Tuesday 1st January - The New Year Humbug meets Zombie Mutants from New York
A Happy New Year to you all. This is the standard greeting and the curse of all pissed mobile phone owners who thought what a jolly idea it was to text everyone in their phone book last night at midnight, regardless of whether they actually know them well or not. I expect dentists, doctor's surgeries and hairdressers hate New Year's' as the drunken revellers press the 'send all' button and plumbers and cleaning ladies across the land are inundated with reams of messages from people they only know vaguely into the wee small hours, all of which invariably claim undying love for the recipient. It is on these occasions polite and acceptable phone etiquette to text back: 'Yes. I love you too. Now shut the F*** up and leave me alone.' Martha Stewart says so. She learned it in prison.
Mind you, drunken texters don't always get their message right, specially not if they're using predictive text, so I imagine people were roused from their slumbers to find messages saying: 'Hippy Fish Mongers Unite, Love Cheryll xxx,' and sat round for the next few hours wondering if this was code from the government they were supposed to act upon come New Year's Day, probably to prevent an imminent invasion of masked marauders from some far off land.
Might I start this New Year by saying how much I hate New Year? Now for those intuitive members of my readership I suppose you may have guessed my feelings by now, given my opening rant. I didn't say it yesterday because I was trying to be cheerful, but it's like an itch that needs scratching and I can't hold back any longer. There. I do feel better now. Better out than in, as my gran would say.
I realise I am just cementing my reputation as a cantankerous old git, but really! Why should there be one day of the year when we are all supposed to go out together and have enforced fun and recreation? Apparently Christmas is the top choice for people thinking of suicide every year, but me, I'd go for New Year's Eve every time (well, with suicide there would only be the one time, but you know what I mean). New Year's Eve is way more depressing because; a) it doesn't involve presents, b) it is not associated with any kind of cake, and c) it requires you to leave your comfortable home and go out in the cold. Rubbish. These days it also costs a bloody fortune.
It's a kind of fascist state mentality that really gets me down. People are absolutely incredulous about the fact that I don't like New Year's Eve and I don't go anywhere. The more amazed they are, the more it brings out the worst in me. The more excited I see people get, and the more plans they make about what they're going to do over New Years, the more grumpily anti-social I get. Now I do realise that this is quite a stretch for a woman who only goes out about three times a year anyway, but trust me, I can manage.
It's a horrible idea, which every year gets more and more horrible. This is probably because every year I get more and more curmudgeonly and old, although, in my defence I have always hated New Year. There was a time in my life when I would make the effort and go out, hoping that I would be able to break through the overwhelming barrier of misery, but it has never happened, and now I am inclined to think that it never will. After all, at least in the olden days I had a huge capacity for getting absolutely wasted, which does tend to see you through the worst bits, but since having children I get a headache if I have a pint of shandy while I'm standing up, and if I have a bottle of wine in a year it will be AA for me.
Luckily for me, Jason is of a similar opinion and we are both happy to stay in, pottering around the house and resolutely ignoring any exhortations to have fun. We only tend to watch films or television that we have recorded so that we can stay away from any live Hogmanay, Hootenanny, Revels type programmes, and any form of countdown (not the Carol Vorderman sort, although I find it is best to avoid that too), whatsoever. Because of the exploding church/fireworks we were actually awake for New Year this year, but by accident rather than design. We agreed tacitly not to say the line to each other, waved across the duvet, donned ear plugs and got back to the serious business of getting some kip.
I confess that I can think of nothing worse than squeezing my rolls of lardage into a sparkly boob tube and some stilettos, going to a party and getting trollied at vast expense with forty thousand of my closest friends, none of whose names or faces I will be able to remember with any clarity for the rest of my life. All of my closest friends live miles away from each other and they're the only ones I can trust to watch me vomit into the hood of someone's parka any more. I can't run fast enough to escape the bedlam that comes with drunkenness (I once nearly got arrested scaling some scaffolding at the Ashmolean museum, and it's only because I could run fast that I escaped the clutches of the law) now that I am old and knackered.
