"We Know What We Are..."

I love football. I've always loved it and I always will. Despite wrangling with my conscience in the very pages of this blog, it's a fact I've come to accept.

In my adult years, as I've begun to embrace the anti-masculinity of cultural icons such as Bowie and The Smiths and developed a fulsome affinity with the politics of the left, I've found my infatuation with football - synonymous with male bravado and extreme financial speculation - somewhat troublesome.

My fandom for Chelsea, a club dependent on the oil-money of an enigmatic Russian Oligarch, only adds to the love/hate dichotomy battling away in the midfield engine room of my conscience.

And yet, from out of this dizzying nausea, I now find myself reaching a formative 'age of reason'. Somewhat unexpectedly, Chelsea's Europa League triumph has provided the keystone bridging the turbulent sea of uncertainty.

As the trophy was jointly raised by Frank Lampard and John Terry, I came to recognise them as yin and yang respectively - Lampard the consummate professional, who in a difficult season, has proved his talent and dignity amidst the furore over his lapsing contract, and John Terry, the self important, delusional captain, declining further in skill and self-awareness the longer his influence within the walls of Stamford Bridge remains.

Terry and Lampard, once peas from the same pod, now as polar opposites.

Yet, it's not just watching my football club that inspires this conflicting thought process. To return to The Smiths, Morrissey himself recently posed for a picture with Mel Gibson (and Tom Jones somewhat bizarrely) which was published on an authoritative fan site. That it was Gibson, a man recently lambasted for controversial statements of an anti-Semitic nature, only lends more weight to the critical voices chastening Morrissey's own plethora of concerning comments on race and immigration.

Can the same man who showed such empathy towards the oppressed in his art really turn out to be a racist? With those spectacles!? With that quiff!? Or is this a man who's made opposition to established ideals such a lifelong mission that he can't help but be contrary in all matters? More significantly, if we air on the side of the former, does it mark as null and void all the positive traits he represented during his mid-eighties alliance with Johnny Marr?

Perhaps a question for another day but this moral quandary emphasises the fact we don't enter this world fully formed, physically, emotionally or intellectually. One of the great joy's of life is seeking a greater knowledge of the world and oneself through experience, learning and education. As a result our lives are messy; a hotch-potch of sometimes counter-intuitive beliefs, our whole concept of right and wrong balancing on a knife's edge.

An admittedly trite example: I'd never think of myself as inherently conservative, yet - as inversion of the strict rules on dress enforced by the All England Lawn Tennis Club - I could never bring myself to play football in anything other than a predominantly black coloured boot. Ridiculous I know but my father's no-nonsense approach to sporting apparel has scorched itself into my psyche more indelibly than the image of the sun on my retina were I to aim my vision directly at its rays.

Similarly, my undying affiliation for the footballing totem of south London establishment will always grate against the more latterly formed facets of my personality. Yet, you know what? I think that's probably okay isn't it? After all, supporting Chelsea isn't a vote for the Tories and it isn't an endorsement of super-capitalism either.

If I was to support a football club based on political ideals, I suppose it might be Liverpool, borne of the north-western socialism embodied by the figurehead of Bill Shankly, their fans victimised by establishment cover ups in the wake of this country's greatest footballing tragedy. Yet they, as with that other great sporting working-class signifier Manchester United, are also now owned by multi-millionaire businessmen.

Regardless, I couldn't possibly support a team that isn't borne of my south London roots, that would quite obviously be absurd, as my dear old Dad would no doubt attest.

Perhaps I should form an allegiance to AFC Wimbledon, owned by their fans, who take an equal financial responsibility for the state of their club and are impassioned by the betrayal of their former team upping sticks to Milton Keynes? 

Yet, could I really bring myself to do that?! It would undermine all my history with the club I've supported since I was a boy. My first game a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace in 1991, the FA Cup triumph in 1997 when I was 15 years old and all the ups and downs that followed would be as good as erased from existence? No.

I realise that chasing these arguments round and round in my head is as pointless as were I that character in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', attempting to choose between joining the 'People's Front of Judea' or the 'Judean People's Front' (as it happens, I'd probably plump for the 'Popular People's Front' - I've never liked crowds). In fact, the important thing is I haven't chosen at all! Couldn't choose. No more than I could choose my parents or the place I was born.

As the traditional po-going of the victorious team begun in the Amsterdam Arena on Wednesday night and the blue and white ticker tape fell from the skies to collect at the bottom of that inverted traffic cone of a cup, I put an end to these futile attempts to square all the circles.

