There are lots of things I am looking forward to this year. Here are some UK culture-ish things worth sharing. Except for Bamboo, which is neither culture, nor high on the list. A full, comprehensive list which also includes the flippant addition of bamboo can be found over on Bitchbuzz.

- Debut indie flick Submarine from Richard Ayoade is released which will suffer from easy comparisons to Harold & Maude and Rushmore. And whether this does it good or hinders reception, it should be “literate, sardonic, nostalgic” and hopefully a bit lovely. Released in March.

- Mixed thoughts on The Royal Wedding which provides us with a day off, repetitive television, and a notable lack of 1980 Adrian Mole-style street parties. It’s a bit sweet though. April 29th.

- Social Media Week in February which, if it’s anything at all similar to Internet Week Europe from last year, should be awesome. Excited at the prospect of good events. February 7-11

- The constant hubbub of the release of Modern Warfare 3 and the inevitable attempts to improve on the Black Opps release event that took place last year, which should be interesting to see what gets done launch-wise. I’m going to stick to playing Age of Empires though and pretending I am ten years old.

- More Sherlock. (and Dr Who, yes, as the BBC continues its fad of men-with-angular-faces.) But I love Sherlock Holmes in complete consistency from the BBC production, through the slightly-awful film to the modern day version with its on-screen clues and texting which are, whilst mostly silly, also utterly wonderful.

- Mr Charlie Brooker, after ditching his Guardian column is back in the angrily titled How TV Ruined Your Life to explore the “fairground mirror British television holds up to reality, and how misguided it can be to treat the images you see on screen as a decent likeness.” To be honest, it could explore how the Eurythmics feel about chocolate money and I’d still watch it.

- And lastly, JWT says 2011 will be the year of Bamboo (amongst 99 other things). My favourite tights use essence/extract/scientific particles of bamboo to create magical softness. Manufacturers may begin injecting this into everything we buy so buy shares now. Expect bamboo newspapers and apples by July.

What are you looking forward to?

I wrote about Quora. Less about whether it’s a Twitter killer (yawn) and more about banal chatter vs expert opinion and debate. First though, it’s very important you watch these crows.

Read it over on Bitchbuzz Tech.

I made some candles recently. They didn’t require a massive attention span, and the internet told me I could use yogurt pots as molds, which pretty much sold it for me.

It was lots of fun. I suppose these have turned out to be one of the “well they’re ugly as hell, but they’re mine and I love them” things. They’re probably not very nice for you but I love my little blue and white-ish candles. They’ve been sitting around looking very pretty and I’ve only just braved some terrible fear that lighting them will break them (by break I mean I’ll have fundamentally made them wrong and they’ll explode).

I’ve written up how to make them over at Bitchbuzz.

As for today I’m beginning a long slow fight with a pair of knitting needles. I’m using happy red thread to keep my spirit up.