Across the UK, around the world, my name is Howard Hughes and this is the unexplained.

Well I'm sitting here, I've completed the podcast for 2023 now and I hope that you've enjoyed at least some of them across this year.

Thank you for your kind and constructive comments that keep coming in, always gratefully received.

Now things seem to be very quiet. Something really odd has happened. I'm

recording this a couple of days before Christmas, but it does seem to me that

people have not given up on the year. That's wrong, but it just seems to me that

they've gone into holiday mode early. It's almost as if they've said, well, 2023 has been

a hell of a year, one way and another, and we're probably going to go into the holiday as early as we possibly can.

And so what it means is the road outside where I live is incredibly

quiet where in previous years I've noticed a stampede outside, you know people

rushing to drive to wherever they're going to drive to get

last minute presents and do things, you know, maybe that is still to come because I think there's one

more day of shopping to do if you have

the fortitude to face it. But it seems to be dead quiet. And that is a

reflection I think of the year that we've been in. So as far as I'm

concerned,

2023 has been a challenging year. The low point of it was the fire in my flat,

and despite my best efforts, I'm still clearing up from that I have a lot to do and I think I'm going

to have to turn some attention to myself and the things around me for a while to try and

get all of that sorted but that's the plan as we go into the new year

you know plans plans plans but you know that's what I want to do and the high point of the

year for me was definitely getting to see the United States again.

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