That Was The Year That Was (Not Was)

Yeah, lame pun, I know...

If I manage to get to be an old man, I wonder how I’ll look back on 2011, given I went through a series of bizarre events that usually happen to other people.

But no matter, I emerged in relatively one piece to keep writing the usual crap about things that either annoy me or stop me getting annoyed in a world seemingly designed purely to irritate.

Footballer of the Year
Bit of a tricky one, this, as even though United won the league and made the final of the European Cup, I’m struggling to think of one player who managed consistency across 2011. Rooney upset many with his stupid antics on and off the pitch, Nani has been his usual inconsistent self. Vidic has been crocked for most of the last six months, as has Javier Hernandez, who scored some vital goals in the run-in last season.

So, for lack of a better choice, I’m giving it to Phil Jones, despite the fact he only signed for us in the summer, on the basis that he’s proven so good as to be almost an automatic choice in the first team. He’s made a couple of major clangers, but you can excuse that in a 19 year old, especially one with the confidence to charge upfield with the ball at his feet in a way not seen at Old Trafford since Gordon McQueen.

Album of the Year
Surprisingly, there was more than one album released in 2011 I liked. There were in fact four, which must be a record. Note must also go to the reissue of Nick Lowe’s fab 1979 Labour of Lust album that I've been enjoying recently.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart stumbled at times with their second album Belong, but overall it was a fine album and I have hopes they’ll knock on and produce something better in the near future.

British Sea Power made another fine album with Valhalla Dancehall, albeit one that treaded water a little bit and did nothing to halt recent sliding returns commercially. Whether they’ll elect to go down weirder paths, as flirted with on their soundtrack to the historic Man of Annan film, they’re still capable of writing excellent songs in both pop and experimental genres.

Half Man Half Biscuit did what they do best once again on 90 Bisodol (Crimond) with songs of tedious daytime TV (Tommy Walsh’s Eco House) and pavement etiquette (L’Enfer C’est Les Autres). Always the same, always different, they should have put statues of the lads up on that spare plinth on Trafalgar Square. Or at least outside Prenton Park somewhere.

The winner, however, is The Coldest Winter For a Hundred Years by the always excellent Wild Swans. A fair old time in the making, it seemed I’d been anticipating it for years and luckily it didn't disappoint. Killer songwriting and brilliant playing all over, especially the kind of guitar chops that I’m glad to hear again. Following their jaunt out being pop stars in South East Asia, I can’t wait to see what Paul Simpson will do next.

Game of the Year
Up until Christmas, this would have been Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hands down. However, having spent the last week or so hammering through Batman: Arkham City, it’s become a closer run thing. After much consideration (i.e. the time it takes to sup three mouthfuls of coffee and eat a handful of Quality Street sweets) I've gone with Skryim. Though not matching the moments of drama Batman produced, or the voice acting skills (Mark Hamill will always be the Joker to me), its sheer depth and scope has not been seen by me since I played Elite II: Frontier, a game that had the whole galaxy as a playground.

Terry Fuckwit Clone of the Year
It has to be James Murdoch, for his stunning display of ineptitude at the Leveson Inquiry, in which we got the general picture that he didn't have a Scooby about what was going on in the company he was apparently in charge of. Watching, I got the idea that ol’ Rupert was thinking ‘he must get it off his bloody mother’ or something.

The fall of the News of the World, of course, was a major highlight of the year. I expect it’ll be the first of the major papers to go belly up, though the rest will probably fall under the harsh machine gun fire of falling sales and public indifference. The fact that it’s hardly been missed says something about the nation’s reading habits, and not in a good way, but I can console myself that at least one bastion of shite journalism has been dumped onto the slagheap of history.

With that all done, it's in 2012 we go. We can look forward to Mass Effect 3! Which is good! And Manchester City beginning to dominate English football for years to come! Which is crap! And it makes me want to go live in a cave somewhere for the next 30 years...