A look back at 2025


Bradford on Avon town bridge (and my house!), September

The end of 2024 had brought some much needed stability to my life - we'd finally sold my mother's house & distributed the funds from her estate and the emotional pangs from her passing were starting to ease. However there was one Big Change looming on the horizon - I'd decided to give up work and fully retire after testing the water with a year of part time working. My finances seemed robust enough to cope without a salary but I'd been advised (by my boss) to wait until January so I'd still qualify for the company's Christmas bonus. With that prospect in mind I spent a quiet holiday period while pondering what I might get up to with all that free time...


Winter snowfall, January

January brings my annual diabetes review which turned into a series of consultations through the year. The first checkup gave me a general thumbs up where I was told I'd be called back if anything unexpected turned up in my blood tests, then in March I was rescheduled for a follow up to hear that although everything was fine my readings were creeping upwards (not the good direction) and this would probably continue for the foreseeable future. I was a little disappointed as I'd been gradually improving since I'd been diagnosed and had held the dream that my symptoms (& meds) would recede away to nothing but the news wasn't terrible, I'd just continue taking my pills and would otherwise be unaffected. My diabetes has become pretty much a background issue for me at this point and I have no real problems with 'better living through chemistry', it was just a reminder that my ageing body might not be as self-repairing as it once was.


The Avon bursting its banks, January

Later in the year I was called back for another consultation. This turned out to be provided by an external pharmaceutical company who were sponsoring reviews of people who were on long-term repeating prescriptions, to see if newer medicines might be better suited. The consultant was friendly & helpful and at the end she proposed changing one of my pills to a newer drug that provided extra benefits, it all sounded good to me so I agreed to the change. A week later I got a call from my doctor who said that the advantages of the new drug were in areas where I had strong & healthy results already so in his opinion I'd be better off sticking with the meds I was currently taking. In both cases I felt that the pros & cons had been clearly laid out to me, my questions had been answered, and I was being treated like an equal partner in the management of my bodily processes - things have definitely improved since my early encounters with the health service (and would continue that way through the year). In the end I decided to leave my meds unchanged, trusting that my doctor has a better long-term overview of my health and feeling just a little cautious about 'free advice' from Big Pharma.

The end of January saw the river Avon, which passes maybe ten metres from my front door, burst its banks. This has become a regular, if not routine, occurrence but as usual it didn't make it to my house and retreated back within a couple of days. We normally get a couple of these floods annually but this was the only one this year.


New instruments, February

With the Christmas bonus safely in my bank account I handed in my notice at work. Things had been going downhill for well over a year at this point, the ongoing series of restructurings & reorganisations within the department had, ironically, reduced the workflow to a trickle and I'd found that idleness & underworking was possibly more demoralising than the burnout that the company was (theoretically) more concerned about. A steady stream of people were leaving, the ones remaining were keeping their head down & just going through the motions, productivity was way down, and nobody in management seemed to be concerned about it. It was easy enough to coast along but I felt this 'meh' attitude was spilling over into my personal life. A series of discussions with my 'financial advisor' left me feeling (mostly) good about surviving (& maybe a little more than that) with my current savings so I bit the bullet and set my leaving date to Easter - a symbolic rebirth.


With Marina & Kay, April

I'd decided to return to full-time working for my final three months, partly to give a final top-up to my savings but also with the expectation that the first quarter of the year would have fairly dreary weather anyway. It was a little disappointing (but perhaps predictable) that nobody in the company tried to persuade me to stay but I suspect the levels of disorganisation had reached the point where nobody in a position of authority noticed - this was (in my eyes) confirmed when I received both an additional bonus and a pay rise while working through my notice period. My workload continued to drop, reaching a new low when another reorganisation saw me drop out of the team structure completely and I'd often spend days looking for something to do. At one point I was going to meet up with some friends and decided that it wasn't worth trying to book a day's holiday (the system had stopped working for me) as my absence probably wouldn't be noticed. Which it wasn't. Looking back I realised that over the past year virtually all of the projects I'd worked on had either been postponed indefinitely (after being Top Priority Urgent at their inception) or had been continually rethought/redesigned until all progress had been negated. It was definitely time to go.

