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Life just seems so busy at the moment and looking at my diary it isn’t set to get any better any time soon. A combination of work stuff and personal commitments mean that I rarely seem to have time to myself.

This weekend the options are as follows:

1. Head down to London for a Greenbelt meeting
2. Head up Bolton way for a friends special birthday party
3. Stay at home and have a weekend catching up on paperwork, housework and possibly even some relaxation

I go for option 3, but predict that come Sunday evening I might be chewing my own arm off in boredom and will want to socialise.

I think it’s a sign of quite how behind and tired I am that actually I spend the entire weekend at home (seriously I didn’t venture out even to the bins) and it was so good.

Now if this roundabout of life could just slow down a little bit, or if I could find a few extra hours in the day…

On Chesil Beach

This week at book group we discuss Chesil Beach.

I loved it. Ok I'm a McEwan fan anyway, but this is one of his best I reckon, up there with Atonement.

Sure there are flaws, but it's beautifully crafted and an immensely impressive work. A skilful breakdown of how two people in love could end up at a pivotal moment, where communication catastrophically and irretrievably fails and it all falls apart.

Seven-oh

Down in London for my pa's birthday. It's a special one; you know one of the ones that ends in an 0.

Of course it would be the last thing he'd do to really celebrate.

Me - How come you haven't got your birthday cards up Dad?
Dad - I was never allowed to put my cards up when I was a kid, so why would I start now?

Woah, bit of an insight into your parent's upbringing or what?

Back to good

At my eighth Chiropractic session, there is good news; despite interrupted treatment what with Christmas etc, my Chiro's verdict is that my back is well on the way to full function. This is well ahead of predicted, which apart from anything else is reassuring on the whole financial incentive vs medical treatment front.

Accordingly, my next treatment will be in three weeks and all being well we should go to four to six weeks from there.

Best of all though, is that my back is genuinely feeling loads better. I'm pretty much back to full function swimming wise and unless I've had a bad day (eg in bed with migraine or I miss doing my daily back exercises etc), I'm pretty much pain free.

Tedious

He. Him. He. The men. The lads. He. Him. He.

Isn't it time a meteorite took out these pea-brain dinosaurs?

So very, very bored of it all.

Dinner and Wii Tennis

I didn’t sleep at all well, so after seeing J off with directions to Stuart’s church, I head back to bed for a snooze, before finally emerging in time for one of K’s most excellent roast dinners.

R does her best in graciously defeating me on every Wii game she’s mastered, but whilst the humiliation of not being able to hit a baseball smarts, at least I should have burned off…oh mayber half a Yorkshire pudding?

One question troubles me though, why can I not serve in Wii tennis, without also miming throwing a ball in the air?

As K and J almost fall off the sofa laughing (strange how they couldn’t be persuaded to join in…), I reflect that it’s a good job that I resigned myself years ago to the fact that my purpose on this earth is to provide endless moments of schadenfreude for others.

A Manchester Saturday

I was a late developer today, my compadres K, V and J were already laden down with carrier bags before I finally made my first purchase.

However, I did finally find a pair of black work trousers I liked so it was a success. Of course it could be said that I didn’t strictly speaking need to also buy a lovely cotton top whilst in Monsoon, but really, can one ever have enough black tops?

After a bus home and a quick change, Stuart and K call round for J and I and after much indecision about restaurants we head for the Little Yang Sing.

I’m always nervous when I make a recommendation, but fortunately this jewel in Manchester’s China Town crown, didn’t let me down.

Journeys

J should be arriving this evening for a weekend in Manchester. With four of the six lanes on the M6 in Cheshire closed, it's proving more difficult than expected, but eventually she finds her way through.

Stuart is also struggling to make his way back north after a Greenbelt meeting in Cheltenham. Once again it seems precipitation is causing parts of Gloucestershire to close down.

Fortunately N is able to come to the rescue and come back to collect Stuart and drive him through the snow to a point further east where the trains are still running.

Needless to say, by the time we are finally all gathered around the dinner table, tucking in to treats from the tandoori and seeing off a couple of bottles of wine, we're all ready for it.

Hamster Jam

Today a very, very lovely person sent me a very, very beautiful delivery of flowers.

There are few things this girl likes receiving out of the blue more, than a gorgeous bunch of blooms.

You know who you are. Thank you.

The Whistler

Our section of the office has a new comer.

Isn't whistling in public a hanging offence?

And the offenders are always of a certain age, aren't they? And the sort that would be the first to complain about someone's ring tone.

Still, I must try to keep this in proportion in terms of my response. After all I'm a reasonable, mature adult and there's little point saying anything anyway, it seems to be a sub-conscious activity on the part of the guilty party.

No, I'll just have to settle for ripping off his f*cking head and shoving his whistling, f*cking face up his corduroy-clad, saggy arse.

Happy New Year everyone.

New Kro

Out for a buddy drink last night with Stuart, I think we both have the January blues.

After a hard day of work he's melancholy and tired and I'm trying hard not to think about my forthcoming work week, which is stacked head to toe with meetings upon meetings.

For the length of the evening however, we are protected from it all and find a space in which two buddies can just chat idly about gadgets and forthcoming birthdays etc over a couple of drinks.

The space in question is provided of the lovely people at Kro, who it transpires have just taken over a bar near the Dog Collars and Rabbit Corpses homestead.

Order

The ever amazing Caroline over at One Pedestrian has spent the day sorting her CDs into alphabetical order. Which has reminded me of my dilemma, for whilst my CDs are nicely alphabetical, my books are all over the shop.

Multiple book shelves (mostly two deep), in multiple rooms, on multiple floors. As I think Fragile Tender once described it - the curse of the literate.

The only order is based loosely on height, with taller tomes consigned to deeper shelves - space optimisation always the key. Other than that, they're all just jumbled up, a little bit of themeing in places, the odd little cluster by author, some loose differentiation by date of purchase, but nothing hard and fast and trying to find anything is becoming a real nightmare.

Can someone not design a gadget using tiny tags (maybe those tracking chips that people get upset at Tescos putting in their razor packs) that help you track them?

Or do I alphabetise within the size groupings?

Even if that worked, it feels, well a little too ordered (I know, don't ask my why it's different for CDs - maybe because they're already more uniform in outline?).

Of course I could take a lead from S who once famously drove P mad, by reordering their entire book collection, by colour of spine. It looked very pretty apparently, and as S said, in order to find something all you needed to do is remember the colour of the book's spine...

Maybe not eh?

New Year - New Look

I'm main-lining Echinacea and high dose Vitamin C and it seems to be working; whichever of the various family lurgies I picked up in London, is staying in the background, trying to have its day, but being kept at bay.

Accordingly, I make it to the Dog Collars & Rabbit Corpses New Year's Eve Party and last until about 3.15am, when the never-ending SingStar finally drives me home.



Anyway, I'm never one for New Year Resolutions, but maybe the time is fitting for some redecoration around these parts. So what do you think? Here's a snap shot of the old version. Shall we have a vote?

New Year, New Look?
	Yeah, it needed some fresh paint around here
	Oooh no, stick with what you know
Free polls from Pollhost.com