AMONG THIS CLAN

Not that I really expect anyone to give all that much of a toss, but…

Well, like on several previous years, perhaps now numbering in the scores, the so-called “Festive Season” was all pretty grim around at Blogfordshire HQ again this year.

The Beloved came down with her annual bout of holiday disease which, whilst it was terribly unpleasant for her, for me, meant several nights of sleeplessness as I listened to the endless coughing, and several days of zombie-ing around brewing kettles and whipping up the odd meal or two, or sitting in an armchair catching up on my increasingly poor choices of movies on disc to fill in the time between.

And when you’ve become as isolated as I have in recent years, in terms of friends and acquaintances, this is never a healthy situation, especially if you start to believe that the rest of the world is doing its level best to have as much fun as possible, and seems to manage that very well without you.

Some of us do fall through the cracks, you know, and I’ve become increasingly aware in recent years that, other than my Beloved, I don’t have anyone at all that I can call in on, or ring for a bit of a chat, because all the people who I might once have been able to call upon have either faded from my life, or arte simply far too wrapped up in their own busy lives to have any space left in it for their now long-forgotten former lives.

Of course, I know that I’ve got nobody else to blame, and the bed I’ve made is the one I now have to lie in, but that doesn’t help when the bleakness overwhelms you as the rest of the world seem intent upon reminding you what a swell time they’re all having without, it seems, once stopping to wonder about those of us who, quite simply, aren’t, and don’t, and, in all honesty, probably wouldn’t turn up anyway even in the unlikely event that we got any actual invitations to go anywhere.

Which we don’t.

The darkest hour came just before the dawn on the twenty-fifth, when, lying awake in the darkness after a particularly restless night, a wall of bleakness, self-loathing and  melancholy just slammed into me like I was a brick wall, making me believe that this might very well turn out to be the last one, and this mood pretty much hung around, bubbling under the surface, for the next two or three days.

Oh, I was able to meander cheerily enough through our gift-giving, and the day over at the Beloved’s parents’ house was pleasant enough, and was actually a far happier day than I had persuaded myself that it would be, and I’m very grateful to them for that, but, on the inside, my melancholia was there all of the time, just bubbling and boiling away under the cooling pillows of lava, and I was constantly fighting to keep it at bay.

Of course it doesn’t help when you know that you’re not anything like as badly off as some at this time of year, and are constantly reminding yourself that it’s pretty self-indulgent to complain when you have so much and so many people have so little, or have suffered such catastrophic losses in the few days leading up to this most “special” of days (like those poor souls in Glasgow) that you can’t imagine that you can dare to complain, even though the chemicals that control these thoughts in your brain never do it with all that much in the way of rationality and logic.

Anyway, after two or three days of this, I was feeling fairly bitter about pretty much everything and have come to the conclusion that, whilst my real life is no great shakes, my online life is fairly meaningless, and so I’ve decided that, in the light of such indifference, I need to disappear from TwitWorld for a while (not that anyone there will notice or realise when you’re no longer there), slam down the window shutters on FizzBok (because it no longer seems like the kind of world for the likes of me), and that Lesser Blogfordshire is in need of a good rest.

This might last an hour, or a day, or a week, or a month, or, perhaps, forever. After all, I’m aware that I always start to feel this irrelevant at about this time of the year, and it usually manifests itself with me throwing all of my toys out of the pram, but this time the bitterness I’m feeling feels very, very different, and I’m not sure yet whether I’ll ever find my way back.

Get this message to Gordon:

“Lesser Blogfordshire is in the Black Lodge, and can’t get out.”

Happy New Year.

THE THIN MAN

I guess that it's time to do some educating...

If you're not familiar with the "Thin Man" series of films, initially based on the book by Dashiell Hammett, then perhaps you should really try and track them down some time, especially if you are in the mood for a bit of a treat.

The first is usually easy enough to spot, as it tends to turn up on some of those old movie channels that I can't get quite a lot, but the rest of the series.

Their perky relationship, which featured in half a dozen Screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s (before evolving into a TV series featuring Peter Lawford and transmogrifying ultimately into the basic premise of "Hart To Hart") is one of the finest and most entertaining double acts ever committed to celuloid and if you haven't met Nick and Nora Charles yet, then you're truly missing a treat...

True, and depending upon how you feel about such bastard offspring, you might feel that the world might be a better place without them because of the Peter Lawford TV series, and you might feel that we might all have been better off if  we'd probably never have had "Hart to Hart" either, and yet so many of the TV and Film series which rely on a bit of banter between the lead couple owe so much to the series of Thin Man movies made in the 1930s and 1940s...

This is quite simply a sublime sexset of movies. The original "Thin Man" tends to get shown rather a lot on television but its sequels are less well known, and that's a great pity because these films are all very enjoyable with witty, sharp dialogue that seems daring and up-to-date nowadays, and must have seemed positively shocking back in the 1930s.

William Powell and Myrna Loy were just perfectly cast as Nick and Nora Charles and the class just pours out of every frame. Perfect chemistry - so charismatic that if they could be making films today they would quite possibly put all other stars in the shade.

These films inspired so many imitators - not least "Hart to Hart" - but they remain the original and, in my opinion, probably the best of the lot.

Some people seem to find old movies a bit of a turn off these days, and that's a great shame, but if you're willing to accept the fact that storytelling styles were just different back then and go along with the fun, you're in for one heck of a treat, and if you were to try and track them down on disc, because a set was once available, it included a nice set of extras, too, which included a selection of comedy shorts and trailers which, if you put them on before the "main feature" might have given you a feeling of how a night at the cinema used to be.

Mind you, the old style of trailers pretty much used to give the whole plot away - simpler times - so you might want to leave them until after Nick's revealed "whodunnit" if you're not a fan of the spoiler.

CHOICES

It seems to me that life is mostly about choices and learning to live with them and realising that you can't really complain about how things are when the way things are in your life is mostly due to those choices you have made.

That's a convoluted way of saying something very simple, but, bizarrely, it does make perfect sense, both grammatically and philosophically, and even geographically, if you're so inclined.

Or is that mathematically...?

No matter... I'm wandering off the point a little here.

On the whole, unless other people have chosen not to spend time with us, or society has chosen to put us into a place full of other people we've never previously met, we choose the people we want to spend our lives and times with, even if he prisons we find ourselves in are the ones of our own making.

Also, if we find that some of the days of our lives seem dull or mundane, well, perhaps everybody else's are too, and in much the same proportion, but not necessarily at the same time.

Which is why the grass can always seem greener, or your own life, and what it has become, can seem lonely, bereft or tragic at a time when all anyone else seems to be able to tell you is what a fabulous time they are having.

