best......

hello, for the final time this year


it has, i think, become a bit of a standard for me to do a sort of something about the better parts of a year which has gone by. every year, look you see, or when i remember to. quite tricky to know what to do with this year, though.

for me, and many of us i suspect, 2017 cannot exit soon enough. it's been miserable for all sorts of personal and general reasons. may we never see the likes of it again, and congratulations to all who have made it this far through it.

still, nothing is all bad. well, nothing except Van Halen with Sammy Hagar on vocals, and of course Mr Kim Kardassian or whatever he is called. and so, with a for what it is worth bravado to it, here's my choice of highlights, then.


.....album of the year

 

to be perfectly honest, if any of the three best albums of last year - Girl At The End Of The World by James, Night Thoughts by Suede and of course Blackstar by David Bowie - had been released with an extra track or two in 2017, well they would have walked to the title best album of 2017.

but this is not to say it has been all bad. far from it, but only as far as "above average". pictured above are the top three from the year, then. in no particular order beyond release, For Crying Out Loud (2017) by Kasabian, As You Were by Liam Gallagher and Songs Of Experience by U2. all three are consistently excellent, solid rock albums.

honourable mentions go to the two pictured below, namely Low In High School by Morrissey and Piano Portraits by Rick Wakeman, with the latter being the first album of the year what i picked up.

any disappointments? surely, sadly. Spirit by Depeche Mode, which just so happened to be the most expensive album i bought, what with it being about 1p south of £18 when i bought it on day of release. plus £1.50 for 10 minutes parking. although it is not a bad album it is not a particularly outstanding or memorable one. i've not been tempted to revisit it, put it that way.

will there be decent albums in 2018? hopefully. Manic Street Preachers have one on the way. we can only hope that if The Stone Roses really are finished, then one of the four puts out some new music.


.....excuse of the year

probably quite a few things would qualify for this, but sometimes you just have to go with either what you remember, or what was most recent, or indeed in this instance both.
 

yeah. that came in response to a query as to why exactly all of a sudden our internet connection was blocking stuff like Facebook, You Tube, Instagram, Twitter, etc. needless to say the person i contacted for help was of no use, but switching it all off and all back on again did the trick.


.....book of the year

it does feel like i read more good than bad during the year. so much so that i cannot recall exactly what stood out the most, so i will be as simple as the above and go with one of the more recent what i read.
 

yes, In A Cottage In A Wood by Cass Green was most splendid reading. sort of spooky and scary, but more of a mystery thing than an outright horror. as i commented in my review of it not so long ago, probably the most "unputdownable", let me just keep reading this sort of book what i had encountered since the magnificent The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins.


....selfie of the year

no, not one of me, or any of them there "celebrities" what do them. kind of not, at least. here you go, here's one what my Dad sent me. 

cheers Dad. i am not all together certain that "selfie of the year" is actually a thing, but it probably is. no doubt them fashion and gossip magazines all have an award for it, so there you go, my contribution to it all. or my Dad's, i guess.


....film of the year

somewhat tricky, this, i confess, as i have not seen nearly as many of the films released during the year that has been 2017 to make a qualified opinion. that said, i did end up at the cinema 3 times during the course of the year, which is probably more than in the previous four or so years combined.

of what i saw, by some considerable distance Dunkirk was the best of the lot.  

this was magnificent film-making, to be sure, so it was. a simplified take on a complex moment in history that managed to avoid being dumbed down. to really capture the point of the story, the significance and the importance of the events at Dunkirk in a film which ran for less than two hours took some doing, but genius Christopher Nolan did it.

other choices? The Lego Batman Movie was fun, but far too long for what it was. Star Wars Episode VIII : Battlestar Galactica had marginally more good than bad to it, but was simply not a magical, wonderful Star Wars film. Wonder Woman was mostly good but the pacing was off.

worst film of the year? no contest. Alien Covenant was pointless. horrible, awful, dull film, whether considered in its own right or part of the "expanded" Alien concept.


 ....criminal of the year

there are probably a few contenders for this, i just have absolutely no idea who they might be. for this award, then, i trust Spiros, as he is the greatest legal mind of his generation. and, for him, the best criminal of the year was some chap called Abdul Adan.

enthusiastic supporters and followers of Spiros will have no reason for me to explain why he has given this award to who he has. there is not a lot i can add, except perhaps some applause for Mr Adan and his enthusiasm for mobile phones. well, that and something else he is clearly quite enthusiastic about.

onwards, then.


.....portrait of the year

i dare say, suspect even, that there are loads of them. for me, though, there is no need to look any further than this picture what my Dad took of my Mum.  

nice one, Dad, and good to see you, Mum!

yeah, just about run out of things to give a "best" award to. hence the next one.


......Florence speech of the year

frankly, no, i would not go out of my way to give an award to anyone for giving a speech in Florence. but i bet you that someone what did give a speech in Florence during 2017 arranged for an award to be given for it. with this in mind, the self-appointed winner of such an award would be Theresa May, who is still somehow Prime Minister despite George Osborne's promises. 

the most memorable part of the speech came after it, in truth. whereas Mrs May does not answer questions from people in Britain, unless she has to in Parliament, she is eager to do so with people in other countries like Italy. anyway, in answer to one question she said that she would "safeguard" the interests of Italians in the UK, as she had me "one or two" of them and "quite liked them".

my hope, then, would be that she meets one or two British families - like mine for instance - and quite likes them too. that might mean she safeguards us, instead of threatening to tear thousands of families apart simply because one member is not an EU citizen.


.....snow of the year

a difficult choice to make, as we had a lot more of it this year than we did last year. my favourite ever snow is the one that falls in a different country entirely, or comes at night and is melted away by the morning.

failing that, this snow what fell was quite picturesque, i suppose.
 

yes, well, my blog, so indeed i did decide to sneak a picture of moi or if you like moi in here, despite knowing that a good many of you would care not to see me as such.

and that's that, then.


thank you, one and all, for reading my various exploits, shenanigans, thoughts and what have you throughout the year. more of the same, i would think, to come in the next. well, seems daft to stop now.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!