As with any human being, group of individuals, sector of society, rock band, pop icon etc.; a football club - indeed a sport - is never perfect; they/it will always let you down. In essence, in the forming of your own identity you can only ever pick up on the good stuff and run with it...

In that case I suppose I am a proud Chelsea fan and, perhaps, for the first time in my living memory, there is a suggested positive identity forming around the boys in blue - one of dogged determination and willpower residing despite the obscene monetary and moral maze in which Chelsea perennially find themselves lost.

It pleases me as much as Super Frank's record breaking 203 goal haul and I'll squeeze every ounce of pleasure I can from the claiming of another trophy in that image. That the winning goal in the final came from Ivanovic, a shy, retiring, unsung hero of the team is a bonus. John Terry's costume changes will be left to evaporate in the mists of my mind.

Don't let the debate leave you feeling MT

Frankly, I'm not writing this for you, I'm writing this for me. I have to write it; a final cathartic, unburdening, underlining and, hopefully, ending of the obsession I have been indulging since the news of her passing.

Like you, I've read just about enough commentary on the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to last a lifetime. I completely understand if you turn away from this blog and head back to your facebook profiles, twitter feeds and instagram filters.

Yet those complaining of the blanket coverage, or youngsters understandably bewildered by the fuss, perhaps don't realise that Thatcherism is still the pivotal political ideal around which British society revolves today.

Even Tony Blair, the man who could have been our hero, was in thrall to many elements of Thatcherism, and Cameron, although careful to initially portray himself as a new kind of 'compassionate' Conservative, has come to demonstrate that, on the contrary, he holds dear to his heart (stony and cold) many of the harshest tropes of the Thatcher government. The current battle over history's perception of her legacy therefore feels utterly vital to our future.

I can't rejoice at Thatcher's death, I couldn't rejoice at anyone's death. That would display the kind of reactionary behaviour I so often criticise of those on the right. I was only a child when she was in power and my view of her time at the sharp end of politics is appropriated from all I have read since I left school not through any personal experience.

As rightly pointed out to me, my reaction to Margaret Thatcher's death can therefore only be cerebral, never visceral. My family and I, nor the community we lived in, were affected by the closure of the mines, we lived in the environs of London, the one place in the UK that didn't suffer from Thatcher's iron will. Perhaps I, like many of those damning the revellers, have no right to do so from this detached position?

And yet, her passing, and the following struggle to define her time as leader, feels like an opportunity for the left to rise above the caterwauling and demonstrate to those on the right a compassion they so often lack. To lead by example. The idea excites me because this feels like an opportunity to reassess what we as Britons want from our government, what we want the country we live in to really be like.

After the Olympics and, more pointedly, the Paralympics, I hoped that the wonderful compassion and inclusivity of those summer months, ripe with a public booing of George Osborne, may have sown a seed in the conscience of the majority of Britons, that they might see the possibility of another way - the current debate feels like the possibility is being tested.

Of course, in reality, the real test will only come at the General Election in 2015 but it's now that the seas of change have to swell. It may well be that Thatcherism has indeed indelibly inked itself into the tapestry of British society never to be erased, yet the notable dissenting voice this past week - however distasteful - suggests that Thatcher's legacy will remain a divisive one.

Perhaps the traits I cling to most - compassion, empathy, care for the most vulnerable in our society, the repulsion of greed and the fostering of equal opportunity haven't, in fact, died along with the leader who's actions so fiercely sought to eradicate them?

I hope those who voted for Thatcher - elected her three times no less - did so because they were somehow blinded to the alternative, that they felt they had no choice. As a socialist I choose to believe this is true. In fact I have to. The death of Margaret Thatcher is a chance to raise the spectre of that choice once more.

Don't call it a comeback

"Here I am, not quite dying. My body left to rot in a hollow tree. Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me. And the next day and the next day and another day."

It's early days I'll grant you but culturally 2013 already appears to be defined by the comeback. The question is what does the resurgence of our past favourites really mean for the future of popular music?

There have always been comebacks. From Lazarus to Elvis Presley history is littered with them but 2013 has already seen David Bowie, Suede and My Bloody Valentine release their first music in a decade.

Of course with Bowie, as ever, the music is only half the story, and its no coincidence that the release of 'The Next Day' coincides with the V&A's retrospective exhibition 'David Bowie Is'.