Well, rest assured, all you tragic souls who wash up on the shores of Lesser Blogfordshire from time to time; There'll be none of that sort of nonsense in these parts. If life's choosing to give us lemons around here, you know that you'll just end up with a recycling bag full of rotting lemons.

Most of us are supposed to be living lives of quiet desperation anyway, I just took a long time to realise that I'd become the living, physical embodiment of it.

If you knew what my life has become, people, you'd probably weep... if you could bring yourselves to actually care.

Sorry, in my head, when I sat down to start writing this, my arguments here made a lot more sense that they seem to do now.

There are, of course, other, less important choices that life will give you - Whether to visit Twin Peaks or Bedford Falls for Christmas; Whether a Roger Moore film is a more entertaining choice than a Daniel Craig one; Whether, after having missed the last posting dates before you even sat down to write any Christmas Cards, you should still bother sitting down and writing any.

I'm not sure I know the answer to any of these questions, although certainly the season came crashing into our lives far, far more unexpectedly than I could possibly have imagined so that those cards never got written, but I think that it was a wise choice (for me at least), in the end, to choose "Twin Peaks" over Bedford Falls this year, no matter how terrifying a place both of them can appear in their own sweet ways.

Somehow I felt as if I fitted right in.

WHY WOULD YOU…?

Here's a question for you…

It's something that's been puzzling me for a few weeks now, and I was wondering whether any of you more worldly-wise folk might be able to shed some light into the darkness over a small matter of parking my car at work.

I am, after all, something of a creature of habit and, after parking my car regularly in bay number six, over by the trees, for the first few months that we were inhabiting the little grey box next to the sewage works, there was a bit of a daytime gale and someone from another office tapped on the door and advised that if any of us were parked near to the trees it might be wise to move it, just in case any large branches were to fall.

And so, in the days when I responded to such things, I shifted my vehicle and found a cosy spot just outside the window of my own office and tucked it in there and, because I am such a creature of habit, that instantly became my parking spot of choice, and I've used it ever since when it's been available, only shifting to another on days when I arrive later than usual and it's been taken, which then leads to me to a sensation of the entire day having a strange sense of "wrongness" about it.

This might just come from the late start, of course, but who really knows when you're dealing with the intricacies of the subconscious mind...?

It's not as if it's a particularly good spot, or anything like that. It's slightly further to carry my stuff than I would really like, the window cleaner regularly asks me to move it so that he can place his ladder there, and the car dismantling place are forever dropping tiny tyre-threatening bits of scrap nearby.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, after I'd returned from my holiday, I arrived at my usual time to find that Captain Hilarious was already hard at work at his financial dealings business, having had an early start and being totally alone in the now unlocked building, and had parked his car in the one place where I usually put mine.

And this is where my question comes in.

Why would you, with an entire car park to choose from, pick the one spot that you know another person has been using for at least three years…?

Is it because you want to play the Alpha male…?

Was it just just Mind games that you felt like playing to mess with my already considerably messed up head…?

Was it just done out of plain ignorance…?

I suspect the first, consider that I'm far too irrelevant for the second, and really couldn't comment on the third because I hardly know you (although you do seem to have made more of a success of your life than I have, so I suspect it's not that).

And, as I mentioned earlier, it's really not as if it's a particularly convenient spot, because, even if I am, after all, merely a creature of habit, it doesn't mean that I like to make life easy for myself, now, does it?

I have asked this question at home, and the response I got was interesting, once we'd got the whole "It's probably nothing" business out of the way.

"What motivates people?" I was asked, and, when I couldn't think of anything, I was told "Sex and Money" which means that, because there's obviously no fiscal advantage in it, perhaps he just wants to park nearer to the lady in the sports car so that he can engineer an "accidental" meeting or twelve and catch her eye.

Not, however, that he appears to need much help in that department, as the shrieks of laughter from "The Girls in the Office" that we hear through the walls whenever he utters a syllable are anything to go by.

In the end, of course, it doesn't really matter. Whenever it happens, I'll just park my car somewhere else. After all there is the entire rest of the car park to choose from...

And a change is as good as a rest they say…

So it might actually do me some good.

LOST CHRISTMAS

Much like last year, there will be no* Christmas decorations adorning Blogfordshire Towers this year. Oh, we've put the few cards we've received (for which, many thanks --- although I don't appear to have got around to writing any of mine as yet…) on the card holder that always hangs in the living room, and bought each other a few "token" gifts, but that's really just about it for us.

There's no tree, no tinsel, no wreaths or baubles, and the decorations that we do have (because we do have some - although we've donated the various trees we had to the Beloved's office decoration squadron) are remaining firmly stowed in their boxes this time around.

It may seem odd, or sad, or just downright bloody miserable to you, but we somehow seem to have just lost the will to be bothered with it all, to be frank with you.

And it's not as if there are children to be amused, or guests to delight, so sticking up a few gaudy bits of tinsel just seems a little bit pointless when all that you have to do is find the motivation to take them all down again a few days later.

And it's all felt very odd this year anyway. It's as if we are aware that Christmas is happening, but somehow it just feels as if it's happening to other people, and in a very half-hearted way, and in about three month's time…

We've walked around the supermarkets, we've heard Slade blasting out over the tannoy systems, and seen all of those bizarre and obscure foodstuffs that people only seem to crave - and then, suddenly and bizarrely, in vast quantities - once a year, but somehow it's all failed to sink in, and, if I hadn't made a real effort to head off upstairs and get those few tokens wrapped and transmitted up to North Pole Central for distribution, a round trip that seems ever more wasteful in terms of Air Miles and Environmental Impact each year, I suspect that even that might never have got around to having happened.

And yet, if you're like me (and so few of you appear to be), you do find yourself pondering upon the madness of people and the ridiculous pressures that we put upon ourselves to have everything that it is humanly possible to have available and preferably within arm's reach for the one entire day that the shops will be closed, just in case Uncle Albert (other Uncles are available) reaches out and finds that his favourite drink or nibble isn't there, and his entire Christmas will be "RUINED, I TELL YOU, COMPLETELY RUINED!!!!" if he has to have a Hula Hoop instead of a Twiglet, or a Whisky instead of a Bourbon.

But people, other people, have different reasons to do such things than I do, and the multiples of heaped trolleys that you see crossing the car parks of the supermarkets imply "house fulls" that I have never experienced, and three-day binges that really will consume all of those cases of lager, no matter how unlikely that might at first seem to an outsider.

'Tis the season of plenty and excess, but that's no longer a game that I want to play.

