Tag: story of the year

Where do I begin when looking back at 2025? I try to summarise the year as a way of celebrating the good stuff. Daily or weekly writing is often weighed down by the minutiae of life; summarising a longer period can pick out themes or big moments.

My Instagram feed has often been a good summary of the year. At the end of December, I briefly talked about my Instagram Top Nine for 2025, but this time around, I don’t think the feed is representative of the year as it has been in the past. Maybe the Stories highlights are better, but the thirty stories are only a little improvement.

So, in the main, I am sticking to the same format as last year because I have not yet found a more inventive way to present it.

Moving

I have to face reality. I have lost a lot of motivation to exercise, and as I’m ageing, that is bad. My step count was down 11% from last year (and 15% from the year before), and I moved 1,225.5 miles (256,482 kcal). I am trying to do better in 2026. I want all those numbers to be up in next year’s report.

Places

Yes, I am the person still checking in on Swarm. The year in review isn’t great. But I did get to Paris, Spain (and the Guggenheim Museum), and Argentina, where I had one of the best meals ever at Fogón Asado.

2025 in music

This year, I discovered that Apple Music does not count music played via its Sonos integration. That’s a lot of music Apple’s not reporting on, nor featuring in my recommendations. Somebody should tell Tim Apple that you can’t have a music service making recommendations based on historic listening without knowing everything I listened to from that service. He probably doesn’t care. I guess ‘Money, Money, Money’ is top on his recommendations.

While I suspect it’s the classification of country as my most listened-to genre is right, 15,464 minutes and 1,304 songs are likely off the mark. And marking the Starlight Express album as my favourite because it’s long, and I listened to it before we watched the show again in November, is just off.

So, to Last.fm, we go. 5,287 tracks recorded; the most listened-to artist is Johnny Mathis; the most listened-to album is Breland’s Cross Country. I’m so disappointed I was too ill to see him in concert earlier this year. Apparently, Ella Langley’s Weren’t For The Wind is my top track. That’s algorithmic playlists for you: I can’t hum that tune, but I’ll put it on as I write and confirm at the end if I recognise it.

All the socials

I’ve already mentioned Instagram, and what I said last year for other networks:

I (still) have a Mastodon account, but I have yet to pontificate there. Ditto Bluesky, although I keep promising myself I’ll move to a custom domain.

There are now over 100 feeds in my NetNewsWire reader, but many of them remain silent. London Centric and The London Minute are still very much on my reading list, as are Diamond Geezer, It Just Gets Stranger, and Daring Fireball, and I regularly read them. I added a bunch of radio-related feeds this year. And I read about the lives of people I don’t know via their weeknotes.

Books, TV and Cinema

I failed my reading challenge: on 12 of 15 books read. At least it’s the equivalent of one a month. I’ve dedicated a whole post to that this year.

There’s always so much good telly that I don’t know which shows to call out. We started the year watching The White Lotus, which was recommended, but it didn’t quite work for me, and we never progressed to the second season.

A conspiracy thriller with a mathematician as the central character might not sound gripping, but I liked Prime Target, and similarly, Slow Horses and Down Cemetery Road both had me hooked. The new Bergerac was, perhaps, not as gripping as those other shows, but we stuck with it. The Åre Murders was a crime in another language, which I thought was great. I started rewatching The Blacklist at the start of the year, but after a couple of binge evenings, I seem to have lost interest again.

I always think I don’t watch much reality television, but watching Race Across the World, plus the celebrity version, and The Celebrity Traitors, suggests otherwise.

I should note The Residence, Murderbot, and The War Between the Land and the Sea, so I can remind myself to look out for follow-ups, as I enjoyed them all.

I went to the cinema three times in 2025. Queer was hard work, especially on New Year’s Day. Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy was quite fun, and The Phoenician Scheme was a wonderful Wes Anderson movie.

I watched The Salt Path and The Amateur on a plane, Conclave, Wonka, The Accountant 2 and A Very Jonas Christmas Movie from my sofa. The last two were far-fetched, but fun for Christmas, and I do recommend the other two.

