Towards the end of the first week of June I watched the pre-credits scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. We were about four hours away from landing in Adelaide when the precious artefact, sheathed in plywood, was rolled into an immense storehouse of similar crates while the camera panned out.

Today I made an ice coffee because the afternoon sun hitting my window was too warm to contemplate drinking a warm one. How quickly that winter went by since returning from Norway and resuming my daily routine. My 2025 winter routine was a lot of: sleep in clothes with multiple blankets, gentle stretching, double-layer pants and wear a puffy jacket under my actual jacket. Heated gloves. Occasionally put a beanie on over my headphones. Go for a walk, stare at the water. Eat berries and yogurt for breakfast. Work on various projects and initiatives. Coffee. Gym when possible. Lots of chicken because for some reason it was very cheap. Recover from a collapsed lung. Edit photos. Listen to music. Walk to the shops. Savour any sun patch.

There are actually only about thirty photos on my phone from June 7 to July 31st. And half of them are pool chemistry or Nash's GI tract related. It wasn't an exciting winter. It wasn't a bad one (the collapsed lung wasn't much of an inconvenience). I went to the office three times. It was just comfortable and a bit numb. I have no regrets.

It feels like since August started that the sun lingers longer and the coldest crisp is no longer in the air. I haven't double-pantsed for over a month. I haven't charged my glove batteries for weeks. Even though August was rainy and stormy at times, it feels like there was a lot of sunshine in there too.

So where does that leave Bradism Winter 2025? Only some tunes and journal entries to remember it by. Another season packaged up in a crate and being wheeled to its eternal resting place in the database.

A warm, summer night in autumn 2025.

I do love me a seasonal playlist to remember a period of my life. And if some of the song lyrics/titles have a literal link to the specific season that I listened to them in - even better.

Lots has changed since my debut one in 2004. First, initially I had a lot more tunes to choose from in humanity's back catalogue. Second, I didn't make them every season, and third, the music listening experience was so different back before Spotify and endless mobile phone data. I feel like my standard for getting on the seasonal mixtape is a lot higher in 2025 than it was say in 2006. I also can't tell for sure if I look back fondly at every track that made a seasonal mixtape back in the day purely because it was on there. In the old days I would listen a lot to whole albums, playing them in my car where I couldn't change to another band on a whim. For the past few years I have had a staging process where anything I hear on an album or through the algorithm gets added to a "Liked from Radio" playlist (I forgot why I called it that back in 2016) and then usually when I'm feeling a tune on that list over a specific season it will get the call up to the seasonal.

Some tunes do hit my brain and go immediately to the seasonal as well.

By the time of Autumn 2025, I felt like making a mixtape for Autumn was tough. The main problem was that it was hot and sunny all the time. Summer lasted until April. Where was the weather I needed for enjoying some down tempo melodies, some darkness, the sound of rain on the roof?

The inverse of this problem was that I was scheduled to leave for Norway in early May, so whatever Autumn I was going to have had to be squeezed between summer finally ending and then.

Optimistically I named my playlist in Spotify Høst 25, which is Norwegian for "Autumn, 2025". And in March I added a couple of folky/dreamy tracks that gave me a feeling of what Autumn might actually vibe like. I also added a song called "Midnight Sun" from Jan Blomqvist's new album, for obvious reasons.

The reality of Autumn was a lot of moving house/selling house fun, ankle pain, and a month long cold. Plus some good tunes from Lawrence Hart, Brother Bird and Of A Revolution that had got me through some late night drives to the self storage or trips in the hire truck.

A 2m x 1m x 1m (approximately) solid chunk of an ending chapter of life.

By the time I took off for Oslo I had eight songs worth of Autumn and I thought I was either going to have to combine this with winter after I got back, or maybe release another seasonal EP (Summer 2022 was the first of those when I went arm first into the CBF).

A lot happened in Norway and I listened to a lot of music there but it certainly wasn't autumn.

On my last night in Lofoten, giddy with the heights of Reinebringen and the endless sunset and sleep deprivation I sought a playlist to soundtrack my drive back to Eggum and I started with Høst. Within about eight minutes I was listening to Midnight Sun while driving under a midnight sun and this was incredibly validating to me as a sign of my musical taste, sense of timing, and good fortune.

Because the drive was a lot longer than the short autumn soundtrack, after Gonna Be Me finished I switched to 2025's Liked From Radio and played it on shuffle.

There were a lot of good songs on that list and some I skipped. And the ones I didn't skip got instantly encoded with the vibrancy and energy of that drive along Lofoten's E10.

The sun still hadn't set when I arrived back in Eggum. Obviously. But autumn had ended. I was about to return to Adelaide for winter and a whole set of new releases and old life. But I wanted to do anything I could to hold on to that drive and that autumn where I pushed through pain and sickness to move house, sell a house, recover from injuries, work hard and then make it to glorious Norway for a life changing holiday.

So I added all the songs I'd just heard to the playlist in the order I'd heard them.

Autumn sunset colours in Adelaide, not Norway.

And now that winter is closer to ending than it is to starting, it's time to commemorate that decision and add Høst 25 to the list of seasons I've had the joy of experiencing with music.

When the last week of spring hit 37° and the forecast showed December bringing with it an early taste of 40° it felt like the inevitable and familiar return of summer. Days of leaves at the front door, numb fingers trying to assemble breakfast, cravings for sun to penetrate clouds, all were forgotten. It was summer again. The fifth I would live through at my current address. I could already see the next few months spreading out before me. Early morning walks. Blocking out the sun with whatever I could. Air conditioning. Smoothies. Salads. Emerging into the air after dinner for beach walks or sunset beers. Summer Again. I saved my playlist with that name ready for the weeks ahead.

Summer provided all of that. And it provided injuries, stress, Christmas, family, house stress, and new music.