There are other reasons, of course. Last year it all just seemed far too hard, and sometimes all of the news in the world just seems far, far too sad, and this year, in our post-S.U.R.A. "trying to get our act together" phase, we've pretty much stripped the living room down to nothing and scrubbed and dusted the hell out of the place, but this has taken so long that we're frankly far too exhausted to go around tatting the whole place up again.

It's always felt like a difficult time of the year for me anyway, and I've rarely come away from it without at least a touch of depression and a vague sense of disappointment. Somehow the sense of anticipation that was attempted to be bludgeoned into me as a child never quite managed to materialise on the day itself as we awkwardly played life's chess game whilst trying not to upset the wrong person at the wrong moment.

I do have a strange relationship with Christmas anyway; For years I really tried to make the effort, but somehow it really seemed as if the world really didn't care if I did or I didn't as it went about its own business obliviously.

I tried to "have the people over", or "do the things you ought to do", or even, in more recent times, "write a nice story in 25 parts for people to enjoy" and so forth, but, in the end, I still spent more Christmases all alone than the Seasons Greetings implied that I ought to be doing.

When I was younger, it was different, of course, but not really all that different, because we're all still alone with our thoughts and surrounded by people who also want to be doing what they want to be doing, and the sense of duty, or obligation, or just not wanting to upset the applecart, sometimes mean that you tolerate the wishes of everyone else without really giving all that much thought to what you would like to be doing yourself.

"Don't put the telly on whilst we're eating…", "Couldn't you play with that tomorrow instead…?", "We need to visit Auntie Mabel..." (other Aunties are available), "No, put the toys down, it's time to go to church…", "Could you pick me up later, only I've got something else that I need to do…"

My mother always claimed that she loved Christmas, despite a distinct lack of evidence that it was all that much fun for her, certainly in more recent years, but I do think that she liked the idea of Christmas rather more than the practical, harsh reality of the actual day itself which was, more often than not, a bit of a disappointment, especially when compared to the ones she seemed to believe that everyone else was having.

At least, that was always the impression that I got, despite the fact that my efforts to make the day nice for her, and cook her a good dinner, always seemed to be appreciated. Sometimes, like a lot of other things surrounding our particular family Christmases, it often felt as if these were merely the words that you were supposed to say, rather than them having any reality attached to them.

Ah well… I'm probably wrong, but that cynical streak runs deeply through the heart of me, and it's hard to lose it, even with my strange desire to have a  "proper" Dickensian house full when we finally get the "Big House" (which is never going to happen), or when (or if) I sit down for my (almost) annual trek to Bedford Falls, or when I'm flicking through "A Christmas Carol" once again, as I try to do at about this time each year.

Still, for the moment, in this house at least, it seems that Christmas is just something that happens to other people, that's all, but it does have its upside. After all, once you have decided to abandon Christmas ("all ye who enter here"), life does seem to get a heck of a lot simpler.

Nevertheless, and despite all of this rambling nonsense, I hope that you all have a happy one, no matter how you choose to do so.

* "No" in this instance being a relative term, of course.

OUT TO LUNCH

I know that we don't seem to be very good at this sort of thing, but, nevertheless, the three of us that share the tiny grey box next to the sewage works finally did manage to get our act together and head out, however reluctantly, to have some sort of a Christmas lunch last Thursday.

You may have seen us.

We were the three non-"Wildtypes" sitting over there in the corner and wondering what would be considered to be far too expensive to order on the company credit card....

Okay, that's probably not strictly fair.

After all, m'colleagues are probably both more than still capable of a certain amount of Wildtypedness given the opportunity, so let's just say that you might have spotted two Wildtypes and their attendant troll.

I'm referring here to a "troll" in the traditional sense of course; the "lurking around (although, in my case at least, seldom under bridges) making the lives of others (again, this rarely includes gruff Billy Goats) thoroughly miserable" sort of troll that you find in the fairytales, and not the type that posts something provocative on the internet in order to annoy as many people as possible.

And when I say "provocative", I'm not talking about a sultry photograph of someone wearing nothing but underwear of the sort that used to adorn otherwise forgettable paperback thrillers when I was a lad.

Language, hey…? Sheesh! How it evolves so...

But, getting back to my original point (because I may have drifted off there for a second or twelve), I inappropriately used the word "reluctantly" earlier, because it's sometimes hard not to believe that, as a society, we end up doing such things more out of a sense of social obligation rather than because anyone is really bothered about actually doing them.

We, of course, sped to the pub like gazelles eager to get ourselves as far away as possible from the prowling tigers.

That all probably sounds thoroughly ungracious of course, given that somebody else was actually buying my lunch, but sometimes I just can't help myself, or stop myself from fretting over the possible social angst, especially when the email pops into my Inbox about twenty-four hours earlier, long after I'd written off the remotest possibility of such a thing occurring, and then none of us can think of anywhere local that we might actually like to go to, and at least one of us is feeling a little under the weather, another of us is (technically) on holiday, and nobody really seems to see any wisdom in trying to book somewhere in advance rather than just turning up and hoping that they might have a table at lunchtime, one week before Christmas Day.

Of course, in a busy office during the most frantic period of the year (there are the annual Trade Shows coming up in January), there's never really a good time to do this sort of thing, just as there's never (as one of m'colls is finding) a good time to take a holiday, or go out for a good time, and, as yet another small crisis overwhelmed us during the morning, we had to delay our twelve-thirty booking by half an hour whilst we dealt with that, and still ended up spending more than a reasonable amount of our social time checking our emails once we did venture out into the pouring rain and head over for our now one o'clock luncheon appointment.

That said, when we did actually turn up, after pausing for far longer than was probably necessary to admire the "hilarious" ancient stone object sitting at the edge of the car park, there were so many tables available, that such worries as booking did seem to be rather misplaced, but, after last year, when we were crammed into a corner under the big screen TV as the verdicts in the Lee Rigby case were announced in order to add a further downer to the unseasonal cheeriness of the pub we chose to go to that time, it still seemed to be a wise thought.

But the lunch itself was pleasant enough, and we managed to stretch it out to three courses, and the conversation didn't dry up, or drift for too long into talking shop, and so, on the whole, it was probably deemed a great success in as much as we manage to do any such thing over the course of the year.

I am still utterly freaked out by the fact that it really didn't seem like an entire year had passed since we had last made an attempt at seasonal sociability, and that 2014 has, to all intents and purposes, all become a bit of a blur, and disappeared into time's crucible in what feels like the blink of an eye.

And that's not just because I discovered Pinot Grigio (honest!), but also because of my duties as an Executor which seemed to devour months at a time.

