52 in ’25!
It’s been an unexpectedly busy start to the year (and two weeks off does nothing to sharpen anybody’s work ethic, it has to be said), but the new year has been and gone, things have settled down nicely and just in time for my birthday!
I’m keeping it brief, but in a slight change of plan the only available days this week will be Thursday, Friday and Saturday, since I’ll be in anyway; I have exciting birthday plans tomorrow including trips to IKEA, the Natural History Museum and (predictably) the Prince Charles Cinema, plus a hot bath and some cheesecake. Gentle R&R is required, so the phone will be off until Thursday morning – yay!
The evenings are gradually getting lighter, the cold snap of the other week seems to be gone for good and Spring will be here in no time; unbelievably, a full year has passed since the move fifteen minutes north! It was a good move in the end, leaving aside the two weeks of cleaning to make the place habitable, plus building work and having to start all over again to compose a directions text that be understood and successfully acted upon by all who receive it. I’m still working on the last part.
For Song Of The Week we’re going trad. Happy birthday to me and roll on 2025!
Proper update soon! Watch this space…
the sleigh ride starts!
A weekend spent putting up the Christmas tree, marzippaning and icing the Christmas cake and getting stuck into the first of this years’ viewings of Miracle on 34th Street and Elf (with Muppet Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life to follow this weekend, courtesy of the Prince Charles Cinema’s ever-reliable December programme) has finally brought about the gradual segue into the Christmas state from just plain stressed and knackered, and a relief it is too.
The crap weather (not that much of a consideration normally, but a monumental pain in the arse for anybody having to travel further than to Waitrose and back) and general dourness of November is (hopefully) past, I have got used to having to put on lights if I want to do anything beyond watch TV after 3pm and the approaching longer-than-usual break is well within sight!
An unusual amount of tedious badgering for services not on offer and days/times when I don’t work has surprised me this year, and has (predictably) been responded to with mixed levels of civility depending on the variables. If it saves time, let everyone be assured that if I’m not that desperate for your money in April or August, I’m not that desperate for it now, either. I only bring it up after three such occasions in the last week, which is extremely rare for me even allowing for the weaponised non-reading stance of the Adultwork users. Just find somebody else, ffs.
That aside, between tonight’s long-anticipated trip to see Prodigy back at Brixton (as much fun as ever, but exhausting) and tomorrow’s carol service over at the Barbican I will be busy getting all my last minute jobs done before packing up for the Christmas break, so whilst I’ll be here I will not be available ‘NOW’ any more than I am the remainder of the time and the day is starting to fill up already. Saturday morning; possible but unlikely.
Instead of a Song Of The Week, the time has arrived to enjoy my favourite YouTube video of the year instead. Despite the appearance of the 28 Years Later trailer last week, Nyango Star has won the internet.
More soon! I can’t be sure exactly how soon, but I’ll be here…
an even quieter place…
…is where I currently am, for some last minute R&R before the Christmas panic excitement gets into full swing.
I will be back for business as usual from Wednesday, which will also mark two weeks to the day since I baked my Christmas cake for the first time in a good few years! Cake 2024 is wrapped up safely awaiting a nice drink (as am I), and will be taken out periodically when I get back, eventually to be rolled in marzipan and icing (if only). All courtesy of this kit from Waitrose (which has ensured for the first time ever that I’m not still trying think of ways to use up mixed peel in August) and a bit of help from the spice box – there’s never enough, after all.
The vigilant will have spotted the Christmas hours page is up and with relatively little effort required beyond changing the days, since for the first time in probably a decade I have no availability between Christmas and New Year – sorry!
Despite this being traditionally a good week for everyone to get up off the sofa, brush the Celebrations wrappers aside and stagger into town for a bit of a change of scene, the timings plus station closures have made it sufficiently impractical so as to be not worth the bother. Plus the last time I worked on a New Years’ Eve was somewhere between farcical and catastrophic and I will not be chancing that again.
But it’s still a month away! For the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be busy busy right up until Saturday 21st. Not quite yet, though.
Some calming nostalgia is required just to set the pace for the next few hours, and who better than Gomez, whom I once saw in a field somewhere I was too mashed to remember the following day, let alone some twenty five years on. You can never have too much Gomez.
More soon! I will be back directly…..
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