Hello and welcome to my review of 2025! I really hate to use the phrase rollercoaster of a year because that is almost always used as a negative phrase and obviously a rollercoaster that doesn’t have ups and downs is really boring, I would know. But unfortunately rollercoaster of a year is what I will have to use as I can’t think of anything better. 2024 felt like a more consistently positive year ( I even calculated an anion gap) with one major negative whereas 2025 has been more up and down. Let’s get into it.
We start in January because that’s the first month of the year. The year started in a rather foggy (photo provided for evidence) Cologne with Aaron and Liz (Full Cologne Blog).
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| See what I mean |
After enjoying a few slurps of Kolsch we headed to what’s probably my favourite place on Earth, Phantasialand (Phantasialand Blog). There’s nothing quite like riding Taron and Fly in sub zero temperatures and having a beer in between!
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| What a coaster |
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| Aaron where’s your pint mate? |
After January comes February and to be honesty not a lot happened. I stepped up my house search and realised why estate agents have such a bad rep. Honestly some of them are so full of sh*t that if you gave them an enema there would be nothing left. I was shown some absolute horror shows of houses. Despite spending most of my time on property websites I did manage a weekend away in Lincoln (Lincoln Blog) for Lincoln (a) with Veal, John, Nathan, Rach and DJ came for some of it too!
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| What a squad! |
At the end of February I found a house that I liked and made an offer. The offer was rejected and the house mysteriously disappeared from all of the property and estate agent websites. Later in the year I received a call asking if I still wanted to buy it, I did not. It transpired that the extension on the house had been built over the boundary and onto council owned land. Bullet dodged.
As the year marched into March so did my house search. One highlight (lowlight) was a house being described by the estate agent as having a layout that “allows you walk around the downstairs”, as opposed to all the houses where you can’t do that. I really was getting sick of this contestant rubbish they spout. Happily March saw me travel up to Manchester and Stockport to see Rach and Liz.
Then things took a turn for the better. I viewed another house and after I told the estate agent that I wasn’t interested they offered me a visit to a house which had not gone to market yet. It was everything I was looking for. I guess I should tell you my criteria now! At least three bedrooms, en suite, drive way, preferable three stories, garden, area for a bar. Using my best poker face and I guess also poker voice I got my second offer accepted! The house was also in my preferred area of St Ives (Cambridgeshire)! Around a week later Nathan, John, Veal and I embarked on a pub crawl of my new town.
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| I forgot to smile |
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| One of my new haunts |
Whilst all the house faff was going on I found time to meet Neil Harris following a 2-1 win up at Huddersfield!!
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| A Cambridge United legend and Neil Harris |
At the end of April I ventured to Asia for my biggest trip of the year! I hadn’t been to Asia since visiting a Japan back in 2015! Richard, Jordan, Claire and I started trip in Beijing, China, (Beijing Blog) with the highlight being Universal Studios Beijing (Universal Blog).
As May neared we flew to South Korea and showed off our dance moves in Seoul!
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| Seoul Style! |
The first activity in May was to visit the de-militarised zone between South and North Korea, where we crawled through a wet tunnel to get within a few feet of the mysterious country. I was happy to have a helmet on as I hit my head about a million times. I might still blog this part of the trip but it was so long ago.
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| Debut LP coming soon |
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| North Korea in the distance |
South Korea was amazing! We travelled around riding some real bucket list coasters such as Atlantis Adventure, which is THE AQUATRAX!!!!
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| Still can’t believe I’ve ridden it! |
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| Four AQUATRAX fans! |
Just three days later I reached my latest coaster milestone!
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| 800 ridden but I need more! |
Fast forward two days and we reached Taiwan, which is home to the OG tilt coaster!
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| It’s a really hard coaster to tick off! |
Taiwan is also home to breath taking mountain roads, great nightlife and a huge metal ball that stops Taipei 101 from falling over if it’s windy and/or an earthquake happens.
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| We got stuck here waiting for an earthquake damaged tunnel to open |
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| Cheers! |
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| Ball of steel (might not be steel) |
Back in England I suffered death by house paperwork but did manage to spend my usual week volunteering at Cambridge Beer Festival.
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| Oops |
I then entered the last year of my 20s and celebrated with curry, beer and friends.
June was a bit of a quiet one. I collected my ten years of service award from work.
I kicked off July by doing the Fuller’s brewery tour, which was good fun! The house stuff was really taking up all of my time.
I also spent more time in St Ives waiting to finally get some progress with my house purchase. It takes so long. Now that bridge is on my daily walk.
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| I still love this view |
In August I headed back up to Manchester to see Rach & Jo, where we watched some cricket (pictured) and ate some of Jo’s amazing green mac and cheese (not pictured).
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| I don’t know why I took a photo of plastic cup |
During my journey to Manchester all the house stuff suddenly sped up and finally on September 1st:
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| I still haven’t trimmed that bush… |
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| Bet the neighbours found this weird |
September was probably the happiest month of the year for me. I finally secured the sort of house I’d always wanted. A three storey townhouse with enough bedrooms for future planning, a big kitchen that deserves someone who cooks better than me and a nice garden ready for BBQs (I need to buy a BBQ first though). I also had someone very special in my life and just six days post having the keys for house that had no furniture I spent my first night in the house! We sat outside on deck chairs and waited for some sort of special moon to appear, we couldn’t see it so went back inside. The intent was there.
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| Yes, my house has a bar! |
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| Deep cleaning action! |
By this point I felt that life was nearly complete as I was super happy, taken and living in my house (that was really starting to take shape). Then as September was coming to an end and October was starting everything went wrong. I was no longer taken and my house turned into a living nightmare. Here’s the full list of problems with my house!
Underfloor heating dead as a dodo. Radiator installed otherwise there would be no heating for much of the downstairs.
2/3 toilets needed repairs
Multiple items of furniture arrived damaged and needed replacing. Delivery idiots put a hole in my wall carrying a sofa upstairs.
Oven and grill elements broke requiring repair
Dishwasher caught fire (yes really) requiring replacement
Air fryer broke and had to be exchanged
Letter box fell off and I installed a new one
Multiple power failures caused by a faulty junction box
So yeah, quite a lot wasn’t it? To go from being so high to so low. The sheer frustration of having thing after thing go wrong and then my domestic appliances deciding to have a suicide pact. Luckily I had a holiday round the corner to New York. (NYC BLOG)
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| Rooftop hotel bar! |
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| Central Park |
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| Valhalla is my fave NYC bar! |
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| A great evening |
In November Nathan, John and I embarked on a classic away day to Nottingham to watch Cambridge play Notts County. By classic away day I mean we had great beer in brilliant pubs and ate lovely curry after watching 90 minutes of terrible football! (Nottingham Blog)
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| It’s pretty old |
That just leaves us with December! The annual trip to York got things off to a good start! (York Blog). I just love York!
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| I also love beer and space raiders |
There we have it, the rollercoaster of a year comes to an end which leaves me just enough time to try and summarise things! Firstly I was expecting a few house hiccups but I think I’ve been really unlucky with all the things that went wrong and the timing where most of it happened at the same time as the worst part of my year. Despite all of that I have plenty of fond 2025 memories to look back upon. I had some amazing travelling adventures, Cambridge United end the year on a 13 game unbeaten streak and I own a house! I’m also exceptionally lucky to have so many great friends that I’ve spent time with, travelled with or both this year! It’s the not so good times where you find out who will really come out to bat for you, I send immense thanks to them! Here’s to 2026!
Thank you for reading. Writing does really help, you should try it.
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