Still, after a couple of hours, we departed, with me having just enough time to pop into the loo to dispose of all the Diet Coke that I'd drunk, and discover a notice stuck to the wall about staff recruitment that had just enough typos in it to let me proof-read it thoroughly and decide that it was worth taking a picture of, even though getting a camera out (even one that's just built into a phone) always seems just a tad "suspect" in a Gentleman's Public Convenience even as I'm doing it.

But thankfully I was alone.

Then we headed back to the office and started fire-fighting the emails that had inevitably popped in to our inboxes whilst our phones were otherwise unavailable, and the Christmas cheer was pretty much over for another year.

Still, thanks very much guys, for the nice thought, and for the meal. I know that I'm sometimes an ungracious and ungrateful companion, but I do appreciate it.

TELLY SPAGHETTI

One of the side-issues involved in the (hopefully) de-rodenting of our living space was the sudden need to sort out the dusty old spaghetti junction of wiring behind the TV set and try and make some sense of the ridiculous amount of wires that seemed to have accumulated through the years as various bits and pieces got added to the basic telly in order to get it to function in the bright new electronic-heavy world which we've created for ourselves.

Does anyone now remember the days when you just shoved an aerial into the back, plugged it in, and switched in on, and there you were, watching telly…? No…?

And in those days, setting up a telly was a proper job and everything, and the man from D.E.R. (in our case) used to come along and fix it when it went wrong.

Not now, though. Nowadays there are so many boxes attached to the telly that it looks not unlike those pictures that you sometimes see of the room-sized computers that took men to the moon, and you sometimes feel that you need a PhD in "Young Persons' Interests" just to sit down and not want to watch the news.

And we've not even got a complicated set-up. There is no Sky, BT or Virgin box, no satellite, and nothing in the way of games consoles adding to the limited numberer of ports on our perfectly reasonably sized TV set, so God only knows how people manage who have got all of those sorts of things as well.

Now, you need to understand that we do seem to have a rather peculiar set up, given that all of our limited number of channels still arrive at our telly via the aerial thanks to the "second class" version of Freeview that we receive hereabouts thanks to our fairly limited relay transmitter.

To be honest, we find the sixteen (or so) channels that it gives us far more than enough, but other people still seem to find this limited number fairly odd, even if they still only end upo watching the same half dozen that we do.

More choice, you see, doesn't necessarily mean that you want to watch any of it. Strangely, when the wind is blowing the TV does try to tell us that it has found more channels, but, if we accidentally "Okay" them they all either evaporate, or freeze after no more than a few seconds, and, on the next storm less night, they've all vanished again.

Until the next time.

So, getting back to the back of our ridiculously under-equipped telly, first the aerial wire goes to the videotape recorder (yes, folks…I've still got one of those plumbed in…) from which it travels to the DVR and, from there, a third connector carries the signal on to the TV itself.

Power leads from each of these boxes, and then SCART leads in and out of everything are also lolling around, including all of the ones from the older DVD Player which is also still wired into this mad labyrinth somewhere along the line, and tangled up with all of that lot, we also need to add into the mix the leads which are the various wires connecting the phone line to the outside world, the Broadband Hub, and the power lead for the Broadband Hub, all of which need to be within a wire's length of the place the aerial enters the house, and the telephone connection box.

Then, when you look at the back of the telly itself, you've got two or three AV Inputs, plus another connector for the Smartypants device, and another for Analogue input, as well as other sockets for various SD Cards and the like, and, as I mentioned, we don't even own one of those Games Consoles that other people seem to find so very vital to their particular existences, all of which you have to try to remember the ins and outs of as you pull them all out for a bit of a dust.

Taking a picture helps, I find...

Then you discover some odd anomalies, like that strange fact that the HDMI cable - the one that connects the TV set to the so-called "Smart" box which is about two feet away from it - is about five meters long and, as you try to wrestle with that, you might also find that one of the cheap and nasty SCART leads seemed to be knackered and you might have to run around upstairs and dig out another one that you vaguely remember having put somewhere at some point in the far and distant past when you bought a pack of two of them for no very good reason other than the fact that they were cheap and nasty....

Typically, as I was right in the middle of wrestling with all of this like Indiana Jones in the Well of Souls, the phone rang  all this and, for once, instead of being yet another recorded message about a boiler that I don't want, it turned out to be a real person who actually wanted to have a reasonably long conversation with me.

Twenty minutes or so of conversation later, and I hadn't quite managed to remember how to put it all back together, although I did finally manage to get it all sorted out without causing my forehead to bleed too much.

Of course, with the building work due to resume early on in the New Year, pretty soon I'm going to have to unplug it all and relocate the whole lot somewhere else, so that, much like this Blog posting I fear, might all have turned out to be a bit of a waste of time.

TREADING WATER

I think that I'm just treading water with this blog now, ticking off the days as we head towards the end of another year…

Ever since I noticed that there was still an outside chance of actually making it to the 365 postings ("A Blog A Day") mark for this year after all (and despite my many lapses), I've suddenly found myself with nothing much to write about, so it's become something of (yet another) stick to beat myself with, made doubly troubling ("Doubly Troubling" - I like that… could be the name of a character in something…) by the number of postings that I know that I've done where there were hardly any words at all, which means that they hardly even count as "blogs", and the sure-fire knowledge that this whole process really, really, ought not to be too difficult.

And yet, sometimes, it is...

After all, a couple of paragraphs about what's going on really ought not to be beyond me, even if I try not to talk about work (for obvious professional reasons) and my Beloved does not like me to talk about her, and I have little in the way of friends and family to get me into all sorts of scrapes.

But, you know, I do still just about have a pulse, and I do venture out of my door in the morning, and things do actually happen around me as I plod my way along and through this great big shiny world. Conversations… Events… Really, really annoying items on the radio… but often I know that they've either been better said already, or they are just far too tedious for even me to bother with putting finger to keyboard and expound upon.

So, instead I drearily talk on and on at great (or perhaps not so great) length about the inner me (a dark and frightening place), or things that trouble me when I listen to the news, or just - if I'm getting really desperate - stuff that I've bought, or stuff that I have that I've rediscovered, or stuff that I just enjoy.

Hence the stupid amount of telly talk, or sad, desperate mornings like these when I might feel that I may yet have to resort to admitting to having played virtually all of the "Queen" back catalogue in the car during my commute in recent weeks for some bizarre reason which now utterly escapes me, or those terrible, terrible mornings when the Blog starts to eat itself and I merely ramble on about the process of Blogging or, perhaps, Not Blogging.

Like today…

Because we've come to that point of the year where the (almost) inevitable internal debates begin; Should I really bother with trying to stagger through yet another year of trying to come up with some daily thoughts about nothing in particular, especially when "nothing in particular" appears to be mostly what I do?

