The end of the year has come around, so it’s time for the traditional round-up of things that have occurred. I don’t want to write this, you don’t want to read this, but here we are: them’s the rules.
Let’s start with all the upheaval that’s been taking place on social media thanks to everyone’s favourite spoilt, tiny-dicked, angry, hugely-ridiculed, rich (but getting less so every day, thankfully) little baby, Elon Musk, and his ownership of Twitter.
Twitter has never been good for websites because Twitter has more-or-less been a broadcast mechanism that most power users simply maintain a presence on to stroke their ego. Well, I suppose that’s true to some extent for anyone with a public persona; me included, though only the tiniest of amounts, I swear. Click-through rates on links is woeful, with the majority of likes being there to say “Hey, I’ve definitely, honestly, genuinely read that thing you’re sharing and have you clicked on my link now because click on my link.” Big accounts on Twitter tend to only chat with other big accounts and my enjoyment of Twitter has deteriorated over the last few years with its only usefulness being in real-time event chatting backed up by the large and powerful infrastructure there.
You might notice – you probably won’t notice – that there are no Twitter links on this site any longer. I’ve not ditched the accounts I run, but I’m barely using them now. I refuse to produce content that might lead to engagement on the site that might boost metrics for Twitter and help it attract advertisers. It’s now run as a right-wing playground for information suppression and disinformation spreading. Anyone who criticises anything that the puerile twat owner likes or does risks suspension thanks to his fragile character, which is the right of someone who owns something, of course. But we all have the right to walk away from that authoritarianism and reduce exposure to the poison there and ensure we don’t contribute to slowing down the drain on Elon’s costs, and we should. Because he’s a cunt, and he deserves every terrible thing that happens to him.
My social media presence is on Mastodon now, and it’s a breath of fresh air. If you’re on Mastodon then feel free to search for me – @neonbubble@mstdn.social – and follow, if you fancy.
If you haven’t used Mastodon but are considering it then there’s a learning curve, you won’t like it and will think it’s quiet if you don’t follow lots of people and hashtags and actually engage with people in the form of boosting their content, and it’s definitely not for you if you want to be the centre of attention and are trying to make money from affiliate links or being a travel agent or any of that stuff. It’s for creators and for those who want to share and learn about things. I’m following scientists, photographers, legal people, artists, musicians, travellers, and so many writers. There’s no algorithm to force things into your eyeballs. There are no ads. Think of it as a connected, heaving crowd of short newsletters you need to subscribe to instead of a walled room you’ve been locked inside and handed entertainment. It also, occasionally, has timeouts and delays and issues because all the Mastodon servers are run by individuals and small groups with limited resources and money to connect it all up. As someone who was online before the World Wide Web existed and who watched it all grow, it’s great to see a return to the old way of doing things, out of the power of megalomaniacs and mega corporations. If you’re interesting and interested, then it’s the social media site to be on.
With the rant against the tantrum tyrant over, here’s the summary of our travels for 2022, when cruising made more of a normal return but we decided to forego any flying until things really settled down. I mean, they’re not settling down in any way at all, but 2023 should see us hit the air anyway because the world has pretty much shrugged and accepted that people are going to die and we’re all okay with our little bit of complicity in it.
We spent two weekends at nearby Hayling Island and the Warner Lakeside Hotel, which tells you that the first time must have been decent enough. It was. It was also close enough that we could travel on a Friday after work and just relax, eat, drink, walk, swim, and be entertained. Our first weekend was in February, and we went again at the end of April, and both trips are covered here: Warner Lakeside Hotel Break 2022.
In March we hit our first cruise of the year; a short hop across the channel to Belgium on Valiant Lady. We like the Virgin Voyages experience but the ship was so indistinguishable from her sister ship in layout and dining options that we decided that’s probably the last time we’ll cruise with Virgin. The ship isn’t generally important to us when we cruise but we do like having at least something unique about a vessel. We seriously wonder how we’d cope with a week on one of the ships given that we’ve pretty much eaten all the things on their unchanging menus we like now. We did have a fantastic excursion with the ship’s crew to a brewery in Bruges, though. You can read about our Valiant Lady cruise here: Valiant Lady Mermaiden.
In April we spent a long weekend in Salisbury and, at time of writing this, I’m still in the process of covering some of those activities now. We got to see the Magna Carta at the cathedral, discovered the very excellent former residence of Sir Edward Heath, Arundells, and took trips out to visit Old Sarum and Wilton House too. You can catch what I wrote about those places here: Salisbury Weekender, 2022.
At the end of May we spent a week aboard Sky Princess, cruising to Norway and Denmark. The stand-out port on this short cruise was Skagen, where we visited some World War II fortifications, then found a fantastic brewery in the town. No links to this or other posts yet because, well, it takes me a while, but I can still throw some pretty photos in this update.
Less than a month after that cruise we were at sea again, and we were on Sky Princess again, making it the third time in under a year that we’d cruised on her. With hindsight, a bit of a mistake, as we started to realise that we need a little more variety in our ship surroundings, and it also hammered home the issue that Princess Cruises have with their Wi-Fi package on their ships: namely, that it’s not very good, and, for some reason, manages to get worse every time. However, we did meet up with another travel blogger and her family, and had a great time with them, and a great time hitting the Norwegian Fjords and Iceland.
In August we took a short cruise on the Steamship Shieldhall from Southampton and down the Solent to cruise past some of the larger, more modern cruise ships in port.
Later that same month we spent the weekend in Oxford to give us a chance to see the city’s highlights, which of course included the Ashmolean Museum, and also to venture a little further out as we wanted to check out Stowe Gardens.
Early in September we treated ourselves to a second short cruise on a steamship, but this time the Paddle Steamer Waverley on what should have been a cruise around the Isle of Wight but ended up being a day on the island as there were engine difficulties. Still very enjoyable, though.
Our final cruise and final trip of any sort of the year was aboard Island Princess and took place at the end of September and into early October. Our stops this time around were at Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and Belgium. Rotterdam was probably the most interesting of the places we visited, and Gothenburg was probably the biggest disappointment, but the cruise as a whole was excellent.
As mentioned, we’re planning to not limit ourselves to Europe next year. Croatia and Slovenia are in Europe and new for us, and we are planning to hit the Netherlands again, but Alaska, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama (including the canal), and Colombia are what we’re looking forward to in the Americas.
What we’d also really like in 2023 is a somewhat normal year. One without new wars, new viruses, new insurrections, new James Bond villains rising to take over the world’s communications platforms. Could we please have that?