End-Of-Year-Count 2020: not much of anything, really

I think that was what the classical Greeks would have called “a funny ol’ year and no mistake”. I did a lot of it backwards, naturally – not working from home at first (in common with many, of course), and only being able to start doing so at the point where a lot of people were being forced back. There’s a lot about that (and a lot about much else) that makes me Feel Some Kinda Way, but… ah, you’ve heard it all.

Speaking of doing things backwards, anyway: Books. I know a lot of people have at least managed to get more reading done this year. I am a Contrary Mary and read a lot less, and I really do mean a lot less. It’s the lack of bus journeys that has done it (even when I had to go out to work I was lucky enough to be able to get a lift).

“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi (started in 2019)
“Trans Like Me” by CN Lester (started in 2019)
“Provenance” by Ann Leckie
“Dream-Songs – Book Two” by George R.R. Martin
“Witches, Witch-Hunting, And Women” by Silvia Federici
“The Hastings Traditional Jack In The Green” by Keith Leech
“Lori And Max” by Catherine O’Flynn
“Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher (re-read)
“The Finite” by Kit Power
“False Gods” by Graham McNeill
“Galaxy In Flames” by Ben Counter
“On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt
“Nostromo” by Joseph Conrad
“The Wild Girls (Plus…)” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“I Am Not A Wolf” by Dan Sheehan

Bit feeble, ayit. Carrying over the year line to 2021, I’m currently amidst “Under The Paw” by Tom Cox and “The Subcultural Imagination” edited by Michelle Kempson and Shane Blackman.

I did watch a greater than normal number of Films, but a good chunk of them were aroundabout March-May time. Maybe this was some weird surface manifestation of a subconscious stress thing (like eating more, but that didn’t stop in May).

“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962)
“Children Of Men” (2006)
“Dawn Of The Dead” (1978)
“Mad Max” (1978) (seen before)
“Mad Max 2 – The Road Warrior” (1981) (seen before)
“Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985) (seen before)
“The New Barbarians” (1982)
“The Death Of Stalin” (2016)
“The Battle Of Algiers” (1966)
“Battleship Potemkin” (1925) (seen before)
“Coffy” (1973)
“Foxy Brown” (1974)
“Red Dwarf: The Promised Land” (2020)
“Super Fly” (1972)
“Shaft” (1971)
“Trouble Man” (1972)
“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971)
“Truck Turner” (1974)
“He Never Died” (2015) (seen before)
”Black Sheep” (2006) (seen before)
“Songs From The Second Floor” (2000) (seen before)
“Kontroll” (2003) (seen before)
“Dispossession” (2017)
“Conspiracy” (2001)
“The Wannsee Conference” (1984)
“F For Fake” (1973)
“The End Of The Tour” (2015) (seen before)
“The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs” (2018)
“Hail, Caesar!” (2016)
“Miss Potter” (2006)
“Miller’s Crossing” (1990) (seen before)
“Sorry To Bother You” (2018)
“Event Horizon” (1997)
“Peter Rabbit” (2018)
“It’s A Wonderful Life” (1948) (seen before)
“Scrooge” (1970) (seen before)
“Roald & Beatrix: The Tail Of The Curious Mouse” (2020)

The lack of live stuff is, of course, predictable. There were some Gigs up until the start of March, and the thought of it feels like something from another world.

Daria Kulesh – The Kitchen Garden Cafe, Kings Heath, Birmingham – 5/1/20
Martin Simpson/Tom Martin – Tower Of Song, Kings Norton, Birmingham – 1/2/20
Sam Lee – The Glee Club, Birmingham – 5/2/20
Diz’n’Rox – Temperance, Leamington Spa – 22/2/20
Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters/Teeth Of The Sea/John Biddulph – St Paul’s church, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham – 6/3/20
Moses Boyd/LA Timpa – The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham – 7/3/20

The only Opera and Theatre visits were on the same day (the 8th of Feb), on a trip to London – the Gerald Barry “Alice’s Adventures Underground” by The Royal Opera at The Royal Opera House, and Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” at Wyndham’s Theatre.

That’s your lot, really.  I will try to read more this year.  The live stuff doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a go-er for a fair old while yet.