Pretty Unappetising

Another photo from this morning's walk in to work.

St.James's Park is chock full of birds, yet nobody seems to want to eat these yummy berries.

They've been sitting there since October, when I first noticed them.

The photos put it far more eloquently that I can, just how heinously winter sucks ass.

The bush is a variant of callicarpa, for which the common name is "beauty berry" but in bird language must mean "shitty-tasting".

Grey

Whoop di doo!
I actually made it to work today.
"Normal service" has been resumed on the trains so I was "only" 65 minutes late.
2008 has started like a Trabant on a frosty morning.
I've a good mind to send it back and ask for another year.

London, like Old Dive, is grey and subdued this morning; as inspiring as an accountancy textbook.

Everything seems to be in greyscale at the moment. This reflection of a tree in the lake in St.James's Park is about as good a description as I can find of the year so far; a black, meandering, confused mess.

Roll on spring.

I Don't Even Know What Day It Is

That's twice in the past seven years that I've gone back to work a day early after Christmas.
What a fucking dork.
At least this morning, the trains were so crap that at five AM the website listed fifty-five cancellations so I emailed the office to say I'd be working from home.
I was quite happily beavering away when an email came back from the boss at 8:30 saying "Hahahahaha! Go back to bed, you klutz! We don't start work until tomorrow."

The last time this happened was before the evil "One" franchise took over our rail line and so the trains worked (sort of). I got into the office to find the security guard (Hi, Fernando) looking at me weirdly and asking what I was doing there.
Having kicked myself around reception I went up to the office, got a coffee and breakfast and read the paper, then went sightseeing and shopping in the snow (yes, we had snow back then).
I wasn't going to waste a seven hour round trip to London by just going straight back home.

So that's Dive's start to 2008.
I'm so dumb that I don't even know what day it is.

Well, start as you mean to go on, they say.
This is going to be one dumb fuck of a year.

I'm Not Impressed

This is it, huh?
Another fucking year …

Well this is what 2008 looks like from my front step.
Grey, dreary, fucking cold, damp, boring, depressing …
And I have to go back to work tomorrow.


You guys really went out and celebrated this?
You're weird.

Duck … Here Comes Another Year.

Hokay.
I for one will be going to bed at my usual time of nine o'clock this evening. Bollocks to all this crappy New Year's Eve toss.

I'll kick off my last post of 2007 by checking my resolutions from last year to see how I did:

On New Year's Eve last year, I resolved to:

- Be less of a miserable old bugger;
- Well. That one never stood a fucking chance, did it?
- Stop kicking children in supermarkets;
- Neither did that. Take away all my fun why don't ya?
- Get a girlfriend (Hah!);
- Astonishingly, that actually happened in February and is still happening!
- Keep blogging;
- I flagged a bit during the summer, but I'm still here, so that's two resolutions kept.
- Keep getting 100 percent in my Japanese exams;
- Easy Peasy! Still an unbroken 100% record.
- Take up a new hobby; maybe macramé, caravanning or puffin-frottage.
- Nope. Didn't do that.
- Eat a dolphin;
- Nor that. I couldn't even get hold of any whale sashimi this year. Arse!

Those were the "official" resolutions and I actually made three out of seven, which surprised me greatly.
My "unofficial" resolutions were to:

- Offend people;
- Swing wildly between black misery and overexcited childish euphoria, with nothing in between;
- Spend more time stuck on trains;

And all three of those I kept assiduously.

Here's a quote(ish) from last year's "New Year's Eve" post to remind you why I shall not be partaking of drunken revelry tonight (nor any other New Year's Eve as long as I live):

"The one thing I shall NOT be doing is going out tonight.

Between the ages of nine and forty-five, I spent every single Old Year's Night (musicians always call it Old Year's Night, rather than New Year's Eve because New Year's Eve suggests hope and Old Year's Nights are festering pits of hopeless black despair and miserable fucking despondency) on stage and believe me, there's no better aversion therapy than that.

Here's a typical Old Year's Night for Old Dive:

Stay sober all day!

Pack up all the gear and drive to the studio (or wherever, depending on the year). Unpack all the gear and load it into the truck/van/bus.

Drive for hours to some posh fucking hotel.

Carry all the gear up endless flights of stairs and down miles of dingy corridors, then set it all up and soundcheck everything (including such immeasurable joys as listening to the drummer hit the snare drum once a second for five minutes while Rod gets the fucking levels right).

Sit in some miserable fucking hotel room, stone cold sober, munching crap snacks and drinking crap hotel coffee and watching suicidally dire crap TV from five (when we have to be out of the ballroom so they can set the tables) until eleven pm, by which time we are all ready to kill someone and wired from all the caffeine.

Get changed into fucking dickie bows.

