I'VE MOVED!!

Please come and visit me over at http://traveldiaries.lastminuteliving.com/

All comments appreciated!

Thanks for visiting

You're all invited to a party...

...and I won't take no for an answer.

For the next year I will be taking part in an ambitious, over the top and largely original experiment and I want you all to help me out. Firstly, finish reading this post. Then, head over to the link at the bottom of this and read the post written there. It's written by me on my brand spanking new blog and the blog where the experiment will be taking place.

Where I need your help - As you'll discover, the experiment I'm taking part in is a pretty ambitious one, especially for somebody who struggles to update his blog once a week/month and it'll be a lot easier for me to find the inspiration if I know people are actually reading what I'm writing. Therefore, I would be eternally grateful if you could leave a few comments and maybe even link to it if the fancy takes you (or swap this link for that one if you like). I'm even including a section for exchanging links and so if you tell me once you've done it I will be sure to return the favour.

I the mean time I wish everyone who happens to stumble across this a happy new year! Marvellous.

Visit: http://traveldiaries.lastminuteliving.com/cityliving/

Christmas Eve

Early christmas presents, don't ya just love 'em?

I've just opened my first 'christmas eve' present and I love it. It was one of those things I've been thinking about buying for weeks as well and have stopped myself from purchasing just in case. And now here it is, marvellous. It's the most recent 'Dino:The Essential Dean Martin' CD (with 30 classic tracks no less) and really does get me spot on as a christmas present. I got it from a friend whose christmas present I think I've got pretty spot on as well. I went shopping for it last week with the objective of buying the most obscure dvd in world cinema history. I came home with a strange Japanese 'The Sound Of Music' spoof called 'The Happiness of the Katakuris' featuring songs, dance, zombies, volcano's and clay animation sequences. I can't wait to see it myself because it sounds so tacky and weird.

I've still got all my wrapping to do (I only buy for immediate family so I'll be seeing them all tomorrow) so I'm hoping to get it out of the way whilst listening to the new CD. I've been out drinking all afternoon as well so my tipsy wrapping should prove fun. I wrapped my friends present in tin foil because the wrapping paper had temporarily dissapeared, I may even do that for the family, admittedly it was a lot easier.

Merry christmas all. Have a good one!

PS As regards christmas presents and friends. If you are my friend and you haven't received a christmas present it's probably just because we don't 'do them.' I still think you're great :D

Ok, I've not gone mad. My last post, although slightly alcohol fueled was supposed to sound like a film noir narration or a 1920's detective novel. I have no idea why, the mood just hit me to write a different style for once and suddenly I turned into a mack wearing 1920's private eye, scotch in one hand, cigarette in the other. Suffice to say we can be clear on one thing, the works christmas party was truly and utterly the worst party I have ever been to. I was the only man and I was dragged up to dance to Slades 'Merry Christmas Everyone' which I didn't appreciate.

Yesterday I had severe food poisoning, the worst I have ever felt, ever. I was, quite literally, being sick every 10 minutes from waking up ill at 5:30am to going to bed at 11pm. I had a headache, I had a temperature and my body was aching worse than I've ever known. I spent most of the day lay on the bathroom floor until finally giving up at 7 and having my mum call the doctor.

When we finally got everything sorted and talked through the symptoms the emergency doctor said it was definitely food poisoning and reccomended I go to the local hospital, be put on a drip and stay in overnight. Not wanting to move from the bathroom floor lest I be sick again I said I'd have to think about that one. I spent the rest of the night drinking pints of water and trying not throw up the entire pint before I could get another one down so as to rehydrate myself. Moreover, because of the dehydration my skin became worryingly dry and I got freakishly dark patches beneath my eyes.

As I said, worst day ever.

Beyond the lights and the disco balls and the tacky DJ taglines was a lounge. A lounge filled with mock-leather couches, dark corners, ambience and a barman who, for all intents and purposes, looked just like James Woods. Now this was a bar. A bar where the drunk, or misplaced, or down-and-out could prop their weary frames and take in a few rounds of scotch. A place where those who could not dance, or couldn't be bothered making the effort with others could relax and take in a few high volume beverages. This was the lounge, a place for loners, a place for shysters, a place for disco misfits. And it was in the lounge that I found myself after this years staff christmas party. E-O-Eleven.