When married to the self defacing 'anti' artwork of the album's sleeve and its reference to past glories therein you realise that, in PR terms, the guy's played a blinder.

I don't particularly care for the music of My Bloody Valentine but certainly the return of Suede has set my pulse racing. Their new album, Bloodsports, is a string of glamorous hooks and blood curdling ballads pulling on every last heart string.

Bowie, rumoured to be ill and widely regarded as in retirement, and Suede, who's last album defined a nadir for the band, both appear to be of the realisation that this is their last opportunity to define their legacy.

You might argue that with Bowie's glittering career there is hardly any need, yet it's to the credit of both performers that their artistic integrity forces them to redefine themselves in an age that could have quite easily rejected them.

On the contrary, as it turns out, they've been embraced! The Bowie exhibition is claimed to be the cultural event of the year by the Guardian newspaper - in March!

Unexpectedly, it's taken a 66 year old man and his 40 year old prodigies to shake us from our slumber. Surely this isn't the way it's supposed to be!?

Yet even the 'manufactured pop' clique, defined by their obsession for fashion and fad, has been in reflective mood of late. ITV2's The Big Reunion has been a gem of a show. Despite following many of the now tired reality TV tropes, the coming together of a clutch of 90's popstars has, against the odds, been a wonder to behold!

The genuine drama of the group members maturely and profoundly addressing the issues that once ripped them asunder is utterly compelling and the stark illumination of record label tyranny with relation to the well being of their young adult employees is refreshingly confronted.

When the groups nervously jump back in the saddle, the camaraderie between them is touching and genuine, with the self awareness to realise the transient nature of the fleeting moment they are in.

Atomic Kitten, 911, B'witched: all are seen for what essential they are - mildly talented individuals who took the chance of a lifetime and ran with it. You can hardly blame them for that and, in fact, when you see the price many of them paid you feel a genuine empathy.

Yet it's the joyful exuberance of boy band 5ive that steals the show, their likely lad banter and no nonsense approach an antidote to the incredibly intense members of B'witched in particular, struggling to control emotion and ego.

Even when perennial naysayer Sean appears close to the brink, band mate Abs comforts and cajoles him in a tender and quite touching manner.

So there we have it, pop and the avant garde stunned into an endearing, self knowing retrospect. I find myself looking in vain for some significance.

Is my love for Bowie, Suede and 5ive merely evidence of reaching an age of post modernist affection for the past twisted into a disappointment in the contemporary or simply that young artists are somehow no longer enabled or willing to commit to cultural revolution?

Political, social and economic circumstance wills that they should be surely? Or perhaps this current reality is in fact the norm? We've passed through so many iterations of popular music that the lines between the past and the future have been forever blurred?

The children of the revolution are now adults, yet are delightfully still hard wired to break for the corners of the envelope.

At thirty myself, I'm not sure whether I find this a comfort or a concern but then does it matter the age of those teetering on the edge of now? Why not grasp for another day in the sun if there happens to be one breaking around you?

After all, Suede's Brett Anderson sings, "When we touch we are young."

The album is dead. Long live the album

Has the rise of digital really killed off the 'album' or do we need to separate our sadness at the loss of a medium from our frustration at a lack of innovation?

There's been a tumult of recent commentary revolving around (no doubt at 33⅓ rpm) the potential decline of what was once the 'LP' and now is the 'album'. The BBC has been the main culprit with admittedly excellent documentaries such as "The Golden Age of the Album" and "The Great Album Showdown" all indulging in a warm and fuzzy nostalgia for a time when vinyl ruled the world.

The love of vinyl is no bad thing, all that's associated with the physical means of 'putting on a record' makes sense to me despite my growing up in a predominantly post-LP era. The tangible nature of the format, the opportunities to indulge in extensive artwork and the obvious emotional investment required in taking time to care for the object itself are all facets of the black disc's appeal I can readily recognise.

Unfortunately, the underlining implication in all this retrospective affection is an erroneous assumption that the artistic validity of the album format itself (i.e. a collection of songs over approximately 45 mins) died along with the drop in vinyl production at the turn of the 1980's.

This patently isn't true; the subtext exemplar of an albeit understandable, rose-tinted fondness for the past, a rejection of the musical validity of the new, easily afforded by the distinguishable 'line in the sand' that is the 'death' of a format. It's too convenient to associate this with the perceived end of an art form, a perception which is, no doubt, subjugation for a notional tide mark representing the moment a glorious youth was lost forever.