Gigs and shows

We started the year in Birmingham watching The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – CBSO Explores: Friends in Love and War, and then a complete contrast with a big, glossy Palladium panto with Julian Clary and Jane McDonald, which, as always, was an absolutely brilliant spectacle.

I never thought I’d like watching dance, but a contemporary dance piece at Sadler’s Wells East, Birdboy, proved that thought wrong.

We supported a couple of new musicals, The Rise and Fall of Vinnie and Paul and Stiletto, and very glad we did. But also big theatre musical moments with laughter at Titanique, memories at Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical, a return to ever-energetic Starlight Express and Jamie Lloyd’s marvellous Evita revival. I am not sure why October was such a theatre fest, but that got its own post.

The Isle of Wight festival was again packed with great music, and Patti LuPone, The Hidden Cameras, Suzanne Vega, Toyah and Adam Ant, among others. The Crazy Coqs had a great year with nights themed around Céline Dion and Genesis & Phil Collins, as well as a James Bond night and a Christmas night.

Audio

I spent most of my 2025 podcast time with the Game Changers Radio trio. Radio-related, Happy Place with Greg James and Fearne Cotton was also good. The Shipping Forecast: A Beginner’s Guide was a lovely listen, and that might also be about ‘radio’.

Ed Miliband: Why Blair & Farage Are Wrong About Net Zero is a video podcast, so it’s living here and recommended. Also in politics, LBC presenter Iain Dale talked to former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon about her new book, and Mishal Husain talked to Mark Carney about the world.

Great to hear from Russell Tovey on Dinner’s On Me.

I keep trying to make dietary changes. As a result, I listen to quite a bit of the Zoe science and nutrition podcast, but I think I am still eating the wrong things.

Other writing

In 2025, I published fifteen blog-like pieces on my site, from the frictions of everyday life to open skies and festival fields. I started asking what we hold on to and why in Usable, but only just, struggling with my ageing AirPods. Modern life was the subject of my second post last year, the fatigue of headlines in All the news. Back to tech writing with High bar for tech, where I talked about how the Meta Portal is both a device and a memory frame, and, even though it’s by Meta, I really wish they still made it.

Summer arrived, I planned for the festival and wrote a run of pieces from the fields in Festival Diaries 2025: Day One, Day Two and Day Three, before shifting to a different kind of spectacle in Grease Immersive Cinema Experience, where film, performance and some Olivia Newton-John nostalgia collided.

Travel shaped the next phase of the year in Buenos Aires: Four Days, Four Stories and Four Days Between Sky and Water, both describing my South American adventure, while questions of self surfaced back home in A New Identity and Counting from the start.

As we headed through autumn and into winter, theatre and seasonality came into view in Curtains up on October, followed by a moment to take a whistle-stop trip north to reflect on sounds from my teenage years in Piccadilly Magic and, finally, a photographic review of the year in Top Nine 2025 that I’ve already mentioned.

I am not sure what, when taken together, these tell you. But I always enjoy writing them. Because some of these pieces can get lost amongst the weeknotes, I have started a new archive page just for my more recent words.

Other counts

Let’s look at what else I’ve counted. I did 355 TfL London transport journeys, 42 of them on buses. That’s down on trips from last year, but more buses. JetLovers, once again, counted my flights. There were 9 (7 of which related to my Argentine holiday). I kept my AWS fees under £5 in 2025, but over £140 was spent on postage. And, last year, I woke 2% of the time in Shrewsbury.

Previously

Oh, and if you’ve read all these words, yes, I recognised the song.

All my previous attempts at summarising my year are grouped under the yearnotes tag.

