Thoughts of the old year, and the new one to come have finally kicked the blogging part of my brain, long inactive, back into life. So I thought I'd catch up on what little I managed to bore you with this year, and look to the future with a promise to bore you on a far more regular basis. Thank me later.
kay ess jay kay
My first ever blog. Just a wee introduction to who and where we are. The whos are still the same, but the where is slightly different. We have temporarily moved to a fantastically posh flat nearby so we can clear out the old Kay Towers ready for selling. As far as I can see, the only way to do this is to position a skip under the window and start shovelling. Nearly 15 years worth of junk is not really the kind of pile you can sweep under the corner of the carpet. But we'll get there, and right now we're absolutely loving living in a posh flat in the posh area of a posh town. The deception continues...
all change
Not such happy news on this one. My situation will almost certainly be reorganised before March arrives. I am now firmly convinced that somewhere deep in the bowels of Aberdeen Council headquarters there lies a very special department, called the "Aintbroke Repair department". Employment in this department is by invitation only. If you show a particular prowess at rearranging, reorganising and generally meddling with things when there is absolutely no need, you're hired. And somewhere along the line, this department got wind of my current job.
"Hey, they're doing well, making a huge difference to the city residents and providing a high level of customer satisfaction and great value for money. We must do something!"
We've tried telling them, we've sat through endless meetings while they try and show us how we will do our job so much better under the new system, all the while seeing in their eyes that they have no earthly clue what they are doing. So unless something very dramatic happens in the next month or so, it will be on to pastures new for me and all my colleagues. Ah well.
Cheers
A mixed bag of updates, this one. A cocktail if you will. On one side I have a success story. As it happens the very person that I had in mind as I wrote that blog reappeared just a couple of weeks ago. And it appears that this gentleman did indeed hear the bell for time, and made his way to the door and back into real life. Albeit a little later than some of us, but he certainly has embraced his new found reality and is doing very well indeed. Happily married with a fantastic new career on the horizon. He told me all this while in a bar, as he sipped his diet coke, before dashing off to drive his wife home. Good man.
However there is another side to this update. Another of the original subjects reappeared in my life recently too. Only this one wasn't chatting to me. I was performing CPR on him after I found him in a dingy stairwell of a high-rise block of flats. Despite all efforts, it seems his doctor was right when he said he wouldn't reach 30. Time was called, and this time he definitely didn't hear last orders.
Para What?
I am still fiercely proud to call myself a drummer. No change there, nor will there ever be. So there.
Who's doing what now?
Well. I was trying to find an excuse for this but there really isn't one. I still absolutely love to run, I just haven't done it in a while. Like about six months. But I will. I'm actually really really getting the urge again. It was always there, but it kinda got drowned out by all the other stuff going on. But the less I run, the more I want to, so I am now desperate to get going again despite the weather, despite working shifts, despite any other excuse I can come up with. Where's me trainers?
self improvement through violence
Another thing I have let slide somewhat, but this time I have an excuse. The dire state of the NHS. No really, I'm waiting for an appointment to get my nose straightened after the last time. Now this may seem daft, to be waiting for my face to be repaired before I can get it dismantled again, but that's how it is. Now sherrep. Or I'll flatten you. As long as you give me plenty time to remember how to do it...
What a drag it is
Disappointingly, I still seem to be ageing. I now have two very young colleagues at work, and this has only served to heighten my awareness of how old I really didn't think I was. There is a look. It is a look I can't describe, but you may have seen it. It is a look that only the young can give to the old. It is a look that says "..." in some unspoken tongue that hits with unerring accuracy every time straight to the brain. In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (younger readers may not remember this) Adams (rip) describes an apparatus that can send any man completely insane, by illustrating the true extent of the whole universe, and highlighting his exact significance within it. The realisation that you are a mere nanomicroblip in the whole scheme of things is enough to render any man utterly incapacitated by worthlessness. The look of a young person towards an old person who has just tried to impart some wisdom is like a pocket version of that. Devastating.
So my ageing continues apace. Ah well.
So there it is. This is where I find myself at the end of one year, and the beginning of another. Some good news, some bad, some things I can do something about and some I can't.Pretty much like every other year, for every other person. On the whole, life is good, and I plan to tell you all about it as often as I can, if you'll have me.
See you next year.
