On the 7th January, Elizabeth Wurtzel's death was announced and how we've missed her voice in all of this. As I said then, she "was someone who loomed very large for me, in my life and writing. Her fearless, raw openness and bravery in pushing the barrier in expressing the inexpressible, which often got her into trouble."
By the end of that month, I'd initiated a new blog project, The Coffee Collection, photos of beverages in their hospitality settings, which reminds me that my visit to Lichfield was this year. For at least six months, I've assumed it was in 2019.
January also heralded the appearance of a whole new incarnation of the Doctor and in the gap between Fugitive of the Judoon and The Timeless Child, I wrote this speculative post about where the Jo Martin version came from. In the event, I was half right. The whole business of the Doctor not even being a Time Lord in the first place was a conceptual leap too far.
Just at the start of lockdown, I began cognitive behavioral therapy which was to have been in person but ended up over the phone, with the therapist calling from her own home. In the end, I was signed off because she didn't think there was much more for me to learn - that I already had all of the coping mechanisms in place that she would have taught me. I'd entirely forgotten that back in February, I'd actually posted a lot of these on this very blog.
Letterboxd tells me that I've watched 373 films so far this year, which is probably higher than average. In February, I explained my use of their scoring mechanism in all of its tedious detail.
The most popular new blog post this year by far, was this selection of screencaps from Doctor Who's The Timeless Child annotating all of the images in her memory dump. Still bummed they didn't manage to fit in Koquillian or the Monoids.
The last time I went anywhere nice, or at all was the 9th March when I began visiting all of the London tube stations in order which on reflection seems amazing reckless. But at that point I didn't have any clue about how the virus was spread and even remember wiping down one of the bars in a train carriage before holding it, despite the fact no one was wearing a mask and all crammed in together. God knows when I'll get to Shepherd's Bush Market and Hammersmith.
A week later, yes really, the whole country was in full lockdown. Still unjaded and full of enthusiasm, I was blogging about how to make the most of streaming services and began offering a daily selection of entertainment which lasted a whole fourteen entries before the magnitude of what was hitting us sent me low for a bit.
But I watched Michelle Terry as Hamlet in a production I never thought I'd ever have the chance to see and noticed how almost the whole of Disney's entire back catalogue was now at the touch of a button for a third of the price of a VHS tape and along with some other things realised I did still have the procrastination fight in me. Still do.
By the end of May, I'd listened to the whole of The Beatles in production order, spent a week or two in June creating a chronology of films set in New York and even longer in July putting all of the available Royal Shakespeare Compay productions in viewing order.
The blog mostly became a link blog for the Summer.
Come Autumn, the tyranny of choice in film was really beginning to take hold and I wrote about strategies to cope.
Then in November, Biden won and other than this look back across the year, that's the longest piece of writing I've been able to produce since.
Hopefully next year the words will flow again. Until then, Happy New Year!