Christmas 2022

Okay Christmas entry here we go after being away for a few days for Christmas having packed a sweater, skirt and a dress to wear being familar with this side of me as much as we've battled over it in the past.

Yes really!

There will be a full entry on this at some point in the new year but basically it is the four cd book form set of songs from 1980-84 Now didn't include the the individual yearbooks and extra volumes.

Call Rupert the Bear an addiction going well into boyhood, a name some used to describe my dress style back then and this is this years Rupert annual with a nexture of reprints and fresh material that makes me feel great.

This is card wrappers worth of books starting with this years Beano annual which like the comic is firmly set in the modern day even if some characters we grew up remain as does Bash Street School.

Then we have the Dandy Annual, the comic outside of the Summer Special no longer exists so we have fresh stories based on our favourites such as Korky the Cat, Winker Watson, the Jocks And The Geordies, Keyhole Kate and Desperate Dan.

The modern world is around them but things are more as they were. Love it!

Then we have the compilation with the theme Things That Go Bump In the Night which draws from old stories from the Beano, Dandy and others in the old D C Thompson stable around that theme which pulls you into the past well.

I enjoy this series of compilations a lot for that.

 The Big Present this year was a three lp version that takes three concerts from San Francisco's Fillmore undertaken in 1997 by Tom Petty that go beyond the greatest hits and the new album but into songs from artists such as the Byrds and Grateful Dead that aren't in their recorded catalogue otherwise and in any event were some the best concerts the band ever did.

I also had a copy of the Record Store Day lp issue of Duran Duran's 1982 Hammersmith Odeon concert which is a double album on gold coloured vinyl.