Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you and your friends and families all have a wonderful 2020 and thank you all for following this blog over the past year, and indeed the past decade.
As you'll have seen, over the last year my blogging has become less frequent - which is a great shame as it is something I definitely enjoy. No doubt it's because - like many of you - I've been more active on Twitter than Blogger. And the distractions of modern life, family, work and commuting have, again, been, present.
But, all this being said, I looked back at my blog over the past few days and enjoyed re-reading some of the nonsense I've been posting over the past year, a great deal of which has been about the fictional town of Laarden, set in the late seventeenth century Spanish Netherlands.
The good news for 2020 is that I don't intend anything different. Shock... surprise... bewilderment! No major announcements, or New Year's resolutions, Sidney? No suggestions of any new periods, or changes of social media? No, dear readers, none at all.
OK...OK.... I do promise to try and blog here more often - but that's only the softest of new Year's resolutions, I think. But apart form that, I'd like to bring you more painting, figures, modelling and fiction from the strange, distant, through-a-glass-darkly world of 1688 Flanders.
So, with that in mind, perhaps this year you might:
- come face to face with the fearsome Gendarmerie of Le Roi Soleil;
- trudge along the muddy roads of Flanders with a group of straggling soldiers;
- witness the miracle of Sint Jacobus' golden fishing net;
- inhabit the shadows of a town in darkness with a man who cannot be seen;
- trade and negotiate for lucrative tulip contracts on the Laarden bourse;
- discover the strange secret of a Prince of the Blood.
All that, dear readers, and much more nonsense besides...
A degree of this foolishness is being driven by Curt's Tenth Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but hopefully this year's fun will stretch long past late March when the doors close on what will be another wonderful Challenge.
And, as this Blog has been going for almost a decade, since 26 January 2010 (..I know, how crazy is that?...), I'll be looking back at some of the past nonsense I've been posting here over the last ten years.
So plenty to look forward to in 2020, and (hopefully) something for everyone.
