Singing the New Year blues

I hate this time of year. You go to work when the stars are out and come home when they’re back again. Before that, you have to decide whether or not to go for a swim before work which means getting up whilst the owls are still hooting and taking a random guess at what to wear because global warming has resulted in no clue as to what the day might hold weather-wise. Then you have to plan the timing in order that you leave the leisure club…leisure?... at a point early enough to miss the school run but late enough to pick up a coffee on the way. And should it be a coffee or could it be a hot chocolate which is more filling. Too many decisions for that time of day.


Then there’s the compulsory post-Christmas diet. An early rise precludes breakfast so a healthy banana, tucked in the work-bag, is good for the conscience but comprises an insufficient, and generally subsequently bruised meal. Which necessitates the purchase of a healthy/unhealthy flapjack: healthy because it’s full of roughage and unhealthy because it sits in your stomach like a large, sodden brick for several hours afterwards.

The winter evenings might as well be written off. They start at 4pm and finish about seventeen hours later. You get home, full of good intentions to clean the place up a bit, put the heating on, draw the curtains and fall asleep. Around five o clock, aged parents phone with the aim of having an enthusiastic conversation about something or other. Bleary-eyed and incapable of making any decisions other than picking up the receiver…and this is a BAD decision…the conversation has to be resumed a couple of hours later. By this time, the sun has theoretically passed over the yard-arm of aged parents’ planet and they can’t talk coherently, having imbibed the aperitif, eaten their complicated dinner and joined those in the land of the ‘asleep in front of the television’ set.

Meanwhile, you have your own dinner to consider. The plan to cook something healthy whilst drinking a glass of red deteriorates into drinking three glasses of red and speaking to younger members of the family who are also recovering from the working day.

What are you having for dinner asks daughter number two?
I found two courgettes in the fridge I say
There are always two courgettes in your fridge
Yes. Possibly, they’re the same two courgettes. Anyway, I’ve cooked them with some onions, covered them with cheese and shoved them in the oven.
Are they still there?
What?
The two courgettes

Oh. I’d forgotten about them

Last night I went straight from work to meet a friend at the cinema. She was hungry and so was I. We went for dinner. Then we went home at twenty past seven without seeing the film because we were too tired to stay out any longer.

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.