Go on stage and play (SOBER) until three in the fucking morning, sometimes backing some fucking washed-up chart has-been who thinks they're God (The Bachelors are exempt from that … supposedly old and embarrassingly naff, they turned out to be virtuoso musicians, great fun and fucking good company … the only Old Year's Night gig I've ever enjoyed), all the while having to stare at disgusting fucking drunks in party hats who are ripped to the tits, pawing and slobbering over equally pissed pretty girls you'll never, ever get to paw and slobber over, who are trying pathetically to dance and falling all over the monitor speakers (I hate you all forever).

Pull fucking party poppers off hot amps before they catch fire.
Smile (the worst bit of all).

Make our miserable fucking way back upstairs and change again, then wait hours for the drunks to piss off before spending a soul-destroying hour breaking down all the gear and packing it away.

Drive back to the studio, soberly waving at all the traffic police who are just as fucking miserable at having to work all night on the set of "Night Of The Living Drunks".

Repack all the stuff in our cars.
Drive home, sober and homicidal at breakfast time vowing NEVER to do it again.

(er … I'm not sounding just a teensy bit bitter here, am I? … Yes? … Good!) …

Much to the falling-over amazement of all my session musician buddies (I'll think of your suffering as I snuggle into my pillow, you poor sods), I made a break for it at forty-six and have been on the run ever since, refusing all offers, no matter how desperate and cash-laden they have been (and they have been).
The upshot of which is that for the past two years (Three years now!), my Old Year's Nights have been blissfully relaxing and I've been asleep well before midnight.
Tonight I will be doing the same again. I'll watch a DVD after dinner, then take a book and a scotch to bed around nine. Ahhh … bliss …

So enjoy your drunken revelries one and all. You're more than welcome to them."

So now you know.
Decades of aversion therapy have left me with a deeply ingrained and truly seething hatred of New Year's Eve and all who sail in her.
I have stood, year after year, decade after decade, soberly watching with mounting disgust and abhorrence the binge-drunk antics of New Year's Eve revellers and feeling the deep hatred and bile-bitter loathing settle heavily on my cold black heart.

I make no resolutions for 2008.
It's just another fucking year.
Enjoy tonight if you must, but spare a thought for those poor fuckers up on stage.
God, I hate it all!

Helly and Pea

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without an invasion by our lovely Peahen and equally lovely sister Helly.


There was much playing with computers (and stupid PS2 games like GTA and Lara), munching of nibblies, slurping of green tea and yummy damson smoothies, laughing at Rip Torn's sex scenes in The Man Who Fell To Earth, looking at Helly's belly (nice), palpating of avocados, dog walking, guitar playing (Peahen plays guitar, as well as trumpet, cornet and piano … girls … huh!), neighbour-visiting and general larking about.
I love it when blogs collide.

Filler Post

More wet stuff from my wanderings.

What do you think might be going on here?
Other than swans learning how to detonate farts with a delayed action fuse …

Interlude

Housework today.
And I'm expecting company.
So hum some light music and relax your eyes with a couple of shots from before Christmas that I didn't get the opportunity to post.

These are from my wanders around London looking for water shots.

Unfortunately, they remind me that I'll be back at work soon.

Hey ho.

Suffer, You Bastards!

Well, that's that crap over for another year.
What's next?
Ah … Winter.
Life is a never-ending joyous carnival of things I'd rather avoid.
Hey ho.
Roll on death.

Even worse than death, here's another meme!
Thanks, Maria. Let's make the meme-haters suffer!


Maria's Numbers Meme.

Ten Favourites.

1) Favourite colour:
Black (It's a colour if I say it's a colour)!

2) Favourite food:
Sashimi.

3) Favourite song:
"Prayer To God" by Shellac.

4) Favourite movie:
Anything black and white that makes me cry like a girl.

5) Favourite sport:
Rugby Union.

6) Favourite season:
Spring. Autumn's pretty good, too. Summer and winter suck ass.

7) Favourite day of the week:
Monday. Hah!

8) Favourite ice cream:
Ben and Jerry's rainforest crunch. They stopped doing it years ago, the fat, beardy bastards.

9) Favourite time of day:
Dawn.

10) Favourite month:
May.

Nine Lasts:

1) Last cigarette:
I've never smoked tobacco. Grass, yes, but tobacco? Why the fuck would anyone want to smoke that shit? It stinks.

2) Last drink:
I've got a coffee on the go right now, but I had a scotch last night to celebrate Christmas being over.

3) Last car ride:
Last night, coming back from Mum's.

4) Last kiss:
It was in London. I'm grumpy because it won't be repeated until next year. Fuck these stupid Christmas holidays.

5) Last movie seen:
Diarios de Motocicleta. Last night.

6) Last DVD:
David Lean's wonderful, black and white Great Expectations on Christmas Eve. Winter is the season for Dickens and for black and white movies.

