So, how are things? For me, I can’t say that 2025 was a vast improvement on 2024, but I’m keeping on keeping on. I tend towards incoherent rage in relation to the (in)actions of the UK Government – as I said before they were elected, I’m not enamoured of the current iteration of the UK Labour Party, so I didn’t have high expectations of what they would get up to in power, but the lack of imagination, ambition, and basic human decency has nonetheless been dispiriting. I hope that they get thoroughly trounced in the local elections in May (*notwithstanding the worry about who exactly will be the beneficiary of that collapse), although they will probably fail to learn the appropriate lessons and continue to tack right, following the Tories into electoral irrelevance.
On the more positive side of events in 2025, I’ve continued growing plants from seed and progressed with learning French (anything remotely constructive counts as being life-enhancing in the current climate). I completed the InnerFrench ‘Build Your Strong Core‘ course I mentioned in last year’s round-up (recommended) and although I didn’t continue with formal courses in the second half of the year, I kept up practice by using the Lingvist app (kind of a flashcard app, but requiring you to fill in missing words in sentences), and listening to a lot of contemporary French music (stand-out discoveries: Grand Corps Malade; Solann; and Barbara Pravi). And I read a whole book in French (not a study book)! I’ve still got the second half of the intermediate course to do on StoryLearning, and I have also paid for a couple more courses on InnerFrench – I just need to get a bit organised and plan time in to do them regularly.
Nobody Knows Anybody 