A lot has changed this year – we’ve diverged and also welcomed some amazing contributors, so we thought it would make more sense to spread the end-of-year lists out between more people than just me and Poppy. Here they are. Happy 2013 everyone! Make it incredible or you might as well just die!
Guy Lochhead
Top 3 things seen:
- Laser eye surgery
- Sandflies hopping round a lantern on the beach under Joe’s family smugglers’ hut near Plymouth
- Pete’s “Liability” tattoo
Top 3 things heard:
- Lying back on a kayak drifting through a lagoon listening to insect noise rise and fall in time with my breathing
- Yas Clarke‘s signal processing
- Oneohtrix Point Never zones whilst driving over Clifton Suspension Bridge at night
Top 3 things tasted:
- All-night yerba mate, coffee and modafinil
- Crab freshly caught just for us with sticky rice, Singha and fresh coconut milk from the garden as a thank you present for fixing bikes in Thailand
- Fresh yoghurt with sugar stirred in just before bed after a long day’s herding on the steppe
Top 3 things smelt:
- Ulaanbaatar’s winter pollution
- Phil Wood waterproof grease mixed with Lush‘s Dirty soaps
- Cigarettes and herbal tea at Ranbing’s flat
Top 3 things felt:
- The warmth and weight of an old wild monkey who jumped into my lap on a kayak in a mangrove forest and made me bottle-feed her.
- Actually having proper adult arguments about actually proper things that matter with actual people in power. Feeling useful and purposeful.
- Drinking strong Russian beer in the Tsaatan Community Visitor Centre and toasting lost love with Saraa and Gana. Continuing implosive confusion, stoke and love…
Poppy Illsley
Top 3 things seen:
- The Atlantic again
- Gwangjang Market, Seoul
- A massive storm over Koh Yao Noi
Top 3 things heard:
- Rain on the car roof from a bed in the back, in the night, on top of some grassy hill near Darhan, Mongolia
- Coffee machine steam wand
- Piano practise from the bath
Top 3 things tasted:
- Buuz and vodka for breakfast before a horse race in -40, during Tsagaan Sar near Kharakorum, Mongolia
- Sour cherry syrup and lemon drink in a heat wave, the Peloponnese
- Cookie’s tortillas and cold lager waiting on the table at 4am after a fiesta, Cookie and Conchi’s flat, Madrid
Top 3 things smelt:
- Burning tar and hot dogs in Ottery St Mary
- Wet dirt in a car market in Ulaanbaatar during the year’s very dirty, very wet first rain
- My house after 10 months away
Top 3 things felt:
- My dog died and I didn’t mind that much
- Really old, really good, really bad
- Love
Jade Hoffman
Top 3 things seen:
- Eagles and vultures swooping over my bed.
- Sea brains and the Camber Sands sand dunes.
- Orca whales.
Top 3 things heard:
- Oscar’s soundtrack for our film
- The Monday Matter jingle
- Beth, playing guitar whilst I cut her hair.
Top 3 things tasted:
- Nopi
- Really good dahl, made at Guy’s flat.
- Crab, and kale, and raspberries from the San Juan Islands.
Top 3 things smelt:
- Dogs, many dogs.
- A new house, and an empty old house.
- Lapsang souchong
Top 3 things felt:
- Sea legs
- Eating sweets on Skype with Poppy.
- People I love coming back home.