7) Last Phone Call:
I called Mum last night to tell her I'd got home okay (Mums are Mums all over the world).

8) Last CD Played:
Currently playing: Berg's opera: "Lulu."

9) Last Dance:
I dance all the time. Probably the last time was around the kitchen while I was brewing coffee just now. As I've said before: I dance like your dad; only worse. You don't want to see that.

Eight currents.

1) Current mood:
Grumpy. You couldn't guess?

2) Current taste:
Coffee. Other than that I have impeccable taste, as you well know.

3) Current clothes:
A Sock Monkey teeshirt with Drinky Crow on the front and a pair of glasses. Yes, that's all and yes, that's my penis.

4) Current desktop:
Some swirly water from St.James's Park.

5) Current toenail colour:
They look kinda toenail colour. I don't know what I'd call that.

6) Current time:
8:45AM on Boxing Day morning.

7) Current Surroundings:
Sitting at my downstairs computer in the dining room (where I was sitting in yesterday's photo).

8) Current Thoughts:
Relief that Christmas is over, tinged with grumpiness that I miss my girlfriend. We can video chat but we won't be together again until next year, which sucks.

Seven Firsts.

1) First Best Friend:
Malcolm. We grew up from babies together. I suffered one of my first big reality checks with Malcy; we had lovingly made a two man (well … two four-year-old) submarine out of scrap wood. We took it to the river, got in it and it sank very successfully but didn't seem to want to surface until we got out. We just couldn't figure it. Try as we might, the fucker would only go "down", never "up".
I think a big part of the problem with today's kids is that their parents wouldn't allow a pair of four-year-olds to play with saws and hammers and nails and to go unaccompanied down to the river in a home-made submarine. Shame on them. We had a fucking marvellous time! Hi, Malcy. I wonder where the hell you are now?

2) First Kiss:
Judith Flaxman. Yummy.

3) First Screen Name:
Screen name? What's a screen name?

4) First Pet:
Jasper. A ginger Tom out in Malta when I was a baby. He took a scorpion sting for me, pouncing on the fucker in my cradle. What a hero.

5) First Piercing:
Other than surgical stab wounds, the only thing I've had pierced is my eardrums from Ming The Menstrual's nagging.

6) First Crush:
Debbie Smith. Sigh …

7) First Cd:
Shit that makes me feel old. My first seven-inch single was Adam Faith singing "A Message To Martha" in 1962; my first LP, saved for for months with my pocket money, was The Beatles' "Revolver" in '66. My first CD was Sonny Landreth's "South of I-10" in '95. I'm a vinyl junkie; I resisted digital for years.

Six have-you-evers.

1) Have you ever dated one of your guy/girlfriends?
No, though one of my ex.girlfriends is still a very close friend.

2) Have you ever broken the law?
Sheet! Check out my past blog confessions. Let's see now … I blew a load of shit up in my bomb-making youth, including a hilarious telephone box detonation. I've driven under the influence of alcohol, marijana and blow-jobs (though not recently, I hasten to add). I once followed a police car round Norwich with a Camberwell Carrot on the go for about twenty minutes, waving it at them whenever we were stationary in traffic (that was fun). Lots more, but you'd have to trawl through the archives for 'em and I can't be arsed right now.

3) Have you ever been arrested?
Not once. Hee hee hee.

4) Have you ever skinny dipped?
Yup. Though these days you really wouldn't want to see that.

5) Have you ever been on TV?
Yup. Various little crappy things. I've blogged before about "What I did in the nuclear war" and "The crappest TV theme tune I ever recorded". Both of those are doozies.

6) Have you ever kissed someone you didn't know?
I'm a musician. It comes with the territory.

Five Things

1) Thing you are wearing:
I told you that already.

2) Things you've done today:
Housework. A shit, a shave and a shower. Listened to opera. Drunk coffee. Blogged.

3) Things you can hear right now:
Berg's opera, "Lulu" and if I turn the sound down (hang on) … absolutely nothing else. I love living in the middle of nowhere.

4) Things you can't live without:
My old Les Paul. My girlfriend (I didn't mean to type them in that order! OW!) … Shit, I'm in trouble now. Oh, and books.

5) Things you do when you are bored:
Hunt down men with comb-overs and kill them humanely.

Four places you have been today.
Duh! My bedroom, my bathroom, my kitchen, my dining room.

Three people you can tell anything to:
1) Me
2) My girlfriend.
3) er … That's it.

Two choices:

1) Black or White?
Black, black, BLACK!

2) Hot or Cold?
Hot.

One thing you want to do before you die?
Finish my coffee, please.

Shite Christmas

A very Merry Christmas to the lost and the lonely from the miserable old man in the piss hat.


May all your Christmases be merrier than Old Dive's.