2020

2020 was...

Visits from friends, Veganuary, Durness, Proposing to Ailish, Celebrations, Big Table, Clare’s Birthday, Edinburgh trip, Trail of Dead live, 5k runs, Animal Crossing, Lockdown, Face masks, Months where nothing happens, Dread, Existentialism, Ugh, Covid Parents, Online D&D, Deactivating Facebook, Airiel, Cancelling a Denmark trip, Videochats, Fargo, Films, Reading, Leg Pain, A few cries, Shaving me head, The Last of Us, Sunday Night Mario Kart, No running, Forse of Nature, Building a LEGO Castle, Back to work, Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle, X-rays, Dishonored, Jurassic Park in the cinema, Playstation 5, Gael’s bday dinner, Winter Sad, Xmas Shopping, Secret Santa Lunches, and so much time in the house.

It was a difficult year that made me thankful.

A Lego Castle WIP

This year -amongst other things- I was planning to attend a few Lego shows across Scotland, and most excitingly, display some builds too. I’ve written previously about plans and how big a fuck up 2020 as a whole has been, and the same unfortunately extends to my ambitions for Lego-based travel too. Nonetheless I’ve had a great year pottering away and building those projects, particularly the big Castle MOC I was planning. This was a build that was supposed to be finished for display in April but as one thing led to another and deadlines changed to July, it still remains sadly unfinished...

So, here it is, in not quite but almost there completion! I’m posting it here because it represents quite a bit of my time this year but it also serves as a big to-do reminder for the upcoming months, where -hopefully- it will be getting displayed publicly. The other reason of course is that while all photos and videos of Lego MOCs online are brilliant, there’s a certain fascination to seeing something not quite finished; a work in progress, rough and ready, where techniques and inspiration can be found. This isn’t the most technical or complicated Lego Castle out there by any means but hopefully someone will find it’s development interesting, or at the very least, inspire them to do their own! I’ve been posting regular updates over on my Lego specific Instagram, but here they all rounded up to show the progress.

I’ve built Lego Castles before -this is going to be a bigger, better, and more complete iteration of my Widmore series- and it’s great seeing that progress over a big 15 year AFOL period. Keeping the mostly same landscaping and shape make comparisons easy, and it’s just satisfying having that all play out like a little child. I’m building for me. Send this back in time so I can play with it! There’s still trees and more landscaping to add as well as further interior details and the addition of actual Lego minifig knights to populate it. With good intentions and a few more weeks it will be finished soon- assuming I don’t get distracted or -more likely- try to make it even bigger!

Faves in 2020

Normally year-ends are marked with numerous rundowns, “…of the year” posts, and favourite picks. This year has been a bit different release-wise across various media, so I wanted to do something different other than obvious game/film etc of the year and enthuse instead about my late discoveries or personal entertainment highlights from the year. Stuff I’ve missed or not fully posted about yet. Catch-up year!

‘Trail of Dead live, The Mash House in Edinburgh

In March before everything went tits up we were very fortunate to get a mini break in Edinburgh . Two weeks before UK Lockdown was even a remote possibility I was lucky enough to get to see one of my favourite bands play live in quite possibly the most crowded, loudest environment ever. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead have been a band that I’ve been a big fan of for close to 20 years now, so it was incredibly rewarding finally getting to see them live after all this time. The band played lots from their back catalogue as well as plenty from their new album this year -X: The Godless Void and Other Stories- and the gig was probably one of the most thunderous and booming shows I’ve ever been to. Volume is subjective and usually with hyperbole, but I’m not lying when I say I didn’t know bands were allowed to play so loud…legally. I had extra tinnitus for days, annnd declaring that now makes me older than ever. Sorry.

Spotify and BBC Radio 6 Music

This year I started listening to BBC Radio 6 Music in a big way and after defaulting to Apple Music for years, this year I rejoined Spotify as streaming provider. These are quite small things, but both changes resulted in me discovering and listening to a lot more bands, artists, and genres than I have in any other year. I listed to 241 new artists this year(!) and 327 total, a lot more than my usual standard plays and go-to favourites. So lots more diversity this year- here’s my playlist of my favourite songs from this year.

Lots of Films!