I didn’t do my yearly self-review at the end of 2023. I have no recollection why. When I restarted the weeknotes in mid-2023, I allowed myself the flexibility to be late publishing, and I think that enabled me to keep the streak going. I hadn’t considered that one of the consequences would be I’d write something every month of the year in 2024, something that hasn’t happened here since 2005. I think the weekly writing habit was good for me as I wrote a whole bunch of other things alongside the weeknotes. As the new year allows these moments of self-reflection, here comes my 2024 Yearnotes: a way to look back and be grateful for the interesting things I was able to do.

Two of the things I am happiest about this year don’t fit neatly into the categories I use here. I am delighted that we were able to keep our monthly Pub Quiz attendance going; it’s such a nice way to see friends regularly. And, a random comment in the summer led to the discovery of €25 tickets for the Paralympics and a hastily booked train. It was wonderful to immerse myself in some sport for a day. Even the power cut at the hotel the night before our early-start departure couldn’t spoil the joy of the event.

And there was a sixth wedding anniversary, an eightieth birthday celebration, a fiftieth birthday party, and a King’s Garden Party that I haven’t written about but must be highlights.

Moving

At the end of ’23, I started to suffer with a frozen shoulder. It went through its most painful period in the first quarter of 2024. As a result, I didn’t even cross my gym’s doorstep for the first seven months of the year. And then I only went 6 times between then and now. I should insert the usual new year wish to do better. But, who am I kidding?

If I look at the amount of exercise I actually took, irrespective of time in a gym, my trackers say I took 3,131,527 steps for a cumulative distance of 1,407 miles (and burning 268,888 in the process). That’s 12 days and 17 hours of exercise-like exertion.

2024 in music

I try to make Last.fm the source for this data, but Apple Music’s failure to natively sync means I am dubious about the numbers. Last.fm says I scrobbled 5,170 tracks (down 24% on 2023). Of those, there were 3,093 unique tracks compared to the 2,906 songs that Apple says I played. While Last.fm thinks Lainey Wilson’s Wildflowers and Wild Horses was my top track, Apple says it was No Caller ID by Megan Moroney. To be fair, they both have the same count at Last.fm, so I am unsure why one was picked above the other. They’re both great songs.

Last.fm says Breland’s Cross Country was the most listened to album, Apple says that was number 3, while Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter was top. Are you spotting the trend is country music again?

All of that is somewhere between 12 days and 14 days listening in 2024. I think that was pretty good. I just wish somebody did the same for podcasts.

All the socials

I (still) have a Mastodon account but I have yet to pontificate there. Ditto Bluesky, although I keep promising myself I’ll move to a custom domain.

There were 28 Instagram grid pictures. There were 84 stories. It still remains my favourite format, but that’s a 42% decrease on 2023. There is a highlight selection from 2024 stories. Also, although it’s not social media, it is photos, I posted a collection of pictures from God’s Own Junkyard, the warehouse tribute to neon: All lit up.

There are now 98 feeds in NetNewsWire, notably new in 2024 are London-themed newsletters that I read via RSS. London Centric has just published a ’best of’ and The London Minute is becoming a daily read. London Spy, The Londoner and, nearer home, The Wimble are all worth some time. Given that London’s newspaper, the Evening Standard, had to drop the ‘evening’ portion of its name this year because it’s become weekly, these are more than the name ‘newsletter’ might imply, and are all recommended reading if you live – or are interested in goings-on in – the Capital.

Books, TV and Cinema

I failed my reading challenge, managing only 9 of the promised 15. However, they were all excellent and I don’t know which to call out as my favourite.

I saw a few more things at the cinema than in recent years: Poor Things (weird, horrific and compelling), Die Hard (yes, I’d never seen it), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Wicked.

I also saw All of Us Strangers, but skipped the cinema to watch it from the comfort of my living room. It takes time to work out the timeline of the characters, but I loved it.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office was the first big television show I watched this year. Slow Horses remained excellent and Lost Boys & Fairies was brilliant. Other highlights included Dead Boy Detectives, Ludwig, Heartstopper and The Jetty. I really enjoyed Celebrity Race Across the World, possibly the nearest to reality TV I’ve watched all year, and we watched Shardlake on Disney+ even though I couldn’t get Cadfael out of my head while watching.