In my final week we arranged an in-person meet-up for the team and a farewell lunch where we were joined by our boss and her young son - a nice reminder that workmates are people too! It was a really nice way to ease out of work life, I'd spent virtually all of my time there working from home and it was good to be reminded of the personal touch that real world social interaction brings. A wider goodbye came with our usual video link-up and an unexpected extra present was finding that the rumours were true and I wouldn't be asked to return my work laptop. This had a bigger screen than my personal machine and has since taken its place, allowing me to release my second monitor and free up space in my home office. Simplify! Simplify!


The work team, April

After maybe 45 years of working with computers I was expecting to find new projects & outside opportunities to use my skills but that side of my life seems to have dropped away with very little effort. I wrote an app to help monitor my finances and a script to automate processing of my home recordings but nothing after that, with no urge to find more. This feels rather odd as I was quite proud of my achievements in picking up new programming patterns & techniques during my advancing years - I suspect that despite my delight in coding it remains a tool for me, something to achieve an end rather than an end in itself. We'll see if any new applications present themselves in the years ahead.

I had a rather upsetting episode early in the year when I found myself unable to complete a programming task at work, it wasn't impossibly difficult but somehow I couldn't come up with an approach that made any progress. This threw me into quite a downward spiral as it felt like another sign of my mental processes deteriorating and I spent a bleak evening feeling sorry for myself. A good night's sleep seemed to unblock my coding abilities and the next day I was back to my usual professional competence but the experience stuck with me, was my brain following my body into obsolescence? I'm generally fine with the idea of my personality evolving over time and a series of 'me's taking over but it seems like the current 'me' would like to stick around a bit longer. This concern about gradual mental deterioration would recur throughout the year.


Kennet & Avon canal, Bath, April

After another long hiatus in recording my solo music I returned to a tried & tested method of freeing up the creative logjam - rethink my instrument setup! This led to a long(-ish) process of evaluation which I describe in my article the third machine, the end result of which was buying a new Korg Opsix synthesizer and Roland TR-6S drum machine. In keeping with my 'just enough' policy I balanced these new acquisitions with matching dispersals, selling my Hydrasynth and giving away my old Volca Drum. I rewired my home studio to accommodate these new additions but wouldn't get around to regularly playing them until later in the year.

I was still hoping to find a band to play bass with but it didn't come to anything this year. A friend invited me along to a jam night at a local pub where (mostly elderly) musicians were grouped into impromptu, er, groups to cover well known songs. It was a pleasant evening but it didn't appeal, although I'm fairly proficient at picking up songs on the fly and reasonably confident about stepping out on stage with minimal preparation I like to rehearse & work on a piece to put on a show that I would be happy to watch. Having been out of the local 'scene' for a few years now I'd need to make more of an effort to get back in touch, something I've not been able to muster for a while but hopefully there's life in the old dog yet.

My 'little' sister Marina came over from Australia in April, primarily to be a bridesmaid at an old friend's wedding. Her recent trips had been made during our mother's final decline and funereal processes so it was nice to feel that sombre atmosphere receding and to enjoy just meeting up with sisters - we were joined by Kay for a London rendezvous. Kay & I have been meeting up more regularly and later in the year began going on (for me) quite long hikes, usually through Epping Forest to our old home town and often to the tree where my mother's (& other family members') ashes are scattered. On one trip we attempted to find our first family house based on my vague childhood memories (we moved out when I was five or so) and a couple of old photos - we failed at the time but after talking to an uncle we not only identified the house but discovered he knew the current resident!


