5 Favourites from 2025
2025 has been an interesting year for me and I thought I would talk about 5 of my favourite things that I watched or did this year.
Fantastic Mr Fox
A rather late addendum to the list of movies I watched this year is the adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel, Fantastic Mr Fox. It however quickly rocketed to the top of the list.
The film truly speaks to me as this masterpiece of positive existentialism. The film is centred around the main character, Mr Fox, who is struggling for his place in the world. There is something fantastical about a film centred around a foxes mid-life crisis.
The titular character at the start of the film says “I am seven non-fox years old. My father died at seven and a half. I don't want to live in a hole anymore, and I'm going to do something about it.” He then proceeds to tear into his food like the animal he is. Yet that justapostion provides this beautiful examination of the questions of identity, purpose, and belonging.
How do you find your meaning and purpose in the world, and how is that centred in your relationship with other people?
Man is fundamentally a social animal, as Jean-Paul Sartre would say - is it then so fantastical to see this through the lens of a fox?
Fantastic Mr Fox is a film that will long be on my favourite films list, and I am sure will be subjected to many rewatches.
Mead
As anyone who has spoken to me in the past year has heard, my Mead is a project that has dominated this year. I have for many years wanted to make mead — also known as honey wine. I even considered fermenting it in the cupboard of my university dorm; however, in the end I decided not to.
This year a close friend of mine and I finally pulled the trigger. We ordered 10 kilograms of honey and started fermenting 25 litres worth of 10.5% ABV mead. Currently I have 51 bottles aging, well on their way to 1 year old.
Whilst the value of having my own fermented alcohol sitting in close proximity is quite clear, what has been most fun for me is the lessons learned in this project: the many hours looking at different types of cork, trying to speak to niche Portuguese cork producers to procure cork, or evaluating different types of bottles at 3 a.m. It has granted me this unique insight into the world of alcohol production.
This has of course led to another batch with a total of 50 litres of mead ageing, and likely more to come.
The value of wanting to do the project and then seeing it completed as been immense, and now I am able to offer anyone the ability to taste mead. Not many people can do that!
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby was a book I had struggled with when I was younger; it just didn’t quite jive with me. But one October journey to a charity shop saw me picking up a copy.
From that moment on, I couldn’t put the book down; I was addicted to it.
For those who haven’t read the book, it is a masterpiece with a variety of interpretations. F. Scott Fitzgerald was in some sense writing a semi-autobiographical novel about his life, where he felt as though he was struggling with class differences and how, no matter one’s material wealth, they will always be excluded from certain class circles. They will always be labelled as ‘new money’.
The book is also a classic in the hopeless romantic who yearns for an idealistic love he can’t have. Yet at the same time, whilst reading the book, it becomes quickly clear that none of these characters are likeable; they are all severely flawed. It is narrated from one perspective; however, the narrator slowly becomes unreliable, with details changing, causing you to question his trustworthiness.
If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend it — but skip the movie.
The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz
An odd book to enjoy so much, but The Examined Life is a fascinating collection of essays by the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz. I have read other books by psychoanalysts that are full of jargon and are poorly written.
The Examined Life is nothing like that; every chapter is masterfully written, with huge depths of knowledge and insight squeezed into every page. I won’t say too much as I think everyone should just read the book to see what they think.
Finland
Another late addendum to this list is my trip to Finland: a work trip that saw me exploring the depths of Finnish security, but provided me with a fascinating insight into the Finnish world — a culture and history that shares so many parallels with the British. The Finns are arguably more awkward (how that is possible I don’t quite know), yet at the same time have such a diverging history: for 800 years Finland was a Swedish colony.
In what is termed the worst month to go (November), I saw Helsinki as an active city full of life, beautiful architecture, lovely people, and a stoic perseverance. The commonly bandied-around stat is that Finland is the happiest country in the world. Whilst I have my problems with how the surveys are phrased, I can see how the Finns are happy.
Their society just works: from trains, trams, and buses to shops, saunas, and lunches, everything is supremely efficient. Even the worst nightmare of flight cancellations was handled with excellence.
I would highly recommend anyone visits Finland, regardless of how bizarre it is seeing five naked Finnish men drinking beer in a 90°C sauna.
Read The Great Gatsby years ago. May have a do over!