So this is the 28th of December...

That's right kids, it's an end of year 'state of affairs' blog, prepare to be utterly riveted with the story of my year, the story you've been waiting to hear, all year, a year to hear, but don't fear, don't shed a tear, it's here, for you to hear, the story of my year.

It's fun to rhyme.

I finish 2009 as I started it, cold, alone and essentially pointless. The way human beings are designed to be. I haven't made my fortune, I haven't found love, I haven't etched my name in the pillars of history. I haven't even got my own Wiki page, because apparently someone else has to set it up for you, and you have to have actually done something they consider important, or they delete you, which as far as I'm concerned goes against the whole spirit in which Wikipedia was conceived.

I did change one of my pillows though. One sprung a leak sometime in the autumn and after a few months of having a bedroom that looked like the crime scene of some kind of teddy bear massacre I finally bit the bullet and replaced the damaged head comforter. I'm still not entirely happy with the new one, it's too big and firm, it's exactly the same as when you change girlfriend, you get used to the shape and size of one, where your arms are supposed to go, how the best way to fit around each other is so you don't wake up with a kink in your neck, just how much force is needed to 'accidentally' kick them out of the bed if they're starting to bug you. Pillows and girlfriends, exactly the same.

Obviously the biggest thing I did this year is get a job, because obviously jobs are the most important thing in our lives, obviously. I got up one day, put on a suit and asked a reasonably intimidating panel of people if they'd mind awfully giving me over forty hours of things to do each week, push me to get out of bed before my natural body clock would allow, and judge me on all my successes and failures. I then followed this up by reassuring them that no, it was fine they wouldn't have to pay me too much to do this, just whatever they felt they could afford in these harsh financial times. After hearing the same offers from several other people they finally gave in to my charms and enlisted me in their little slave ring.

And you know what, I've quite enjoyed it, the actual work varies, as with everything, from a tedious and over pressured chore, to something I get a genuine buzz out of, sometimes I even go home feeling like I was useful, which is nice. Of course, as my work is connected to a place that serves alcohol it also means that I sometimes go into work hoping that whatever I've forgotten from the night before hasn't earned me Laughing Stock of the Week, but that's a hazard I've learned to live with all my life.

All in all though, it's a nice change to be working with other people, obviously there's all the expected nonsense about teamwork, new challenges, collaborative ideas and processes, six hour long meetings with flip charts, but really it's just nice to have a new set of people to have a laugh with during the day. So I think I'll stick at it for a bit.

Then there's this band thing, after a year repeating ourselves in various practice rooms we finally got on stage last month, and it was good. It's strange how twenty minutes as a bit part in an unpaid performance for a bunch of strangers seems to be worth a 16 hour day, of which a good ten is spent on a motorway burning expensive fuel and not getting home until almost sunrise, without any real questioning or feelings of effort. Whilst I will bitch and moan for a goodly number of hours about having to go buy washing up liquid from a shop which is 300yrds away. I've missed that though, I think I've missed the travelling more than anything, missed showing up at new places and not knowing what's going to happen. I'm not sure entirely why this appeals to me so much, I'm not an overly social person so I don't come away from these things with new friends and enlightening conversations that often, a lot of the towns and venues you end up in are less than exciting and quite often you find that your expensive and lengthy round trip has led to you playing to a nonplussed audience of other bands and bar staff, but no matter how many times you do this, the build up to each time doesn't stop being at least a little exciting. I'm looking forward to it in the new year at very least.

I moved back in on my own. I like living on my own, I like the control of my time and space that it gives me, I like deciding who I share it with and when, when I eat, what goes on the TV, how everything is arranged, and what point the bin really does need emptying, But it seems I had become a little used to having people around. It's fine during the usual weeks, because between work and bands and traditional going out patterns I only really end up at home one or two evenings as it is, and I can usually fill those with a quick text message or two, but I have to confess that the holiday's have been a bit of a trial, so I might have to think about this a little before the summer. I'll get to make a list of pros and cons for this, which is really quite appealing.

I must have done some other things this year, but the continuing curse of the memory can make it very difficult to say exactly what those things were. There was a weekend in London and a few night's at gigs, a couple of which were amongst the best I've ever been to. There was Edinburgh of course, the best week of any year, I think one of the greatest things about this is taking a few new people up every year, and watching them fall in love with the place, and with the fringe, in the same way I did the first time I went and the same way I do again with every visit. I'm not a person for looking forward to things usually, I prefer to just enjoy them when they happen without building up unfeasible hopes and expectations, but I just can't stop myself from doing that with Edinburgh, I've already got plans in place for next year and catch myself daydreaming about it on a fair number of occasions.

