So … What to do with 2011 …

I thought I'd try it out and see what it portended. This is what I found:

Well, the weather's still crap but at least it's not snowing any more. Snow is so 2010.
Driving in to the city on deserted highways with not another car for miles around made for a pretty good start to a Saturday, even in grey mist and drizzle. No traffic in the city, either, just empty streets echoing away in all directions, the only noise being my car engine and the drone of hundreds of thousands of snoring revellers about to wake up to a stonking and well-deserved hangover.
More fool them.
I went to bed early (you should all know why by now) after watching Rigoletto from the Duke's Palace in Mantua, with Plácido Domingo as Rigolleto and Julia Novikova as a smoking hot Gilda (mmmm) and so will not be joining in today's official national headache and nausea festival.

I took my pick of a thousand empty and free parking spaces (weird at eight on a Saturday morning) and wandered a plague-ridden city. Had the weather been any better I could have taken a bumper crop of Hollywood disaster movie style photos. I was kinda glad I'd not watched The Omega Man for a few years as I felt like the last person alive.

All the shops closed and shuttered, all the market stalls deserted, the streets echoing and empty and allowing me the discovery that my right shoe has developed a squeak that seemed to carry right across the city centre.

Ask me what I was doing there? I have no idea whatsoever, but it was strangely fun having the whole place to myself.
Then I discovered I was not alone. All the coffee shops and newsagents were closed (along with everything else) apart from two, my usual paper shop and my usual coffee shop and breakfast haunt. Weird, but kinda nice, like they'd just opened up for me.

No queue in the paper shop, just Lucy wishing me Happy New Year and chatting about how spooky the city was with only us in it. No queue - in fact no customers - in the coffee shop, just big greasy Matt behind the counter, looming and lank, looking for all the world like a low ranking Mafia thug with a godawful hangover.
Wahey! My pick of every comfy chair in the place! I settled in to my favourite chair by the window and started my year as I mean to go on, with a diet breakfast of creamy porridge with honey and a full-fat latte.
I managed to read the Guardian Book Review from cover to cover with nary a person walking in (or indeed past the window). Not until an hour later did I see another soul: a confused looking family who seemed spooked by the vast echoing emptiness all around them who wandered into the coffee shop and wandered out again, apparently lost.

Heading back to the car I heard music and was pulled toward Saint Peter Mancroft where the organist was sitting all alone in the massive gothic darkness belting out Bach at full-stops volume. He'd locked himself in, otherwise I'd have recorded him for you. I stood in the rain and listened for ages.

I've decided I like 2011 so far. It's got no people in it other than weird little Lucy in the paper shop, with her startled hamster face and her hair that lives an independent and completely wild life of its own, Matt, who was too hung over to do much more than grunt but luckily sentient enough to operate the coffee machine, a confused family and a deranged organist.
No doubt last night's revellers will soon wake up and ruin everything, but having a little piece of unspoilt year to paddle around in by myself was not unpleasant. Let's hope it bodes well.

 On my way to Saint Peter Mancroft (the big church in the background here), I found this stall.

 Ooh! Lots more!

"Er … Hello?" I ventured.

"Anyone about?

How much for the pigeon?"

But alas, nobody would take my money so I wandered on and enjoyed my own private Bach recital in the rain.

Happy 2011, Blogville.