I've got a brain but I'm a bit afraid to use it.

It's very hard to be reflective on the everyday trials and tribulations of life when you've got toddler wee on your socks.

Nevertheless, it appears to be the time to do the whole looking-back-on-the-year thing. The trouble is I have the memory of a goldfish that's been shot in the head with an adamantium bullet (that's one for the geeks and a frank admission I've seen Wolverine: Origins and yes, I enjoyed it goddammit) and can only remember the year in news with prompting via Google, or a TV end-of-year programme. Incidentally  I'm watching one of them right now. I've forgotten most of the news they've talked about in the first hour already.

I think that it may be hard to remember the news if it doesn't personally intertwine with your own life. Obviously the bigger things will shine through, like the Olympics. You couldn't have not noticed that to be honest, and quite rightly too. The London Olympics was possibly the highlight of the year for many. Even if you don't like sport that much, you couldn't help but be sucked in to the pride of seeing British athletes earning their place in history. I'll be honest, I didn't know who Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis and that bloke with ginger hair who jumped really far was before the summer. But now I do. Except for that Ginger bloke, I still can't remember his name.

You might think that I was going to continue with some half arsed review of the year.  Instead I'm going to tell you what I'm planning for the new year. I know that talking about new year's resolutions will generally make peoples eyes roll so much that it seems like they are having some sort of a fit, but I will try and make it sound less wanky than other people's.

It started with me wondering about what the boys will do when they get older. I imagined myself feeling proud at what they will achieve and that wishing that I would've actually got around to doing what I wanted to do. Then I realized that I wasn't it wasn't the future and I'm not fucking geriatric.

So I'm going to read more books. I don't read at all. Come to think of it i think I've only read six books and three of them were Red Dwarf novels. I'm going to try and learn some languages, and start with Welsh. It seems like the right thing to do. I want to aim for French as well, possibly, as I know up to (and including) twelve words in French, so it's a start.

But the main thing i want to do is finish something. Anything really. I've always had a dream of doing something creative and I feel the need to see it through. You see, I've never really followed through on anything I've tried. Cricket, music, writing and so on and so forth. Ironically this blog is the only thing I've ever persisted with. So my aim is to try and finish at least my odd short novel about a Private eye in the future, despite the fact that the same idea was used by Charlie Brooker and Futurama. I've also had an idea of another sci-fi story. Well, write what you know, eh?

The thing is, if you want to leave a mark on the world, then you have to at least fucking try. I've not tried, but I will. This time next year I hope to show you a whole bunch of rejection letters from a bunch of people that shows that even if I didn't succeed, I made the effort and I've got something to show for it.


So my new year's resolution is to try and finally apply myself. God know it's about fifteen years too late.

So, happy new year and a genuine thanks to all that have at least read the blog and help me earn thirteen whole pounds.

 See you on the other side.

The Apocalypse made me write this....

So we're going to die this week.

I really should be doing more than watching an old repeat of Have I got news for you and get my affairs in order. But then again, why? If nothing is going to exist after the the 21st of December then this is hardly the time to be sorting out the spare room. This is the time to be either sobbing uncontrollably or finally finding out what it's like to drink cheap whiskey out of a brown paper bag. I've seen films, it's what you do when the world is ending. That it coincides with black Friday means that you wont be able to tell who's drinking to forget their impending doom and who's forgotten what the date is and is drinking to celebrate ten days off work and Dr Who being on the telly in four days time. Well, maybe that last one is just me, but you get the idea. The Apocalypse, of course does bring the conundrum of if you haven't bought Christmas presents yet, should you bother?

The obvious answer is of course, yes. If anyone actually believes that bollocks, then they should just kill themselves anyway to avoid the embarrassment. The same goes for the Flat earth society and people who think that the moon landings didn't take place. I'm sorry I'm normally a forgiving person but those people...

Anyway, go buy your Christmas presents and be with your family, but remember that being with family is the most important aspect of this time of year. It was either this year or last year when I realized that how much the commercial side of Christmas has had a grip on me for much longer than I care to admit. It's ten or twenty minutes of opening presents and after that, well, you tell me.