Wild garlic woods, May

There have not been many trips this year and those have all been in the south of England, my wanderlust has been seriously subdued. Most have been day returns but I've visited my dear friend Linda in Cardiff on multiple occasions and managed a short excursion to Penzance to see 'the Profs', two old friends who have ascended the ivory towers of academe and lived to tell the tale. Linda & I had a short (& very hot!) summer break in Teignmouth (photos here) and later in the year were joined by her son's family for a day out in Bradford on Avon - it was nice to be an honorary uncle! My local social contacts remain rather limited but I have a regular 'dining & chatting' friend with whom we explore Bath's restaurant culture and a handful of drinking companions to discuss the state of the world and how to put it to rights. It's all good.

May brought the annual Green Man festival where (mostly) British folk dancers & musicians perform at sites around the town. It's a wonderfully immersive event where the town is filled with performance, the distributed nature makes it easy to wander & discover rather than having to plan your day and the streets are filled with strangely dressed individuals. There are some photos here


Radio interview, May

An unexpected opportunity to talk about music came in May when I was invited to appear on West Wilts Radio as the guest on Andrew Matthews' show A Million Songs Across My Brain. This was a sort of Desert Island Disks programme where I could choose three of my favourite songs (plus one of my own) which were played (in full!) while I was interviewed. It was a fairly nerve wracking experience at first but Andrew is an excellent host and I was soon rabbiting away about my musical tastes & history. There's an edited version of the interview (with the music faded out) here.

I've had a handful of medical issues during the year, luckily nothing very serious. The first was finding my hearing getting much worse, partially in general conversation but more clearly when listening to music, especially when playing & recording. I tried the usual solution of dousing my ear canals with oil but after a week of this it seemed like I needed some stronger medical intervention. As has become standard practice I used the NHS app on my phone to report the problem, going through the list of questions and adding my specific symptoms as prompted, then waiting for the health service to get back to me with the next step(s). I really like this system, it lets me ask for help with ailments without having to worry about how serious they are (or might be) or whether I'm clogging up the channels for patients with more consequential illnesses. In virtually every case I've been contacted on the same day with either a phone consultation or an in-person appointment and there's a sense of the medical staff having time to fully investigate & explain what's going on.


Blooming succulent, June

In this instance a consultation was scheduled and I found myself sitting there while a medical operative (I'm never quite sure what to call them nowadays) peered into my ear with a powerful torch. He confirmed that the problem was wax build up and said I should continue with the oil before moving on to more powerful ear cleaners for a few weeks, only then would they consider providing physical unblocking (it seems the ear syringing of the past is no longer considered safe) but there was a hesitancy that hinted that another alternative might be offered. And it was, there were several private clinics where the microsuction of the offending wax could be carried out immediately - I assume that going private was not something that the health centre wanted to actively push but in a lot of cases (like mine) it was the quickest & easiest option. A quick google found a (fairly) local service provider with good reviews and moderate fees and although it took two visits - one of my ears was severely plugged - I soon found myself with relatively sharp hearing again. I guess I should begrudge the creeping privatisation of health services but then again I could afford it and I was quickly treated so I can live with that.

My next encounter came in the summer when I found myself with sharp pains in my side, especially when sitting up first thing in the morning. Assuming it was a muscle pull I resigned myself to a gradual recovery but after a week with no easement I once again logged my ailment with the NHS app. This time the response was more immediate, I was rung back later that afternoon by one of the practice doctors who asked more questions and then suggested I 'pop round' so she could have a look at the affected area. Fifteen minutes later I was in the consultation room where the doctor checked a urine sample there & then, poked & prodded at my midsection for a while, then confirmed that the pain was almost certainly muscular and could be left to repair itself. My sample (& ongoing diabetes test results) showed no kidney problems and there was nothing else that raised any red flags. All seemed to be well but as I was leaving she said it might be worth having an ultrasound scan of the area just in case - no more details were given and as the pain receded over the next few weeks I thought no more about it.


St. Michael's Mount, August

Many weeks later I received an email with details of my ultrasound appointment. This passed without incident (& confirmed that all was well) but the process of getting there & back prompted me to write some thoughts about modern life during my contemporary encounter with the health service.

