This year has been a good one for music. I have seen Imogen Heap, Hole, Emma Pollock, Patti Smith, Peter Gabriel, Sia and Tori Amos. I’m not sure if that’s all so far. I have the Manic Street Preachers, Tori again, Imogen again, Laura Marling for the first time and Melissa Auf der Maur still to go. I have travelled to Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, France, Holland, Finland and Russia for Tori, stopping off in Germany along the way to walk through a park and play by the windmill, then catch a flight to the smallest airport I‘ve ever been to, Tampere. I’ve never had such a prolific music year, because up until I got together with my girlfriend a year ago, I had pretty much given up on seeing other artists apart from Tori Amos. I used to go to gigs all the time when I was younger, but then I started being more selective and narrow. During university, the good part of it, the number of poetry readings I went to far outweighed the gigs I saw, but then everything changed and wonderful writers like Alice Oswald were replaced with fuck knows who, and it wasn’t worth going anymore. Anyway, I’m not writing this to show off or anything, I’m writing it so that I can look back and remember exactly how good 2010 was. I’m talking like the year is over. I think it’s the cold weather and all the talk about Christmas.