Drunkly Sober Writing Skills

So 2015 happened. Like a whole year of my life that I can honestly say I lived without being in fear of what's going on inside my own head. That's a pretty random thing to say, I know, but 2015 was the first year in a long time that I've been fully in control. Applying and choosing a uni, passing my first set of A Levels, finally overcoming anxiety and whatever else the fuck is wrong with me.

And a lot of stuff happened to the world, never mind me. A lot of people died, a lot of people did things that will go down in history, both for good and bad reasons, reasons that, either way, will be marked in our kids' history books. From a little boy on a beach, to red white and blue lighting up the world's skies, 2015 will be remembered as immense. An entire library of world history crammed into twelve months.

And, of course, I lost my grandad. A man I just toasted to not half an hour ago, with some hella expensive whiskey that tasted like some hella expensive shit-smothered cardboard. You can never say I didn't love you, Robert.

But yeah, there's a lot of 'this is a brand new page, make this book a good one' quotes flying around the internets tonight. Which part of me (the tumblr part) agrees with, but the other half is repulsed by the cheesy crap that some people be spouting. So my inspirational quote for the evening is; don't fuck this one up.

This is a brand-spanking, new car smell, plastic cover still on the seats, fresh, year. The other one is a tiny bit fucked up - it's been keyed a couple of times and smells like a couple of homeless guys have taken up residence in it. Honestly, it needs compounding into one of those neat little cube-things. 

But it happened, it existed. It will never not exist. Don't know whether this post is of benefit to anybody but me to be honest. I've no idea what I've written. Because I may be a tiny bit drunk. Thank god for spellcheck. Or thank Steve Jobs for spellcheck. Or Bill Gates. Who came first, though? It's like the chicken-egg debate. I should really leave now.

Oh yeah, happy new year or whatevs.

R.

Grandad

The thing is about death is that it isn't real enough. You refuse to believe it. Yeah, you cry and you mourn and you lie there at night thinking about what the last thing they said to you was. Worrying whether you told them that you loved them before they stepped out the front door. But somebody doesn't have to be in the same room as you to be alive, so he could just as easily be sat in his armchair watching Seven Wives for Seven Brothers, couldn't he? He could just as easily be stood over the pond feeding his coi, or shouting at his computer, couldn't he? 

Because that's the way I've decided to think of it. He's still in his armchair watching TV or shouting at Facebook for not sending a message to a long lost cousin somewhere in the depths of the highlands. It's just that his armchair is still in the bungalow, but in a different 'place'. And he's probably already off his face on Gkenfidicks, looking down (or up, you never really knew with him) at us all and thinking 'stupid bastards, I get all this stuff for free up here'.

And he wasn't taken 'before his time', either. Because it's not about the length of time we're graced with, it's about all the stuff we manage to ram into it. And, oh, did he manage. The self-proclaimed computer sensation, the world traveller the Indian prince. He did far more in his life than I'll ever manage to do in mine, I'll tell you that for free. He was chock-full of stories and images of people and countries and other worlds. You could sit and listen to the man for hours, and still, I swear he never once repeated a story. Somehow, there was always something new he had to tell you, but that 'something new' was a story about some dodgy tradesman he met in Australia in 1964 who told him he was selling him a car and he turned up with a camel with a monkey strapped to its back or something.

The only way I managed to compute all of this, was creating some really over-elaborate metaphor. I said it was like somebody collecting hundreds of antique discontinued vinyls over 76 years and keeping them in a huge box in their wardrobe. And, one day, they go to open their wardrobe and the box is just gone. Poof. Disappeared. With no explanation, so you just sit there and think about all those songs that you'll never hear again. Every ounce of time and space that went into crafting every line, every word, just gone. 

Of course, you're sad. They were yours. And you're angry, because you'd spent close to a century collecting all those vinyls. But then you realise, you loved those songs with everything you had. You know every line, every word, every chord of every song on every single one of those albums. They live within you. When you're sat at work, tapping on the desk, that's the tune you're tapping. Whatever song you're humming when you're making breakfast on a morning, that's what you're humming.

So, whether we like it or not, he's sticking with us. We used him up and squeezed him dry, we loved him until it was his time. So there must be no 'I regret's, only 'I remember's. Because every time you drink whisky, every time Liverpool scores, every time The Beatles play, you won't be able to help seeing that smug bastard, winking at you, and raising his glass.

Ill in Time for Christmas

So I willed it and willed it until it finally happened. It's been wanting to happen for a couple of weeks and I hoped to God that I would be able to get it out of the way before Christmas. And here it is. I woke up with it a couple of days ago, and I've never been so happy about not being able to breathe. Yes, I finally got a cold. But this cold means, if my maths are correct, I will not be ill over Christmas. Because, I swear to God, if I'm not able to taste that fucking turkey, that is the day I lose all hope in humanity.

I've not asked for much this Christmas, because as you get older, the present pile gets smaller but all the more expensive. Because I don't get 'excited' about Christmas anymore. I think, on the scale of 1 - Dudley Dursley, I peak at about a 5/6 on the whole present thing nowadays. I look forward to seeing family and eating a shit-tonne of goose fat-smothered food. I look forward to giving the gifts, not receiving them. I enjoy watching my 10-year-old cousin go through his 'I don't know what to believe but if I say I don't believe in Santa, I might not get presents' phase and hear him scream 'Thanks mum and dad... and Santa!' when he opens up his 13th set of Star Wars Lego. I kind-of like receiving an unusable present from my Gran and smiling gratefully, because it wouldn't be Christmas without a pair of hessian sandals to wear in the Northern snow. 

I also don't have a job to go to over Christmas (oh yeah, I quit)' so I don't have that to worry about. The fear that crept into my heart whenever I thought about serving plates upon plates on watery poultry on Christmas morning, when I should be spending time with my family, was enough to make me cry. I vow to never work in a pub environment again. Although the Sunday drunkards were always fun to observe, it wasn't worth it. 'Twas all in all a faf, really. But, because I'm such a good person, I've been spending what little money I've managed to retain on the few humans who've claimed me as a 'loved one'. It's times of the year like this that I wish I was a sociopath so I didn't have to worry about buying gifts for other people. I hate people.

So while I am broke, I am happy, however slowly I may be drowning in used Kleenex's. However high I am on ASDA's own cold and flu capsules and however shit the back of my mouth tastes. Now I think about it... No. I'm happy. I think.

So Happy Christmas/ Hanuka/ Ede/ Quanza/ whatever Pheobe Buffay celebrates this time of year.

Aw, look at the state.