In September one of my knees began playing up, verging from twinges & odd sensations through to sharp pains that immobilised my, er, mobility. Another health centre visit gave the (not totally unexpected) diagnosis of early arthritis and I was provided with links to exercises to strengthen the muscles around my knee to provide more support for my old bones. Although my knee issues have persisted they have been fairly manageable and generally ease off when I'm out on longer walks & hikes.


Local deer, September

My regular walks, a hangover from COVID times, have continued - the health app on my phone tells me that during 2025 I averaged 6.2km per day (9k steps). This app has become an ever-increasing repository of my body stats with daily weight & blood pressure readings, cycling distances, & rowing distances (on the rowing machine, not on actual water) in addition to my walking counts. It's interesting how I've (subconsciously?) 'gamed' my fitness regimen and feel righteously pleased when the numbers go in the right direction. Cycling remains my main strenuous exercise but I'm very much a fair weather cyclist, reverting to the reliable (but very boring) rowing machine at the first sign of rain, wind, or chill. I keep promising myself a new bike but can never quite justify it to myself, my current machine is old but serviceable and nothing has yet tempted me away. But you never know.

As my work routine slipped away I returned to composing & recording with my new Opsix synthesizer. This machine uses FM synthesis to create sounds, a notoriously difficult & fiddly system that I'd dabbled in previously but had never come close to mastering, and I'd bought the synth as a bit of a personal challenge. This time around it actually started to make some sense, helped by the excellent control layout and backed up with internet guides & tutorials, and before too long I was creating new tunes and packaging them up into albums. The new machine led me into some new sonic areas (as was the intention) but listening back I can still hear my own personal styles & tones which is reassuring, good to know that I'm using the tool rather than the other way around.



This year's albums (tap for more details & links for listening)

Musically I found myself getting more adventurous, more willing to follow ideas that strayed outside my (admittedly limited) knowledge of music theory. This caused some problems when I couldn't work out how to construct accompaniments and had to rely on trial & (lots of) error but the end results were worth it, more varied & 'interesting' than a lot of my previous efforts, at least to my ears. It's very hard for me to assess my musical output and it's common for creators to always consider their latest works as their best but even so I feel happier with this year's songs than I have for quite a while. And external validation followed - a friend, out of the blue, praised some of my recent efforts, using specific examples which (to me) showed that this was real admiration and not just a polite 'very nice'. I don't get much feedback on my work (to put it very mildly) and I've (mostly) resigned myself to having future me as my primary audience so it was great to hear that I wasn't just wallowing in self indulgence. Well, not completely.

Since returning to solo composing & recording I've set myself some restrictions & limitations, ironically to encourage my creativity. These have been reviewed & refined over the years and I decided to write up the rules & resulting effects in the corsetry of freedom


Walking with Kay, October

Looking back over my musical output during the Renmei (my nom de musique) experiment I noticed a pattern emerging - I'd spend around six months recording three albums with a single instrument then stop for a long hiatus (up to a year) before starting the cycle again, usually with a different synth. In November I completed my third album with the Opsix but rather tha tailing off the ideas kept coming. With only a month remaining before the inevitable Crimble disruption I made the brave (foolhardy?) decision to go fast & loose and see if I could come up with another collection before the festivities began. Taking a lighter touch and letting 'good enough' be, well, good enough I made the deadline and was delighted with the resulting album which felt fresher & more lively than the preceding ones. Maybe a technique for the future?

The one black cloud on the horizon in my musical outlook has been a sharp downturn in my playing abilities. My keyboard technique has never been particularly good but this year I found myself repeatedly unable to play even quite short phrases without many (sometimes very many) attempts. On a couple of occasions I've had to resort to programming a sequencer to play the phrase which has its own downsides, often sounding robotic & artificial which can require adjustments to the arrangement to hide (or emphasise) the effect. More worrying has been instances of 'brain freeze' where my mind goes blank in the middle of a take, not just unable to remember the next note but sometimes completely losing track of what I was attempting to do. Very scary. I suspect I'm hypersensitive to mental & memory issues as they manifest more & more frequently among friends & family but I notice myself already adopting techniques to manage my own, less reliable faculties.