As for fortune, love and history? I'll probably just have a cup of tea for now. I really would appreciate it if you could get started on that Wiki though.

I forgot to make up a title.

I'm pretty sure I can use anything as an excuse not to do anything else. This week I've excelled at this skill, my washing machine has been out of order, I've used this as an excuse not to do all of the following; the washing up, hoovering, wear a shirt, make a phone call, go to bed, try and fix the washing machine. Oddly I didn't use as an excuse not to wash my clothes, I kept trying, which of course only made the problem worse and the uses for excuse more frequent.

On top of this my glasses broke, yes, it's been an unfortunate week, and obviously this was like the goose that laid the golden excuse to me. It's been brilliant.

So it is with mixed feelings that I've lived through the last 48 hours, receiving my new spectacles and having a man make the machine work again. Even worse when the cause of the broken tumbler was revealed to simply be a kinked hose, and that if I'd been any sort of a man I'd have dragged out the machine, spotted the problem, fixed it, and got on with my life. This would have taken about 5 minutes and given me a great sense of achievement, whilst my actual course of action was to search unenthusiastically for some instructions, give up and spend 9 days half-heartedly playing voicemail tennis with the landlord and various sub-contracted companies, before having to avoid eye contact with a man who came out in the evening, clearly missing out on setting fireworks for his kids, to solve the whole thing in 5 minutes without even deholstering his screwdriver. Which believe it or not did not fill me with a sense of achievement.

Sure I can see and have clean clothes, but at what cost?

It's OK though, my remote control won't turn the sound on the TV up, it'll turn it down, but not up, this probably means I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Bums on seats.

Do you think bus drivers feel better when their bus is full?

Do they go home feeling like they've done a better days work if they've ferried more people around, like the day has been more worthwhile. Or are passengers an annoyance, a hassle, extra notches of stress. I mean, I prefer driving alone, I don't have the pressure of being responsible for my passengers safety, or their judgement when I make a mistake, I can turn the stereo up and sing along without embarrassment, but essentially my journey is selfish, it helps nobody but myself. A full car/bus would mean more people helped, less carbon footprint (per person) and a feeling of some sense of community created from my task, but would increase my tension levels potentially leading to future health issues, plus if i do balls it up, more people are at risk.

I don't think I could be a bus driver, it's a straight choice between the guilt of the wasteful and the stress of the protector, it's just too much. Hail to the bus driver, bus driver man.

I can see the pub from 'ere!

Have I ever told you about my clock before?

It's got a radio receiver in it, or some similar fancy technology, which means it automatically learns the time from time signals in the ether. I never have to set it, or correct it, it just sorts itself out. Neat, eh?

Well, since the clocks went back last weekend, it has taken to just spinning constantly at the rate of about 3 hours a minute. This can mean only one of two things. Perhaps time itself has disappeared, we now exist in a timeless space, 3 dimensions and that's it, which is an awful lot for my head to deal, for one, do i go to work tomorrow or will it still be today which is my day off although i it has been today all week then why did anyone show up all last week. It's possible, I'm no expert on these matters, but like the emotions of a lady, I've no real hope of understanding it.

Assuming that time still exists, it can only mean that for the last 7 days I've been hurtling, at quite a speed, into the future. I had no preconceptions of what this might be like, so I'm happy to accept that this is indeed the case, I am by default the most amazing human being to have ever lived and you should be honoured that I am communicating with you from the future. I can answer any questions you have about the future, but essentially, it's still raining, James May is still on TV and yes, your bum does look big in that.

Enjoy the present chumps, see you when you catch up.

Down at the Bottom of the Garden

Early today I was offered salvation by a boy in a white shirt and black tie, he asked "What's the most important thing in your life?". All I could think of was the fact I'd just eaten one finger of Twirl and saved the rest for later, and whether or not that makes me King of Everything or whether it further marks out my decent into adulthood.

