Call me a crusty old curmudgeon, I’ve certainly been called much worse, but what is it with people and the latter weeks in December?  OK, I know a lot of you reading are probably muttering, “For fuck sake Mr Omneo, it’s Christmas!” to which I might, if I could be bothered, reply, “Big deal!” If I was even more bothered I might go into one on why it is I’ve never understood why it is Christians celebrate Christmas on 25 December as it wasn’t even the date that this alleged Son of God made his way kicking and screaming from his virgin mother’s womb. Given that every king and his dog have buggered around with the calendar, if he was born Jesus could throw a party any time from April onwards.

Like most things, Christmas was hijacked by the Christians who didn’t like all those nasty Pagans who celebrated their Winter Solstice on the 21 December, obviously they didn’t want to be like Bill Gates and take it over out-right, instead they thought more like Rupert Murdoch and just launched a rival festival and threw in the notion that everyone who celebrates it gets a present.  It doesn’t matter which century you live in, everyone has their price and it’s usually much less than you think!

So this is Christmas and what have you done?

Of course I wasn’t the first to pen that line, a little Scouse git called John Lennon got there first but still, the sentiment stands.  What have you done during 2008? I’ve just come from the kitchen where I was giving that question some thought as I prepared, cooked and ate my meal;  a 2 onion chilli.  Technically speaking it’s a 2 onion, 2 capsicum, can of  kidney beans, can of tomatoes, can of condensed soup and a shitload of chilli with a glass of red wine chilli but for ease of reference I call it my 2 onion chilli

Well, a mixed bag of thoughts today. So mixed in fact I’m not sure which ones will make this blog. Ever had one of those days when your head is filled with a few dozen thoughts and you want to think about each one as they all seem super important but you realise that as you think about one in more depth it pushes out one of the others and you get frustrated as you can’t remember which one is being pushed out, so you try and think about what one you’re losing only to find that thought is edging out another?? No?! Hmmm… must just be me then!

Two people I know have recently gotten married. I liked both of them but never really got around to telling them, well I did tell one tho it was perhaps a few weeks before she told me she was pregnant, trust me and my lousy timing, wait 2 years and pick the worst possible time to declare an interest. From there I guess I backed off, into a corner, not so much to lick my wounds, just to macro-analyse things and tell myself what a fool I was. The second I wasn’t so brave, probably because I liked her more than I was really prepared to admit to myself, which is kinda stupid as I had already agonised one time around when we first stopped speaking.  That took me around 5 or 6 months to get over but I pulled myself together and got on with living, not that I had stopped, I’d just put myself on slow-mo for a while. When she got back in touch with me after a year or so I resisted the temptation to think there was anything in it. It just went to show she was the special person I thought she was. She later got engaged and we chatted about it and she seemed to indicate that she wasn’t 100% certain it was the right thing. Aaarrgghh… why tell me that, how are you supposed to give an honest opinion when you haven’t been honest with your feelings?

Finally I woke up this morning and didn’t feel like I had spent the night breathing through a straw that someone had filled with cotton wool. It still felt like I was breathing through cotton wool, just not restricted to a straw’s width worth.

It’s typical though really isn’t it? I book a week off work thinking I’d have time to chill out, catch up with friends and make merry before this god-awful thing they call Chris-T-Mass rears it’s ugly head and screws things up. Instead, on the Friday of the staff lunch I wake up feeling like shit but determined to have my free meal so I stop off at the chemist before I get to the office to stock up on cold remedies.

As far as I can recall the lunch was good, it’s hitting the bar afterwards that strikes me as hazy… arguing with some Aussie who was celebrating the 5th anniversary of his fathers death by hitting his sister, turns out Daddy was a Glaswegian, nothing like the sins of the father following the child! From there it all went quickly or perhaps that was just the Sailor Jerry?!

OK, a slightly misleading title I grant you but come on, there has to be a reason why I’m up at at ‘em at 7.30am on a weekday!  Of course today is Britney Spears pre-sale day for her London gigs at the O2 Arena and despite pouncing on the website at 7.30am when pre-sale started I still didn’t manage to get any closer than row X of block 101 tho admittedly for the first time I managed to get tickets for the lower tier! Annoyingly enough I just tried the booking process again and it came up with seats in row J of block 106.  Part of me thought of buying them to sell on eBay but consider it my good deed for the year, I’m allowing someone else to get rich on the misery of others.  Karma, what a fucker!