With lockdown and being off work earlier this year I watched a LOT of films. In total this year I watched 81 Films For the First Time, and 140 films overall. In the absence of cinema trips here were plenty of rewatches of past favourites instead, and Christopher Nolan, Michael Caine, and Peter Jackson all featured quite heavily- here’s my stats in full. Next year I’d like things to be a bit more diverse, cult, and overall varied. Any recommendations let me know!

Lots of Books!

This year I aimed to read 25 books and while I quite havent reached that target yet (there’s still tiime) I’ve read a lot more this year than normally and spent more time actively reading accordingly. My favourite audiobook this year is Pet Sematary by Stephen King, I’ve posted about that already, and one of my favourite books was We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson. Again, I’ve already posted about that, so let me offer up my other favourite instead…

Ice by Anna Kavan

I picked this up at random earlier in the year, and I read through it pretty quickly. It’s set in a distopian post-apocalyptic landscape where the cold stings and a chill bites throughout. Things happen, and there are scenes and events, but I wouldnt say there is plot, if that makes sense. It’s a maddening blizzard of a journey where things and narratives happen in paralell to each other but you’re never really sure what it real and what isnt. It’s magical in places with it’s language, sometimes feeling like a bleak fairytale in others, but it’s a piece of media that’s really stuck with me throughout the year. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely something I want to reread slower and even more thoughtfully next year.

Nintendo Firsty-Party Games

Animal Crossing: New Horizons released earlier this year and over lockdown and in the absence of structure, was something that I enjoyed and played immensely. The game really helped me relax and switch off, and ultimately give me something to obsess over instead of doomscrolling. Nine months later i’m still playing frequently. Also helpful and fun, my friend group started playing Mario Kart 8 online most sunday nights. In a time where couch-multiplayer is disappearing from games (regardless of social disctancing) these nights really felt old-school fun, and again, something good to distract and break up the week.

Online Dungeons & Dragons

Something that equally kept me ticking over was voice chat D&D, and playing over Roll20. I’ve probably played more this year than any other year combined with near weekly precision. In one campaign i’m heist happy halfling Panwick, in the other i’m dashing, dumb, dentist half-orc Henk. Both campaigns have been great distractions, and good burst escapes from reality.

Airiel

This year I listened to so much shoegaze and dreampop, and Airiel were one of my early discoveries through Spotify. BAND OF THE YEAR! Admittedly they only released one single this year and the stuff I did listen to was mainly from 2017-2004, but band of the year! I really enjoyed playing their dreamy/floaty, lets be honest, lovely discography and zoning out especially during the height of lockdown/2020 doom hell. The band are one of my favourite things this year- definitely on the list to see live once things are okay again.

Dishonored

The Last of Us Part II came out in June and really blew me away with it’s bold narrative choices and heavy story consequences, but after completion I bounced off it pretty hard and revisited my backlog. The original Dishonored came out pretty late in one console generation and early into another so it was something that like lots of things I never really got round to. I played through the base game and all it’s DLC this year and I fell in ove pretty much straight away with its open-ended gameplay and the world narrative that it’s all set against. I jumped into it’s sequel shortly after and it was the same here, but with even more polish and gameplay options to be had. I had so much devious stealthy fun with this series I really regret sleeping on the franchise for so long, especially now that it seems finished. I would still definitely recommend playing the games even now

2020 Was Pretty Bad So I Treated Myself

With 2020 continuing to be an absolute disaster culturally, politically, and more importantly personally, It’s been more important than ever to find ideas and activities to keep happy. Absolutely everything has changed in some way, and I’ve found the continued sudden stagnations and resets quite difficult if I’m honest. I might have mentioned this quite a bit already. Lets just write the year off and pretend it never happened?

With that in mind -and with all previous lookingforwards delayed or cancelled- back in August I decided to proper treat myself and preorder a Sony Playstation 5. Since that preorder went off it’s been my go-to calendar excitement, and incredibly fulfilling having something to look forward to daily. It’s perhaps a purchase sooner than necessary: gaming backlogs grow and are at this point forever, but the allure of shiny new boxes that play shiny new games is an insatiably maddening one, so here we are! After 27 years of playing videogames and having that as an interest I get my first “day one” console! I’m only a few hours in and still really need to play things properly but so far I love every bit of it. I have the next few days off, so while my birthday plans changed, my Denmark holiday was cancelled, and all those weddings I was hoping to attend were delayed, this is hopefully going to make up a little for some of the previous inconveniences of 2020. I feel better already…

2020 Reading Goals

Back in January I made a lot of New Year Resolutions and things I wanted to do this year, but with 2020 being the absolute worst, few of these have have actually been acheievable or even realised. Things like travel plans and running have been big no-gos as global pandemic and backache continue on, but one resolution this year was to read more and it is actually on track!

