A Happy New Year to all my readers...

There! I've always wanted to write that! I suppose some sort of retrospective thingy is in order so - here goes:-

This is my first year of blogging (I started back in May) and I have been enjoying it immensely. Whether or not you lot out there in cyberland have is another thing entirely but it's all the fault of my old mate Leigh Heggarty (for more details of the attribution of blame, see "The time has come", the Walrus said...), whose excellent blog documents the everyday life of a jobbing Rock guitarist in great - and frequently amusing - detail.

I have made a new 'cyberpal' through the blog, courtesy of my Emily Remler memoir - See Emily Play - which put me in touch with the author of the All Things Emily website. We have been corresponding regularly and have been exchanging music and political opinions, both of us expressing joy (along with most of the Western World) at Obama's election. And talking of politics I am now the proud possesor of a 7 metre telescopic flagpole to go with my red flag (see A bit of flag waving). I do urge you to pass this idea on and to participate yourself. In a recent interview, Adrian Edmondson made the observation that, when Margaret Thatcher finally dies there will be a very large queue of people waiting to dance on her grave. It occured to me that they would probably get their feet fairly muddy because there will also be an awful lot of people pissing on it...

I have also got back in contact with an old pal, Paul Marsden, who was a fellow traveller on my early forays into discovering music. Whilst I was writing about some of these exploits ( see Folk me sideways Part Two for photographic proof of them) I checked for online evidence of his existence. Lo and behold - there was his website and contact was duly made. We have been exchanging emails and phone calls on a grand scale ever since (and as there had been a thirty year hiatus in our relationship there has been a lot to talk about).

I've been to some excellent gigs, bought a lot of CD's and DVD's, read a lot of good books, joined the wonderful world of blogging and - apart from becoming the proud possesor of hearing aids (see Mutt and Jeff) and high blood pressure - have, by and large had a jolly good year. I trust that yours has been at least as good as mine (but without the deafness and the blood pressure!) and that this coming year will be even better. That's it...see you in the new year!