Not only that, but the nothings in particular that I do tend to burble on about seem to have less and less to do with the lives of everyone else with whom I fail to engage, and those very nothings appear, perhaps without any irony, appear to be appealing to nobody in particular.

My "most read" (or at least "most clicked on") pieces remain those two posts which strangely have little in common other than having the word "post" in their post titles, with an observation about Penguin biscuits coming in a distant third… and everything else that I have bothered to churn out has been all but proven to be utterly irrelevant, except to a very choice of a few very special people.

You know who you are…

So here I sit, trying my best to think until my forehead bleeds of another eight or nine things to rattle out a few words about to fill those last few notches on the calendar's quota board as the year as almost arbitrarily designed as a human construct in response to making some sort of order from the motions of our little blue planet meanders to its inevitable conclusion, and somehow, as that final hurdle looms, the mental well seems to have frozen over, and the tiny bucket that I plunge into it from time to time is merely bouncing off the surface and not bringing me the fresh, clear spring water to my stream of consciousness that I want it to, and that well water is not so much being trodden as skated over, slipped on, and smashed into as the smooth-bottomed shoe of time leads to the Accident and Emergency Department of destiny.

Possibly...

Could I really stand putting myself through another year of such torture…?

I guess we'll all find out soon enough, eh…?

A "JAMES BOND" FILM

I did a rare thing the other day when, after a bit of online chatter got me thinking about such things, I decided to sit down and watch, for the first time in absolutely ages, a "James Bond" film.

Now, this is not as simple as it might at first seem, not least because my Beloved is not really a fan, and so finding such two-our windows of opportunity can be quite a rare thing anyway, so making such a decision can eat massively into the free space in my busy blogging schedule that I set aside for writing my nonsenses, or devour time which is meant for more worthy, practical, washing-up related pastimes, or time sometimes meant for just sitting down for what is, just plainly something else which might be better entertainment.

But it's not just about those things.

After all, a film franchise that has endured throughout fifty years or more must have some sort of entertainment value, even if I sometimes think that I might just have finally "grown out" of it, but, despite being what you might still call a "fan" of the series, sometimes the idea of sitting through one of the actual films themselves does seem rather tiresome, especially when there is such a smorgasbord of other video entertainment waiting on the shelf and in the ether to be consumed nowadays.

Incidentally… Have you ever noticed that you can have a movie sitting upon your shelf unwatched almost indefinitely, and really "not fancy" it, but then find yourself watching that self-same movie all the way through when you happen to spot that it's being broadcast on TV…?

Or is that just me…?

Is this merely a strange compulsion, or just basically part of being bone idle and taking the easy option every single time…?

Switch on TV...

Think "Oh, that's on, I like that..."

Disengage brain.

Watch evening vanish.

Meanwhile, getting back to that "James Bond" film, the difficulty comes in picking which one to actually watch.

Of the twenty-three so far released, the first six are now so familiar to me that I could probably sing along to the lyrics if you set the dialogue to music, and they have, perhaps, become about as diverting as a screensaver, at least in my memory when my fingers move past them across the DVDs on the shelf in search of something that I want to watch.

I have recently had a slight yen to give the shallow, overblown and vacuous nineteen-seventies offerings another go. After all, "Moonraker" always remains a guilty pleasure, and, despite the fact that my head tells me that "Diamonds Are Forever" and "The Man With The Golden Gun" are utterly ridiculous, cheap, nasty and really not very good at all, my heart feels like giving them another chance, just to see if I'm remembering this incorrectly and they're actually quite brilliant, whilst "Live and Let Die" struggles to get past even my fairly low "politically correct" barriers nowadays - although some of the other films score quite poorly on the sexism and cultural stereotyping meter, too, as the times have moved on...

People took their children to see "Live and Let Die" when I was a child you know... for birthday outings and such.

I wasn't invited...

However, getting back to the present, the problem is that, around ten minutes into any of them, I'll suddenly be wishing that I was watching something else, and that's no fun when your window of opportunity is closing.

The eighties films I really struggle with.

"James Bond" films can be many things to many people, but what they should never be is boring. "A View To A Kill" I'm thinking at you right now, and you know why. I mean, it's a movie with the fabulous Patrick Macnee in it, and I still manage to find it  a struggle.

Embarrassing I can cope with, but boring is just unacceptable.

That said, I have recently fancied giving "Octopussy" another go, and the Dalton pair were favourites when I was at an impressionable age, so any of those might be worth a punt...

But then...

The Brosnan quartet, well, I still struggle to get through any of those, and the Craig trio go from being worthy but dull ("just get that bloody card game over with, will you?") to just a little bit rubbish, to far too recently seen to be diverting.

So, once again, having decided to watch a "James Bond" film, I ended up not watching one after all, and doing something else instead, which is probably a good thing in the great scheme of things and, well, if one just happens to appear on my telly one evening, I'll probably just settle down and watch that and find that I find it quite entertaining.

And there was me thinking that I was a bit of a fan...

MIDWINTER CRICKETY CRICKET

I still struggle to get used to the idea of cricket during the winter, even though my own personal experience of the game, even during the summer, is usually via a crackling old radio and that sort of thing can be done at pretty much any time of the year, day or night.

But the latest One-Day Series currently being played out in Sri Lanka has done little to excite me, not least because I still prefer to follow a good old five-day Test Match series to any of these rather vacuous and rather pointless-seeming series, but I know that I'm in the minority in thinking that in these days of short attention spans and deep, deep pockets...

Quite often, I've almost forgotten that there's even been a game on, which is "unusual" for me as, at this time of the year, I'm usually losing sleep by  trying to keep up with the updates from a Test Series as they occur overnight in some warm-sounding faraway place.

England, of course, remain in the doldrums, despite the Test Series having shown a certain tendency towards improvement towards the end of the summer, so that, when they finally discover some form, they stop actually playing for several months, just to give the footballists a chance at getting a few headlines for a change.

Of course, Cricket has recently been scarred by the tragedy that occurred to young Philip Hughes in the Australian Sheffield Shield competition... and if anyone has ever suggested that, in comparison to the all-conquering pastime of footballing, that cricket is somehow a "soft" option, maybe that horrific moment might just make them rethink that opinion.

That said, the series itself has managed to claw itself back from the potential seven-nil embarrassment that it did look as if it might run the risk of becoming at one point, and the outcome of the series managed to remain in doubt until at least the fifth match of the seven, which, under the circumstances, was probably a lot longer than most England (and Wales) supporters might have hoped to expect.

