Thursday 31/12/09

I've done nothing this week. It's fantastic. I finished work on Christmas Eve and can't have walked more than a mile in total since (and that was to the pub). Last year I was quite down on the whole festive thing, thanks in no small part to being made redundant, but this week I am guaranteed work when I return so I am making the most of it and wallowing. I've done little but sit, unwashed and not properly clothed, on the couch. On the Xbox I have progressed well on Forza and have also caught up on a few episodes of Monk. These haven't taken up most of my time, though. Mainly I have been sleeping.

I am loving waking up when I wish. Fitting in 8 hours sleep but then having the pressure of getting ready for work is infinitely worse than sleeping for 8 hours then doing nothing but chilling on the sofa. I love the easy going lack of stress. I'm also going to bed later and later and this has pushed back the time I wake up.

This has inadvertently prepped me for the stamina required at New Year. Most Friday nights at the pub I am exhausted by 11pm , a consequence of spending all week waking up at 6:30am. This week I should be ready to party (hmm) until at least 1am, giving me ample opportunity to celebrate the arrival of my, and my friends', fourth decade.

I haven't even thought about my colleagues in the office, who are compelled to do my work as I stick Fifa into the disc drive. It's been the perfect week to end a year that I can't really have any complaints about, but I'll try anyway.


Things I liked and didn't like in 2009:

I liked Glastonbury – I'd not quite understood, having been to Reading every year since 2004, why those who go to Glastonbury rave about it so much and hold it in such high regard. Going there brought me round to the idea; it is so well executed as a festival. OK, it's muddy as hell when the rain falls, the music doesn't fall squarely into what I like and it's such a mission to get to but you get there and it makes sense.

I didn't like getting swine flu at Glastonbury – This sucked.

I liked watching the Living End play in Manchester – It was something like the 7th time I've seen them but the show in April, in a tiny university union venue, was probably the best gig I've watched them perform. Because of the intimacy (there can't have been more than 300 people there; minute compared to watching them on the Reading main stage).

I didn't like the Saturday or Sunday nights at Reading – If one thing convinced me that Glastonbury was the superior festival experience it was this. The cunts whose antisocial behaviour led to the destruction of my eighteenth gazebo just destroyed my faith in Reading as somewhere with good nightlife. I will return next year, because the music is always great, but there's no chance in hell I will camp again.

I liked not getting made redundant this year – I was in 2008 and that made me miserable.

I didn't like not moving out – This has been going on for 6 months now. I found a flat I could afford to buy in July, put an offer on it and it got accepted. I applied for the mortgage, which was also accepted. The time since has been spent wrangling with companies who want money out of the person who lived there before. It's doing my head in. And so are my parents who I am too old to live with.


Albums I got into this year:

NOFX – Coaster

NOFX have essentially released the same album for the last 25 years. Luckily it's bloody good punk music. 'Eddie, Bruce and Paul' is a fantastic backhanded tribute to Iron Maiden which has the tradmark Maiden solos, falsetto screaming and lyrics which do nothing but take the piss. The rest of the album is much the same, with lots of catchy riffs and insincere lyrics about religion and mainstream culture.

Brian Setzer Orchestra – Songs From Lonely Avenue

This is really good fun, and it's where Setzer's solo work and the orchestra meet. It has the jumping swing tunes along with some unusually grimy guitar solos. The instrumental tracks make this album and if I had more discipline they'd be the kind of guitar licks I would spend my life trying to learn.

Reverend Organdrum – Hi-Fi Stereo

This wasn't released in 2009 but I didn't listen to it until this year. It's a blinding jazz-rockabilly album by the Reverend Horton Heat guitarist and singer Jim Heath. The album consists basically of him performing awesome guitar solos alongside a drummer and a Hammond organ player. It's the sort of music that would be played in my ideal pub.

I could have mentioned Green Day, but that was a patchy album let down by some abortions which they were daft enough to release as singles (Know Your Enemy, 21 Guns).

Sunday 06/12/09

I’m always keen to try new things and do stuff I wouldn’t normally do, expanding my horizons and becoming a more open-minded person as a result. This week, however, I didn’t do anything new. Rather I saw The Living End, who hail from Melbourne, for the 4th time this year, and the 8th time in total. I know real fandom doesn’t normally begin until you hit double figures of gigs, but I’m rather a fan of this lot. So, unfortunately, is every ex-pat Australian in London.

The gig, at the Kentish Town Forum, was great. The only thing to let it down was the obnoxious, mainly Aussie, crowd. More than simply drinking too much and barging into folk in the crowd (which is to be expected at any gig), in the toilets they complained about the ‘fucking poms’, which I considered a bit unfair. If Great Britain is so shit, why the hell did they fly 10 thousand miles to live here? Clearly the Australians care more about rats than they do the country of their ancestors.

The gig, though, knackered me out. I had to work the next morning. Going to the toilet and then Cramer getting his coat from the cloakroom after the show meant we hung around outside the venue waiting for much longer than we had hoped. All this resulted in getting home at about 1am. I got up for work the next morning at half 6. I was not much use at work. Christmas is still weeks away and haven’t given myself the opportunity to look forward to the new year break. Because I’m lazy I haven’t booked the time off yet. That can only come back to haunt me.

Also pressing are decisions about my future in general, further than the new year. The flat purchase is still going, though painfully slowly. I should work in the mortgage business as they are clearly shit at acting on decisions, too. Judging by the progress, I’ll have a wife and 8 kids (6 from previous relationships) by the time it all goes through. And I’ll then have to sell it immediately because my catholic-sized clan will be too big for the first floor studio flat.

I also need to decide about education. I realised a while ago that I would get nowhere, or no further, in the world without some further education of some sort. This was in juxtaposed to my brief experience of university, which left me fairly cynical towards degrees and students in particular. I think I’ve solved one of these issues by going for a home study degree, something like OU, I’m unsure I have the discipline nor do I know exactly which course to do. However, it wouldn’t cost me anything and may further my (somehow already interminable) career, though would take half a decade to complete.

It really is confusing and a darn sight less trivial than which pub I can go to in Maidenhead next. At least it would be something different.