My 21 Moments Of 2024
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Well it might be time to have a little look back my moments of 2024.
Most of these are joyous moments, though I also include a few moments of frustration and anger, to try to balance it out. Let’s not pretend that I’m overjoyed every single day of my rather fun and joyful existence.
It’s in ascending order, though I’m not entirely sure in ascending order of what – memorable? Meh, let’s crack on.
21. Trance Party lol
I’ve enjoyed giving various friends the Tour Of Croydon this year, though one of my friends who was brave enough to stay the whole weekend in a hotel in Croydon, decided that we had to go to central London for a day out.
He refused to tell me why, so I was kind of assuming that we were either going to a strip club or some kind of music event (music I don’t like), and it was the latter. A trance party. At Tiger Tiger, of all places.
Yes, the music was horrendous, and I eventually got to the point where my ears couldn’t cope, no matter how many more cans of £7.50 shit lager I drank. But it was funny being in a room of 40-50 year-old original trance heads on pills. Great vibes, painful music.
20. Bilbao Monday
I managed to get out of the country 6 times in 2023, but even more amazingly I managed to persuade my mother to come with us. Well, it was more my sister that did the groundwork – my father needs no persuading.
Bilbao was where we ended up, and though I enjoyed our whole time there, the Monday was a particularly excellent day, and the only day the sun came out.
I had a beer in the sun (something I don’t think I’d managed in the UK by mid-June), some ace pintxos, the most amazing cheesecake ever and a few hours of excellent craft beer drinking, along with some wandering through the town. Oh and a trip up the funicular to see the whole city.
19. Unrelenting Gloom
So this list is not just the good moments, and gosh the unrelenting gloom during October and November, then again at Christmas just never ended.
Cloud.
Cloud.
Cloud.
More fucking cloud.
It really did grate on me at times. I live for sunshine and warmth – unrelenting cloud is my least favourite weather. If it is going to be cloudy, at least give me some rain too.
18. Somerset Adventures
One of my issues is that many of my closest friends don’t live in London – and I don’t have infinite money or time to be able to visit them as regularly as my heart desires.
However, I wasn’t going to ignore a 50th birthday, I wasn’t going to let a storm stop me (though we did encounter many fallen trees in rural Somerset), nor was I taking any notice of the advice from Great Western to “avoid all travel unless strictly necessary” because their staff cannot be arsed to work on a Sunday now they’ve had a whopping pay rise.
And there was a bonus legend turning up for a couple of hours too, along with a couple of other Bar Mango legends that I’ve not seen in possibly a decade.
Totally great night, some good beers in a brewery in the afternoon, and a cracking roast the next day. If only I had the money and the time to go there more often. But back I will go.
17. Liam Rosenior Sacking
So you employ a football manager that pulls you away from relegation one season, and gets the team to 7th in the league the next season – far surpassing expectations of almost everyone who knows anything about football.
He’s broadly loved by the fans, though some complain about “boring football”, he used to play for Hull City, his nan is from Hull, he was often quoted as the reason why we attracted some really talented loan players.
Then you sack him. It was arguably the craziest sacking in football since José Mourinho was sacked by Chelsea the first time…back when he was actually a great manager.
Embed from Getty ImagesI was furious, but the owner was bored of the football and preferred to lose 3-2 to drawing 0-0. Hmmm.
Of course, we employed “the next Jurgen Klopp”, we signed 20 new players, we won 3 out of 17 games and found ourselves back in the relegation zone. Well done.
16. Fuck Off Tories
I guess this was an anti-climax in that the result of the election was known as soon as Conservative members decided our economy could be trusted with Liz Truss (not that I think her ideas where bad per se, more fucking stupid implementation/timing).
There were some interesting factors – Nigel Farage stealing Tory voters, the Greens stealing Labour votes, the Liberal Democrats attracting all the votes of Tory remainers. Along with the near-death of the Conservative Party, who somehow are currently favourites to get the most seats in the next election. How?
And I had a big decision to make – could I really vote Labour after saying that I’d never vote for a socialist party?
