As Time Goes By: Yearend Review

Going back to the very start of my blogging journey, the year is 2020 and I’ve just done my first ever blog on this new website, a Christmas gift from my husband. It describes our nine year old son rampaging through the house along with his elder sisters and their partners firing nerf bullets at each other, the perfect release after nine months of enduring their first global pandemic. Funny to think back to that time, a half decade ago, about what has changed and what has stayed the same. Time sometimes feels like a massive concrete wheel, slowly grinding through the hours of work, deciding what’s for tea, emptying the cat litter tray, working on endless excel workbooks, seeing the bank balance dwindle away each month and starting again. Other times it feels like an enormous Raiders of the Lost Ark-type boulder, smashing through months and years as you realise with bewilderment that you’re only truly comfortable in elasticated clothing, your fourteen year-old son is now six foot one with a tache, you’re almost due to move up into the next age category in health questionnaires and the shop assistant doesn’t even need to look at your face before selecting the “No need to challenge” option on the self serve till. Weird isn’t it, how both of those things can be true?

Things that have stayed the same: I’m still not convinced regards the magic of Christmas, as I manically shared with poor Jamie Eastlake who I happened to bump into in town a couple of weeks ago “you can’t tell me it’s the most wonderful time of the f*****g year” .. bless him, he was probably trying to place who the hell I was! I did pause my anti- Christmas flow to congratulate him on the transfer of his play Gerry & Sewell to the West End. What an achievement and a buzz it must be to see your project grow like that, to share it with the wider public. It inspires me to keep going with various creative projects, which as ever are floating round my brain. Time sometimes seems to be against me as a creative barrier, I grab whatever time I can - on a bus, in the bath, between finishing work and seeing to things at home, like painting the kitchen or learning new songs for the band. Other things that have stayed the same include the continuation of divisive politics (word of the year: flagshagger), corporate and individual greed, the gap between the obscenely rich and the poor, cruelty to animals, violence against women and, most painfully of all, children suffering through the actions of adults. “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time At All?” is ironically a question you could ask of many children in this country. On a more positive note, I still love music, I love storytelling, and I love my family to whom I am eternally grateful for their humour and ability to correct me on most topics.

Things that have changed, then. Well, I’m happy to say that our band has really taken off in 2025. Thanks to our brilliant lead singer Kayleigh and epic guitarist Chris for driving the band forwards, booking in gigs and coming up with photoshoot ideas, recommending the right “guyliner” and delivering some pretty fantastic shows. More to come in 2026, see www.smash-hits-band.co.uk for details. Playing live music to an audience is really rewarding and brings joy. Plus having given up my gym membership (in order to help pay for a new kitchen and some orthodontistry) lugging equipment in and out of venues and skipping round behind a keyboard in a shellsuit will be my main form of keep fit in the new year. My Fitbit app usually tells me I’ve been outdoor cycling during a gig, no idea why! But it does burn a few calories and gets the blood pumping. I’m especially looking forward to a couple of local gigs next year, one in Cramlington in February to which my dear friend Helen is hopefully coming with her daughter, and another in Bedlington at the first venue I played at professionally.

This year’s other live events that I’ve attended/appeared in include The Number One Underground Tunnel-based Radio Show (Sun of a Gun) in the Ouseburn Tunnel, The Positive Vibes Show with Dawn and Maureen on Koast Radio, both Adam Ant and Rob Brydon at Glasshouse, Trevor Horn at City Hall, Sam Fender at SJP, Inside No. 9 live in both London and Sunderland, lots of football matches (I wasn’t at the Caribou Cup Final but did celebrate in town at the ground), Torvill and Dean and Mercury Music Prize at The Arena, Come From Away at Little Theatre Gateshead, Misters Drayton & Walton spinning 45s at Baba Yagas (great Sunday afternoon out), Book of Mormon at Theatre Royal, Snakes & Ladders (the final show ever at Prohibition Cafe), Robbed at Laurels (one of the final shows in their Whitley Road venue) and Julie Clay’s final gigs - George Michael tribute at Cullercoats and Marty Craggs at The Exchange. And of course live dragon boat racing, on both the Tyne and the Wear rivers!

Moving onto other things that have changed, my tolerance for EVERYTHING is vastly depleted (blame the menopause, I spend a great deal of my time silently telling everything to f*** off), I’m no longer trying to climb a corporate ladder, or to convince a committee that teamwork and not individual ambition is the way forward, I have finally been weaned off the bottle (meaning hair dye of course which is incredibly freeing) and have stopped weighing myself.

So, bring on the new year. Having attended and been involved in quite a few “final shows” this year, it makes you ponder on the notion that things do and will continue to come to an end. And that’s okay. Having done quite a lot of living in the moment for the past few years, since losing my mam, I accept that endings are natural, they’re part of the whole story. You let go, other things come along and fill the energy. Doors close, doors open. What’s in the next room is the next adventure and - to misquote Frank - more, much more than this, you do it your way as time goes by.