Goodbye...

...2004. For me, the year has had it's ups and downs, and luckily, the up bit has mainly been towards the latter half, and so it's a year that I shalln't remember too harshly. If it had ended in August I may have wanted to forget all about it.

But for a huge number of people, affected by the tsunami, 2004 is ending very badly, and will be a year that they may want to, but cannot, forget. 2005 may not be too great for them either, so I shalln't say "happy new year"; just, as I started, goodbye 2004.

Bank Holiday Power Tool Frenzy!

The house is once again awash with saw dust, bits of wood, and assorted hardware. The cupboard I built last month is now in the process of being complimented with a second matching cupboard on the other side of the room.

When it's finished, I shall have somewhere to put the tools I bought to build the first one...

Cold Turkey

It actually was a white Christmas. I peered through the window at just past midnight, and it had actually snowed. On Christmas Day. Not a lot, certainly not enough to turn Chavsfield into a winter wonderland, but enough to make the roads slippery. Excellent.

In fact, all in all it was an entirely perfect Christmas Day. Now comes the week of eating assorted turkey derived meals, and as I'm on call from 10 this evening, detox...

Merry Christmas!

I've got a silly hat on. I'm full of turkey and sprouts. I am, frankly, drunk, but it's only half past four in the afternoon. Yes, it's Christmas!

Oh, and no sign of any snow here in Chavsfield as yet, though it is bloody cold...

I'm Dreaming...

... you know what for.

Best chance in years for a white Christmas, the weather people were saying yesterday, but looking at the maps and forecasts today, it's perhaps looking a bit less likely - certainly here in Chavsfield at least. Pity, really. It'd be a fantastic day to wake up and see the familiar (but increasingly rare) glow of moonlight reflected off snow. Weather forecast or not, there no harm in keeping on dreaming for the next 24 hours or so...

Almost there...

Time's nearly up... just two more days, and Christmas will finally be here. I'm really looking forward to having a few days off work and recovering from the stress that preparing for those couple of days off work induce...

21 today.. again...

...for the 13th or 14th time. I've lost count.

Twenty one was a crap age anyway. It conveyed no useful additional benefits, besides being able to go into some of the more grab-a-granny type nightclubs, which if I had wanted to, I probably could have done anyway. I seem to recall there not even being that much of a drinking frenzy to celebrate it, though the lack of memory may just be down to there actually being quite a good drinking frenzy. So I think I'll be 18 again. For the 16th or 17th time. That was a good night. So I'm told.

Thirty was the last big "milestone" I had to celebrate, the next I suppose is forty...

I'm not actually worried about getting older, though I do wish the years didn't pass by so quickly. Rest assured that when I do get to forty, provided my liver holds out til then, I shall celebrate it with as much gusto as any previous birthday, because, just like today, that's all it is, another birthday.

Right, I'm off to relax now in one of my birthday presents - new slippers... Hmmm... where's my pipe gone?

Cheese and pineapple on sticks

It's my annual birthday/christmas celebration tonight, and I really ought to be cutting up chunks of cheese and cooking sausage rolls. But I've got a bit of a hangover, so I'm not!

Munchausens Syndrome

Does anybody know when it is appropriate to have a midlife crisis? See on Monday, I'll be 34, and assuming the biblical lifespan of three score and ten years, that means that I'm heading quite rapidly to midlife (note the absense of the term "middle age"...)

Can I have a two year long midlife crisis starting on Monday? Or do I have to wait until I am older? I don't want to trade my girlfriend in for a younger model, but I wouldn't mind an excuse (or the money) for a sports car.

Channel 5

In the absence of Horizon on BBC2, and despite the presence of QI (also on BBC2) and (albeit for the last couple of weeks "best of" episodes) Scrapheap Challenge on Channel 4, my telly watching recently has been fairly limited. Almost every day my answer to the question "is there anything on the box tonight" is a resounding no (luckily I am blessed with a non-soap watching woman).

Tonight, however, having seen and vaguely remembered the words "Egypt" and "Sphinx" in the write up in the Metro this morning, on spec we decided to stick the box on and turn to Channel 5, whereupon through the mist and fog of poor reception there was a jolly good and reasonable well made documentary about the mysterious Sphinx of Giza, which, not withstanding the speculation presented as science, shoddy reconstructions, and spending half the programme talking on the phone with my mother, was most interesting and enjoyable.

This has now triggered a number of reactions. Firstly, it has reminded me I have at some point still to fit the new TV aerial which has lingered in it's unopened packaging in various hidey-holes about the house for the best part of two years; secondly, that I haven't written anything for my website for quite a while; thirdly I might go through the almost wholly disappointing schedules in this year's Christmas Radio Times and actually bother to look at the listings for Channel 5...

Ho Ho Ho

I've finally caught a bit of the Christmas spirit. In a stunning joint effort (as in I directed operations from a bad-back friendly position) we put up the Christmas tree yesterday. Christmas spirit or not, I somehow managed to avoid any temptation to smother the front of the house and the front garden in inflatable Santas and rope light, unlike most around here. I was going to try and take a few shots of some of the local illuminations and somehow include them here, but some other kindly soul has not only taken pictures but created a website: www.hohoho.org.uk

Right, now I'm going to practice seasonal drinking and eating too much.

F**king Hostile

What is happening? Dimebag is dead. This never happened before Metal tried to be rap...

Psychos.... get out of rock, we don't need you, we don't want you. Fuck off.

Ouch

My back has gone again. There I was at work doing nothing more taxing than trying to find something to sit on to eat my dinner, and it went. So now I'm in pain.

On the plus side, since this is the third time my back has played up in as many months, at least I know what to expect and how best to cope with it. Perhaps I should take up masochism and learn to enjoy it...

Hangover

After spending a week on the wagon because I was on call, it was fairly predictable that I would get absolutely hammered yesterday evening. Not necessarily being good at moderation when it comes to alcohol, it was equally fairly predictable that I would have a bad head this morning. And crikey, what a bad head I had. Luckily, not as bad as the gf's though. Her's was so bad she won't even entertain the idea of hair of the dog...

Late

Yesterday, I had loads on my mind to blog about, but couldn't because the page wouldn't load up. How annoying.

For starters, there was a potentially armed man on the loose here in Chavsfield (who turned out not to be armed and not actually in Chavsfield, so that was a bit of a non-event - certainly not up to the "there's a madman with a machine gun on the loose" conversations on the train in the morning.)

Then there is the amazing exponential increase in gaudy Christmas lights around these parts over the last couple of days, presumably as a result of it nearly being the same month as Christmas. I dread to think what the coming weekend will bring... the army of inflatable Santas and snowmen surely can't get much bigger?

Finally, I actually finished my DIY project, and now have a fairly well made, fairly attractive cupboard in my living room. And more to the point, an entire new flat surface to gather dust, pizza leaflets, phone chargers and other assorted junk. Great!