2013 in review : Music

With a lot less money available to buy music i found there was masses of free indie pop out there anyway. As usual for my indie music blog i do an end of year A-Z playlist of some of the bands i liked most in the year, and here it is.

2013 in review : Waterways

Naturally i spent a good deal of this year walking various inland waterways and taking hundreds of photographs, many in the Midlands but i also investigated London's canals quite intensely. I walked most of the Regent's Canal as well as completing the short Limehouse Cut and Hertford Union Canals.

In the Midlands i visited Stratford of course and also returned to Brindley Place and the Digbeth Branch. New ground was covered on the Stratford Canal near Wootton Wawen, the Worcester & Birmingham Canal in Alvechurch and the Oxford Canal in Banbury. Probably the nicest place visited though was Aberystwyth and its jolly little harbour.

All in all some good milage was made. I still have a list of places to visit, we'll just have to see how 2014 pans out. My Inland Waterways blog is a good place to visit if you are interested in my travels.

2013 in review : Model making

As with the gardening model making was something else which i should have had a lot more time to do this year but in the event i only completed 10 kits this year compared to 16 last year. I admit some of this was down to a bit of "Airfix fatigue" as i found it harder to get kits that inspired me but also my model railway (of which more below) took up a lot of my time too.

Two models stood out for me this year, the SPAD XIII and HMS Tiger, both came out really well as did my Eurofighter Typhoon. I have plenty of kits stored up for the 2014 season which will resume in the early Spring.

After a gap of nearly 20 years i returned to the world of model railways. Project Eskalon is a still developing model railway loosely based on the modern Austrian narrow gauge scene. There is a lot of overlap between the worlds of model kits and model railways of course. One of the kits i did complete this year was a doctor's surgery...

2013 in review : Gardening

In theory i had a lot more free time this year so the garden must have looked wonderful? In truth i did do quite a bit in April and May including building a proper raised bed for the veg plot but once the masters got going properly and (probably more relevant) the Ashes began i spent less and less time in the garden.

Having said that i had a decent crop of peas and tomatoes (far too many of them to be honest). For a change i did manage to use some in cooking. I also planted some flowers which grew like crazy and took over half the garden.

So as usual the gardening season began with promise and ended in an overgrown mess. Roll on 2014 for more of the same most likely.

2013 in review : Study

In previous years at this time on this blog i have reviewed the year month by month. I am not going to do that this year as most of the year has been spent a) doing my dissertation b) unemployed. Thankfully both are now coming to an end but they have dominated the year so instead i will do a shorter series of "review posts" focussing on different aspects of my year.

This first post will review my studies this year which is apt because this year has been all about learning i guess. Last January i submitted my dissertation proposal (luckily spotting at the last moment i had spelt the word "history" wrong on it - kind of embarrassing on a history course) and it was accepted so i could continue to part 2 of the Open University's MA History. Since late April i have been working on my dissertation, up to 15000 words on Stratford-upon-Avon's economy in the early nineteenth century and the effect of transport systems on it especially the horse-drawn tramway.

That is now coming to an end, i have written three chapters which all sell pretty good (the tutor agrees with my self-assessment thankfully!) and are backed up with a lot of research (i've been to the National Archives 4 or 5 times alone). I started the conclusion today and will begin bringing the thesis together later in the month. It needs to be submitted in mid-January 2014. A week-by-week diary of my progress on the course can be seen here.

Once the dissertation is submitted and assuming it passes then that is that for my academic journey for now at least. I would like to do a PhD but not for the foreseeable future unless circumstances change. I also would like to learn Welsh, now the OU do a beginners course...

The Masters was not the only course i have done this year. A couple of months ago i took a teacher training course (PTLLS) and I have discovered the joys of Lynda online IT training and have also joined a MOOC which is ongoing and is very interesting.