With that spiel out of the way, there were a few things from 2009 which stick out in my mind. In no particular order, other than what seemed like a logical grouping at the time:

• Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question time: I’d never been a fan of his politics, and as expected this only reaffirmed my opinion. What did come out of this for me, was the showcasing of the ludicrous views that he promoted. If anyone was in any doubt, this displayed the truly regressive stance he holds on such a wide range of issues. All I can hope for is that people saw the same thing and went away realising that perhaps, as far as “alternative” parties go, there are better choices.
• America got a dose of change with the inauguration of Barack Obama: I’m not qualified to expand too much on this as I’ve not followed his actions especially closely this year. I’ll pick one thing out though; his policies on health care and the reform he wants to bring are a good thing. In Britain we’re accustomed to being entitled to health care, and it seems crazy that it would be denied to those less well off. Any policy which helps turn this around is a good thing. The Nobel Peace prize was a little premature though, seems like it’d be better to see how he does in his term before handing it out.
• Swine Flu: I nearly left this one out. The worst part of this (okay, not the worst part really, any death caused by it is of course above this) was the reaction of the general populace. People were panicked by what boiled down to regular flu with a higher chance of being caught. People don’t get like this over your average flu which goes round in winter and there was no need to worry so much over it. Go get your extra flu jab if it applies to you, other than that, go have fun and stop worrying.
• Jenson Button wins the F1 World Drivers’ Championship: This was a great season of Formula 1. It was thrilling all the way through and at the end we got the icing on the cake with a British champion. I hope we have this kind of close racing again next year as producing cars to this specification is no longer a new challenge. The introduction of the new points system should heat things up by heavily rewarding challenging for a win (new points are: 25, 20, 15, 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1).
• Muse album release: Perhaps not too much of a landmark for the year, but something I’d been looking forward to and therefore I’ll sneak it in here. They departed once again from the precedent they had set, experimenting on the new album with some stadium rock (which has drawn comparisons to Queen), a true R&B track in the form of “Undisclosed Desires”, a few tunes in the kick ass style we’re used to and a 3 part symphony. I initially didn’t know what to make of the album. A part of me had wanted it to simply be a continuation of their earlier music, but it’s grown on me and I appreciate it more for being a different experience.
• Rage Against the Machine make Christmas Number 1: This was the first time I listened to the chart show on BBC Radio 1 and I was genuinely on edge throughout. That is until the internet took over and leaked the result part way through. It wasn’t totally certain, but as more of the order it listed was confirmed correct it seemed like Rage were in for the victory, and so they were. Having bought the song myself I was thrilled to see the pop machine dethroned and the smile wiped off Simon Cowell’s face. It only lasted the one week, and McElderry made it to the top a week later (congratulations to him, this wasn’t done to spite him), but the point was made.
• Joe McElderry was well gutted: Sorry, couldn’t resist. It’s not too bad anyway, apparently he’ll make some money out of all this music lark.

Let’s see what happens next year anyway. Overall try to keep a positive vibe going on into 2010. All the best to you from here!

Having finished that day of travel we found ourselves in Madrid Chamartin station, knowing there were no more trains that day and quite happy just to sleep there. Seeing us sit down with some sandwiches from a machine a guard told us we had to be out of the station before it closed in half an hour, and that he didn’t recommend sitting outside as there were parties on nearby roofs and falling bottles weren’t uncommon. A short trip later and we were in Madrid Puerta Atocha station and quite happy to just sit outside until it opened at about 5:30 (which was only 5 hours away by then) since it was a lot less risky. We actually ended up staying in a fairly cheap room in an NH hotel (which are apparently a reasonably priced chain of hotels that I hadn’t previously heard of). The next morning we took a train to Granada and then a connection to Almería where I’m staying for the rest of the holiday.

A few things have come out of this journey for me:

1) No matter how bad things might seem there’s usually a solution.
2) Not knowing the layout and availability of the Spanish trains before your journey is a bad idea, as none of the people selling tickets were able to piece together a journey like this for us by using multiple trains.
3) Travelling like this is truly awesome, not knowing exactly what you’re going to end up doing is quite fun in itself.

So on to today, and I ended up going on a quick boat journey (8m long yacht) which was made even shorter by the fact that I had more seasickness today than I’ve ever experienced in my life. I guess in retrospect the wine last night and the beers I had on the boat were a bit of a mistake, but that’s life! Not sure what I’ll be up to for the last week and a bit, but the beach will probably be a main feature, with an overnight visit to another town on the cards.