This is a day of remembrance, but also a time for gratitude. Never before has the antiviral drugs been as effective, nor has the ability to prevent new infections been greater. None of my friends with HIV suffers any bad side effects of their treatment, and an increasing number of gay man goes on PrEP, meaning the fight against the virus is now twofold.
Millions of people still lives with HIV, and the number of newly infected increases in Eastern Europe, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
This is the kind of story that I can’t stop being emotional about. Dogs are my favourite animal. Once you become friend with dog, they’re loyal until death.
“A film created by queer artist Charlotte Prodger that deals with coming out as gay in rural Scotland has won the prestigious Turner Prize,” Josh Jackman of Pink News reports.
“The EU is moving into full no-deal mode after Michel Barnier privately warned of a sudden escalation of risk, and France advised its fellow member states that planning for a cliff-edge Brexit now had to be their priority,” the Guardian reports.
I think Mrs May is the only one who still believes in an orderly Brexit.
Richard von Drasche-Wartinberg’s In Deep Winter (1923)
The very first snow has fallen over Malmö, and tomorrow it’s Christmas Eve, which is the only day of the year that snow is preferable. But after Christmas, I will spend a month at my flat in Gran Canaria, where it’s about 25°C.
“I find it entirely unreasonable for parts of the British public to believe that it is for the EU alone to propose a solution for all future British problems,” Jean-Claude Juncker says in an interview for the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “My appeal is this: get your act together and then tell us what it is you want. Our proposed solutions have been on the table for months.”
This photo I took in January explains why I decided to buy a second home in Maspalomas.
So, what happened in 2018? Quite a few things.
Shortly after spending New Years in Amsterdam, I visited Venice for the first time. I was, as so many before me, amazed by the city on water. So much so that I immediately booked another trip to the city in the summer.
The trips to Venice are but some of the travelling I made this year. I have also been on short visits to Valetta, Athens, Los Angeles, Florence, and Milan.
The really big, life-altering event in 2018 has to be my January trip to Gran Canaria. I had planned for a short break in the sun and ended up planning for a life here. Now, less than a year later, I sit on my very own balcony, belonging to the flat I bought in the spring. I now have two homes—in Malmö and Maspalomas.
In May, I began a new job that made me realise that law enforcement is what I want to do. I can’t think of anything more important to a free and democratic society than a functioning judicial system.
The bigger world has been in much of turmoil this year. Brexit makes a once proud Britain act as a spoiled, attention-seeking toddler. Trump makes America sad again. The populist movements win support all over Europe, as if we learned nothing from the failures of the twentieth century. Sweden’s general election resulted in a deadlock that—unless some miracle happens—will end in a snap election in the spring of next year.
I’ll end this year the way I ended 2017—with a popular poem by Lord Tennyson:
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.