Gigs and shows

Many of the things I’ve posted about here are tracked in some app or other, or I’ve been able to use my own weeknotes as a reminder. I’ve tried using setlist.fm as a gig tracker. And, while it’s great, there’s no easy way to see 2024, and every artist at a festival is a separate entry, which is fair but, perhaps, does not enable an easy count of gigs. I enjoyed the Isle of Wight festival, Bananarama, Grace Jones, Stevie Nicks and even Bucks Fizz. At the Stevie Nicks gig, I saw Brandi Carlile and am now a fan of the music. In mid-December, I saw both the Lightning Seeds and Paul Heaton; two fantastic evenings.

I’ve not used anything to track theatre shows, so I am reliant on my own notes. Aside from Starlight Express, mentioned below, the best theatre included the immersive Guys and Dolls, Stranger Things: The First Shadow (which can be watched even if you don’t know the Netflix show); new musical Operation Mincemeat (inventive and hilarious) and The National’s Coriolanus was great: I surprised myself following the plot, having never read the play.

I only watched the film the week before we saw Heathers The Musical, glad I did. Never seen a play set in a gents’ toilet before? Boys on the Verge of Tears was such a play and, as a result, was really odd. The Time Travellers Wife wasn’t the greatest, but I am intrigued and might read the book. Closer to Heaven made another comeback at the, sadly closed, Turbine Theatre. Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York and Next To Normal were OK, Why Am I So Single needed some cuts to make it work.

Audio

I’ve always loved listening to the radio. This year, however, I found more and more podcasts to keep me entertained. My current favourite is the cooking-interview show, Dish, but I caught up on a lot of Kirsty Young’s Young Again, which is also great.

Broadcaster Steve Wright died at the beginning of the year. There were plenty of wonderful tributes, but I particularly liked Steve Wright in his own words.

There were a couple of things that surprised me this year; I tuned into Test Match Special while Mum and Dad were at Lord’s for the first day and really liked the company. Timmy Mallett’s Radio Oxford show from back when John Lennon’s died was a nice bit of retro audio.

James O’Brien’s Full Disclosure is one of my favourite podcasts. It’s hard to pick favourite episodes, but I went back in time to the Andy Burnham episode (which was great). Full Disclosure hired an actor to voice The Secret Barrister, and that was an excellent episode.

Other writing

Possibly inspired by the forced regularity of weeknotes, I found myself posting a lot more to my blog. In On diary writing, I talk about how I want to improve my ability to articulate feelings and emotions in writing, which is a goal for this year. That was a follow-up to something from earlier in the year, My digital history, where I think of my personal website as a historical record of my life.

In a year of change for the BBC’s local radio network, I found some material I’d had stored in a box for decades and thought it would be interesting to make sure it’s archived somewhere: From the 1985 archive: Background To BBC Local Radio and BBC Tuning Guides for Shropshire. Let’s hope the mention here gets them some Google juice!

Another blast from the past was ‘Mine is the last voice you will ever hear’, a bit of a wander down memory lane reminiscing about “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and how, when we played the song repeatedly at school, we thought it was a form of rebellion.

I also blogged about a couple of events I’d been to this year: Hidden Holborn was another in the Hidden London series where the public is able to go to areas of the London Underground that are usually off-limits. Once again, I went to the Isle of Wight Festival, this year keeping a record of what I did: day one, day two and day three. And, earlier in the year, I was lucky to get tickets for the first real public performance of the new-look Starlight Express and I wrote up my thoughts.

Other counts

I am always fascinated by the stories people who count things in their lives can tell. There are 2,518 photos in this year’s album, but only 15 made their way to Flickr. Thanks to TFL, I know I made 373 journeys on the London transport network, 30 of them were buses. They didn’t tell me I took 6 flights this year, JetLovers did. And on 1% of my mornings in 2024, I woke up in Edinburgh.

Previously

All my previous attempts at summarising my year are grouped under the yearnotes tag.