it butterfly clips will spring out of your hair.

Melty

Trying to keep up with the regular update thing. The booties off underneath there's just dry skin, which I'm bathing in lotion several times a day. A few weeks ago I went to Oxford pride got happily wet saw some friends enjoyed the sights and sounds. Took one half decent picture. The soggy weather probably make my foot a bit more hurty then normal so I didn't hang around for as long as I would normally. 

Hope you're not melting too much. 

Long Time No Post

Hello my popsies hope you're well the the long gap between posts yes sorry about that I know you've been  eagerly desperately waiting for something new from me. Had lots of ideas but have not got round to it been into hospital and fractured my toe in the meantime, shall not bore you with the full medical history other than to say what was making my body go weird and icky as hopefully gone and the toes nearly healed.

For someone who hasn't had anything worse than flu since they were a baby, it has definitely be a strange time. I also value my toe a hell of a lot more especially when it comes to balance and we'll never abuse it as much until the next time I buy a really nice pair of heels, in red on impulse.

 

Those Russian Lesbians

Crawling under the last few seconds of LGBT history month is a reminder of early millennial representation that's a little problematic.

On its own All The Things She Said by T.a.T.u. is an decent pop song it's the whole outrage-baiting, queerbaiting which led to the wont somebody think of the children, down with that sort of thing fueled hype that kept the media going for weeks and kept the song at number one for four weeks. 

Looking back the calls from the likes of Richard and Judy for it to be banned look a bit ridiculous. The legacy feels problematic in terms of lesbian representation and bittersweet given the repression of lgbt rights in their native Russia.

Their last big hurrah was the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest, the year of Sertab Erener winning Turkey's first and so far only victory and the least said about Jemini. Actually their vocal were just as bad as Jemini's but an energetic performance got them on to the left side of the scoreboard.

MMXXV

Starting the 2025 entries. Is there a deadline for wishing a happy new year? A bit light on posts last year so promising to write a bit more should be a easy resolution to keep. Other than that that you shouldn't have to keep to some self imposed day to make resolutions, pick your own arbitrary day for a refresh. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas time, biscuits and wine as Cliff should have said. As time goes by my wishes for Christmas change from the toy section of the Argos catalogue to a decent selection of biscuits, cheese and wine. Whatever you wished for I hope its coming true, it can be a tough time for some and for those I wish that it will pass peacefully.

Bovril

Highlight of my day was explaining what Bovril was to my niece and the resultant look of distaste and that's before I got on to chicken Bovril. I missed the moment 20 years ago when they briefly changed the recipe to a meat free version, because having been so tightly associated with meat .

Tree up

It's late I'm listening to the cricket from the other side of the world. Shame about the score at the moment. The Christmas tree is finally up! Bit later than most years but I took a few days off recovery more than rest surrounding myself with comfort food and watching series 16 of Doctor Who, Tom Baker in full flow and we say farewell to Sarah Jane, for the moment, yeah my kind of favourite things. Saw the Alan Bennett at 90 documentary which mused on ageing and barely dented his amazing career still very astute observations as ever, definitely worth a look of you have iPlayer access.