Friday, 17 January 2025
How A Baked Bean Stole France - first kids comics of the year
Wednesday, 1 January 2025
My 1970s Diary - fifty years on
It's New Year's Day, a day for doing nothing serious and something you won't make time for once the busy days begin. So I've had idle fun updating the My 1970s Diary blog, with twelve new entries incorporating the dozen spreads I've made into (which is on sale, but hardly leaping off the virtual shelves, it must be said).
The New Years Day 1975 entry is here, and there's one for every other month, to trickle out in regular doses. Do we lern much from them? Probably not a lot. We see me reading a lot of comics, and talking a bit about the ones I'm writing and drawing myself. We see even more of the telly of the day. By god there's a lot of telly consumed by the thirteen year old me. And my Records For The Day are a nice glimpse into whatever Radio 1 was playing at the time, much of which I haven't heard of since.
Tomorrow the working year resumes and I hope I'll be able to turn my efforts into profit. Let's see if I can live up to the promise young prodigy Kev showed back in the day.
Tuesday, 31 December 2024
My Predictions for 2025 (and how badly I did last time)
Every year I try, every year I get it wildly wrong. Actually last year it turns out the predictions I'd made in at the start of 2023 had proved right a record number of times, cos I guess the bleeding obvious. So to 2025, what do I predict..?
Kev F's Confident Predictions for 2025
Now let's see how well I did twelve months ago.
Kev F's Confident Predictions for 2024
1 - A General Election, and it'll be won by Labour.
CORRECT - You didn't need to be Nostradamus
2 - New Tory Leader by Christmas and it'll be Penny Mordaunt
HALF RIGHT - It's Kemi the Bad Enoch
3 - US Presidential Election won by Trump for Republicans (NB: I'll be glad to be wrong)
CORRECT - Sadly
4 - House prices up slightly (2%)
CORRECT - Up 1.9% in fact
5 - Petrol prices remain very similar (currently £1.35 to £1.45)
CORRECT - At a three year low, according to the Guardian, but still £1.35 according to the tank full I bought today
6 - Eurovision won by Australia
WOEFULLY WRONG - Australia didn't even make the final, Switzerland won.
7 - Disney drops or downgrades one of its properties, Marvel or Star Wars
NOPE - Not that I saw.
8 - Comics that get made into TV or movies: Robot Archie, Lucky Luke, the old gasmask Sandman, Challengers Of The Unknown, Metal Men.
WIPEOUT - Apparently a Metal Men movie had been mooted in 2021, but it's been forgotten
9 - TV revivals: I Claudius, a show by the children or grandchildren of Monty Pythons, Call My Bluff, Jeux Sans Frontieres, Not The Nine O'Clock News
CLOSE - Call My Bluff has been repeated on BBC 4, we've been enjoying them.
10 - Biopic subjects: Ned Sherrin, Paul Daniels, Noel Coward, Marti Caine, Victoria Wood
NOPE - TV biopics have been thin on the ground this year, can't think of one
11 - Tribute bands get their own TV talent show
NOT QUITE - This had already been done, by the BBC in 2017, and I didn't notice. Another version also runs on Dutch TV since 2022.
12 - Surprise technology hit: Walking talking AI toy kids have conversations with
NOPE - Though we watched a nice film this Christmas calls Ron Goes Wrong, on this very subject.
13 - There'll be a White Christmas
THERE WON'T
14 - Hot summer or wet summer? I say... hot.
SUMMER SAID WET
15 - Things that I predict cos I don't want them to happen:
- Widespread flooding - SADLY YES, in parts of Europe
- War in Ukraine continues right through year - SADLY YES
- War in Israel and Gaza continues right through year - SADLY YES
- Lots of celebrity deaths, inc acts who were on Top Of The Pops 83/84 and Live Aid - NO. The nearest death to Live Aid was Liam Payne, whose voice was used on the 40th anniversary Band Aid release. Which itself died a death.
So you see, I knew nothing then and I know nothing now. Here's to 2025, whatever it holds.