Head-, Hands- and Heart-first

They say changing residence, changing relationship and changing occupation are three of the most stressful events one can undertake in one’s life, and should be kept apart, entered into with caution, etcetera etcetera.  We say: how do they know?  Have they tried it?  Where’s the experimental evidence?

So, in the interests of science, 2016 is going to be the year in which I’m going to put this theory to the test by doing all three.  It’s not going to be a very meaningful experiment, mind you, because we already know the outcome and will not permit anything to get in its way.

A Happy and Adventurous New Year to you all.

 

 

Don’t Do Don’t

I was toying with doing one of those reviews of the year, but Facebook has beaten me to it, by selecting pictures I wisely posted there – a moth (or butterfly; there was a heated debate); a snail traversing a hose; a frog; some dead tomatoes; a book; some orioning (that’s too good a typo to correct, innit); a spider's web; did I mention a book?

So instead, as a lesson and a resolution, I’ll just stick with the post title.  To put it another way, ‘do do do’.  (As Frank Sinatra almost said.)

Happy Festives everybody.

Strange New Year

The deal was supposed to be £39 per head.  Details were a bit vague.  Some food.  Entertainment.  Fireworks, maybe.  No need to book, just turn up.  So we just turned up.

This place, which I won’t name, consists of one room downstairs, two up, walls and ceiling festooned throughout with hangings, faded sepia photos, brass trinkets, assorted unidentifiable hippyish knick-knacks, altogether charming but not necessarily inspiring confidence.  A family were seated round the only table downstairs, looking defiantly glum.  Voices could be heard from upstairs, this was encouraging, it wasn’t just the six of us.   Our host, dressed in baggy silk greenish loon or harem pants, a black spangly waistcoat over a floral blouse, some kind of turban or fez, greeted us effusively. 

“You’d better have the sofa.  Anything to drink?”  Our expressions must have provided the answer, as he immediately went on: “Prosecco, red, white, lager, local real ale… I forget what else…”  We settled for two Proseccos.  “Two Proseccos, then.  On the house.”  He bustled away.  We exchanged a glance.  So the drinks were extra.

A calm-looking cat was occupying much of the sofa.  My relationship with cats is ambivalent – they either love me or hate me, I tend towards a kind of wary respect – but this one moved out of the way with no fuss, and we sat down.  Wafty new-age musical sounds were seeping out of speakers somewhere behind me, slightly too loud.  The drinks arrived and we toasted the occasion and ourselves.  The cat came back, checked us out, and crept onto my lap.  I didn’t argue.

Two big mugs of soup and some crusty bread were delivered by the teenage Portuguese waitress.  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.  This was the first hint.

The conjuror arrived.  I don’t normally like conjuring, because it annoys me that I can never work out how it’s done, but this guy was good, so I’ll tell you his name – Dee Riley.   Whilst we were enjoying our very tasty soups, he worked the by now three groups of downstairs dwellers, three card tricks each.  I liked this very much, because when he moved on from us to the next group, I got a sideways view and so was actually able to spot how he pulled the card out of someone’s ear.  Once you’ve seen through one trick, it gives you a different slant on the skill of the performance.

We went upstairs to watch – participate in – Dee’s stand-up show, which was brilliant, not to mention hilarious.  I sussed one more trick, which made me feel even better, though I was desperately hungry by now, recognising that no more food was going to forthcome and wondering whether this was really a good way of spending £39 plus.

Just before midnight we were called back down and out into the courtyard to set off Chinese lanterns.  (Bee and I declined, as we both hate the things.)  We got another ample glass of Prosecco.  My watch told me it was 2015, but nobody sang Auld Lang Syne, nobody pranced around like you’re supposed to do: everybody smiled weakly and just drifted off in their own separate directions.  No fireworks.

I went in to pay the bill, ready to make a mild fuss.  The boy behind the counter checked.  “Not sure we kept a tab for the sofa,” he said.  “But I reckon four glasses of red?”  I nodded.  “So that’ll be £13.60 then.”

I gave him fifteen quid and we scarpered for the taxi.

*

The 2 a.m. midnight feast back home was delicious.

Funny Old Year

I don’t really go in for omens or portents or any of that stuff, so I read nothing into the fact that during the last forty-eight hours of 2014, large technological chunks of my life seemed to be cracking up.  The tumbler dryer broke down.¹  The mysterious orange fault light in the car came on again.²  The central heating boiler refused to light when instructed to do so by the time switch.³  And my expensive new glasses broke.⁴


I don’t really go in for the word ‘happy’ either.  Françoise Sagan, in Bonjour Tristesse, noted that happiness is like a flat plain without landmarks, an observation I have often used to drag myself up out of some state of misery or other, though I don’t think she meant it for that purpose.  But for this New Year, for myself, I’m wishing for a few more flat happy plains.  For anyone else who reads this, I think the best I can wish you is a year full of fulfilment, adventure and discovery.  Or whatever makes you happy.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you about the weirdest, wonderfulest New Year’s eve ever, if I can make sense of it by then.

