Reading

I've been visiting one of my favourite blogs more often recently and I have to say it really is staggering how kimbofo does it. She keeps up not just Reading Matters but two other blogs as well, to an exceptional standard, as well as holding down a job and apparently being gifted in many other ways. She's an inspiration and I'm saying that because she has inspired me to get off my fat arse (well, my pert and attractive arse actually) and get some serious reading done.

Now kimbofo has apparently got through on average more than a book a week for the whole of 2007. I know I can't do that but.. maybe I can manage a book a fortnight. I know some of you may think it a philistine kind of excercise, to just crank out pages as if they were something in a mass production process (Come to think of it, that's just what they are most of them) but I feel that if I don't get down to it in that kind of way then I'll never get anywhere.

My problem is not my schedule or my work or anything else; it's me. So having identified the problem I'm doing something about it. I remember I once posted some (whisper it) New Year's resolutions on this here blog but I can't find the fucker so I must have thought it too embarassing and deleted it. Anyhoo, I'm not making "resolutions" this year, I'm just trying to catch up.

So I've given myself a start. It's still a day or so to go before 2008 actually (and it seems, improbably) arrives and I've got a good start into A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle. This comes hot on the heels (by my standards) of Paula Spencer which I picked up at a ludicrously high price when I was stuck in Gothenburg airport with not even a newspaper to read. That was just excellent; I think I finished it just as we were landing at Glasgow. I was amazed at how immersed I was in the thing.

So there you are, readers. That's the plan. Am I not just precious?

This I Know

The only person who ever made me unhappy - was me.

Well Give Me That Old Time Religion

I see he's converted to my old religion. Praise the Lord again. In that way of speaking he has when he's taking a long time to get to the point he said, of sending troops to Iraq:-

"In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

I mean, it's pathetic. He might as well have said, "A big boy made me do it and ran away." Other people of course being GWB. The man's just spineless.

Image taken from:- www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/tony-blair-2-halo.jpg

The Shortest Day .....

.... has passed. Praise the Lord!

Winter

I hate winter. That's to say I hate the winters I normally have to endure - I mean just cold wet, miserable weather - if there is a snowfall it is usually a one day thing quickly followed by rain and slush. I just hate it, the mud, glaur and shittyness of it. But I do like real winter, you know the kind of winter you get if you're lucky enough to live somewhere like ... New York. Now that's a good winter. Freezing cold enough to stop the trains and snowfalls that smother the whole state.

Have you ever experienced that magical moment when you get up in the morning and you look out of the window, and the snow is just fucking car-deep. There's that glorious light refelecting off of the new snow and if you're really lucky it's still coming down in lumps. You leap with tingling anticipation to the TV and the announcer is announcing in drama-laden tones that the trains are off. Yippee! Quickly check the cupboards - food enough, coffee to brew, bread to toast, fridge full of goodies. A whole day - a whole glorious day ahead of doing nothing but looking out of the window at the gorgeous streetscape, brewing coffee and reading. Bliss.

It's happened to me only a couple of times, three at most; twice when I was living in Hoboken and once was in Riga in Latvia one October about ten years ago. I was staying in a hotel then in the old city centre looking out onto streets devoid of trolley cars and people struggling to get to anywhere, and I just sat at the window and smiled like I had won the lottery. I think it's the cosy, trapped inside, back to the womb, kind of feeling that I really like. It's a feeling best experienced, in my opinion, alone.

Back And Hopeful

I thought it was time to get back to the blog. I hope you haven't all deserted me although, as you've been unable to read this blog for so long, I'll be surprised - not to say flabbergasted - if anybody comes along to read it at all.

Never mind there comes a time when a man has to do etc. etc. And I need to something other than work and sleep. I've been away from the blogosphere for so long now I'm sure that a so much has moved on and left me behind. It's good to see my old friend Lingo Slinger is going on from strength to strength. She always satisfies.

So here we are... Looking forward to Christmas? Well we're getting all set and hopefully it will be a peaceful and loving festival. I'm very ambivalent about Christmas. On the one hand I hate the commercialisation of it (although I'm not at all religious so why should I care), but I do like the togetherness of it and the hope that comes up within me that differences can be put aside and families can be ... one.