I also hate the logistics of New Year's Eve. These days with doormen the size of doors, and ticketing for everything, it's like a Nazi bootcamp rather than a festive occasion. You have to wear the right thing, know the right people and look rich. People can be excluded on the flimsiest of pretexts; people only being allowed in with three people called Brian and all that jazz, it's like a military operation. I wouldn't be surprised if you have to show evidence of prior planning to get into some places these days. If you don't turn up with some Kendall Mint Cake, your DNA coding and a Venn Diagram they don't let you in.
The transport issue is worst of all. Finding anyone to take you anywhere early in the evening is like tracking down hens' teeth (I am baffled by this expression, what would you do with hens' teeth when you found them? Make a necklace perhaps. It would be more lucrative to Ebay them to other people in search of hens' teeth and retire on the proceeds). Then, and this is the worst bit, having to wait three hours for a taxi home, which will arrive swilling with the sick of all the revellers before me just adds insult to injury. I, like many other people vomit at the smell of vomit, thus ensuring that I will at some point on the journey home be filling the footwell of the car with my own involuntary donation, brought about solely by the smell of warm, kebab laden sick.
The rates for travel will be three times higher for this time of year than at any other. The driver will be unfailingly surly, despite the fact that he is making enough to take him and his wife to Bali for a fortnight in the space of one eight hour shift. He will also not know how to get to my house, because he has travelled eighty miles from his home, just to cash in on this one night of the year, and I will be too busy being drunk and vomiting to be able to direct him properly. This will add another twenty pounds to the standard fare, and fifty for the purposes of having the upholstery de-vomited. Hence I will end up paying £183.50 plus tip to travel three miles in a drunken haze over the space of an hour. Money which I could be spending on Last Minute Dot Com the following day on a week's holiday for two in Sardinia. Daylight robbery.
I will then arrive home, fall into a coma as soon as my feet make contact with the hall carpet and will wake up twelve hours later, dehydrated, shrivelled to the size of a raisin and with the imprint of the front doormat indelibly welded to my cheek. No doubt there will also be dribble somewhere about my person, depending on the angle at which I fall into the confines of the house. My head will be pounding to the beat of the one armed, amateur steel band of joy and my mouth will feel like a dog's bottom.
I will have bruises on my arms and legs where I have fought my way to the bar and onto the dance floor. I will have sticky substances, which I only hope are alcohol based, in my hair and my eyes will resemble a stunned panda where my waterproof mascara turned out not to be so immune to vodka. My shoes will be trashed, as will my tights/stockings where I had to take my shoes off to dance properly. The outfit I wore to look sophisticated and glamorous the day before will somehow have morphed into something only a tramp at worst and a prostitute at best would wear and I would be brutally ashamed, only I can't remember much of anything due to the dual distractions of both my headache and the lingering aroma of vomit.
I will have to have a tetanus shot where splinters from the dance floor have bored into the bottom of my feet and I have blisters on my toes and heels from the deluded belief that it is perfectly alright to go out and party for six hours straight in a pair of four inch heels. I then spend the next forty eight hours nursing a hangover the size of Staffordshire, getting flashbacks you would only associate with a life of hardened drug abuse and amassing a phone bill that I will spend the next twelve months paying off, ringing my 'friends' to try and piece together why I have a pair of pants, a plastic camel and a lucky rabbit's foot in my handbag.
Trust me, it's no longer worth the effort, and now I am older it's not like my body snaps back into shape like it used to. It doesn't so much snap as shuffle lethargically with a nasty tendency to wobble and veer to the left whilst going round corners. I am in fact the human version of the shopping trolley from hell. Eventually I will be found in the bottom of a stream, upside down and full of empty beer cans. This is the tragedy of my life.