But the fate of Captain Alistair Cook remains the source of much debate as his form at the top of the order has still not shown any sign of recovering and, whilst the ECB seem to be keeping the faith with him, and have confirmed him as Captain for the forthcoming World Cup* (for which this "pointless" series is seen to be something of a "warm-up"), I can't help but think that this is just another embarrassment that is waiting for me to endure in the New Year, and will finally find him dropped, at least from that form of the game.

To be honest, I feel rather a lot of sympathy for old "Cooky", because I think that he's been the subject of unfair scrutiny from certain sections of the media, but it does sometimes seem as if, time and again during the past twelve months, he's been going out there every time with "something to prove" and then returning back to the Pavilion far too soon without having proved anything other than that his critics might have a point.

But, like Ian Bell, I do have a lot of respect for him as a player, and I really hope that he gets it right again soon, because I always feel that when either of these players has a good game, then the entire team has a good game, and whenever either of them fails, a losing result somehow seems inevitable.

Of course, Ian Bell was dropped relatively early on in this series, so what do I know?

Anyway, listening to cricket in the winter (apart - perhaps - from another "Ashes" series which seems perfectly natural because that's how I've always experienced it), really can't help but have an "oddness" about it as the outdoors remains cold, and dark, and miserable, but when I do remember that it's on, that little glimmer of sunshine and warmth from far, far away, can't help but remind me that summer can't be far away.

*Which just proves why writing your blog days in advance is a bad idea.

BOX SET BLUES

Because I am weak and feeble-minded, I appear to have accumulated a lot of box sets lately,  sometimes for the most pathetic of reasons - like the fact that they were set in California, or because the logging trucks I saw on the roads there made me think of the series - but am beginning to wonder if I'll ever get the chance to actually find the time to watch any of them, given that there's now a stack of at least five - possibly six - of the things waiting for my attention, and buggerall free time to sit down and view them, nor a comfortable place in which to do the sitting and viewing, now that - in anticipation of the great (construction) works ahead of us - we've thrown out the collapsing leather couch and I appear to be living like a student once again, despite my great age.

"There's only the rickety chair…"

And yet, even as I write, with this wall of wasted time still to be climbed, the January Sales loom large on the horizon, and with them will no doubt come even more temptations to acquire yet more pointless stuff, which, in most cases, simply become more desirable because they're cheap…

"Oh, I'd definitely want that if it was cheap enough…"

These days, it's the English way of doing things - I don't care what it is, so long as it's a bargain...

And then, usually after only one viewing, most of them get put on a shelf to gather dust and almost certainly never see the light of a laser again, even though I appear to gain some small comfort from knowing that they are there and I could watch them at any time I wanted.

But it's madness.

I mean... who really has the time…?

There's a ludicrous amount of viewing on those shelves, pretty much all of which has been watched about once, and will I ever really get another chance to trawl my way through the complete run of "NYPD: Blue" or "M*A*S*H" or "The West Wing" or "Millennium" or "Blakes 7" or "UFO" or "Inspector Morse" or "Seinfeld" or "The Sweeney" or "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits" or any of those other shows again given the nature of my lifestyle…?

And that's not even thinking about all of the films...

Well, maybe when I retire, but, well, the way things are going these days (and genetically speaking) sometimes that seems increasingly unlikely.

Meanwhile, in the wee small hours, and whenever I'm abandoned for the evening for the Beloved to attend yet another of her many, many work Christmas functions, I'm working my way surreptitiously through a frankly brilliant thirty-part drama series (plus feature-film sequel) from the early nineties ("The Owls Are Not What They Seem..." - if you know what I mean...?) with a slightly more crappy "complete series box set" of a rather less impressive (but happily remembered and fun!) 1970s series, which will annoy the heck out of me when I finally settle down to watch it, but will nevertheless be endured episode-by-episode in their proper order until the bitter end by the completist in me.

However, there's that really special, special offer (that I bought from the BFI a couple of months back) to also slip into the schedule, a series which really deserves to be savoured, especially at the time of year for which it was intended.

But then there's the "Black Friday" deal of that collection of eight 1930s movies to find time for, not to mention the other twenty-odd movie collection that I ordered in a weak-minded moment because I was determined to hang on until I could find it at the stupidly cheap deal price that I'd missed out on, and was surprised one day not long afterwards to be able to do so, and then simply could not resist it any longer.

Then there's the shiny new release of this year's series of another show that I adore, even though I only watched it a couple of months ago, plus of course, in all these cases, more "Extras" or "VAM" than anyone could reasonably expect to be able to sit through in merely one lifetime.

Finally, there's also the tricky little matter of finding a couple of hours to make my (almost) annual trip to Bedford Falls, which is another place that the Beloved prefers not to venture into because she finds it far too upsetting, and so I have to blub alone, in the darkness, before the rest of the household awakens.

First world problems, eh...? First world problems...

This in an era when I'm actually watching less and less television anyway, so I'm obviously just an accumulator out of habit more than anything else, and lucky enough, I suppose, to still be in a position to be one when others are struggling so much, so I should probably just shut up and stop complaining now.

No, really.

God, this is utter madness, isn't it…?

HAVE A NICE DAY

I made a passing reference to the so-called "WeatherBomb" the other day, and one of the remarks I received in reply really got me thinking.

My correspondent basically told me how much they dislike these "American expressions" and, whilst I couldn't help but agree with him on some level - mostly because I'm a bit of a tweedy old-fashioned git anyway - my first thought was that it's no longer "our" world but it belongs to "da kidz" and if that kind of rootless, homogenised, bland photocopy of another, more powerful, culture is what they want to have, then who are we to disagree...?

We may regret the passing of the old ways, and some may try to hang onto them for longer than seems strictly necessary - I still have milk bottles put on my doorstep by a milkman in the mornings, buy my music on discs, and use my landline for most of my (admittedly few) telephone calls - but if they want a bland facsimile of a shallow culture, with all of its fast food, Prom Nights, Trick or Treating, Black Fridays, lack of basic healthcare for everyone, and cheap, nasty sportswear, why should we  try to stop them?

Oh yes... because most of it is cheap, vacuous and nasty, despite the fact that it usually costs a fortune, and lots of things about the way we do things over here are actually rather more nicely done, but aren't embraced as much by the wider world and, when you're part of the up-and-coming next generation, far-away, exotic things always seem far more exciting than the same old bland, boring nonsense that your parents did, and the grass is always far greener on the other side.

The problem is that when you've already been playing on that lush greener grass for all of your life, where do you go for new experiences and excitement when you tire of that...?