He had an American accent, both him and his friend, who was busy exclaiming his disbelief in other's disbelief. I wonder if it was just a coincidence, or if this particular faith based organisation actually fly over agents to recruit on the mean streets of Preston, and do they do this because they have no locally based affiliates, or because they believe that the use of home grown talent is essential to the success of the mission. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's hard to take someone seriously with a familiar North English accent, or it's too easy to brush them aside. The sincerity and movie star tones of someone who learned to talk in the US of A however, catches your attention, makes you think Bruce Willis is talking to you and so you better damn well listen to what he has to say.

Maybe. It didn't work on me though really, I didn't even break stride, just continued on home full of Twirl based musings and the dilemma of whether I should, as he might have said, 'take a nap' when i got in, or soldier on through. His question did hang there a little, but only as much as a recent expulsion of gas from the digestive system, rather than an in use noose.

Homicide Fidelity

There's a hierarchy of sentiment in pop songs that seems a little misplaced. 'I need you', is considered superior to 'I want you'. 'I would die for you / can't live without you', is believed more potent when serenading your potential mate than 'I'd like to live for you / with you'. To claim that you are 'nothing without him/her', suggests somehow that the person in question is more important to you than if you claimed that you 'felt more complete when they're around' or even, if we're pandering to the dramatic, are 'everything' with them. 

Are we stalkers because we listen to pop music, or do we listen to pop music because we are stalkers?

The singers spurt out these sentiments with vim and vigour, eyes closed, fists clutched hard against hearts, we join in while we do the washing up, only with a little less exuberance, for fear of getting soap suds on our tops. Our George's thought police would have a field day with all this flying around. A lover or a fighter? Same thing you're honour, throw 'em in the cells and don't let 'em out 'til St Swithun's Day.

I admit, it's possible that a love song which read 'I find you attractive physically, mentally and spiritually and your particular personality makes me feel a little better about myself and the world. The fact that you seem to have some connection to me is definitely a positive thing in my life, and whilst I'm sure I could quite easily live without you and, had I not met you, I can't imagine I'd have spent all my days trying to fill a you shaped hole, but as you are around, I'd prefer you to stay around.' might not fly off the shelves quite as fast as 'I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)', but I'd feel a whole lot better about my kids listening to it. 

The Mystery of a Speeding Heart

Capital cities I have been to, however briefly: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Bucharest, Sofia, Reykjavik.

That's my intro and I'm sticking to it. I may have chosen to do it to show off my travels, to paint myself as a man-of-the-world, or at least man-of-northern-and-a-little-bit-of-eastern-Europe. I may have chosen it to suggest that what comes next comes not from some country boy who has never seen a big city before and as such is too overwhelmed to really pass the comments he's about to... erm, pass. I probably did it because I just like lists.

London. I went to London this week. Not for the first time, but you get a fresh take on a place every time you visit, same as you get a fresh take on a person every time you meet them, well, at least for the first four times, people don't have as much depth as cities. 

London is not my favourite city, but it's better than Paris, which seems to be entirely based around pouring too much salt in your dinner and worshipping a giant pylon, personally I blame the wine. London does have an incredible appeal though, and it's one that its inhabitants probably hardly ever see, one that a lot of tourists probably miss, with their maps, destinations and plans. Everyone has plans in London, everybody needs to be somewhere. It's a terrible place to be when you need to be somewhere, it's crowded and confusing, it's noisy and over complicated, it's constantly running out of time. Look into the eyes of a Londoner, they're tired and they're beaten, they have to spend hours of their days fighting for position and pushing through a crowd. Unless they work in Pret of course, where they smile, they smile the painful smile of a being with their most sensitive body parts inches from a bear trap that will snap closed if the edges of their mouth ever drop in angle. Pret a Manger is the gateway to hell, though they do make nice food.

My point. The best thing you can do in London is get lost. Have yourself a vague destination with no strict time scale for arriving there, throw away your map, and go on instinct. There is something impressive, interesting or entertaining around every corner of our capital city, and only half of it gets in the guide books. The buildings, the squares, the shops, the parks, the people, the pianos. Then if you're really lucky, you'll chance upon the river, the shores of which make up one of the most incredible sights on this earth. Nothing makes you feel more humble and more proud at the same time as what lines the Thames, I challenge you to challenge that and mean it.

Look at me, gushing hyperbole.

To sum up though, don't go to London with an agenda, and don't try and go for a night out, the place closes at 11pm, probably because everyone is tired from their agendas, if you go, get lost.

This blog is dedicated to everyone that had to wait an hour for me because I'd left my map at the hotel.