A few sketchbook pages from my Italian voyage.

I've just returned from a smashing holiday on the island of Elba and in Italy's Cinque Terre.  The area is a revelation - a true delight for artists of any persuasion, botanists, mountain bikers, walkers, foragers, gourmands (if you ever catch me using the term 'foodie', shoot me), bird lovers, animal lovers, door lovers, lovers and friends.  I came away with the fullest sketchbooks I've kept whilst travelling for a very long time (see subsequent post), and probably the most photos as well (mostly of doors).  I also kept up my daily haikus, which more than ever acted as a handy kind of short, snappy diary - carefully concise descriptions of things I'm seeing or doing.  Elba is beautifully tranquil, rugged yet densely vegetated (many of the steeply terraced wine vineyards that covered the island's hills were replaced with trees in the last century so I found it unexpectedly lush and verdant) with all manner of fascinating plants, many of which are wild herbs that fill the air with delicious fragrance.  I had the most splendid time on a mountain bike, in the sea and on foot, and there was some pretty crazy weather as well as very welcome sunshine - all in all, a good bit of everything and I'd highly recommend visiting both places, but perhaps waiting a little while till the pound's calmed down a bit if you're a Brit!

Whilst away I read Barbara Kingsolver's fantastic epic The Poisonwood Bible - the third book about/set in Congo that I've read in the last few years (the others being Heart of Darkness and the interesting but somewhat distasteful Blood River) and an absolute cracker: characters, plot, history, description - rich and compelling in all aspects.  Two passages about voting really struck a chord in these Brexit nonsensetimes, this one in particular: "To the Congolese, it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plum loses.  That means almost half the people will be unhappy and, according to Anatole, in a village that's halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it.  There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line".  Another vote happens a little later in the book, where "some of them that voted for Leah were put out with [the village chief] and some were put out with [an unpopular outsider], so everybody ended up getting what they didn't want, and now had to go along with it".

Happy New Year!  I hope a fine time was had over Christmas and that the year's got off to a fine start for you.  Time to look back at what I enjoyed in 2015 - always great fun - and tell you my favourites, just in case you're interested.  What a year it was, for music especially!  So much great stuff being put out; people who moan that they don't make 'em like they used to are clearly not paying enough attention!

Great to see Paradise Lost, Koxbox and Kangaroo Moon return with stunning new albums (after years of nonsense/absense), and Vibronics and Sam Lee delivered the goods in their own unique style.  However I was most impressed by the offerings from the Outsiders, Plasmotek, Dirty Saffi (great times for trance!), and the ferocious Cattle Decapitation.  Cripes!

Two longhaul flights were the usual great excuse to catch up on recent films; Inherent Vice seemed really good but I couldn't hear it so gave up (shame), but I especially enjoyed Slow West (a real breath of fresh air with a pleasingly crooked yet humourous tone) and also Mad Max and Inside Out.  I think all were just about pipped in the closing days of the year by Star Wars, though.

I didn't see enough exhibitions last year but my favourite was definitely the EH Shepard one at Illustration House (it's on till the 24th of January so I urge you to visit if you've not been) - not big but one of those ones where you want to look closely at every last little bit and read all of every caption - great stuff.

As far as books go, looking back over the new ones I enjoyed last year, it seems I'm a year behind and they all came out in 2014.  Still, it was a good crop so I may as well duly enthuse and recommend - balls to time!  Fiction-wise I enjoyed We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler but I was blown away by Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North - an absolutely outstanding book that was great in just about every way a novel can be.  A very deserving winner of the Booker and well worth the hype.  Very much looking forward to getting stuck in to this year's winner, A Brief Hitory of Seven Killings, which I got for Christmas.  I'd also recommend Show Your Work by Austin Kleon if you're anything like me, likewise Drawing Type by Alex Fowkes - best example of this kind of book that I've seen, whilst I'm still enjoying slowly making my way through The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being by Alice Roberts and The Ecologist Guide to Food for a good dose of knowledge!

2015 was also, sadly, the year that my favourite singer, for my favourite band, died.  It was out of the blue, after a show, and left me and thousands of others very shocked and upset.  Always quite hard to deal with when someone who you don't know but has given so much and enriched your life in a massive way for many years suddenly ceases to be around any more!  David Masondo, you will be seriously missed!  Maximum respect for all the great works.  Here's the man in action (he's the lead singer on the left).

Posted above are a few sketchbook pages from our recent trip to Thailand.