 

1. It’s only fifteen years old, FFS!  Is nothing built to last nowadays?  I can apparently spend anything between £250 and £1,250 at John Lewis for a new one.
2. I’ve learned to ignore this.  I’ll take it in, they’ll tinker around for a few hours, switch the light off and tell me it’s mysterious.  I keep telling them the fault is that the fault light is on, but they don’t believe me.  I think I’m going to get a new car. 
3. I can make it come on by twiddling a knob on the front, but getting up on a freezing morning isn’t exactly fun.  Homedare* are coming to fix it (or tell me it’s mysterious) on Monday.
4. To be exact, one of the arms (is that what they’re called?) fell off.  The tiny screw which holds it on had somehow worked loose, and is of course lost forever.  The opticians don’t open till Monday.  So I’ve learnt a new skill, that of invisibly repairing a pair of glasses with sellotape.  Always look on the bright side, eh?

*That was a typo which I thought was worth leaving in.

The best-laid plans…

New Year’s Eve is a time for looking back and forward; or, in this case, neither.

We were supposed to cross the triangular village Green to N’s house, for nibbles and vodka shots, at about half-six.  I’d then go back to the rented cottage to peel potatoes and turnips and heat up two or three haggises (haggi?) in time for a late supper, for somewhere between five and fifteen people.  I’d thought ahead, even brought my own masher for the tatties’n’neeps just in case the cottage didn’t have one (it did).

Around eight-thirty, it became evident that this wasn’t a plan any more.  The nibbles were running out, so we dashed back over the Green for an extra pork pie and a few more bottles.  At this point, the plan swerved into a visit to Kate and John’s house round the corner, where their son was running a tiny disco in his bedroom: only room for about five people to dance, let alone fifteen.  So fifteen of us danced.  The haggi were receding into the future.  I think it might have been around this time that I uttered my first profundity of the evening: “The Best Plan Is Not To Have One.”  Or something like that.

I got into a deep musical conversation with John, leading up to the crucial question: “So, what’s your favourite album, Tim?”  I was about to explain solemnly that it was Petra Haden’s a capella version of ‘The Who Sell Out’, and why, when he looked at his watch.  “Ah.  Excuse me.”

I think I heard a distant shout of “Kate!  Get your fiddle!  Now!”, but I can’t be sure because the next thing I knew I was about four places back in a Pied Piper’s procession across the Green towards our cottage.  John was strumming to Kate’s exuberant fiddle-playing, and everyone was doing that side-to-side splay-legged arm-flapping walk-dance that you can only do when intoxication and euphoria exactly coincide and merge into a perfect moment, just before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Just as we reached the space in front of the cottage, the church bells started ringing the Year in, riotously, joyously blending with our music (I think there was singing by then), and twelve struck – a momentary reflective pause – before Auld Lang Syne was sung and someone suggested we nip across to the pub for “Just the one.”

The haggi have been frozen, puir wee sonsie beasties, possibly to be regenerated around 25^th January.

 

 

 

 

It’s Quiz Time - the ‘answers’

1.      Who didn’t skyfall?

A – the Queen: it was a professional stuntman called Gary Connery (who doesn’t look anything like her close up).

2.      Which tower of strength may have been dug up in a car park?

A – Richard III.  (He braggingly describes himself thus in Shakespeare’s play, despite not even being able to rustle up a wee horse).

3.      Is there life on Mars?

A – Yes.  The Curiosity rover has discovered micro-biological traces in rock samples.  They don’t yet know if it’s indigenous, though; it may have been trodden in on the rover's shoes or something.  (That happens here.)

4.      Where did water start just after it was stopped?

A – here in the UK, of course:  just after the hosepipe ban was introduced in the Spring, it started raining and didn’t stop until just before midnight yesterday.

5.      Of what water-related asset was it said, in June: “Prices have bottomed out and investors feel this is a good time to buy.”?

A – Privately owned islands.  This was the view of a representative of a rather specialised estate agency – rush to get yours tomorrow, as the market will certainly take off following this blog post.

6.      Who is ending the year even more pasty-faced?

A – well, mine was George Osborne, because of the warm pasty fiasco.  But they’re all looking a bit seedy, aren’t they?

7.      Two events proved that the world won’t end just because someone says it will.  Identify them both.

A – 1: The end of the last 400 year Baktun in the Mayan Long Count calendar in 21 December; they simply couldn’t be bothered to calculate the next one, the wimps.  2 : Discovery at CERN of the Higgs boson, which explains, among other things, why we have gravity; some said that this discovery would prompt God to realise the game was up, and shut down the universe.  It didn’t happen, so presumably the game isn’t up yet.

8.      How did someone earn £8,000 a day for knowing nothing?

A – George Entwhistle accepted a  £450,000 pay-off for voluntarily resigning as BBC DG after 54 days of not having a clue what was going on in the organisation he was running.

9.      What illumination has finally gone out?

A – the incandescent light bulb, which is no longer available except in certain specialised forms.

10.  Who threw the best blog party of the year?

A – The incomparable ZZZZZZ!!!  (There may have been better ones, but I find it hard to imagine.)

 

Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s Quiz Time!