Ironically, those who never experienced the proliferation of the 12 inch such as I - more familiar with the compact disc than anything - are now, themselves, superseded by a generation who may never experience a physical format of any kind.

It's tempting for those with vast CD collections to take a similar approach to the contemporary rise of digital music.

When we remember the unfettered excitement of a midnight album release (and the associated queues around the block they created) and then see the 'pilfering' of individual tracks from across the iTunes store filling out 'On-the-go' playlists with greatest hits, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine ourselves, at fifty something, plastered, pot-bellied and pie-eyed, across our own BBC Four programme, falling into the self-same traps as our fore-bearers.

Surely, one glance at any greatest album list published in the past 30 years would be enough to assuage any doubts about the album's continuing cultural significance.

Radiohead's paranoic distillation of millennial meltdown in 'OK Computer', The Strokes cathartic destruction of bloated, arse-end Britpop in 'Is This It?' and the romantic never world of hedonistic possibility The Libertines brought to 'Up The Bracket'; just three albums that, in their own, very different ways, successfully encapsulated the impact, appeal and artistic achievement of the best 'LP's of yore.

Radiohead, of course, were responsible for a defining moment in the digital music age, releasing the elegiac 'In Rainbows' as a download at the apparent drop of a hat.

This year, too, has already seen David Bowie unexpectedly release his first single in 10 years without anyone realising he was going to do so and My Bloody Valentine causing a twitter storm with the follow up to 'Loveless' released via their website.

The ease with which established artists can now make their work available is something to be cherished (even if it is questionable whether up and coming acts benefit from such a phenomenon - see Arctic Monkeys for a potential exception to the rule).

However, all examples appear to nod towards an as yet unseen potential for artistic expression and innovation afforded by the digital format. Without the restrictions of having to print artwork, surely the possibilities and scope are endless?

Rather than just an album cover and sleeve notes, why not a separate image for each track? Digital booklets are already a done thing but it feels like the tip of the iceberg and it doesn't just stop with artwork.

Perhaps - just as when LP's were first used solely for movie soundtracks, before artists like Dylan realised their full potential to be something much more - we too are in the fledgling era of today's digital format, waiting for somebody to utilise its possibilities, to create something that will in itself generate another paradigm shift in the development of the album, one as radical as that the LP catalysed some 60 years prior.

The only question is when and who?

We're waiting...

His Master's Voice

"All I have is memories, and reminders of mortality."

The apparent demise of the high street record store HMV has triggered a whirlpool of personal emotions, not dissimilar, I imagine, to those experienced by Nipper the dog, the company's iconic trademark appropriated from an original painting by artist Francis Barraud.

Barraud's vision depicts a Jack Russell listening intently to 'his master's voice' played on a phonograph. With added poignancy, some suggest both sit atop a coffin, Nipper a demonstrable picture of loyalty and melancholy.

Although I could never show quite such sentiment towards what was, after all, another profit making corporation, its passing does, nonetheless, compel me to contemplate the passing of my own misspent youth and a period in time to which I feel I very much belonged.

If it's not that HMV going into administration makes me feel old, then, at least, it makes me feel no longer young, confused by the implications of a new era of music consumption seeming to threaten that which I most loved about the popular music world in the first place.

For all the sins of Virgin, Our Price and others, HMV was the last, ubiquitous bastion of music on the high street, the final totem of a time not solely about the music alone but about the experience of falling in love with bands and what they represent. We still have independent record stores, of course, but perhaps never again will the wider public appreciate that special environment in which to immerse oneself in something 'other'.

At the same time, I realise I may need to simply accept that fact. I find myself raging against a drift into lazy nostalgia, of thinking yester-year was unanimously better than now, disproved by nothing more than the fact that, despite all I've said, I actually can't even remember the last time I purchased a record from HMV!

I was going to write a fuller treatise on the theme until I came across the piece from which the opening quote of this blog is taken. Written by Guardian columnist Stuart Jeffries, it says all I want to say, including how, of all the high street names lost in this recession, the departure of HMV from our national conscience strikes harder to our hearts due to the emotive pull of music in all our lives.

Omnipresent access to music online is a wonderful thing and perhaps someone soon will fully utilise all the new opportunities for artistic expression it may afford the modern music artist. Yet, I see no signs of it to date and in the mean time such a wealth of music at my fingertips feels as much an inhibitor as an enabler.

