Bas gave this blog a a subtle kick. The kind of thing where one answers a number of questions on their blog and then chooses friends who then are supposed to answer the same questions on their blogs. In this particular case, the questions where about 2007. Which is a bit of a problem, now that the moon has almost completed its first cycle of the new year: 2007 is so 2007. Also, unlike Bas, I didn’t get any offspring in the past year, or any previous year; hence I didn’t have any obvious things to write about.

Therefore I decided to cheat a bit and answer the questions about 2008. About its first 28 days, that is.

Three artists I discovered in 2008. Blossom Dearie. The Cuties. New Bad Things. (The latter two are lies, as I knew them before, but I got The Cuties’ debut album in the mail the other day and hadn’t listened to New Bad Things for half of my musical life until Nancy wrote about them. More on the former two soon.)

Three things I won’t forget easily. Seeing Exeter City play (and beat) Oxford. Spending three-and-a-half extra hours on public transport due to flooding. Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Youth.

Three things I feel bad about. Still being a pain to Dimitra at times. Still spending too much time wilfing. Not having worked as hard as I should (and, honestly, wanted to) on mathematics.

Three things I’m proud of. Keeping up with my resolution of reading at least one book a week. Writing a number of news articles that were published on the company’s website. Being asked to take the Exeter Goes Pop! roadshow to London next weekend.

Three things I bought or got. Jonathan Coe’s The House Of Sleep, for a pound at a local charity shop. A new handset for my phone, two months after I had sent the old ones off for repair. New shoes for Dimitra; we originally bought them in October and they had broken already, but Schuh were kind enough to send us new ones, even though we had lost the original receipt.