A lot of these shiny new imports have come through the massive influence that American Film and TV has had on the young, impressionable minds that it's most aimed at. When you're exposed to such exciting versions of High School as seen in "Glee" or (to a previous generation now, I suppose) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" then three periods of dry old Chemistry and maybe setting fire to your blazer on the way home after your last day at school perhaps doesn't seem quite as exciting as an expensive new outfit, a stretch limousine, and the opportunity to lord and lady it over all you meet, no matter how broke it leaves those who care most about you.

Bland, shallow and vacuous it all may be, but at least it's memorable, and life these days is for living in the moment and, perhaps most importantly, being seen to be living it, and for a generation that no longer have holidays, but "go travelling" and who no longer want to stay in a decent hotel but want the "experience" of living in a Yurt and digging their own hole to have a crap in, that seems to be an "awesome" enough ambition.

And if the worst comes to the worst, entire battalions of "helicopter parents" will swoop in an take care of any little problems that may arise, even if you don't have the slightest respect for them and their pathetic little lifestyle choices (which, incidentally, might just include giving you life), unless, of course, you don't have any family, in which case life can start to get complicated when the "RealWorldBomb" hits.

Social Media has also been a great leveller, too, with people getting immediate exposure to the better time that everyone else appears to be having, and looking at their own lives and finding them somehow inadequate by comparison. As to whether this has speeded up the indoctrination of British culture by the American Way, or whether the desire was already in place and it is merely feeding the monster, will probably be for history to decide, but it certainly seems to have been, at the very least, a catalyst for change.

Still, when it comes to the "Americanisation" of Britain, some might say that, given how so much of British culture inflicted itself upon the world back in the days of the Empire, this kind of payback is rather overdue and richly deserved, but I'm more inclined towards the "Great Big Melting Pot" theory anyway, just so long as you keep hold of the very best that every culture has to offer.

I do lament the bastardisation of the language, though, almost as much as I regret the passing of a great many other things, but, of course, it's no longer "my" world, and so it's time to kick back and see what a bloody mess this lot manage to make of it.

DAYLIGHT (LIFE) SAVING

Just a quick one today because I'm in a hurry, don't have all that much time, and, to be honest, probably don't have a lot to say that you haven't heard before anyway.

To be honest, I think that this is a subject that I might have burbled on about on previous occasions in any case, and probably much more effectively, given that my word-wrangling skills seem to be becoming ever more diminished as time goes by.

But why, for the love of whatever deity you choose, or choose not, to believe in, why, when the mornings and evenings get so much darker, and the weather gets so much more grim and, quite frankly, bloody dangerous, do people seem to insist on driving faster than they might normally do, and take far, far more risks with both their own lives and those of the people on the roads around them.

I know that I've suspected for a long time that road sense, reading the road ahead, and basic common courtesy seem to no longer feature in most people's understanding of what driving is about any more, but when the roads are icy, wet, foggy and dark, why do I find people hanging on to my back bumper as if they're glued to it, overtaking on blind corners, accelerating towards me for no good reason, and still tearing towards me as I manoeuvre around the parked cars when there is simply no road space for anyone else to get out of the way...?

Either that, or they believe that braking, indicating to let other people know which direction they wish to travel in, or simply letting anyone else know where they are at all, by, maybe just switching on some lights, are all, somehow, signs of weakness and will diminish them in the eyes of the Gods of Motoring if they pander to such fripperies.

So, when did people just forget that different conditions require people to acquire a different mind set...? And just when did it become normal for people's vision of the road ahead to stop at a point about two inches beyond the limit of their own car's bumpers...?

Sometimes I believe that a lot of my fellow motorists just put down their games console controller stick thingies, pick up their car keys, and just carry on as if nothing has changed. Either that, or everyone is so distracted by their texts and emails, their shopping and the stuff they have to do, that pootling along in the potentially lethal weapon that they're driving is just about the last thing on their minds.

In some cases, tragically, far too literally.

I know that we're all "living on the edge" these days, and, in our cosy, "risk averse", screen based lives, we're seeking out a little bit of danger to add to our days, no matter what the risk might be to anyone else who'd much rather have a chance to be actually getting on with their own lives, thank you very much.

Of course, people do re-assess their own sense of risk to suit their personal circumstances, so maybe that bit of darkness, that touch of ice, that slick wet road surface, or those misted-up windows are adding just a frisson of danger to their otherwise dull and moribund journeys, and that risk is just enough to get their blood stirred up as they consider a day talking on the phones to people who really don't care, and wrestling with the intricacies of software which is, ironically, constantly crashing.

Meanwhile, is it now compulsory on these dark mornings and evenings on our ill-lit streets for all pedestrians to clad themselves from head to toe in black and make themselves virtually invisible, because that's becoming another of my little bug-bears.

Although I'd better sign off now before my blood pressure peaks... After all, today's commuter run is mere minutes away and I need to get myself into a fit state of mind to handle this mornings battles.

MEDIA CIRCUS

It must be difficult for the Security Services, in this era of 24 Hour Rolling News and Live Twitterfeeds, to plan any kind of a strategy when dealing with any sort of "incident" when it happens, and so it was "interesting" in the bloody mess that occurred in Sydney, how much obfuscation had to be done in order for them to get a "reasonably successful" outcome.

Not that anything that ended up so horrifically could really be called "successful" by any reasonable human being...

Of course that kind of bloody outcome almost always happens when anyone involves themselves in a situation involving guns, and you just know that, whenever the armed police, army units, or special tactical forces are going to attempt to "resolve" a situation, then blood will inevitably be shed, and it will not always just be the people holding the guns that will pay with that blood.

And so, whilst the news was telling us that the Security Forces were settling down for a "long siege", they were already "secretly" planning the forced entry which brought that sad day to its unhappy end, and, whilst it's difficult to imagine how else it might have been resolved, historically, the outcome that you get is obviously how it will be remembered as having turned out, and sometimes broadcasting the lie is the only answer, because that's usually far more easy to defend in hindsight, should your actions need defending.

But there probably isn't any other way to handle the media in this day and age, because the perpetrators and hostage-takers all have SmartPhones, too, and "helpful" people will be Tweeting about what's happening no matter how much you try to explain that this really isn't helping the situation one bit, not least because there will always be some people who are siding with the bloody gunman whilst everyone else is looking on in sheer horror and fear as whatever happens happens, and, sometimes, right before their terrified (or fascinated) eyes.

Because, no matter how much we may have played in the playgrounds and fairgrounds, most normal, well-adjusted people are - or at least ought to be - utterly terrified of guns because they are, basically (and this might be stating the bleeding obvious but some people do seem to forget this from time to time) lethal weapons.

Not only that, but the circling news helicopters and the phalanx of reporters awing "developments" all have their cameras trained onto the scene all of the time, which makes any kind of "stealth" approach or "secret" plan almost impossible to execute without everybody else, including the madman with the gun, knowing all about it almost before it happens.