Things have been quiet on the home front, not helped by troubles with handymen. There's some plasterwork damage caused by leaking velux windows that I've hesitated in getting repaired until I was sure they'd been properly fixed - it has taken several attempts. This year I finally looked at getting the work done but the person I engaged texted me a couple of days before it was due to start, saying there'd been a medical crisis at home and he'd have to postpone. He never contacted me again or replied to my messages. Next up I arranged for my decking to be refreshed and once again the company suddenly went quiet and stopped responding. I gave my contact details to someone working on my neighbour's decking and heard nothing back from them either. I'm beginning to think there's a curse involved.


Duck wakes, October

Home improvements have been very minor, a few upgrades & replacements including finally adding a retaining hook to the French windows which I've been prevaricating around since I moved in. Attempting to find a replacement for my (seemingly broken) shaver cleaning station led to a winding internet trawl that finally resolved with the purchase of a new mains cable - infuriating at the time but in hindsight I managed to restore a ten year old electrical device at (relatively) minimal cost after an hour of web browsing. The modern world is amazing but we often don't notice.


Halloween, November

There has been one realm of definite domestic improvement - I've become a lot more adventurous in my cooking, not previously one of my strengths. New additions to the pantry include pomegranate molasses (originally for muhammara Syrian dip but increasingly to add some fruity sweetness to dressings), Korean doenjang & gochujang pastes (for stir-fries & Asian stews), chilli flakes (I now have three varieties for different flavours & fieriness), and black garlic paste (slow cooked, almost Balsamic tasting). I've discovered the delights of marinated baked fish (and now spend more time at the fishmonger stall in our local market) and have generally been more willing to experiment with new styles & dishes, usually backed up with some internet trawling both for ideas and to check recipe details. My cooking style & solitary home life means that I usually have several portions of frozen leftovers after a session on the hob which limits my opportunities for culinary discovery (I have a very small freezer) but does mean that there's always a selection of home cooked goodies if I don't feel like labouring over the pots & pans. Which suits me pretty well.

In October I was contacted by an estate agent about having my house valued. I'd had a valuation carried out a year before as part of my pension/savings review and this was a scheduled follow-up, not seeing any reason not to I agreed and found that, unsurprisingly, the projected price hadn't changed in the intervening twelve months. But a seed was planted and I began to consider moving to a new home. My sister Kay, who owns half of my house, had no objections and so I found myself perusing the online property listings with perhaps more than just idle curiosity. I've not developed many local connections in Bradford on Avon so I set my net wide and my filters loose to see what would turn up.


Guy Fawkes audience, November

Looking at a stream of house pictures & descriptions is a great way to find just what's important in a potential new domicile. My current house is essentially a new build inside an old (& listed) shell and having had a hand in the design it fits me remarkably well. I found my search narrowing down to church, chapel, & barn conversions with their mix of old & quirky exteriors and modern (less quirky) layouts & infrastructure. I've found some very interesting properties but so far nothing that has tempted me further, they're usually too big, too expensive, too remote (an increasing concern as I get older), or in some other way don't tick enough of my boxes.

Not (yet) finding somewhere further away I started looking at places inside (or just outside) Bradford on Avon. Although houses here tend to be more expensive the town is a great place to live with good facilities, lots of bucolic open space beside river & canal (& beyond), a great selection of places to drink & dine, and easy connections to places further afield - a big plus as I doubt I'll return to car ownership. We even have our own little community bus route that I've used to get to the supermarket on a wet & windy day and to take a heavy parcel to the post office, and all free with my bus pass. The repurposed chapel of my dreams may appear but I find myself increasingly picturing a home within the town. Maybe even staying in my current house, which I've come to appreciate more & more after looking at the other options.

