It ended well. Not spectacularly, but appropriately, well paced and without ruining the whole set-up with an anti-climax I’d been fearing since the mid-way point. I shouldn’t have set lower expectations because I knew it was a self-published book, but to my shame I did. Thread is well written and enjoyable. You quickly get pulled into Bartleby Flynn’s quest to hunt down the author of an unknown book he finds in the library where he works. To do this he has to navigate the wider world for the first time, one he’s mostly managed to hide away from. While there are occasional typos and in a few places the font changes inexplicably between pages and paragraphs, I’d be hard pressed to claim that they were more noticeable in a professionally edited book. The descriptions of Flynn’s life are entertaining, as are the caricatured descriptions of his colleagues. The story also brings up interesting questions about identity in a semi-anonymous internet and what it means to know someone.

The Prototyp Car Museum smells, as it should, of petrol. If it didn’t I suppose they’d have to add the smell afterwards in the way supermarkets bake bread on site to make you hungrier. It’s not a large place, two floors of cars plus an exhibition in the basement about the 1950s racing driver Wolfgang von Trips , but nicely curated and laid out. Ludwig Zündapp F3 (1948) The exhibitions focus is on post-war racing, starting with cycle racers; small cars built with motorcycle engines, and then moving into the bigger leagues. Most of the hoods are shut, keeping the outlines of the cars smooth and intact, emphasising the speed evoked by the shape.

Work was a physical relief. Outside the heat felt supernatural, through the floor-to-ceiling windows the car park baked; shimmering waves around each brightly reflecting car, the tarmac soft underfoot and wheel. Inside you were grateful to have a reason to sit in the air-conditioning, on the hottest days it almost felt that to have an excuse to sit in the cool air was payment enough. Almost. Sitting behind a till and repeating the same conversation for eight hours with two hundred different people is a particular kind of mind numbing. You look forward to having to explain someone’s mistaken inclusion of an illegible item in a three-for-two offer just for something different to say. You can’t daydream, but you never learn anything more satisfying than the prevailing opinion on the weather, “Not right.”, and how many days are left until parents can re-incarcerate their children in school.

Having lived with the Nokia 520 for the last eight months it’s time to review how is the phone has been coping with the rough and tumble of everyday life after the glamour of a new toy has worn off. I’m going to try and split my comments into those relating to the phone and those based on the Windows Phone 8 OS, but it’s hard to completely separate the two on a device as integrated as a smartphone.

Sambuca runs down my arm, leaving behind a sticky aniseed trail as I reach the disposable shot glasses over the dancing crowd to my friends. The Lonely Tourist accepts one with mumbled and uncertain thanks as they get handed out; perhaps he’s more of a whisky drinker. Behind the microphone, Gaz Brookfield and the part of the floor called the stage, the leaded windows are running with condensation. The crowd is singing and dancing, eating up the last fifteen minutes of 2013. The small Bank Tavern, hidden away on John Street, is full on New Year’s Eve. Not rammed, but full enough everyone seems familiar as you jostle to the bar. The wood panelled walls are hung with blow-ups of banknotes and portraits of the Queen, on windowsills LED candles flicker amongst stacks of books. The old illuminated by the faux old.

The end of the year is a good excuse to reflect on what you’ve enjoyed in the last twelve months and remind yourself of those songs that jumped out of the background and made themselves known. A huge amount of great music already exists that, while not new to the World, is new to me this year; so I’m not limiting myself to songs first released in 2013. Still, this year is heavily represented because that’s what’s been brought to my attention by websites and radio.

The hardest part about the ArcTanGent Festival is trying to give anyone who asks you what kind of music was played a straight answer that doesn’t quickly descend into a parody of fanzine mission statements. Any description is probably going to involve: post-rock and instrumental rock; but also electronic, indie, rock and punk. Strangely, given how hard it is to summarise the type of music played, it always felt consistent with itself and well curated.

We always remember the things that failed us; the expensive gadget that broke after a year and a day, that feature that never lived up to its promise or the purchase we thought would be essential and then used twice before leaving it in a dark corner to gather dust. Sometimes we get lucky, we get a champion, something that never lets us down and provides service far beyond what we paid for it and is more useful than we ever imagined. But we never remember those because they’re just there working, quietly, unfailingly getting the job done.

“Is it here?” We look at the phone, our location dot hovering somewhere close to 54.24401, -2.287632, which according to someone on the internet, is the earliest start of the River Ribble. This unassuming roll of mossy windy hillside is Gavel Gap, Yorkshire. Derek and I are standing next to a gate in a drystone wall, being buffeted by a wind that’s billowing through the long grass and bringing darker clouds our way. The footpath ahead starts to wind down the slope, the beginning of the 110km Ribble Way that leads south and west, out of Yorkshire, through Lancashire and to the Irish Sea.

My LG P500 Android phone has finally slowed to an unusable crawl. Even a Cyanogenmod ROM couldn’t revive its performance once I had loaded the modest collection of apps I use. For the money it was a great phone that gave two years of good service, but it has now come to the point that I can’t reliably unlock the screen as it would forget the first part of the pattern half way through me drawing it.