But the "24 Hour Rolling News" Monster needs to be fed, and the food it likes most of all is "exciting" video footage, which is why so many channels went over "Live" to watch developments unfold as they were happening, because they've all grown up knowing the impact that those images of the SAS taking back the Iranian Embassy in London way back in 1980 had around the world, and they're all hoping for a slice of that sort of tragic pie, no matter how much they may try and deny it.

Otherwise they might just have been above making yet another story segment out of a genuine, human, emotional response from one of their own.

But, sadly, not.

After all, out of such sensationalist moments are careers made, even though somebody completely innocent usually has to suffer for those images to be created, and we all forget that at our peril as we share the "exciting" story amongst our peers, and the next, far worse story unfolds, as inevitably it must, to squeeze out the last tragedy, and that focus moves on to it next, and, even though you've convinced yourself that things can't get any worse (surely?), it inevitably seems that they will, and, indeed, actually - and almost unbelievably - did today.

Because these days, the whole world is just a Big Top for the Media Circus to perform in, and the rest of us are just potential acts just waiting behind the curtain for our moment to go on and amuse both the Ringmasters and the baying, howling crowds in the audience.

I hope for everyone's sake that you all manage to stay out of the Ring, my friends.

Keep safe.

HAIR TODAY

One of the things about getting to my great age, and having a FizzBok account, (however under-used and under-friended it may be), is that, because they know just how old I am, and when my birthday is, or was, occasionally "targeted" adverts like this one appear from time to time, just to make me feel really special… or to remind me that time's crucible has be in its hot, shiny bowl…

It really must be my age, I suppose…

After all, how many gentlemen of a certain age can actually claim not to have at least a thinning, if not totally non-existent thatch upon their noggin, or at least be troubled by the vaguest possibility of the "chimp's arse" effect that can be going on up there without us even being aware of it.

Luckily for me, of course, despite all of the increasing salt amongst the pepper, that particular effect hasn't yet come into play, and neither has the also much-feared Charlton combover, even though my forehead does seem to get more expansive every time I look.

I fear that the full-on "potato head" may be just a few scant years away…

There are several problems that I have with this particular advert however, and not only because it seemed to have been directed at me as if they were trying to tell me something.

The first problem is that, with his orange top and his "shaven-headed" look, he looks to me just like a Guantanamo detainee which, in marketing terms at least, I don't imagine is much of a selling point unless you do happen to have some ambitions towards that particular sort of lifestyle choice.

Secondly, (and I admit that this could just be my eyesight, or the way that I happen to have first looked at the pictures), I get the distinct impression that, rather than giving the gentleman in question a full head of hair, they've just tattooed little dots onto his scalp to simulate hair growth and, indeed, give the "look" that their might still be follicle heads up there in the dust bowl…

Now, I'm not the world's biggest fan of tattoos anyway, but the thought of someone sticking needles into my scalp, and of having to live with the consequences until, hopefully, a ripe old age, whilst still resembling what my Dad might have termed a "Bovver Boy" back in the day, really isn't going to persuade me, either.

Or, I start to think to myself, maybe it's some kind of plastic film. A "skull cap" that you put on like those hats that Ming the Merciless used to wear back in the old "Flash Gordon" serials, only printed with lots of little dots instead of the whole "Evil Emperor" full on jet black effect.

With my ability to sweat, itch and generally crumple anything I wear, I fear that wouldn't make for a good look, either.

Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly of all, the person in the photograph also just happens to resemble someone I used to work with which is freaking me out in several ways, not least because he's either not aged a day in a decade, or he's moved over into the blunt end of male modelling in a manner that meeting the real person might never have suggested to anyone, I imagine.

Look, I know that the appearance of youth is just about everything to everybody nowadays, but honestly, do try to have a little more dignity, my friends, before the madness overwhelms you.

Or just wear a hat…

CASUALTIES OF WAR

One of the more unfortunate casualties of the recent incursion into our home of our tiny interloper and our subsequent declaration of war against the little blighter, and after which we did the - admittedly long, long overdue - de-clutter and chucking out of the rubbish and "contaminated" stuff, was my mother's last birthday card to me, written in a very shaky hand during the summer of 2013, in which she took a moment to thank me for everything I'd done (Which is, incidentally, to my eyes at least, not very much at all, but there you are).

In the normal, everyday world, of course, this sort of thing would have been chucked out long ago, but with my tendency to over-sentimentalise things and just pile them up to be dealt with later, a dusty pile of old birthday cards can occasionally gain an undue importance in the great scheme of things as they sit there, unremembered and not bing thought about until long after they ought to.

After all, these things are just "stuff" after all, and the real thought mattered when it mattered and it's the memories that really count, don't you think, and not the bits and pieces surrounding them…?

Of course, it was those very bits and pieces that made me think about it that afternoon, of course, and the wrenching sense of guilt as that particular card joined all the others in the black bin bag will stay with me a while, I suspect, along with my wonder that our councils insist upon us using such bags even though they rip and tear for the simplest of reasons.

I looked at the pile of bags that our suddenly very necessary clear out had created and wondered whether the bin men would take any or all of them, given that we might have exceeded our fortnightly "quota"…? I had, of course, miscalculated which collection week it was the previous week and accumulated more outside already than were strictly necessary, but our post-apocalyptic cleansing seemed to have created some kind of a mountain of the blessed things. I suspected that I might just be making a trip to the tip the following weekend when I ought really to be attacking phase two of that very same clear out.

The "mum" thing was a very poignant moment, however, and, along with some of the other "precious things" that had to be discarded as "casualties" our our own private little war, it did serve to remind me that having stuff brings with it the responsibility of looking after that stuff, otherwise things like this will continue to happen. I already suspect that my precious collection of old comics that languish in an as-yet unreachable dark corner of the attic will no doubt already be lost to the unseen marauders, which will cut me to the very quick given that some of that was being "sort of" counted upon for my retirement fund.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that, instead of it getting easier, it's felt far, far tougher this Christmas than last to be completely without parents as I now am. Somehow, I suppose, I'd rather expected last Christmas to be tough, and so it proved less tough than I imagined it would be, but with time being allegedly such a great healer, and this being another year on, I think that I had come to believe that it would be a breeze, so, rather naturally, it turns out not to be.

This year, however, I suddenly find myself looking around for my little rituals and routines and finding that they're simply not there and, whilst I was never the biggest fan of the season, I'm finding that I really am starting to miss all of those daft little annoyances which both got in the way of and contributed to yet another disappointing Festive Season for me.

Hang on to your memories, my friends, because sometimes they're all that you're left with.