The annual one

I won’t pretend 2025 has been a great year. Not for the world, not for me. Still, I can’t let it end without a single measly post.

My main problem has been illness. Small fry, compared to the world’s problems, but it has got in the way of productivity in the Cave. After suddenly becoming unwell in September last year, I was lucky: my acute disease was quickly and successfully treated. But the drugs I was put on have side-effects which I wasn’t warned about. I know I should be grateful – and, believe me, I am – but I’m also frustrated.

And I’m grumpier than ever about people like Google (not to mention X, Microsoft and all the rest of them – I spent days rescuing my mother from Microsoft’s barrage of alarmist misinformation about Windows, which in a well regulated world would be illegal). Just under two years on from my last post, I find I now can’t even post an image on my blog without enabling Google’s data-hoovering cookies. Well, sod that.

Anyway, I’m still here. Progress on my discographical projects has slowed considerably but this year I’ve managed to upload 38 items to my ‘collection’ at the Internet Archive. Many thanks to my friend Andrew Hallifax for tackling some tricky restoration jobs with his usual unflappable professionalism. I would have added more, only I’ve become ever pickier about documentation, so I’m stuck with several transfers which are ready for to be uploaded, but for niggling blanks in the data (contents, recording dates, that sort of thing) which I’ve not been able to fill.

Time is running out, so I won’t list the items that have pleased me the most or meant the most to me. Please feel free to mosey on over and see if any catch your fancy.

Happy New Year!