Stone Cold Reminisci-funk

This is a strange time of year for me. The limbo between Christmas and New Year means nothing to a shift worker such as my very excellent self. Life returns to mundane banality and work-work-work with a frosty slap in the face on 27th December precisely, but it's another week before the rest of the world catches up, so you're left in a hazy netherworld where everything seems normal, but the fridge is full of exotic leftovers and chocolate and the TV schedule's gone all weird. Most disconcerting. And on top of all that, New Year is here again, heralding the yearly visit from the Grand Old Duke of Vague Sense of Disappointment With Your Lot in Life. Hey-de ho, though, I am countering the waves of attacks from his soldiers of shame by staying in on New Year's Eve, going to bed before midnight, and generally pretending my name is Nico Bellic and all I need worry about is where to take women on dates so that I will definitely get laid.

And that, my friends, is my first resolution taken care of - more recycling in 2009! Yes, I wrote that last week, but could not work up the energy to think of a cohesive conclusion to my sorry tale, so just went straight on back to the Xbox. I did in the end go to bed early on New Year's Eve, like the crazy muthafucka that I am, but didn't get to smugly snooze through midnight like some kind of emo with a false sense of superiority, because, of course, the rest of the world was celebrating the arrival of the new year with noisy bang-bangs. Oh, and fireworks HONK HONK. So I marked midnight by grumpily rolling over and muttering about how early I had to get up.

Over Christmas, the normal family dinner took a frightening turn when my mother flung down the roast potatoes and announced she had finally had enough of my accumulated crap taking up valuable space in their attic, and that the time had come to clear it the FUCK out. (She didn't say that, but looking in her eye, I knew she meant it deep down in her foul-mouthed heart) This caused both my stomach to fall and my bile to rise, leaving a small black hole in the centre of my being, which collapsed under its own gravity, sucking me, my family, and the whole Christmas spread into an area smaller than a neutron. Or that would have happened, had I had my way. Instead, with a grimace, I mentally adjusted my plans for the rest of the day from hurtling down the motorway in an empty car towards the warm and loving embrace of my Slanket, to crawling around a cold and cobwebby loft, trying to sort through boxes of stuff not quite rubbish enough to count as actual rubbish, but not nearly important enough to be worth carting 80 miles to my already over-stuffed flat-ette. Thankfully, my mother sensed my discomfort at this turn of events, and instead dumped a shoebox full of photos in my arms and toe-punted me out of the door, to distant cheers of approval.

And so, back in the big smoke, and coincidentally in a cloud of big smoke, I found myself in the titular SCR-F. They were all pictures from around my university days, bringing back floods of mostly unpleasant memories, contrasted with a small amount of pleasure that my 18-year-old self looks very similar to my 28-year-old self (I have been labouring under the illusion that I have spent the intervening years gradually getting more repulsive, but happily, I started off with a healthy level of repulsiveness! Heh, that's maybe a little bit too self-consciously self-hating, even for me. Apologies) Anyway, I have singularly failed to keep in touch with anyone from uni, mostly because I am terrible at replying to emails, but also because there were never many emails to reply to to begin with; I did a quite magnificent complete job of isolating myself actually physically inside a bottle of Southern Comfort, mooning over various men. So where are they all now, these beautiful young things I have captured forever on shiny photo paper? Who knows. A bit of googling revealed almost nothing, so my reminisci-funk continues on unfettered.

Where are you, class of 1998 Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (I know, I know)?? Any information gratefully recieved. So my reminisc-funk can be reminisci-sunk!

Oh, yeah. I'm back, baby!

Hi, I'm Justresting, And You're Reading A Blog Post

The Christmas decorations came down this weekend, and my attempts to smoke out the melancholic mood that had settled on the tired tinsel as it was unceremoniously stuffed into Tesco carrier bags by blasting Led Zeppelin II through the house completely and utterly failed to work. So I was left to fight off the fog of new year malaise by other means, up to and including wine, wii-ing, and terrible, terrible chocolate.

So now begins the grim and tiresome task of trying to differentiate 2008 from all previous years in my life of impossible dreariness. Blissfully, I have already achieved great things this year, by managing to alienate an old acquaintance who looked me up on Facebook (Facebook! Oh, the humanity) in one simple message. Note to self: The proper response to "We should have a beer sometime" is "Yes, that would be nice," not "Yeah, cos last time we met I was a total fuck-up and probably got just the tiniest bit rapey. Oh, you'd blocked that out of your memory? HA HA HA HA!! No, it's fine, I'm really dull now. One extreme t'other, eh? But hey! Let's party!" followed by a plaintive look at the cloud of internet dust where there had been, until recently, quite a pleasant person who I wouldn't have minded meeting up with. Fear not! A copy of this tale is winging its way to the Oxford English Dictionary in an envelope marked "flying start redefined".

Where can 2008 possibly go from here? Well, I have one resolution and one resolution only, seeing as I'm so ahead of the game that I quit smoking five months ago (and those pointing out this could equally be "so behind the game I quit smoking eight months after making the last resolution" will be taken out back and culled like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's chickens - wet with bitter, bitter tears of rage). Although I don't think I will achieve it, somehow. Because it is to take part in some sort of DVD commentary before the end of the year. Come on! Who has more fun than people on DVD commentaries? These people just sit in rooms with microphones and laugh, and laugh, and laugh. In my job, I am often in small rooms with microphones, and I have never uttered so much as a snigger, let alone graduated to tittering or, heaven forfend, a full-on guffaw. Now, there are two very, very minor flaws in this plan. One: to be on a DVD commentary, you have to have had some kind of involvement in the making of a DVD, which in my opinion is a ridiculous rule. Two: I have no discernible talent in acting, directing, or writing. On that last point, direct your eyes to the skies, and note the bi-plane roaring across the horizon pulling a banner reading "No Shit Sherlock".

Actually, I've been watching so many commentaries recently (oh, wow. Does THAT explain a lot!) that I occasionally wonder why I can't hear a disembodied voice relating amusing anecdotes over all TV programmes, the news, and when I'm just walking around. "Oh, this was fun to do, this walk down to the bus stop sequence. As you can see, I had an iPod on, but it wasn't just a prop, I was actually listening to music! It was Lindsay Cooper's soundtrack to the seminal Sally Cooper film, Rags/Goldiggers, I seem to remember. Or was it Mcfly? I don't... Oh, there, just in the background, that's Bill, great friend of mine. Hi, Bill, if you're listening, you old cocksucker! Ha ha, no, that's a private joke. Oh, now, this crossing of Shepherd's Bush Green bit, this really took it out of me. I mean, just emotionally..." (fades into distance)