Could it be I prefer less choice? Or is it that I've never loved 'music' just for the music itself but for something much, much more? Something the faceless, commitment free download of bytes of data can't help but undermine?

For posterity...

...my intake in 2012...

Read...

Foundation - Issac Asimov
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Nobody Ever Says Thank You: A Biography of Brian Clough - Jonathan Wilson
Foundation and Earth - Issac Asimov
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
Strange Maps - Cartographic curiosities
Pushing Ahead of the Dame - David Bowie Song by Song - Chris O'Leary
Letters of Note - Shaun Usher
The Blizzard Issue 5 - Jonathan Wilson (Editor)
Proud Man Walking - Claudio Ranieri
XKCD - A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language
The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex - Mark Kermode
The Blizzard Issue 4 - Jonathan Wilson (Editor)
Revolution in the Head - Ian MacDonald
Despatches from the Sofa: The Collected Wisdom of Frank Skinner - Frank Skinner

Heard...

Battle Born - The Killers
The 2nd Law - Muse
Ocean Rain - Echo & The Bunnymen
Inside the Huddle Podcast - NFL UK
One Day I'm Going To Soar - Dexys
Four - Bloc Party
Coexist - The xx
Remain In Light - Talking Heads
Marquee Moon - Television
Greatest Hits II - Queen
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast
New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels - Dexys Midnight Runners
Drive - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Various
1982 - Status Quo
In the Belly of the Brazen Bull - The Cribs
Complete - The Smiths (CD Boxset)
Radlands - Mystery Jets
Rant - The Futureheads
Blunderbuss - Jack White
Sweet Heart, Sweet Light - Spiritualized
A+E - Graham Coxon
The Ladykiller - Ce Lo Green
Sonik Kicks - Paul Weller
Django Django - Django Django
Dizzy Heights - The Lightning Seeds
Like You Do...The Best Of - The Lightning Seeds
The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monáe
Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Edition) - The Rolling Stones
Help! (Remastered) - The Beatles

Watched...

Slade in Flame - BBC4
The Girl - BBC1
Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender - BBC4
Mad Men - Season 5 (Blu-Ray)
The Killing III - BBC4
Storyville: From the Land to the Sea Beyond - BBC4
The Hour - BBC1
Crossfire Hurricane: The Rolling Stones - BBC2
Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (Blu-ray)
Skyfall
50 Years of Bond Cars: A Top Gear Special - BBC2
Chas & Dave: Last Orders - BBC4
Avengers Assemble (Blu-ray)
Dr Who - BBC1
The Hunger Games (Blu-ray)
The Woman In Black (Blu-ray)
Kill List (Blu-ray)
Planet of the Apes - Film4
The Thick of It - BBC2
Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery - BBC3
Alien 3 - Film4
Brief Encounter - Film4
The Descendants (Blu-ray)
The Muppets (Blu-ray)
Aliens - Film4
When I Get Older - BBC1
Faster, Higher, Stronger: Stories of the Olympic Games - BBC2
Nowhere Boy - Film4
Alien (DVD)
Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? - BBC4
The Secret History of Our Streets - BBC2
Make Bradford British - C4
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - BBC4
The Genius of David Bowie - BBC4
David Bowie and the Story of Ziggy Stardust - BBC4
The Artist (Blu-Ray)
The Guard (Blu-Ray)
Evidently...John Cooper Clark - BBC4
Punk Britannia - BBC4
The Armando Iannucci Shows (DVD)
Marion and Geoff (DVD)
Twilight - Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Blu-Ray)
Hugo (Blu-Ray)
Mark Lawson talks to...Mark Gatiss - BBC4
The 70's - BBC2
Tyrannosaur (Blu-Ray)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Blu-Ray)
Mark Lawson talks to...Frank Skinner - BBC4
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-Ray)
Drive (Blu-Ray)
Being Human - BBC3
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (DVD)
Upstairs, Downstairs - BBC1
Time Team - C4
Call the Midwife - BBC1
Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - E4
Room 101 - BBC2
Blade Runner (Blu-Ray)
Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens - BBC2
Sherlock - BBC1

My New Year's Resolution, for the second year in a row, is to read more.

That was the world that was

It's a common misnomer that the Mayans predicted apocalypse. If anything, that ancient civilisation were more concerned with 2012 marking the end of a cycle. The death of one age and the dawn of another. A moment of physical or spiritual renewal. As in Arthur C Clarke's most famous novel, the alignment of the planets provides a focal point in the development of the human species...