Phil MacDonald
Top 3 things seen:
-The 12,000ft summit of the continental divide over the Rockies, after days of breathless cycling
-Springsteen shaking hands hugging and back-slapping as I carried his guitar into the green room, Ames, Iowa
-Philip Seymour Hoffman ‘auditing’ Joaquin Phoenix
Top 3 things heard:
-Ulaanbaatar children singing along with an autotuned Richard Dawkins
-Baby turtles digging their way out of their nest on a pitch-dark Hawaii beach
-Distinctly black bear-like rustlings outside my tent, alone in the snowy Appalachians
Top 3 things tasted:
-Fried scorpions collected from my dorm at the Kungfu School, Henan Province
-Morning Suutei Tsai after a long night partying in and out of yurts in the Terelj, Mongolia
-Pumice dust as I fell and tumbled on the slopes of Mt Fuji
Top 3 things smelt:
-The pines being logged near my parents’ house, Hampshire
-The sulphurous air at the hot pools near Keflavik, Iceland
-Plum wine and frying fish filtered through paper walls in Kyoto
Top 3 things felt:
-My tearing groin muscles as one Shaolin monk sat on my back and two others pulled my feet apart in attempt to force ‘the splits’ on my inflexible legs
-Bursts of elation then misery as I cycled through the city streets towards the new World Trade Centre, as my cycle trip from San Francisco came to an end
-A nightime hug after my long absence from England
Yas Clarke
Top 3 things seen:
- The inside of a shimmering ball of shoaling sardines as I dived into their midst
- Alice and Jo’s beautiful videos, responding to their respective new environments in Bristol and Mexico
- Supa Happy Foot, the video response from one of Guy’s Mongolian students to Alice and Jo’s videos
Top 3 things heard:
- Harry Hargreaves, 97 years young, saying that “for a wish” he’d like to be sixty years of age
- Lectures on molecular genetics, criminal law, artificial intelligence, psychotherapy and crime & deviance
- Champagne Coast by Blood Orange
Top 3 things tasted:
- My portion of 6kg of roast leg of lamb at our pre-Christmas Christmas roast, perfectly cooked by Jo
- Harsh, strong, dry cider from Ye Olde Cider Bar in Newton Abbot
- Porridge and fresh apple cooked on a camp fire after three days wading in the Rio la Venta at the bottom of a canyon
Top 3 things smelt:
- The meat market in San Cristobal on a weak stomach
- Grease and soap in Guy’s bedroom after a week of building our perfect bikes
- Baking bread to drive out the smell of stale smoke from our new flat
Top 3 things felt:
- Pride at representing homo sapiens for the Eye Ball playing cards
- The leathery fin of a wild, 80-year-old giant turtle, 1km off the Pacific coast of Mexico
- Sheer joy and relief at finding a decent job after months of applications not responded to
Richard Manders
Top 3 things seen:
- Turning around to see someone walking up an aisle toward me
- Sam Vanallemeersch rules
- Falafel King. For a second time
Top 3 things heard:
- Colin Stetson has been a tug boat pulling at my ears all year long
- Seagulls screaming down our chimney
- Led Zep cover band at a bowling alley in Brooklyn
Top 3 things tasted:
- Edinburgh Gin
- Bitter hatred
- Homemade sun-dried tomato bread
Top 3 things smelt:
- I have perennial rhinitis. I don’t smell much but fresh coffee…
- …and warm bread still get through sometimes
- Never-ending snot
Top 3 things felt:
- A cat
- A waxy banana
- A laminated certificate recently sneezed on
Alice McFarlane
Top 3 things seen:
- An operation. It was the first time I’d ever seen right inside someone’s body.
- The films ‘Gaslight‘ (George Cukor, 1944) & ‘The Turin Horse‘ (Béla Tarr, 2012)
- That restoration of Jesus by Cecila Gimenez
Top 3 things heard:
- Wenonoah live at The Grain Barge. I cried loads. It was so good.
- The radio! This American Life‘s ‘The Middle of Nowhere‘ episode, the Nauru section and BBC’s ‘In Our Time‘; specifically the episodes on Alchemy, Fundamentalism and Fairies
- An old man at Newton Abbot Ye Olde Cider Bar telling us about the Long Bar Cork Club, thats been running since the early 1900s and each member carries a cork with a number on. They go on day trips, drink cider and have a secret black book thats padlocked to the pub wall
Top 3 things tasted:
- Jo Hellier introducing me to coconut butter and how its good for everything
- Got pretty into baked potatoes this year, a Turin Horse influence. Also, they are pretty much the only vegetarian option where I work.
- I learnt to make yorkshire puddings this year and it tasted like victory.
Top 3 things smelt:
- The smell of the greenhouse during summer at the hospital I work in. It was like geraniums.
- Starchild in Glastonbury. I bought some Storax tree-gum and that was amazing too.
- The trees outside and fire smoke inside whilst staying in The High Heathercombe Centre
Top 3 things felt:
- Sitting around watching Guy get tattooed by Jez, especially in the summer whilst watching Suspiria
- Being drunk with Peter’s grandad in Plymouth, pissing myself over his stories of watching Plymouth Argyle
- Being at the packed out Feminist Summer School in Bristol, alive and kicking!
Craig Scott
Top 3 things seen:
- A guy in downtown LA pulling a gun on the bus and threatening to kill the driver
- I really enjoyed seing the most amazing vert skating at this years Vans Warped Tour thing pretty amazing scrambled egg fakie oh my….
- The mountains of the Okanagan (if thats the right spelling) of Canada
Top 3 things heard:
There are a lot of good ’77 punk bands I like – not that I have never heard this before, it just gets better every year…
- Eater
- The Extraverts
- Vibrators
Top 3 things tasted:
- Golden Burger, Long Beach
- Golden Burger, Long Beach
- Golden Burger, Long Beach
Top 3 things smelt:
When I was a kid I got my nose broke really bad and I can’t smell nothing, sorry.
Top 3 things felt:
- Getting bummed out all the time
- Feeling really happy
- Feeling like killing myself
If you’d like more end-of-year lists, here are 2010 and 2011‘s