Everybody’s doing it, so here’s my 2012 Quiz of the Year.

1.      Who didn’t skyfall?

2.      Which tower of strength may have been dug up in a car park?

3.      Is there life on Mars?

4.      Where did water start just after it was stopped?

5.      Of what water-related asset was it said, in June: “Prices have bottomed out and investors feel this is a good time to buy.”?

6.      Who is ending the year even more pasty-faced?

7.      Two events proved that the world won’t end just because someone says it will.  Identify them both.

8.      How did someone earn £8,000 a day for knowing nothing?

9.      What illumination has finally gone out?

And lastly, an easy one:

10.  Who threw the best blog party of the year?

How much time do I have?

Every autumn I need a new diary.  I still prefer the old-style book-shaped ones, made of paper and cardboard, because – well, I just do.  My life isn’t complicated enough to warrant electronic management.

So sometime in November, on my various excursions to that increasingly alien world called SHOPS (Slim Hope Of Purchasing Something), I started to check out what was available.  I knew exactly what I wanted: the same that has served me well for at least fifteen years.  A5, Week to View, preferably in black; and if Saturday and Sunday get the same amount of space as the other five days, that’s a bonus.  (They rarely do – why do diary designers assume that we’re less busy at weekends?)

Zero.  Ziltch.  The nearest match was in WhS, who have a ‘week to view’ format with the seven days scrunched up on the lefthand page and an empty opposite page headed ‘Notes’.  Eh?

So last Thursday, irritated, I woke up the computer and visited Azamon.  (Yes, I know.  But I really don’t have time to do all that tax research.)  A quick search and sure enough, there it was: as far as I can tell (it hasn’t arrived yet) a pretty close match.  So I swallowed and held my nose and ordered it.

The fact that they haven’t actually managed to deliver my humble request doesn’t in the least demoralise those nice computers at Amonza, because this morning they scratched their heads then emailed me with a list of stuff that, based on my previous purchases, they were pretty sure I needed.

 

Here are just three*:

An A4 Week to View Desk Diary for 2013, in black;

An A5 Day to a Page Diary for 2013, in black;

And the best one:

An A5 Week to View Diary for 2012.  In black.

To be fair, the last was quite cheap.

 

*(There was also a Jerry Lee Lewis CD, identical to the one I bought from them six years ago, which they presumably thought I must have lost by now.)

Happy New Year!

No, not that one, silly, that comes in June.  Or September.  Or December.  However you choose to count through the solar seasons.  But from today, here where I am, there’s going to be more light than darkness.  That feels like a good place to start counting. 

 I sometimes wonder why our calendar year, and most of its dependencies, starts at, or around, the winter solstice rather than the spring equinox.  It depends where you live, of course.  Today should probably be New Years’ Day here in Europe and points north.  In Australia, you’d have your New Year in September.  Near the Equator, it wouldn’t really matter, because you don’t have the same kinds of seasons, and just the one equinox.

I was once accused of being a Dane, which might be true.  I think I’m a Norman, actually, because of my surname; but Normans were Danes or Vikings or something, weren’t they?  So that would account for my sensitivity to the solar seasons, and more especially to my precise delineation of them.  I suppose I’ve chosen the equinoxes and solstices as convenient points to regroup.  We need markers.  We’ll all choose our own, depending on our latitude and its weather and all the other ingredients in our personal mix.

More importantly, though, the financial year starts on 6^th April, just as the forsythia comes into full bloom.

Detox? Bah, humbugs

Monday is officially the most depressing day of the year.  That's good news, of course, it can only get better.  (I'm pretty sure I blogged this identical point this time last year, and probably the year before, but hey, if I'm not allowed to repeat myself, well, I wouldn't be allowed to repeat myself, would I?)  But so-called 'detox' is not the solution.

A friend at work used to give up alcohol for the whole of January.  He was hell to be with, and tipped the first pint of February down with audible relish.  I remember him once saying "Welcome me back to the human race" as he did so.  And science states that so-called detox is a myth: abrupt changes to your body's expectations, as cultivated over eleven months, do more harm than good.  At least the science I read does.

And there are more pressing reasons to abstain from self-imposed abstention.  They come under the collective heading 'Christmas presents'.  Here are a couple:

And of course:

OK, not strictly humbugs; but there must be a hundred of them in there (it doesn't say on the packet), to be consumed by 3 April, when the best-before date starts to poison me.

And I haven't even started on the socks and the handkerchiefs.



Review Of The Year 2011

Lesson Learnt: Tread carefully, but step out with conviction when you do.

Lesson Not Learnt: Don’t wear white shirts to dinner parties.

Best Thing Said To Me: Not telling.  Runner-up: “You are lovely.”

Worst Thing Said To Me: “I really enjoyed our friendship.”

Answered Question: “Does the Higgs boson exist?”  (Answer: maybe.)

Unanswered Question: “What did I come up here for?”

Achievement: Playing the guitar for two hours on Boxing Day after a six month lay-off.

Non-achievement: Painting the kitchen ceiling (winner for three years running).

Un-understood Word: Meme.

Culinary Discovery: Wilkin’s Tomato Ketchup.