It's now March 19, and forecast for 33° tomorrow. Every day I wake up and think, Summer Again. But today at least one long lingering stress from the end of summer has been resolved. So it feels appropriate that I should post my summer playlist now, in the hopes that after this the drought might break and it will actually rain again.

Specific summer memories must include:
Cooking a lot of olive oil, salt, herbs and chicken.
So many cheap berries from Saturday morning markets strolls with Vanessa.
Enjoying the tiny difference that roller shutters made to the house temperature.
Floating in a pool.
A family dinner as sunset light filtered in from across the mountain tops.
Nash eating/drinking pup-a-cinos.
Doing a lot of holiday planning.
It almost never, ever raining.

I know what compelled me to buy a ticket for the Anjunadeep Open Air show tonight. I listen to their mixes all the time. Usually around 9AM after coffee while programming, or better, drawing a component diagram. Progressive trance. Sonic synth work. Well chosen vocal samples. Visualising the relationships between systems. Bliss.

But standing in a crowd at the other end of the day would be a different story. And back in October I couldn't have known that I would be in the apex of preparing my house for sale. Yet I still went. I guess I wanted to see if I felt something. Or if I had any sense of belonging.

I did not. But the music was good and loud. Earplugs were worth bringing, and the high vis vest made for a pleasant cruise home on the bike in the temperate, open air.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Maybe if I brought my laptop.

There's not much to love about heatwaves, but last night I did get a serendipitous shuffle that put Leftfield in my car speakers as I set off for an after dark run to put boxes into storage. With the windows down, it was a good vibe.

No such luck tonight, even with the sun disappeared I had to drive with the air conditioner pumping just to be able to roll down the windows.

Recording this memory for reflecting on next winter.

Spring 2024 started with many leftover quiz night cupcakes and pizza slices, and a crisp Sunday morning. Irises were in bloom. Jumpers were worn. A lot happened in the following three months that led to a barefoot walk on the beach last Saturday night as the sun showed no interest in the horizon despite it being well after 7pm.

Tomato plants have grown, exams were passed, pub trivia was won, wellness benefits were spent on putt putt and bouldering. Blinds and shutters have been installed in preparation for the Summer 24-25 playlist. We walked on the beach.

I visited Alligator Gorge, Watson's Bay, and Melbourne twice. I saw the milky way and a miniature horse. Hats and shorts replaced heated gloves and puffer jackets. I witnessed another AFL Grand Final that I'll probably forget. I made a lot of sandwiches seasoned with Gaganis italian herb mix, plus quite a few pizzas. We walked on the beach some more.

I bought a new computer and monitor. I settled into my new job. I rode my bike to a brewery, and then caught the new train line back. Vanessa beat me in arcade basketball many times. I did a lot of gym and I saw Chihuly in the Garden. Nash swam in West Lakes. We walked on the beach.

I took many photos of flowers and birds. And Nash. And sunsets at the beach.

I lost two teeth. I went to Christmas Carols. I wrote a bunch of code. I listened to a lot of music. Over 5000 unique songs, 80+ a day. That's not counting the times when I dug up old mixes for the speaker in the gym, or when I put on Anjunadeep mixes for focused software development, or when Vanessa was DJ in the car on the way to the beach.

It was a good Spring.

Considering all the effort I put into passing my latest work certification, I can't believe I missed preselecting the playlist for after I passed the exam.

Over the past six years I've tried a few ways of getting through winter - surgery, northern hemisphere holidays, global pandemics - with varying levels of success. Winter 2024 featured none of those and while I was still embittered about the cold a lot it was probably the most tolerable winter I can recall having. Though not as tolerable as hiking through forests in western Europe.

What was the trick to this?

Better warmth strategy. I bought an alpine-quality puffer jacket in May, and upgraded my old North Face jacket during winter as well. I bought gloves with mini heaters in them. You just need to recharge the batteries every couple of days.

I discovered the benefits of wearing pyjama pants under my tracksuit pants for extra warmth. I bought new socks. I wore beanies. There was a single morning it was cold enough to justify wearing all of the above at the same time. Most of the time I was able to coordinate a few of these together such that I did not feel cold while being outside. This resulted in less grumbling.

Indoors, I gave up on watching television in my freezing living room and spent every night at home in my study with the door shut and the heater running. Even that was still pretty chilly and didn't stop me from teaming the pyjama pants and tracksuit pants at times, but it was tolerable.

Good distractions - one technical project and one mindless pastime. The former was designing and building the quiz website. The latter was beating Breath of the Wild, which I actually completed around the second weekend of July and then I didn't play any games after. But it got me past the solstice.

Getting sun on my arms at every opportunity. Mostly by timing my lunch breaks for around 2pm on days when there were no clouds, and walking really fast to justify removing my jumper.

Also what definitely helped was not getting sick, other than the tail end of a cold in the first days of June. How I managed this is probably due to a lack of social activity and well timed vaccines, but it absolutely made the season way less shit. Also having most of August off when it was serendipitously quite sunny certainly accelerated the transition into spring.

All of that was good, but I think solid routines were the real key to getting through winter. Trips to the markets on Saturday mornings, walking Nash to the bakery on Sundays. Birthday month's daily desserts. Inviting myself around to Alex's fire on the weekends. Coffee and progressive trance between 9 and 10 each workday.

A paper titled Routine and the Perception of Time in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that a key factor of people remembering time as passing more slowly was "anchors of novelty", and by removing a lot of novelty from my life in Winter it certainly does feel like it breezed by.

Actually, considering I did work two major projects, changed jobs, had a colonoscopy and a two week holiday I'm not sure those enjoyable routines really did help that much, and maybe it was the pyjamas plus tracksuits that was the real MVP.

Or perhaps it was actually the new music.