Perhaps it was a players paradise, maybe it was a packers nightmare, but a bar room full of 300 guests, all of whom happened to be women, was no place for me. I tried, man did I try, but once the disco lights came on and I'd spent more than 15 minutes arm-in-arm being led around the dance floor I quit, I retired to the lounge.

The lounge admittedly didn't have much going for it, but it was quiet, the drinks were close and, above all else, it didn't have a dance floor. It was smokey, not usually my scene, but the barman was friendly and the shots came cheap. Dizzying liquor, straight to the head, Jim Beam Black, the solution to problems past and present. I drank, I laughed.

Soon enough the party had ended, the lights were up. On the stage a middle-aged balding fat guy packed away amps and decs and stereo equipment, not half as flash in the full light. A friend talked lesbian sex with a passing acquantance, eager to get a taxi home, not interested in the tonguing antics of a couple far from home.

And suddenly I'm inside my house, feeling merry, needing more alcohol in my vains. Last night the Alcoholics Anonomous website test confirmed that I was an alcoholic and I want to live up to the reputation. Needing to update a blog. Wanting sleep. Knowing tomorrow will be an early morning.

I plan to drift off to the Dandy Warhols 'The Last High'. They know the score...

CHRISTMAS HAPPENS...SOMETIME SOON!!!

I don't know. Somewhere over the past couple of days the christmas spirit seems to have leaked out of me, leaving me feeling tired, drained and completely down. It's nothing to do with 'the stresses of christmas' because I'm not a person to get stressed, I'd feel like this without christmas. It's just an all consuming nothingness which is annoying in that I myself can't even define it.

I don't blame you for thinking I sound stupid, in a way I kind of agree. But it's reached some kind of ugly limit today and so naturally I had to vent something somewhere. I gave up discussing any problems of significance with people years ago because, I concluded, it largely either involved them or affected their opinion of me in such a way that it would fundamentally change my relationship with them. Besides, who wants to be known amongst friends and family as 'that depressing guy who complains all the time'? Which is, as a matter of fact, what I would probably be known as if I ever resorted to talking through serious problems with people because once I started, I probably wouldn't stop.

I imagine it's a defensive thing more than anything because, in certain circumstances, I will actually break this rule. If, for example, a friend has just divulged a huge secret to me or told me a lot of their problems and I have tried to help I will sometimes return the revelation or complaint with things of my own. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in the business of discussing my personal feelings on a quid pro quo basis, I don't trade information, I just like to know that we're those sort of friends on that sort of ground before venturing anything. Afterall, it would crush me if a friend turned around and said 'look, I'm just not interested in listening,' and that's no over exagerration. So I don't do it.

Another reason I probably don't do it is that in situations like my current one I don't actually know what it is that's getting me down and I've reasoned that knowing what it is you're talking about is probably a logically starting point in any conversation. So it's not that I choose not to do it, it's that I literally can't. By all means I can try, buy me a few Jack Daniels' and I could name a whole host of sorrows, but none of them would be right. I guess in a way that's what this post is all about. Maybe you can tell me yourself if this draft survives and isn't deleted before I can press the send button.

In fact, in the interest of this being published I'll stop writing now and get to pressing that most inviting of orange buttons at the bottom of my screen. Although first I must make one proclaimation, and that proclaimation is that 'Space Cadets' is an absolutely fantastic program worthy of much more praise than it is currently getting. It's the only TV I watch these days but it is well worthy of my hour. Watch it!

CHRISTMAS HAPPENS IN...12 DAYS!

Days to christmas: 13

Behind Bens advent calendar door today: A Cracker!!!

Guess at what will be behind tomorrows: A candy cane?

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat and most of my friends are splitting with their partners and fretting about being alone on christmas. It's true, this year Santa has a lot of unexpectedly lonely boys and girls on his list.