Yet I did vote for them, probably for similar reasons that more left-leaning friends moved to the Green Party – basically I’m expecting them to carry out planning reform and improve the relationship with the EU, and my hope is that will outweigh the stupid tax and spend shit (currently…it ain’t).
But I did have to explain myself to Lady Thatcher. I think she understands.
15. Sunday Funday in Prague
Have I ever mentioned that I like beer?
Have I ever mentioned that I like sunshine?
Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE drinking beer in the sunshine?
Well, Prague was actually hot and sunny the whole time we were there, and though I enjoyed the whole trip, I especially enjoyed the accidental Sunday Funday along the river, with a mixture of craft beer places on boats and slightly quirky independent bars on the side.
And all this whilst in the gorgeous sunshine.
14. Liechtenstein being cool
My European train adventure was fun, though again I was cursed with the weather on my first stop in Basel.
However, I popped onto a train, and then a bus, to head to the smallest country that I’ve ever visited – Liechtenstein.
I didn’t spend too long there, and also spent too much of it at a wine tasting which was boring.
But it ticked the boxes in terms of gorgeous views of mountains, some castles, some beer and some sunshine. Plus getting the train through Switzerland was just mesmerisingly stunning.
13. My First Ever Lesbian Wedding
Can you believe that it took me until the age of 44 to go to my first ever lesbian wedding?
It was in February, up north in this gorgeous gothic mansion near Selby, and I paused my detox for the celebration.
The ceremony was super sweet, everyone was on great form – and the roast dinner was actually excellent. Was such an honour to get an invite.
12. Return To The Office
So I was already indulging in a bad mood in early-ish January, fed up of the weather, two shit roast dinners in a row, detox, yadda yadda.
And then our CEO announced “everyone back to the office 3 days a week”.
Cue fury. Whilst writing code, I need to be able to concentrate and deep think, putting my brain into the whole system of the codebase, to do my best work. I cannot do this in an office with hundreds of people, noises, bad light, varying temperate, etc. I can work in an office, but not to the best of my ability. Plus the time spent commuting is my upskilling time…many days before work I spend some time studying.
It turns out that I don’t mind being in the office – I like the social aspect. I hate the commute, I get less work done, but it’s kind of nice speaking to people. And those that need to deep thinking time did get an agreement to only go in once a week, so it hasn’t impacted me too much.
Yet the glory days of engineering, pre-AI, pre-RTO, are gone. Employers are in control.
11. That Overhead Kick
The England vs Slovakia game wasn’t exactly a bundle of joy.
I’d put so much energy into defending Sir Gareth SouthGREAT, yet here we were about to go out of the Euros against Slovakia.
And fuck me, the football was drudgery.
And fuck me, I was well into the 6.5% NEIPA, sitting in misery and loathing.
And fuck me, Jude Bellingham.
10. Not Coming Home Again
That Sunday was a long day.
An early (and shit) roast dinner, followed by a trek to Walthamstow, waiting an hour outside a venue to be able to get a non-guaranteed seat. Then 4 hours inside until the game started.
It wasn’t to be. Spain were too good, we weren’t really firing as we could/should.
But yet again, Sir Gareth SouthGREAT got us to a final of a tournament. What a legend. Your mileage may vary, but for me the greatest manager England have ever had. Maybe Tuchel will go one step further.
9. Prague boat
Whenever someone says “let’s go on a boat!”, I’m like, “yeah whatever”.
I seem to forget that actually I really enjoy a relaxing hour on a tourist-filled boat up a river.
The sun was setting, it was still super warm, we ordered some prosecco and we got to watch views of the gorgeous buildings of Prague.
8. Wholesome Christmas
Sometimes I can get a bit restless at Christmas being back in the family home – it’s quite small, my bedroom and bed is tiny, I miss my computer, I miss my space.
And that happened a bit again this year, mostly on Christmas Day where I swear we spent 12 hours in front of the TV – I’d forgotten just how bad Home Alone 2 was. Maybe not quite 12 hours, but I’m really not used to all that sitting doing nothing.