I set myself the goal of reading 25 books before the year was out, and while initially that doesn’t sound like much, it’s five times more than what I would normally get through in the same period. I never read as much as I’d like to (lets blame nights out, doom scrolling and social media) and while lockdown and distancing have been absolutely terrible it’s been quasi-good at partially eliminating some of those distractions. With eight weeks now left this year I’ve now got only five books left (see above) to hit my target- they’re an odd mix of books started last month, earlier this year, and even from a few years ago during house and job changes. What I want to do is get everything finally wrapped up ahead of next year. I am notorious for starting things and never finishing them, having backlogs, and slow progress on media across the board so I’m looking forward to completing this self-challenge and more excitingly, looking forward to doing even better next year.

A list of everything I’ve read so far this year is over on my Goodreads page. Once the year is over I’m planning on doing a post here summarising them all with my thoughts and faves, potentially another looking for 2021 recommendations too (if I actually get my backlog cleared)!

Lockdown 2020: Three Months Later

Three months later, for better or worse, it’s only really now that the UK (and Scotland in particular) is easing lockdown. I’ve written a little about it, but for the most part i’ve reserved the nitty gritty and worst of it all for my diary and daily moping. That might seem a little bit of an exaggeration, but hands down, the last few weeks have been weird, and hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime deal. I can safely say I never want to experience these three months mentally again and i’m sure plenty of others are in a similar boat.

With the last three months suddenly there was an abundance of free time, there’s less social requirements, and for myself just less urgency all around if i’m honest. When it was all announced it seemed like a chance to finally catch up on everything but to begin with this was mostly just endless news refreshes, eating, and like I said, moping. NOT learning all the new languages, running everyday, and all those unstarted projects, because somehow I had absolutely convinced myself that was all going to happen? The Onion covered it best: Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive. I always give myself grief over how little i’ve achieved at the best of times (spoiler: recurring narrative) but the truth is looking back over the last three months I did achieve more than what I realised. In 2020 it feels somewhat wrong to care and think about self when there is so much more important things happening worldwide like equality demonstrations, media misreporting, and THAT global climate shitstorm, but maybe that’s the point to feel less overwhelmed. So to fill in the long gap in this blog between posts (again, recurring narrative) here’s a big list of everything ive been doing/achieved while in lockdown. I guess i’m writing it down and posting to feel better.

  • Took our dog a (big) walk everyday and started playing Ringfit Adventure on the Switch. I hurt my ankle, stopped, and then started again. I haven’t been running properly in weeks, and this one really annoys me. I need to reintroduce activity gradually, slower this time.

  • I played 90 hours of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I can not stress how reassuring and relaxing this was- total escapism for the early days of lockdown, maybe obsessively so. I also replayed the entirety of Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us -less relaxing more cathartic- and played lots of Mario Kart Online with friends, this was loads of fun.

  • I built Lego 10255 Assembly Square, and it was great really hving something to focus on each day- it took around 15 hours to build. I took lots of photos and videos during the process, I might still retroactively post about it. Creatively for an online contest I built this.

  • I reopened my Bricklink store to sell off some excess Lego. Buy stuff from me. I also rejoined Spotify and made a few playlists. Follow me.

  • Socially, I participated in lots of videochats and played lots of voice D&D too which was initially different but very cool.

  • Shaved off all my hair. Later shaved off all my beard. Both grew back- what a huge twist.

  • Rewatched all of the Extended Edition Hobbit and Lord of The Rings films. Really enjoyed LOTR for nth time, everytime I watch it I appreciate it more. I watched all of these films too.

  • I did some video editing! I made videos about our recent Edinburgh trip, climbing Ben Bhraggie, and going to Durness and proposing(!), they’re all on my mega-amateur YouTube channel.

  • Started Creative Writing. This is something ive wanted to do for ages so I took a short online course at Open Learn and have been doing some exercises independently too. Ive really enjoyed it, it’s I definitely something I want to keep up once we go “back to normal”. I found this quite relaxing too.