In 2012 a transformation certainly seemed possible. As the Paralympics gained welcome gravitas in the sporting galaxy, the new human condition was symbolised by the quite remarkable performance of the athletes, overachieving when they had every right to underachieve, burdened more by a society's negative perception of disability than their physical or mental impingement's themselves.

The ceremonies book-ending the Olympic Games served to epitomise all that is great and all that is galling about modern day Britain respectively - Danny Boyle's opener encapsulating the eccentric melting pot of British culture, its closing counterpart a ramp down from the euphoria, a cynical treadmill of popular recording artists...and George Michael! As a yin and yang, they worked in harmony to show us both how far we've come and how far we still have to go....

As the public clamoured for tickets, I picked up two to a Mens Football tie at Wembley Stadium, the over-eager teams of Gabon and South Korea huffing and puffing their way to an enjoyable, if anything but super-human, nil-nil score line.

Thankfully, that dearth of footballing excellence was offset by a springtime trip to Barcelona, a pilgrimage to that temple of tiki-taka, the Camp Nou, in which an Argentinian perfected metronomic clinicism and I had the pleasure to witness one of the 90 plus goals he scored in the calendar year.

During a period in which English football was beset by racism and rank opportunism, Messi's humble, self-effacing odyssey shone a light for football fans to guide them through the void as if the very personification of that Olympic torch, itself illuminating the darkest back waters on its own epic journey through the country.

In film, two super heroes dominated the cinematic box office, firstly the Dark Knight and then a secret agent, but hot on their heels, and somewhat more pointedly, a determined girl from a disadvantaged background applied herself with compassion and ingenuity to conquer a 'Games' of a very different kind.

On the small screen, the BBC dramas Sherlock and The Hour won over my heart, whilst others went dotty for Downton, and Mad Men made a welcome return to our screens, if no longer to be found on BBC4, the channel which again surpassed itself in providing an outlet for some of the most thought provoking and high quality programming from home shores and overseas.  

My favourite album of the year came from the former Dexys Midnight Runners, Kevin Rowland and 'Big' Jim Patterson, reforming to release a long-player bent on self-transformation and personal restoration, not only with the assistance of some sublime soul music but a bonafide bout of comic wherewithal to boot. It was titled 'One Day I'm Going To Soar'.

The political landscape was pocked and marred by the ongoing reverberations caused by the Leveson Inquiry into Press ethics, shining a spotlight on the shady relationship between the press, police force and Prime Minister - David Cameron might be forgiven for mumbling Shakespeare's 'My Kingdom for a horse' in his dreams at night.

Meanwhile, and speaking of Kingdoms, 2012 saw the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, pageantry and pedantry in equal measure throughout the land. Yet, as the divine right of the monarch was celebrated across the UK, in Switzerland the only nod to divinity was in the naming of the so-called God particle, revealed for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Despite some scaremongering, the end of the world was not nigh.

Perhaps the spectre of apocalypse loomed largest in the stunning revelations of child molestation at the BBC. Jimmy Savile's exposure the trigger for a raft of accusations and arrests which undermined our trust in one of the nation's greatest public institutions.

A relief then, to arrive at the corporation's annual Sports Personality awards, an escape from the maelstrom and a welcome time for reflection in a year when sport provided the prism through which to view humanity at its finest. What a delight to see the purple and red shirts of the 'games makers' who, without cynicism or inflated self importance, oiled the wheels of the Olympic charabanc so merrily.

Stealing the show, however, was Martine Wright, the lady who lost her legs in the terrorist atrocities the morning after London's successful bid was confirmed, triggering her journey towards competing in that same event seven years later. If anyone symbolised our achievements in 2012 it was the sitting volleyball player who taught us to embrace both tragedy and triumph in equal measure.

While some prattled about the death of one world, NASA's Rover begun extensive exploration of another, furnishing us with the most stunning images ever seen of the surface of another world and suggesting a possibility Mars may once have sustained life. Perhaps it will again as discussion of colonisation and human existence outside of the confines of our own 'blue marble' is pontificated once more.

Considering certain predictions, perhaps it's just as well - or perhaps, like our inspirational Paralympians, we should focus on conquering ourselves before we try and conquer the world, Earthly or otherwise. Perhaps that's the way to finally complete the transformation to a super human species and this time, when we do, we'll be sure to take everybody with us...