So, now we have dispensed a little new year cheer I shall get back to telling you a bit about my day. It has actually been another nice one, despite my dire predictions. We decided to tempt fate and go to the cinema again, as our first trip had been easy, painless and dare I say it, enjoyable? Jason got to pick this time, so we went to see the new Will Smith film; 'I am Legend'. Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of Will Smith I did agree to see it, because the book; 'I Am Legend' by Richard Matheson, is a bit of a cult classic, and as I've owned it for three years and not managed to get round to reading it yet I thought the film might help me decide one way or the other.
As it happened I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was, and you don't hear these words from me often, a very, very good film indeed. It was also, and I say this in case you decide to take your aged aunt or grandmother, very scary indeed and made me jump several times, and squeak a fair bit. We got really great sleep last night and consequently both woke up feeling a bit hungover (we're just not used to it!). I had a whole cafetiere of coffee to myself this morning to get going. Jason also suggested that I take a flask with me to the cinema. I'm very glad I didn't, as I would undoubtedly have thrown it into the air shrieking and scalded my legs during one of the moments of tension, of which there were many.
The premise of the film is that Will Smith is an army colonel and scientist. A genetically mutated virus, which was introduced into the human population to cure cancer, has gone hideously wrong and has been steadily wiping out human kind. At first it only spreads through human contact, but eventually mutates to become airborne. Will has been working furiously on a cure to no avail. At the time the film begins he has been living in New York alone with his dog and a shedload of evil mutants for three years and he is still trying to find a cure.
Now this sounds totally cheesy I admit. There are however, a fair few redeeming features:
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Although it is a bit sentimentally American (i.e. God Bless Us All Especially if We Are American, I have always loved you, etc. etc.) there is enough misery to disguise it quite well and it's not the usual patriotic Disneyfest we have come to know and loathe.
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The ending is not too trite and is nicely incomplete and messy.
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Will Smith surprised us by being able to carry the whole film virtually by himself without being irritating and/or funny. He can actually act, which is good, because apart from the dog and the mutants he's pretty much the only one in it.
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It doesn't neatly answer all your questions, but there is continuity and most of the plot holes which would normally be left open are actually closed.
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Even though he does stupid stuff during the course of the film, you actually understand why he's doing it, and it's not just to propel the film to the next big effects shot.
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It's really tautly plotted and the tension is ratcheted up nicely.
So, as you can see, a big thumbs up from Katy 'Bazza' Norman, which surprised everyone, because I'm usually hyper critical of films, particularly ones which are set in the future and involve mutants and weapons. A big hoorah there then...
We had lunch like civilized adults and then went and picked up Oscar from his granny's house where he was holding her captive on the hall floor with a bit of spitty biscuit and a crayon. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, although mum looked rather tired. The girls had gone with Jamie, who is having them until tomorrow. Mum has reconfirmed her deep joy at the fact that she only had two children, and that they are now grown up and living elsewhere. This means we won't get another night off for six months, but it was worth it!
I have to go and plan an essay on Burma now. I've got to explain why democracy has failed in Burma from its independence in 1948 until now in only 800 words. It will be a challenge. Not because I can't write an essay in 800 words, although I'm sure most of you wouldn't believe that, but because quite a lot has happened in Burma in the last sixty years. I think it's at least a packet of Hob Nobs plan. Possibly a Terry's Chocolate Orange plan.
By the way. I broke my streak of dreams about musicians last night by having a very complicated dream about Stephen Fry! It was something to do with a necklace made in the shape of some baby ducks. Stephen spent the entire duration of the dream dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, but wouldn't say why when I asked him. He did give me a biscuit out of the pocket of his blue gingham apron though, which is fair enough. At this point we were in his mother's living room, which had three plaster ducks flying up the wall and a cut moquette three piece suite, which was very uncomfortable. When I commented on this we were magically moved to Birmingham Cathedral and spent a lot of time looking at the Burne Jones' windows. Very odd. It was probably the effects of the Thai curry.
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