Hurry up, it's nearly here.....

Thursday January 9th 2014. 00:23

Funny how we spend the latter few months of any year, eagerly counting down toward December 25th. All that build up, all that stress, all that shopping. All that wrapping.

With all that lead up, you eagerly wait in anticipation to see the smiles on the faces of your loved ones when you give them the gifts that you really hope they will love.

And within the space of less than an hour, the unwrapping is done.

With all the muscling through the supermarket to fill your cupboards, fridge and freezer with enough food to feed every person in your extended family. Completely lost is the realisation that if every one in the family is spending all this money in case the related hordes descend on them, surely the whole family can't go round everyone's house ? If we're all round someone else's house eating all their food, I'm not at home eating mine.

In any event, no amount of sweating over exactly how to cook the perfect Christmas Turkey, or discovering the latest new and entirely secret way to roast potatoes (a secret that the whole country is party to I might add) even though roasting potatoes is something most of us do every Sunday without a second's thought. It's all over and done.

Stomaches are full to bursting. Wallets are empty. And still it is all over. So we then start looking forward to the inevitable slide into the New Year.

Excitedly recanting the events of the year gone by, and daring to suggest or guess at the new opportunities the next 365 days will bring. THIS year will be different, we tell ourselves.

Resolutely we commit to changes that we can barely remember, let along keep to a week later.

Now, a week into the New Year itself what are we doing ? (well, okay, I mean what am I doing). I'm counting down, wishing the time flies past until my next pay day.

That date, now two weeks away feels a long way away in deed.

Where the wind blows

January 6th 21:52. Monday.

Is it really Monday ? Only Monday ?

Can't it be, well. Thursday or something ? Friday ?

No ?

Oh well.

Like a good Englishman, I'm going to talk about the weather. It's been raining and howling with wind for about two weeks now. The storms that brought disruption, damage, flooding and power loss to thousands of homes before Christmas don't really seem to be abating.

The storms in the United States of America have had wind chill temperatures drop to -50 degrees. It's like the film 'The Day After Tomorrow'. Apparently it's been the windiest December since the 60s and the wettest since the 50s.

Yeah, and global warming is a myth.

Something interesting to say ? Don't be ridiculous.

Sunday January 5th 2014. 23:56

I am resisting the temptation to commit to, or hint at any New Year resolutions this year. If memory serves - and it doesn't really need to serve, I can just look back on blog entries for the last two or three years - making such commitments has failed in the past. I also note that not making those commitments has failed in the past.

hmmmm

So hard to know what to do. I know. How about, not using some arbitrary date in the calendar to prompt me to change something in my life that I've put up with or been too lazy about for the last x number of days/weeks/months/years/decades.

I am really getting to old to play all these silly psychological games with myself, and I suspect that anyone (I am sorry if you are) reading this will be bored to tears to read about yet another person promising themselves, and the world (because the world really gives a rats arse about what I do or don't do) that they are going to eat less / exercise more / be more creative / get out more.

My great plan for 2014 ? I plan to be more spontaneous. There. Ruined it already, but planning it, I'm no longer spontaneous. Shit.

While one part of my head folds in on itself in what can only be described as an angry though paradox, the rest of me will just sit here typing random stuff until it either makes sense or stops pouring out of my head via my wrinkly hands.

Wrinkly ? No. I'm not THAt old (and don't get me started on the concept of age) I've just gotten out of a two hour bath. So I'm wrinkly. Time for some chocolate milkshake I think.

Desk and lamp. Christmas presents to myself

Desk. The desk was a good idea. It lends an air of 'sit up and pay attention' to what I'm doing when I'm on my (lovely new Macbook) computer. The table lamp also serves me well, by literally illuminating the area of focus.

The cats on the other hand, think that this means it is a sun bed for them. The fact that the lamp is fitted with an energy saving bulb, so therefore does not radiate heat seems to have been lost on them entirely. I don't know if cats need vitamin D, but they sure as hell aren't getting it, or any comforting warmth from the lamp.

2013 has been a year where I went from struggling to get by on what I earn, to becoming comfortable (but not to excess), by a slight raise in my earnings and by doing a butt load of overtime.

The Christmas period has been marked with many things, but it's also been marked with me doing even more overtime than usual, and that being on the bank holidays will be really nice when that hits my pay toward the end of January.

I may have earned more in the last year, but I have also not been as restricting on outgoings as I should have. I have spent too much on 'things'. Gadgets. Although I don't regret the bigger purchases (new TV, new laptop). I am aware that I have not made anywhere near as much of a dent in my credit mountain as I would have liked.

2014 has to be a year of spend less, earn more. Have fun, but rein in the spending.

I am fortunate to be in this situation. There are lots of people in very bad situations, where they are struggling to make ends meet. The politicians will argue, and will blame each other, and will point accusingly at one another, but that doesn't really do fuck all for the poor families trying to keep it all together.

I've found also in 2013 that I have drifted even further away from one of my friends. I had mulled a fair bit during the year about how this person, who has been a constant in my life for the last twenty years is now such a distant part of it. I have seen them about three times all year. Communicated online a few times, but that was it.

People drift into and out of your life, it's an ongoing process. Times change, we all change. Some people are bringers of change, some people don't happily fit into the change in direction. This friend has found something that really makes her happy, and that makes me happy. Something that really gives her comfort, in dealing with the hardships that she and her family are facing. She has found religion. But she has found it in such a way that I do not feel I can  talk to her really anymore because she will bring it up, and as much as I respect her views, and her beliefs, I really don't agree with them.

Because this creates a thing that we cannot talk about, without fear of one of us being really upset, we now no longer seem to have anything to talk about. So it's easier to not talk. Somewhere inside me I feel that this is me failing her, and me letting her down, maybe even that I am prejudiced toward her faith. What I do know, is that it was easier to ignore her spouting on facebook about ill informed political issues - where everything was something personal for her. This is more intimate. I feel I cannot say anything, because what I will say will offend. And I don't want to offend her.

Life moves on. There is nothing any of us can do about it. It would be pointless to try. Everything has it's time. I feel that our friendship may have had its time. There may be a time in the future when our paths phase back into one another. It's just that right now, I can't see it.

In line with me making my life the way I want it to be (instead of it being the way someone else wants it to be, or even what I think someone else wants it to be) I am aware that some things I do, will help me be who or what I want to be. Other things won't. So I will want to, stop spending time and energy on them.

It works the same for people. I am tired of the distracting bullshit of social media. But that's not social media's fault is it. It's mine. I'm the one being distracted. I either take control of that, or I don't. I either learn to ignore it or I live with the constant doubt and nagging feeling that I am missing out on something.

And I'm right. I am missing out on something. I'm missing out on life, being too absorbed in sitting on my arse watching other people talk about how little they are doing in their lives also.

I'm an englishman. So I'm going to make a cup of tea. Anyone want one ?

Oh my young apprentice

A working class hero is something to be.