Or #WTFhappened

So, how was your Christmas? Did you ask Santa for the Wolf Alice album like I suggested last week?

Following on from last Sunday’s episode, here is the Fiskal Policy’s interpretation of the final six months of 2021.

A jubilant July?

I went to Wimbledon to watch quite a bit of tennis. Strictly speaking I went at the end of June but history relies on when the past is written down, not when it happens.

This was in my pre-vaccination days so I had a test to get a kind of Covid passport.

As well as being able to sit next to strangers it meant I could stand at a urinals flanked by an elderly gentleman and a man who may have been in his early-20s. It was something I hadn’t done for years.

It was also the month of the Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey.

Yes, the best story ever told (unless you work for Sutton Council – it is probably something most of them want to forget) happened in a library in south London.

If you haven’t heard about it before then click on the link above and enjoy the pictures.

Amazing things happened in August

There was a mix of indoor and outdoor fun in a month where I mostly felt ill in a non-Covid way.

When I wasn’t trying to work while lying on the floor I managed to thoroughly enjoy Motherland: Fort Salem indoors and watched quite a lot of music in Crystal Palace and Portsmouth outdoors.

If you haven’t seen Fort Salem already you really should watch it.

Was September super sexy?

Indoor concerts were well and truly back when Nick Cave and Warren Ellis performed at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, South London.

It was a long time coming, not just because of the pandemic but because of the bankrupt Labour council.

Proclaimed as having better acoustics than the Southbank Centre on the bank of the Thames in Central London, Fairfield Halls had only recently reopened following a multi-million pound refurbishment.

And as outlined in Inside Croydon (don’t tell the old me that I’m linking to an article by Inside Croydon) and The Stage in more words than I have space for here, the refurbishment was fraught with disaster.

Similarly to last year, Great British Bake Off was back on our screens.

People love it as feelgood TV. I think there has to be more to life than people baking and being nice to each other.

An October to remember

Undoubtedly most of the year in review pieces you’ll read will look at other things in October, like how Boris Johnson was faring in the autumn.

But for me the most unexpected event was how I turned my hallway into an art gallery full of pictures of Lauren Baker neon sculptures.

(It wasn’t completely unexpected as I’d known it was going to happen since August when I recruited a photographer friend and someone I met on Facebook to take photos of me in Chelsea. But unexpected in the way I never thought of myself as any kind of ‘street model’ when the year began.)

Remember remember the 5th of November (and other dates too)

November typically marks the start of the Christmas season, when the John Lewis advert comes on the television and other shops try and get in on the act too.

One day everyone will admit the Kenzo advert from a few years back is the best commercial ever made.

Until then people will look forward to the wintry cover version of whatever song the department store finds for 2022.

Also in November I finished a six week course about contemporary painting at The Barbican in London, run by Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Some of you will already know about the life-changing effects of the course.

One day I may write about some of the other aspects of what happened.

December isn’t just about Christmas

This year the Christmas party season has undoubtedly been much bigger than last year, for most people.

One event which couldn’t happen last year but did in 2021 was Fiskmas. At some point hopefully soon I’ll finish writing the piece.