One of the things I've also realized is that my Christmases are in a state of flux. Since the boys have been born, Christmas has been different. The first one with the boy was when he was only three weeks old, so you on Christmas day you could have told us that it was June 7th 2015 and we wouldn't have known the difference from sleep deprivation. Since then it's been watching the boys and waiting for when they're big enough to understand what's going on. This is probably the last year in which the boy will not be fully aware of the scary elf bastard who sneaks into everybody's house. So next year he'll be full of things for Father Christmas to bring him and us pointing at the cheaper alternatives saying that he might not have room on the sleigh for all that big expensive stuff. The new boy will still be impressed by the boxes.

But I've come to realise this is the exciting part. For the next several years I get to experience the young, untarnished joy of the boys thinking that there's a wonderful selfless person that will give them presents for being good. No doubt it will make me remember things that I had forgotten about that made me look forward to Christmas when I was younger and make me reevaluate the things that my parents did that made some wonderful memories of being young. But one of my best Christmas memories will always be the year that it was just me and my wife, just in the home and sporadically giving each other presents and being in each other's company. Before the boys, after some years with drunken mother/grandmother incidents. It was just us and it was perfect. Plus we watched Die Hard, which is the best Christmas film ever. In your face, Capra....

So as usual, I haven't really got a point, I just hope that everyone I care about is happy on Christmas day; which I think is all that anyone should ever want.

Of course if the world does end on the 21st, grab the nearest bottle and jump off the side of the earth, just avoid the turtle on the way down; he's probably got enough to worry about...

Attempting to cure writers block

As I'm sure that your aware, it's been six months since the last blog; more or less. I remember that the new boy was a tiny little dude that had just been sick on my shoulder (actually I'm not that sure, but it's a statistical probability). Since then many things have changed. I've started a new job in the meantime which means that there's precious little time for committing random thoughts to a blog.

Well, that's a bit of a lie, I've had time to do it, it's just that I've had a case of not knowing what to write. It's not like there's a shortage of topics. Port Talbot is still Batshit crazy, the boy (and new boy) continue to amaze and exasperate in equal measure and life in general has gone on. But nothing jumps out. Maybe I haven't been looking hard enough, who knows?

So what I'm going to do is just try and literally type my thoughts out as I think them. this could either be amazing or a worrying look into my psyche, either way it might be a hoot.Come to think of it, this may have been how I started the blog in the first place.

Ooh look at me I've come full circle.

Right then. As i write this, the Brits are on. Music scares me these days, well it doesn't scare me as such as turn me into a boring old man who moans about it being better in his day. But it's not just me surely? Music really is shit these days. All the usual pop stuff just sound like that auto-tuned bollocks that you hear ever since  the 50s barbie-brought-to-life Cher mangled her vocal track with it. she probably had it installed in her larynx the last time she had her cheeks rotated.
 It's not all rubbish of course though, at the moment Adele is performing and her voice is pretty astonishing.

Well I've had enough of that, let's move on...

I very recently turned thirty. I just typed that and I think that it's only just dawned on me now. It's viewed as something of a milestone when you hit the big old 3-0. Maybe it harks back to days of gone when it was the life expectancy.

"You're thirty and not dead! YAY YOU!!!"

Maybe because it's a round number. Maybe because it's dividable by ten. Maybe even because it's the age in Logans Run where you get killed for being too old, I don't know.

Nuts, my brain appears to have stopped.

Well I'm sorry for wasting your time with this one, I'm just easing my way back in after a while off the scene, as it were.

But I have plans.

You may or may not know that The Apprentice is on next month and it happens to be one of my favourite programmes because there's nothing funnier that seeing a very well educated person make a complete tit of themselves, other than seeing Piers Morgan being slapped very hard in the face.

 But as I'm yet to see that I've decided to start a new blog. I'm going to attempt to do a blog-along (I'm copyrighting that word so back off society..) When the episode goes out on BBC 1, I'll be writing and posting as soon as I can after it's finished. Not a review, more of my account of what's happening.

There's a fair chance I'll not get around to it, but I'll do my best. I bet you all can't wait.....