Seconds Out :: Year Two

Someone said to me the other day, ‘How on earth are you going to follow 2008?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, 2009?’ I replied, hilariously.

‘No, but blog-wise,’ they insisted, wilfully unamused, ‘what are you going to do? You’ve found a woman, you’ve got a book deal, you lost most of the weight you were trying to lose. You stopped smoking. Mostly. It’s like, what’s left to do? What’s left to blog about? And the answer has to be – as far as I can see: nothing. What’s the point? There’s no point.’

I pooh-poohed the pointlessness. After all, most of what I blogged in 2008 was just ordinary stuff that happened to me: relationships I was having, things I was getting up to, stories from the past. And despite the fact that I won’t be speed dating or whoring myself online in ’09 – fingers crossed – I’ll still be getting up to stuff. I’ll still be having ridiculous conversations with idiots. I’ll still be doing and saying idiotic things myself. So I don’t think things round here will change so radically. Not really.

But still, something worrisome lingered like a foul smell. Maybe it was all that pooh-poohing, maybe it was the fact that in 2008, there’s no denying that this blog did have a hook. An angle. Something that made it a bit special, and gave me a raison d’etre. In 2009 however – unless I come up with something a bit special – it’ll just be another run-of-the-mill blog, and I’ll just be another navel-gazing cyber-diarist, regurgitating an unspectacular existence like a shouty old man in a train station with stuff in his beard.

So, what I’ll have to do – obviously – is come up with something a bit special.

Hmmm. That may take some time.

In the meantime, here are my general intentions, in the traditional, timely manner.

New Year’s Resolutions :: 2009

1. First and foremost I resolve to write the best book I can possibly write. It has to be good enough so that anyone looking forward to reading it is not disappointed. It also has to be good enough to afford me the possibility of writing another one. In fact, ideally, it’ll spawn a career which takes in novels and screenplays and this time in 2010, I’ll be poolside in Malibu, sipping margaritas with Charlie Kaufman and Audrey Tautou. It’ll be purely platonic between Audrey and me however, despite her best efforts and leechlike attentions.

2. Secondly, I resolve to ensure that this blog remains readable. The last thing I want to do is become one of those bloggers who get lucky and then turn their back on their blog. I’d rather jack it in altogether than let it fester and ossify, and I have no intention of doing that.

3. Thirdly, I resolve to purchase or otherwise procure for myself a kitten. I recently saw some pictures of Bengal kittens and I resolved to have one of those.



But then I thought, no. They’re too pretty. I would get one, fall in love with the little thing and then some evil swine would take it away, torture and skin it. You know what human beings are like. And I would never recover. So I resolve instead to get an ordinary moggy. This makes more sense. I’m more of a moggy man really.

4. Fourthly, I resolve to grow my own vegetables and make the healthiest soup known to man. The garden is a bald mess at the moment so the transformation I intend to visit upon it will probably make for some exciting blog posts too. No, really.

5. Fifthly, I resolve to love well and with ecstasy aforethought. (This should maybe have been further up the list.) (Oops.)

6. Sixthly, I resolve to learn a foreign language. Maybe French. Maybe Mandarin Chinese. (Probably French.)

7. Finally, I resolve to carry on in my attempts to become healthy. This means eating well, attending a new gym regularly and generally doing as much as possible to compensate for my increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Ideally I’d like to get down to around twelve or twelve and a half stone by the end of this year.

Then I’d be happy.

But as it is, I’m pretty happy anyway, and I can’t wait to get going on all of the above just as soon as I’m back from Bonnie Scotland.

So all that remains to be said is a gargantuan thank you for reading this year, all of you, even the evil stalker. It’s been a fantastic year and it genuinely would have been nothing without all of the feedback I've received from all of you. And I hope you all have a fantastic 2009.

See you next week.

x

Feel free to leave your own resolutions in the comments. I’d love to hear them.

Christmas Feedback :: Oiling The Festive Perineum

bulk :: nah, let’s not get into that just now. It’s really not relevant. This is a time of hedonism and self-indulgence, not asceticism and abstention. Really. Don't even think of it.
alcohol units :: really, let’s just skip the rest of this, eh? Yeah, we can start this again next year, maybe. We’ll see.

This blog post comes to you direct from deep within the puckered folds of the Festive Perineum, that tender temporal crease which ties Boxing Day to New Year’s Eve. A strangely timeless time in which normal rules of engagement don’t really apply and all flesh seems of its own accord to expand miraculously. The Festive Perineum is enjoyed to its fullest of course, when massaged gently with the languorous tongue of Free Time and, ideally, intermittently prodded with the well-lubricated fingertip of Sybaritic Indulgence.

I think I’ve probably stretched the perineum metaphor far enough there. Stretch it too far of course, and it snaps, and that’s something you don’t want to happen, for when the Festive Perineum snaps, the guts of the entire year spill out onto the floor, making a terrible, untimely mess. Then you have to suffer the hideous indignity of having the whole year stuffed back in the year hole and the year hole stitched up again. It’s extremely uncomfortable I hear, and you have to spend the first few months of the next year learning how to walk again.

So be careful. But not so careful that you don’t enjoy it, as it’s probably the freest you’ll ever feel without leaving the country.

Speaking of which, in a couple of days, I’ll be leaving the country. Nothing drastic or permanent – not even a place where I have to take a phrase book. I’m off to Scotland! To spend a few days and see in the new year with Morag’s dad, stepmum and three half-brothers. I have to admit, it’s kind of daunting, but then I’ve been daunted a lot recently, and the fact that I’ve managed to get to the other side intact gives me hope that this will be OK too. I’m not entirely sure what the plan is yet, but there have been rumblings of some kind of road trip. I’m assured it will be ‘gey braw’ and that I oughtn’t ‘girn’ or ‘greet’. I think I might get hold of a phrase book anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Finally, Morag and I received an unexpected late Christmas gift this morning. I’m not going to say what it was because it’s a little raw and personal, but it made me shed a little tear. Still, no harm done. And now I know what I want for next Christmas.

So, I hope you’re all enjoying the Festive Perineum as much as I am and that you’re all giving it proper laldy.

x

PS. Whatever you do, do not do a Google image search for the word 'perineum'. Now I must go and cleanse my mind.