(Continued from Part 1)
The ancient Chinese oft quoted curse “May you live in interesting times” got used a lot in 2016, for me at least it was a huge shake up of a year and “interesting” barely covered it…
This Part 2 of my look back at the heartless confusing and yet liberating and life altering bastard of a year that was 2016 begins in…
July
After 10 years and 1 day exactly and a LONG way overdue I finally left Japan to return to the UK.
I didn’t write much about that then, and I haven’t since.
I have plenty to say about it, believe me, but the little black ball of anger and disgust deep inside me is not a good place to make public statements from so I’m going to refrain.
It did feel like a huge relief to get on that plane knowing that it was the (almost certainly, but never say never) final time I’d be doing it.
I cried me a river in the days leading up to it but only from saying goodbye to friends and I’ve never been any good at goodbyes so that was no surprise…
My almost weekly for 10 years Friday nights will never be quite the same…
My brother in law thought this would be suitable for a send off meal…
And then suddenly, I was here and it felt like a huge weight had been lifted…
I hit the ground running and within days was in London with Martin Cooper the director of “Traces Of The Soul” editing the trailer at Storm HD…
I had my priorities straight too and bought a lovely new bed to get out of at 6am everyday…
The weather was uncharacteristically kind…
I found some great photos in boxes I haven’t looked in for 20 years, this one by the legendary Dave “Mr Muju” Ashlin…
It’s me playing a gig many moons ago in Brighton with the band I had with Rochelle Vincente – “The Hawkline Orchestra”
And it was another month when we didn’t lose anyone who meant anything to me…though I personally experienced 1 or more little deaths :)
August
I was up in Sheffield with Martin Cooper shooting for “Traces of the soul” – 2 amazing artists with incredible stories, Calligraphitti Ambassadors Iranian born Ghalamdar and Englishman Karl “Kobe” O’brien…
We were “up north” so we breakfasted accordingly…
I bought a car and started driving for the first time in 14 years, not scary at all, no sir…
I was at Silverstone to film drift car nutcase Buttsy Butler for my friends at Postfuel. I didn’t let Buttsy drive my new car…
The UK was proving to very car oriented as I also went for a drive in this beauty…
I was reconnecting with some dear old friends from WAY back in the day…
Being back was beautiful and weird in almost equal measure…
We lost Gene Wilder and the man responsible for the Backstreet boys and N’Sync, Lou Pearlman…
September
The piece I DP’d/Shot/Edited on Buttsy Butler in August went up on the Influx site…
I started another Instagram account to post pics of the out of date food I kept finding in my Dad’s cupboards…
I was at IBC 2016 in Amsterdam with the News shooter crew and very interesting it was too, plus Amsterdam is beautiful…
This was my favorite tattoo from the show…
And this my favorite piece of street sculpture…
It seemed there was barely time to catch a breath before I was passing through Brussels on my way to Photokina 2016 in Cologne again with News shooter…
Where Dan Chung and Kai Man Wong were causing trouble outside the Fuji booth , and I was just lurking in the background…
I shot and edited a load of reports from the show…
Our hotel was next to a refugee detention center which made me feel a bit weird…
Dan Chung has officially the most ridiculous unread mail count I’ve ever seen…
Then I was back in the UK, where I hooked up with my new friend Richard Slade from Neotists to watch him talk at Pecha Kucha St Neots…
Again we didn’t lose anyone who made it to my radar
October
This months piece I DP’d/Shot/Edited for Influx was on Bowler Motorsport in Derbyshire who make custom rally cars based on Land Rovers…
I was self medicating because I had a horrible cold…
I did get a new toy from the lovely people at CAME TV and ran around using it for all kinds of fun filming…
After months and 1 expensive unsuccessful application my wife finally got her UK visa and arrived, to celebrate we went to visit my dear old friends in the awesome Mujuworld in Cornwall and I made a little travelogue about it…
After 10 years of not being allowed in swimming pools due to fucking stupid Japanese rules about people with tattoos I was determined to get fit and was (still am!!) swimming 1km a week…
It was a struggle not to fire bomb the house where Margaret Thatcher grew up on a visit to Grantham…
10 years in Japan and not one cos-play incident, 4 months in the UK and I was reduced to this…
And at last I found the answer…
We lost Pete Burns and Joan Marie Johnson.
November
I was super happy to have 4 of my films in the St Neots film festival…
I was on a plane again, this time to Barcelona, I’d signed an NDA so I couldn’t talk about why though…Luckily Dan Chung and I accidentally shot a video about it on a ridiculous Sony RX100 V set up…
Dan and Phillip really needed to get a room while we there…
I was starting to feel like I’d lost a little weight since I got back…
Luckily I found a supplier of the only thing I miss from Japan (my dear friends aside) to add some nutrition…
I didn’t buy anything at the farm shop however…
The supermoon was pretty impressive when it managed to make itself known thru the cloud cover…
Enid was providing me with reading material…
We lost Eddie Harsch, Leonard Cohen, Robert Vaughn and Andrew Sachs…
December
Richard “Neotists” Slade and I went on a mission to deepest Suffolk in search of…
A design classic, the Herman Miller Aeron, my home edit suite just seriously leveled up…
I visited a U.S. Air force Nuclear bunker with Richard Slade and Dave “Laica” Fleet, scouting locations for upcoming projects…
Charlie Brooker had some thoughts on the future of VR…
I published my 2016 Showreel (Hint Hint, Hire me!!!)
Music “A shrine for horses” by Laica – laica.bandcamp.com
Then everything ground to a halt as I had a biopsy on my tongue that meant that it was really painful to swallow, eat or talk and sleep was a distant memory for well over a week…
(I’m sure some people thought the me not talking thing was fine)
We did go full Jesus’ birthday preparations, my first tree for many years, which cheered me up a little.
Pretty much worse time of the year to not be able to eat anything but soup tho, luckily single malt is most definitely a liquid…
We lost Greg Lake and Peter Vaughan…
There’s still another 2 weeks of 2016 technically but I doubt any of what that will contain is relevant here, probably a few more childhood hero’s deaths if the rest of the year has been anything to go by, so I’m gonna wrap things up here…
If you made it this far with my 2016 review, Thanks, but seriously you should get out more.
If you read my blog at all, BIG Thanks!
Thanks once again to all my friends new and now far away without whom I wouldn’t have made it to the end of this year intact. Big Love to you all.
Go! have a great end to the year and heres to a great 2017!!