In fact this year the number of friends who have become single since November 30th outnumber the ones who are still happily with their partners. And all of them are sad and depressed about what to do when the big day finally roles around. Because, for reasons as diverse as mental spouses and long lost loves all of them have been on the receiving end of a big fat christmas bust-up.

Admittedly, some are doing their level best to make things work. They're buying gifts, wooing old flames and declaring undying love to make sure they're back together with loved ones in time for the 25th. Others are joininbg dating agencies, hanging around local singles nights and generally making fools of themselves to make sure they are with somebody (anybody!) for the christmas period. Me, I'm not particularly bothered. After this weekend I won't be seeing my girlfriend until January at the latest but I'm secure enough in my relationship not to mind. But, what all this commotion has made me wonder is, why is christmas and new year such an apparently scary time to be alone. Well, I gave it some thought and finally I came upon a small snippet I'd written a good few years ago. I suppose this is as good a reason as any to explain why nobody wants to be alone at christmas or New Years:

New Years Eve scares a lot of people. In a lot of ways it scares me. It’s a scary place to be, the eve of a whole new year. It’s the lip of a void, containing nothing but an inky foreboding blackness out of which anything could emerge. For many people it’s not a brand new start at all, it’s simply the uglier, more indefinite continuation of all the bad things that have happened to them the year before. It’s a bottomless pit of a million more opportunities for something awful and utterly terrifying to plague their existence. And, to add insult to injury, the crowning achievement of the sick miscreant who invented the whole thing placed a series of parties smack bang in the middle of the whole sorry episode so friends and family alike could get together and see who exactly stood at the edge of this void alone. And then, when the new year finally does role around, you’re shoved mercilessly into it despite all protests and feeling nowhere near as drunk as you should be to find that once again you’re stood on the outskirts of a circle, sipping at an empty glass and watching couples and lovers and partners you don’t want to be around hugging and kissing and making plans. Happy New Year.

Well, it works for me :P

And by the way, the christmas paradox is a paradox because advent calendars become disposable on December 24th/25th. Who wants to make festive ice cubes on December 25th? Answers on a postcard! :P

CHRISTMAS HAPPENS IN...13 DAYS!

Days to christmas: 13

Behind Bens advent calendar door today: A sack with presents

Guess at what will be behind tomorrows: A cracker?

Thats right folks! 13 days! That's less 2 weeks. In fact that's 8 more working days for me. One more day at university. One more lecture and one more seminar. Wow! The numbers are getting smaller.

My christmas plans are well and truly finalized now. I'm taking my girlfriend to see Eastenders' Steve McFadden in Peter Pan at the Palace Theatre this weekend and I've booked us a room at the Palace Hotel afterwards which should be nice.

We're using next weekend as our unofficial christmas day really because due to distance, families and other commitments we won't be seeing eachother on christmas day itself :( (a nice big aw from everyone please!) which means I'm having to cart presents down to the hotel early in the afternoon before she arrives (not that they're that huge, in case you're reading :P) I'm really looking forward to it actually. Apart from the obvious I really like the Palace Hotel and it's been years since I've seen a traditional panto. I'm planning to spend some time next week in front of my bathroom mirror shouting 'It's behind you!' just to get into practise before we go. I swear the tickets arrived last week but my mum (who has moved them) swears she hasn't seen them (even though she has moved them) and insists that they are somewhere in my bedroom (despite the fact that she has moved them). Grrrrrr!

Other than that the house is looking nicely 'christmassed' now with the trees, wreaths and wot-nots hanging about. My nan has finally bought some new christmas lights and decided to go all minimalist with them by plugging in the whole set and just throwing them in a heap on top of her record player. And my dad has decked out his apartment in Reading with a menagerie of fiber optic foliage which I'm sure would give any onlooker a tension headache within minutes. The fun!

And thats about it for now, but until my next post consider this:

Every year, when taking chocolates from advent calendars, thousands of people have the 'good idea' of using the left over tray to make festively shaped ice cubes. Why is this a paradox?