However, overall it felt a really wholesome Christmas. All the family were on great form, I got some cool presents including a gravy boat and a mum-knitted scarf, me and my sister had two fun afternoons out around Hull – inspecting various bars, including a proper dive bar with heavy metal karaoke (after we left, thankfully) and a craft beer place serving pattie butties.
The turkey was ace (thanks M&S), we went to see plenty of family and I cooked a couple of meals too. I was, of course, itching to get back home to crack on with life by the end.
But it was one of my favourite Christmas’ for years.
7. I Have A Sofa
It took about 6 months to decide which sofa to buy, but finally I found one which was totally me.
There’s still so much to do to get the flat how I want it, however there is 3 or so months of detox coming up.
And I really do love the sofa.
6. Quo Vadis
For some reason I have 4 superb Martins in my life, and two of them were in London one Friday.
We started at Albert’s Schloss which is this uber-fun bierhaus near Piccadilly Circus. It was so great to catch up with two of my dearest friends…both of whom don’t live in London, of course!
But the real reason I wanted to post this was our dinner in Quo Vadis. I had the rabbit, and holy moly, it was sensational. Possibly the most sensational thing I’ve eaten all year.
5. Teeth Out Experience WTF
One of the first days of 2024, I chipped another tooth and was like “damn, this cannot go on”. My upper teeth were a mixture of gaps, fillings and chips, I’ve learnt not to smile so most people don’t know how bad they were.
Time to call Smile Savers.
As soon as that chip happened, I did some research – I ended up going with Smile Savers in Budapest. It was the first place I researched, but also was the only one with every single review at 5 stars, and had reports from British newspapers from 15 years ago, so the quality seemed legit.
But WTF was that Monday about.
8 fillings on the bottom, 8 teeth out on the top, 6 screws drilled into me, a bone graft (basically a hammer to the face), 30ish injections and a load of stitches. Fucking hell. I have to go back at the end of March to get the implants put in. Surely it won’t be that torturous again?
4. Sunshine in Palermo
Sunshine!
I either really lucked out on the weather on my holidays this year (Prague), or really flipping didn’t (Bilbao, Basel, Budapest…if that was a holiday). 31’C at the end of March in Europe is what I call lucking out – heck, even some of the Sicilians were wearing shorts on the day it got to 31’C.
I really enjoyed Sicily – there is plenty of history/culture, we had some gorgeous food (and some average food), some really good beers, and of course, sunshine. 31’C. In March. Did it even reach that temperature at all in the UK in 2024?
3. Painting My Bedroom
Who would have thought decorating would be one of my highlights of 2024?
But it kind of makes sense – I love planning and building features for websites, why would this thrill not translate to real life doing stuff?
I decided to do one wall in like a pastel pink, the others in pure white to try to maximise the light.
It took a while to do – I was tending to do 20 minutes on my lunch, a bit after work – that kind of thing, whereas it is probably easier to do it all in a few longer hauls. But I enjoyed it…and it looks a lot better. Not perfect though.
Now for the main room.
2. Falling In Love With Strasbourg
Strasbourg was the third stop on my European train adventure.
In the end, I liked Basel, but it was so expensive, the weather was poor, the food disappointing.
And then I stepped into Strasbourg. It was hot and sunny, the women were beautiful, the food was stunning and the whole city is just immensely picturesque. I really have to go back there.
1. Portugal. All Of It.
Have I mentioned that many of my dearest friends don’t live in London?
Me and my sister (who does live in London) decided to go on holiday in September, somewhere warm but close.
I suggested Portugal, where a dear friend lives.
Well, it was a superb holiday, and arguably my moment of 2024 – if a whole week can be a moment. Said dear friend was our tour guide for much of the week, so we saw much more of Portugal than we would have done otherwise.
From sunset bars, to cliff-top walks, jokingly bad roast dinners to charming lunches, hot sunshine to weird fog, a pirate boat trip to the caves, a stupidly long walk in the heat. Oh, and Buddy.
Take me back to Portugal. IMMEDIATELY.
Those were my moments of 2024. Maybe I can do ever better for 2025.