I know you’re expected to do these sorts of year-end write-ups in December because there’s something gauche about looking back so immediately after the new year begins. Maybe this year I’ll be organised enough to do so, but last year, I was not. So! Here’s a quick run-down of events, achievements and discoveries that made 2025 (at time of writing not even 24 hours deceased) bearable and, at times, even enjoyable.
Fierce Salvage: A Queer Words Anthology
Published in February, this anthology of Scottish queer writing is the culmination of two years working with Michael Lee Richardson, 404 Ink and thirty-five brilliant contributors, five of whom were mentees working with five mentors. After we published We Were Always Here back in 2019, we didn’t expect to be putting out another Queer Words Anthology quite so quickly, but the political landscape changed drastically and it didn’t feel right to witness rising intolerance without pushing back however we were able. Many shenanigans and hiccups took place between sending in the funding application and actually getting the book out – minority art is not easy to make in turbulent times! – so I’m incredibly proud it now exists.
Finally Visited Aberdeen
Despite having lived in Scotland for over 20 years, I had never been to Aberdeen, so when the opportunity arose to hold an event for Fierce Salvage at the Sir Duncan Rice Library, it was the perfect excuse for an overnight stay. The Granite City is meant to glitter in the sun – I wouldn’t know, as it rained non-stop the entire time I was there. Still, the overwhelming greyness of the city was impressive in its own right, and little can prepare you for how hungrily your brain latches onto any speck of colour when the sky is the same non-colour as the land. I particularly enjoyed the Arts Centre’s ceramics exhibition with a wall full of glaze swatches, the Tippling House’s old fashioned paired with well-fried scallops, and a vintage shop near the docks where I bought a comically oversized jumper that I feel awkward wearing in public.
Edinburgh International Book Festival
Another Fierce Salvage-adjacent experience, I got to attend EIBF not as a punter, but as a writer – my first time, hopefully not my last. I used to think I knew what impostor syndrome was, until I picked up my author’s lanyard at the exact moment Nicola Sturgeon’s event ended, and the ex-First Minister sat at the table next to mine with a full entourage, then moved on, and was promptly replaced by Jackie Kay. I was very much out of my depth – so a huge thank you goes out to Andrés N. Ordorica, our event’s host, for making it feel marginally more like I was meant to be backstage.
Denim Cut-offs
A revelation at 39 years old. Who knew showing this much leg could feel so good? (Everyone.) See above for exactly how much leg. (Almost all of it.)
Finished Writing A Novel
My dystopian ghost story is complete. This has been a long time coming. I began in January 2016, before Brexit was even a word, but bailed on the first draft in June when I realised (a) I’d accidentally written a Brexit analogy, and (b) I’d written myself into a corner where the only logical ending was to kill all my characters. Neither revelation was I very fond of. So I came back to the book a year later, deciding to rewrite it entirely, with a more sci-fi edge, specifically a world-destabilising blood plague. And while the shape of the story was largely correct, on a technical and tonal level it was, uhhh, not ready to publish. Had a wee panic, left it aside for a while, and then along came a world-destabilising blood plague. Call me Cassandra. In the wake of COVID-19, the tonal issues just did not feel good at all, and the third full rewrite began. I would not recommend this, as a general approach to writing something large. The ghosts of the first two versions haunted the third, and it took a lot of wrangling and hard conversations with myself to realise how much had to be cut, and then to actually do that cutting. Kill your darlings is fine advice, until you’re faced with a book that’s 85% darlings. A huge thank you then is due to my pal Leckie of Bone Chanter and Wraithlands, who was a first reader of the third draft, and structural editor, and general morale support. It’s now ready to send to agents, which will be the Great Work of 2026. Hopefully the spectres of 2016 lend it a resonance it would otherwise have lacked, had I finished it ten years ago...
