2013- Electric Puppet’s first 5 months in review

Well- it’s New Year’s Eve, and time to reflect on what has gone on over the past year. For my family, this has been a big year, as we left the comfort and splendour of Oxford to return to our home city of Stoke-on-Trent; I graduated from university; I got my first job; we decided where we want to go with our life in the near and more distant future, thanks to an American man and his family on YouTube; I completed my first book of poetry, which had been languishing prior to this summer; I took the plunge and begun this blog, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while; and have got back in contact with several family members that I haven’t seen for the best part of a decade thanks to Facebook. It has been eventful, and had also been emotional and tiring for all of us. Also, with any luck, next year should be just as eventful- beginning work; trying to get my book published; endeavouring to write the novel and short story collection that I’ve been planning for a month or so; and getting married. Yes: my partner and I are getting married next year!

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In terms of this blog, I will be getting up several ‘Thoughts on…’ posts for the books I have read recently- the first two Adrian Mole books, Penelope Lively’s ‘Heat Wave’, Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, and Tove Jansson’s ‘Finn Family Moomintroll’- in the new year, and hopefully will get the first few up on New Year’s Day. For now, though, I thought that I would highlight a selection of posts from this blog that have proved popular, may have been overlooked, or are of relative interest for me.

• Firstly, a bizarre yet infectious song about socks from a star of the YouTube community, who has influenced my partner and I in the way we approach life more than I can ever express, and which has gained me quite a few views: I’ve got my socks on! 
• Graduating from Oxford: Graduation!
• …and the city we have returned to…: Stoke-on-Trent: The city that died
• This post about a Roman archaeological discovery in London has proved to be my most-viewed post on here, thanks to its inclusion on a history resource website in the Netherlands: The best Roman sculpture ever found in Britain: An eagle in London. (Here is the website with my page linked if you’re interested. They’ve given me free publicity, so I’ll give them a free plug too! Find my post part-way down this page on histoforum.net) 
• For me, one of the biggest losses of the year: Seamus Heaney 1939-2013
• An archaeologically-inspired painting: Banksy’s ‘Cave Painting’
• Here are just a selection of my ‘Thoughts on…’ posts from this past year: Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’; Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’; George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (in which I managed to mention Lady Gaga- you’ll have to read it to see how!); a selection of John Ruskin essays; Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Torrents of Spring’, and Jostein Gaarder’s ‘Through a Glass, Darkly’.
• I also posted about a book that I got for 50p from our church fair, and which dated from 1725: A new purchase- Matthew Prior’s ‘Poems on Several Occasions’
• The irrepressible stomp of Global Warming has had an interesting effect on archaeology, and I posted on several new discoveries: Treasure from the Norwegian ice; More Iron Age treasures from Norway, and Two soldiers in the Italian ice.
• For no reason other than that they look nice: Eye eye!
• This year has been dubbed by some to have been the ‘year of the selfie’ (David Cameron’s badly-judged example with Obama notwithstanding…), and I’ve included three good ones: Pope Francis; Darth Vader, and an astronaut.
• An interesting discussion of jewelled relics and adorned human remains in archaeology: The jewelled saints of 16th century Europe, and other beautifications of the dead

I think that’s enough links to my other posts to be getting on with for now. Anyway- check some of these out if you haven’t already, or have a browse of the blog and see what you come across. Also, you can follow Electric Puppet on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/electricpuppetblog

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Lastly, here are a few fellow bloggers that I’ve come across in the past few months that you may find of interest:

Don’t Bend, Ascend

These Bones of Mine

Bones Don’t Lie

A Corner Of Tenth-Century Europe (written by one of my Anglo-Saxon lecturers from Oxford; he has since moved on to work at Birmingham University)

Museum Postcard

Prehistories

Interesting Literature

I hope you have a very happy New Year, and that 2014 will be good for you.

Image: The Telegraph

I’ve got my socks on!

Regular readers of this blog may recognise the name ShayCarl from my post about an upcoming film called ‘Vlogumentary’ and my first life update. For those who don’t, he is a vlogger on YouTube who films himself and his family (known as the Shaytards) every day, and has done so for the past 4 and a half years. He has done a hell of a lot for my partner and myself through his daily updates, as his general outlook on life has given us both inspiration and has helped us to plan our life and our goals out in ways we would never have imagined before we started to watch them. Well, about a year ago Shay begun to sing on one of his vlogs about the socks he was wearing, and from that innocent seed there has grown a range of ShayCarl Argyle sock merchandise and now this- the music video for the song. I just thought that I’d share it as it is so fantastic, and it may bring a smile to your face as it did to mine! Also, both of my children now dance around the house every time we play it to them, and our eldest (aged 3) knows most of the words! If you like it, thumbs up the video!

If any of you want to subscribe to the Shaytards on YouTube, the link is in the text above and also below, as well as the families individual channels, which are here aswell:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SHAYTARDS

http://www.youtube.com/user/shaycarl

http://www.youtube.com/user/ShayLoss

http://www.youtube.com/user/katilette

http://www.youtube.com/user/WhenTheKidsGoToSleep

http://www.youtube.com/user/HeyKayli

http://www.youtube.com/user/caseylavere

And if you want a pair of the socks: http://www.rodeoarcade.com/collections/shay-carl 

 

 

‘Vlogumentary’

Recently my partner and I have begun to watch vlogs uploaded onto YouTube by an American family known as the Shaytards, who are great fun to watch and who seem like very, very nice people who we are happy to support in all they do through our viewing of their videos. They have been vlogging everyday for the past 4 years, with this year being the last year that they will vlog daily. This year, Shay Carl, who is the primary vlogger, has been involved in the making of a documentary about vlogging, vloggers, and the impact that this relatively recent phenomenon has had on many people’s lives. This is the trailer to the film, titled ‘Vlogumentary’, which I am posting in the hope that it can gain more exposure for Shay and his team. It looks like it should be well worth a watch!