I've been blessed with fairly robust teeth (if not particularly reliable dentists) in recent years but eventually my luck ran out. Back at the end of 2023 I'd had a broken tooth that I was told would require a crown but was patched up with a temporary fix for the short term - this quick repair turned out to be sturdier than it had any right to be, lasting for eighteen months before failing in the summer. Two more temporary fixes didn't reach this level of resilience and in November I found myself in the chair for a (hopefully) more lasting restitution of my oral ivories.


Clouds & sheep, November

I'd gone through the protracted process of getting a crown in the past but dental technology had made great leaps forward in the meantime. After being numbed and having the offending material drilled away the dentist held a hi-tech wand, about the size of a small hand torch, in my mouth and moved it around while it made intermittent beeps. When he leant back I saw a 3D image of my tooth on his computer screen which he then used his fingers on to rotate and edit it. I was sent out to the waiting room for half an hour while a machine upstairs carved the crown, then I was back in for the fitting & final adjustments. Around an hour after arriving I was out again with a restored bite pattern and the twinges of returning sensation to my jaw. And a sizeable dent in my bank balance but all things considered I'd say it was worth it. As with my encounters with the medical profession it seems like health services are hugely improving just when I'm starting to rely on them. Life is good.

There have been a whole bunch of other noteworthy events through the year:

I made it to the cinema ten times this year which is about average for me. My favourite was Flow, a delightful animation with no dialogue (no humans in fact) telling the story of a group of animals coping with an environmental upheaval - it sounds bizarre but it was surprisingly magical & engaging. Others I enjoyed included A Real Pain, The Ballad of Wallis Island, and A Private Life. An odd experience came while watching Mickey 17 when, a few minutes in, I realised that I'd read the book it was based on. The film wasn't very good but it inspired me to reread the book (not sure why they changed the title from Mickey 7) which I enjoyed. My dear friend Shay encouraged me to come to a handful of films at the Bath Film Festival which was fun, I find it challenging to watch too many films without time to mull them over in between but I'll try to get to more during next year's event.

On the small screen I've spent most of the year rewatching (& in a lot of cases releasing) videos from my collection. The only significant purchase was the first two seasons of For All Mankind which I enjoyed but not enough to keep. Exchanging my discarded videos at the secondhand store has provided a stream of 'second chance' films & TV shows but nothing particularly noteworthy. My little housing block is attempting to get a fibre connection which might finally push me into the arms of Netflix/Apple+ next year.


Solstice sun, December

It's been a very bleak year for music (apart from my own) with just one album - a 'live in the studio' set from my old friend Dave Bessell - and one single, which I guess makes it single of the year - My Life by Victor Wooten. And that was recorded in 1997! Other than that I've just been buying remastered versions (notably early Shriekback albums) or singles that slipped through the digitised net.

My reading rate has maintained its level with 79 book purchases over the year. There's been a surprisingly high number of historical novels from the 16th to 18th century, a fascinating period as the modern world begins to emerge & develop, but otherwise it's my usual hotch potch of styles, genres, & settings. Notable authors include Neal Stephenson, Jim McDermott, Tim Winton, Sven Axelrad, S.G. McLean, Miles Cameron, Holly Kennedy, Adrian Tchaikovski, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Catherine Chidgey. There was very little non-fiction this year, the exception being Human Kind by Rutger Bregman which was a wonderful treatise on the practical benefits and history of human kindness.

And so the chill days at the end of the year guard the passage into a new one. Retiring from work has been the big event of the year and I feel that I've barely begun to explore what my life of leisure might develop into. The dark cloud of Vi's passing has started to evaporate and although my horizons are widening and there's a sense of energy returning I've not yet found a focus (or foci) to point that unleashed vitality towards. My health feels a little wobbly but not really cause for serious concern, reports of my decrepitude (especially from within) seem unfounded, or at least premature. The idea of moving house has piqued my interest but has also raised the possibility of doing something more dramatic with my existing home. After a few years of disruption & enforced change it feels like 2026 might be a time for constructive expansion. We'll see.


(Click on the pictures for larger versions.)

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December 2025