  • I also drank a shocking amount of coffee, and had scrambled eggs for breakfast every other day. Did you know you can make them in the microwave? I did not know that until this year! This was probably the most useful thing I learnt.

And did work training, checked the news a stupid amounts of time like I said, and lets be honest, just generally survived as well. Both my parents had (and recovered!) from Covid-19 back in April/May and the last three months i’ve just felt completely spent energy wise. Things are hard, overcoming them and doing things are harder? There’s a big focus media-wise on going “back to normal”, but normal wasn’t always the best anyway; i’d like to think the last three months have given me new perspective about everything. Like I said i’ve moped quite a bit and found this all a lot more difficult than it maybe should be, so doing everything listed above is just a bonus I guess. There’s been no right or wrong way to survive this mentally at all.

(MOC) Batman Oneshots: ASSAULT ON ACE CHEMICALS- LAB 26

I havent really built anything significant out of Lego for a while. This year I was planning to build quite a lot for display at a number of Lego shows and exhibitions later this year, but like lots of other events, they’ve now since been either postponed or cancelled. There goes all that creative urgency…

New Elementary recently ran a contest to Switch My Lantern Up, a Lego contest using the new Green Lantern um…lantern piece as a seed part of something else. I found it really difficult to use it in a way that’s not obviously Green Lantern’s lantern, and my entry was nowhere near as good as the winners of the contest but I gave it a bash anyway. Collecting Lego DC minifigures has been something ive been doing for as long as they’ve been making them, and in the last year and a bit i’ve started making dioramas or scenes to use them fully. It’s taking a lot longer than it should if i’m honest as i’m very slow at getting things started, but im happy with what ive done so far. There’s a few already in my Lego gallery, so for the contest I decided to build another:

Batman03R.jpg

Dastardly Dr Jonathan Crane aka THE SCARECROW is at it again! Creating FEAR TOXIN in a hidden lab at ACE CHEMICALS, our valiant hero BATMAN shows up to give the doctor a taste of his own medicine! Production is already underway however, and the fright formula now ready for bottling! Can our hero overcome his enemy’s chemical onslaught and save GOTHAM?

Edinburgh 2020 #lastnormalvideo

With UK Lockdown still (mostly) in effect and Covid_19 still being a force throughout the world, the BBC recently encouraged it’s readers and viewers to send them their last normal photo. A #lastnormalphoto hashtag was born and a trend was soon in full effect, with plenty of people contributing their own memories.

In March earlier this year my fiancée (!) and I were in Edinburgh a week before things realy started happening in the UK, and there was no real sense of impending change whatsoever. It was still a problem countries away, or so our government treated it. Our trip away was travelling on public transport, having brunch out, seeing alt-rock band ‘Trail of Dead live in very crowded venue, and visiting museums and galleries. Pretty fun, normal stuff, and a great means of celebrating our newly engagement.

I recorded lots of the trip while we were away, more for recollection than anything else, but ive made a big video of it all and uploaded it over on my YouTube channel. It’s only two months ago, but with all the recent changes it now feels so much longer. It’s happy memories, but it’s sad too, with everything that’s happened since. Most of all, it’s baffling seeing big spaces and groups of people together that we presumably wont see again for a while. Strange times indeed.

Lockdown 2020

Im not really the best at updating or writing here. In 2020 so far ive proposed to my partner, seen my favourite band for the first time in 15 years, and now most recently, possibly sprained my ankle. Nonetheless the big life event for everyone at the moment is the Covid_19 situation- social distancing, isolation, and mass political lies in a hellscape straight out of your favourite sci-fi novel.


The UK entered lockdown on the 23rd of March 2020- (for better or worse) quite a while after the rest of Europe. You read about it elsewhere and how they’ve coped but when the quarantine hit everything just felt weird. One walk a day. No visiting friends or family. No loitering without reason. Only shopping once a week. No going to work. Its a sudden abundance of free time but its very demoralising, empty, strange time as well. Lots of reading, online video calls, boardgames and well, house stuff.


So here’s the first month of Lockdown just passed: A mood-board/scrapbook effort of stuff ive captured or saved during “Strange Times” these last few weeks. Its mostly quite (forgive me) random stuff, but given the circumstances it feels like something that should be marked or remembered as well- that month in 2020 where everyone had to stay at home to avoid catching a life threatening virus. Just like your favourite dystopian sci-fi thriller, like I said.