Horse Tranquil

2011

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I went out last night. The first time I ventured out of the house since the 17th December. I woke up on Thursday feeling like the back of this flu/bronchitis had finally been broken; but I didn't take any chances and stayed in all day. Yesterday was an even bigger improvement and I joined the wife and dogs for a dog walk in the pouring of rain and while we were only out for about 35 minutes, it felt good to get the real world under my feet again.

This paved the way for us to receive our Christmas present from RnB, which this year, because of our, at times, perilous financial position, was a trip to our favourite restaurant on them. We were supposed to go on the 23rd, but I was far too sick to even consider getting dressed and therefore it would have been a waste of money and an evening - I've been out when I've been suffering once before, about 7 years ago with our good friends Jay and Selina and while it was a great night out, I really wanted to be snuggled up on the sofa under a quilt and surrounded by dogs.

By the time 6.15 rolled around last night, I was feeling a little worse than I had all day, but I had also been scurrying around the house for best part of the day, so I might have just overdone it a tad, because, by the time we got to the restaurant I was feeling pretty chipper. We had a very good meal, which I have to say I maybe didn't taste as well as my three compadres, and I decided that I was well enough to go to the pub and imbibe my first alcohol since December 15 (I did have some champagne over Christmas, but it was watered down with lots of orange juice).

We got home a little after 10; I still felt pretty good and this afternoon, as I sit here writing this, I feel just about well enough to embark on a new school term. Although I expect to return to work on Tuesday armed with tissues because of the amount of junk that is now, finally, expelling itself from my rather gaunt figure. It would have been nice to have not been ill throughout the entire break, but arguably, it might have done me some good and realistically, I had six months off during the summer and didn't do much more than I have for the last couple of weeks; so it all works out in the end - swings and roundabouts and all that...

It has been my intention to do a review of the year, which I found quite weird really as I tend to hate this week between Christmas and the New Year because all you get is Year end reviews and frankly, in this 24 hour news world we live in, we already remember the last 12 months like it has been etched on our brains! So, as I already did a review of music a few weeks ago and nothing much has changed since writing that; and I've basically subjected you all to the mixture of excellent and abysmal TV I watch throughout the year; given you my left wing perspective on politics and wibbled about all manner of shit anyhow, there doesn't seem to be much point. If you want to know about my perspective of 2011, read my blog for the last 12 months!

Where does that leave us then?

Well, this will be the last blog entry in this stylee. I'm going spend an hour at some point during my last two days off redesigning the page and changing the layout of how I present my entries. It's an annual thing now for me to change something and this year's revamp is sponsored by the rediscovery of my mojo.

Said mojo started to creep back into my psyche about a month ago and had it not been for the last two sobering weeks of feeling shit, I might have been even more insufferable over the holidays than I usually am. Because I have an inherent undertow of expecting the worst to happen, my mojo is tempered by the need to never allow myself to lapse from my prepared script, because I'm acutely aware that my luck tends to be limited.

I was laying in bed last night thinking about the irony of returning to school and my memory played a chronological trick on me. It made me remember how, at times, school seemed to drag into the distance and how terms seemed like huge chasms of time that would never, ever, arrive. It then reminded me that when I was at school I had a finite time there; now as part of the faculty I have potentially an even longer time there. Of course the big differences are that I get paid and the holidays have as much significance as they did when I was a lad. Yes, I will have days when I long for half terms, but there aren't that many jobs in the world that have such pre-ordained breaks and the knowledge that it's about 6 weeks between each break and 6 weeks when you're nearly 50 is considerably less time than 6 weeks is when you're 13.

I think my brain sent me in that direction because I'm still having a battle in my head over the fact that my first holiday has been wrecked by illness and that the few plans we did have were either cancelled or drastically altered. I also don't think my subconscious is convinced I'm cured, but that might just be its sense of fairness being a bit warped. I do still have an horrendous cough and I expect I'll still have it when half term comes around in the middle of February.

Anyhow, I digress. My mojo is working again and I feel confident about 2012 from a working perspective and frankly if that can be as good as I hope it will be then the rest of the year should be relatively stable. Shit will happen; that's unavoidable, but as long as the shit is kept to a minimum in 2012 then I'll be satisfied.

My one resolution for the coming year is to continue to work hard and become an important and liked member of my employment team. I want a few, uncontroversial, years without any stress or worry and if I work hard and keep my head down there's no reason I can't do that.

My hopes for 2012 are rather at odds with each other. There are many things I'd like to see for the country and the world, but many of them couldn't happen at the same time. Therefore my only public political desire is that Ed Milliband wakes up one morning soon and realises that for all his ideals, his nous and his desire to be a great prime minister, the rest of the country doesn't have any faith in him as a potential boss. If that happens, I'd hope that some senior Labour party advisers have a quiet word in Ed Balls' ear and get him to step aside and allow his wife to become the leader. Yvette Cooper is arguably the only person on the shadow cabinet bench who is good enough - all round - to lead the party; the rest just lack gravitas and believability.

Obviously I'd like to see my beloved Tottenham remain challenging for the title for the rest of the season and pull away from 4th place so that immortality is confirmed and we can take our place, rightly, amongst the top 3 teams in the country. This dream is not too fanciful, but as I support Tottenham this brings its own parcel shelf of doubt and expectations being shattered, because, that's what they do best.

Personally, apart from the work thing, I'd like a year of not having some ailment to steal 6 weeks of my life, minimum. A healthy year isn't too much to ask for is it?

Right, I've spent far too much time doing nothing this festive season, so I have nothing more to say than I hope that 2012 doesn't bring you anything you can't deal with. I hope that no one loses a loved one and come December 31st 2012 we can look back and say 'It could have been better, but it really could have been much much worse.'

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