Live/Work Blog

So, that’s all over then. Christmas, I mean. Or whatever it’s called now: “The Festive Season” (What’s so bloody festive about fighting through the plastic-flexing flocks to reach the last “Barbie goes Hunting” or that special toilet water for mother-in-law – “I never use anything else, dear!” – which is now so obscure people send you to the household cleaning department when you ask for it?), “Winterval”. Please! How about “Consumas”?

Strange how some of us seek to rename ordinary things: for relatives, read “loved ones” (Have you looked at your in-laws recently? Right) “Collateral damage” replaces death in war, and “intelligence” has upgraded “information” to a new and dubiously higher status. What’s intelligent about a sign for lost property? Or the bon mot “mail delivery failed.  Returning message to sender”. As Miles Kington says in The Week, “Everything is being made to sound better than it is, or than it was.” I can feel a new thesaurus coming on.

How would this trend apply to live/work I wonder? Should we rename it “evolving endeavours” or “avivocation” – try explaining that at the staff Christmas party.Anyway, how was yours? Turkeycide, I mean.

And new year? Did you stay up and see in the magic midnight moment, clutching drunkenly at people you’d never met before (and never want to again) as you tried to remember the words to Auld Lang Thingie? And what the hell are people south of Watford doing anyway lurching around to some ditty from a foreign country called Bonniscorllun? Probably because there’s always some sad git who knows all the words – a bit like tonsular line dancing – without the prancing. Or were you hot-chocolate comatose by 10 and seeing in 2007 from under the duvet? Go on, you can tell me!

Made my resolution. Yes, well spotted: just the one. Not to beat myself up about not keeping resolutions. Simple and solves everything. On 1 January, I resolve to give up alcohol, chocolate and those little Japanese crackers they serve in the better hotels; I engage in violent exercise (sitting on the sun lounger in the garden while the dog brings the stick back to me); I vigorously pursue intellectual pursuits like reading my old comics from schooldays while “clearing the attic darling”, and I take up putting the loo seat down afterwards. Then, at the end of a wonderfully smug, holier than thou seven days (that’s absolute max), I slip back into the soft, hedonist friendly and effortless caress of real life with no guilt, no stress and total justification. Ha! What were yours?

Excuse me, can I pour you a glass of Rioja Reserva?

PS The Burmese Boys had a good seasonal break – or nine. (That’s two wine glasses, the cherries on Aunty Mabel’s Sunday-best bonnet – thankfully after midnight mass – and most of the baubles on the tree). Ho ho ho!

PPS And yes, we did watch “Love Actually”.