Gym Personal Bests
Enough intellectual shite, let’s talk himbo. After (partly) addressing some long-standing biomechanical annoyances in 2024, I returned to the gym in earnest this year, and surprised myself by hitting some personal bests. Don’t get too excited, they’re small-fry as far as proper gym bros go – in fact, looking up stats, I’m squarely hitting the average for beginners my age - but here’s where my big lifts got to on a 5x5 program:
Deadlift: 92kg
Squat: 80kg
Lat pulldown: 37kg
Bench press: 57kg
I can’t overstate how beneficial I find this type of workout for my mental health. Cardio is important and I need to work on that this year, but it doesn’t return me to my body as wholly as weightlifting does. I was looking forward to closing out the year with my deadlift cracking 100kg, but unfortunately I spent the last two months of the year catching every bug going during a particularly rough norovirus/cold/covid/flu season. Still! I got there once, I can hopefully get there again in time for denim cut-offs season.
Crete & Alton Towers
For my partner’s 40th, we went to Crete, and then Alton Towers. We visited the Palace of Knossos, which I had no idea is sort of… not real? Like, it’s mostly an erroneous reconstruction. We took a boat-ride to a nearby bay where I snorkelled while he paddle-boarded. I saw an octopus which was very brave until it wasn’t, and a grotesque nest fire worms. We ate a square of fried cheese the span of my hand, and stuffed vine leaves which were actually good and fresh and flavourful, not at all like the slimy bland canned ones you get in the UK. We stayed in an absolutely gorgeous house in Chania filled with enough antiques to make it feel more like a museum. We snorkelled again, this time off the coast of Elafonisi, among huge shoals of fish. We appreciated the proliferation of pro-Palestine graffiti and awkwardly ignored all the anti-tourist graffiti. Back in the UK, Alton Towers in the early November rain was delightfully quiet, with most queues for rides only 15m, and the smirr on our faces pin-sharp as we plummeted, whooshed and spun around the tracks at 80mph. Financially ruinous, would do again.
Canty Bay Visit
A wee aclove a little way up the coast from North Berwick, a friend with an uncle with a wee shack he rents to family, a couple of nights away from Glasgow watching sunsets and mucking about in rockpools. Heaven.
Kylie at the Hydro
My first-ever stadium pop gig, and also my second-ever, due to a silly mix-up with tickets. First viewing was in the nosebleeds right at the back, with an all-encompassing view of the stadium, which was fascinating. The work that goes into a Kylie-level gig is mind-boggling – afforded a bird’s-eye perspective, little secret tricks reveal themselves, such as sending dancers out in floor length capes to conceal leaf-blowers, to clear the stage of debris from a confetti cannon. Seeing it a second time, from ground level, much closer to the stage, awe-struck at the enormity of the production, felt almost holy. And, of course, the show was wall-to-wall bangers, with a stand-out being a glam-metal reworking of the best Bond theme that never was, Confide in Me.
Rediscovered Collage
The majority of my design work is corporate, or technical, and it scratches the organisational itch in me that yearns for clarity and structure. But it’s not, well, very fun. And also, design isn’t art, and it might feel like I’m spending my days doing creative work because some design is creative, but the design I do is often quite functional. So on a whim, I had folks round mine for a night of collage, some real low-stakes cutting and pasting, and it felt revelatory? Art is meant to be enjoyable! Who knew? (Everyone.) This feels like a lesson I’ve been continually re-learning across the entirety of my 30s, and I hope my 40s are when I internalise that lesson and have more fun with making any old shite simply because I want to.
Thought Bubble
Okay so yes I did say I like making any old shite simply because I want to, but I also like selling art to make money to afford stuff like going to Crete, so: my good friends at Omipalone Press invited me to share their table, after one of their members wasn’t able to make it, at one of the UK’s biggest comic art festivals. (Apologies to Claire and Sophie for a terrible photo of us at our table.) I’d printed a lot of my collage art specifically for the event, none of which sold, because it very much wasn’t that sort of audience. Instead, my Discworld postcards proved quite popular, as did An Honourable Place. But enough about the crass business of sales. Highlights of the weekend were the drive down to Norwich and back, both journeys a raucous singalong to pop legends, meeting in person a whole host of artists and publishers I’d known from The Internet for years and years, and a screening of Hot Frosty, the 2024 Netflix Christmas Movie, which felt like a hallucination at the time and has only become stranger with age.
Accidentally ordered a 24in pizza in Manchester
Gastronomically ruinous, would do again.