Farewell, November. You took the last of the leaves from the trees and now we’re into stark, bare December.

Not all bad of course. Perfect weather for curling up and reading a good book. I feel like I finished more books than I did, but that’s because there was a 720 pages (in Paradise, still reading) 400 Pages (Hidden Valley Road - still listening) and the only doorstopper I finished was Franzen’s ‘Crossroads’. I did actually finish five others, which wasn’t too bad. I would like to equal my total of last year, 51 books or more importantly, 17556 pages but won’t be overly bothered if I don’t as I wasn’t blogging last year so there was more time for reading. Blogging has certainly reinvigorated my love of reading but it’s a time consuming hobby once you get into the social media aspect of it.

Movie wise, I really enjoyed ‘Dune.’ The sound, the effects, just the overall experience - I loved the size of the spaceships on the big screen. It felt like an old school cinematic classic, much in the mould of something like ‘Bladerunner.’ That was it for the cinema, nothing else appealed to me.

Same with the TV. ‘Succession’ is still very watchable but there is a dark undertone to it. Definitely feels like the death of a character is coming. Reminds me of a season of mad men which was full of ominous signs. It is called succession after all, it can’t go on for ever. I haven’t found anything else to watch, except for ‘Ghosts’, the BBC comedy which is good craic. Netflix seems to have turned into channel 5, everything is about serial killers.

No more gigs, nothing appealing to me and it’s getting too close to Christmas. And there’s of course the other complications, which are too depressing to go into. Lets hope there are at least some xmas gatherings this time round.