2012
Another year passes. Oh time, how merciless ye be! Tick, tock, tick, tock...
Here is my 2012 review, month by month. It is significantly underwhelming.
January
I was most probably ill for at least the first third of the month. My favourite colleague A left. I really, really liked her in an entirely platonic way and things were never the same since.
February
I turned 30. We spent a few days in Cork to mark the occasion. Cork is rainy, as much of Ireland invariably is in February, or any given month of your choice. Smashing people and pubs, mind. Shockingly expensive to eat out, but dere's ya Celtic Toiger doying roight before yer (I find out I am roughly one eighth Irish later this year so this isn't racist).
March
I remember nothing about March 2012 apart from the fact it was freakishly warm and sun-kissed and we discovered that at 89 pence, Aldi's 6 pack ridged crisps are every last bit the quality McCoys can't sell you for under £1. We went for a couple of sunny long distance bike rides, genuinely feeling as smug as the Sussex dwelling pseuds we are.
April
And the rain came down. I remember even less about fucking April. It's a shit month, the very worst of all of them. Who actually LIKES April? I know we had my parents round to our tiny flat for delicious roast lamb at Easter, which was something of a small triumph I suppose.
May
Wet. I remember cancelling a planned meeting with friends at the dog track because it was too wet for us to stand the horribly starkly lit indoor job centre vibe that you're forced to appreciate when it rains. I think I may have had to repair my bike extensively during this time. I dunno. Shit! This is getting difficult.
June
We went to timewarp rural Suffolk to see J's hilarious beige slacks wearing Dad and his missus. Nice and predictably cosy. Actually prepared this time for the cut of his Partridge esque 1970s jokey bloke down the pub jib. Though I'll never quite be on the same wavelength as the Daily Mail reading golfing man, I warm to him. Conflicted bugger - ex-army and resolutely Middle England, yet harbours a baffling but nonetheless sane and extremely healthy disdain for the The Royals and The Jubilee. Very wet month. Some posh old woman throws a national holiday for some reason so thousands of apocalyptically sad, dead-eyed, desperate, stupid and hopelessly servile cunts ironically or non ironically have stupid street parties in the pissing rain with their stupid Union Jacks, stupid bunting, stupid cup cakes and fucking ridiculous 'Keep Calm & Carry On' teatowels. Cunts.
July
Latitude festival! Doing things right this time as 30-somethings! Not camping in horrible noisy zone full of horribly loud, self assured, entitled and jumped-up little Ollies, Olivias and Olivers pilling and puking their privileged little cocks and fannies off! Pop up tent for extra storage! John Hegley! John Cooper Clarke! Paul Heaton! Simple Minds doing early stuff! Elbow in full commercial swing! The pretty tunes and razor wit of Rufus Wainwright. Better than 2011, if not for the rain. Paul Weller wins Tour De France.
August
A nation unfathomably gawps at the hideously expensive, overblown and grotesque spectacle of the Boris Olympics and Boris Paralympics in London, which as a non sportist and non Tory I start off despising and end up despising only slightly less. Because it's always nice to see British people doing very well in a series of completely redundant competitive physical activities that do nothing to empower, enrich or enlighten the human species whatsoever. Best memory - getting home just in time to miss Usain Bolt inevitably win one of those running very fast in a straight line things. It lasted 10 seconds.
10 seconds again, for the uninitiated:
1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10... end.
People actually paid hundreds of pounds to see that reductively pointless spectacle, the utter utter berks.
September
Nice little holiday in Lanzarote. Lovely apartment with ace kitchen. Hired bikes to whizz through the warmness and had an enjoyably cheap time, despite the sheer number of horrible, boorish, tedious and overweight British people. Good GOD. They're ALL pig-ugly, they ALL have bad tattoos and they ALL smoke like it's going out of fashion. Why, just fucking.... why.... still? It's 2012. How?
October
Nice month. Liked this one. One of my oldest and best friends got married to his lovely Czech fiancee and we all travelled over to her home town to join them. 12 hour long slightly awkward language barrier international English/Czech wedding party! Boy, can those Czechs dance.... Ceske Budjovice absolutely beautiful, Prague absolutely beautiful. Returning very soon. Mmmmwah!
November
Bonfire in Lewes on the 5th, best for a few years. Fireworks down at Commercial Square masterful. J's hood, back with the homies, nice. Satisfied enough to find I'm not a paedophile, despite having once possibly lingered a little too long on breasts that might have belonged to a 15 year old schoolgirl on the bus in 1998, when I was 16. Hair gets shorter, facial fuzz accumulated.
December
Disappointing austerity Xmas works do, cramped into upstairs kitchen and entirely self-catered. A far cry from the lavish restaurant based do we had back in '08. Still manage to have plenty of things left to buy by the 21 December, despite having the most organised Xmas shopping itinerary of my life. Ach well.
Next: In 2013, I'm going to live another year, unless I die. This will get witlessly documented in a painfully unbecoming soundbitey style all over again, round about the same time of year. Look forward to seeing you. Cheerio!
Here is my 2012 review, month by month. It is significantly underwhelming.
January
I was most probably ill for at least the first third of the month. My favourite colleague A left. I really, really liked her in an entirely platonic way and things were never the same since.
February
I turned 30. We spent a few days in Cork to mark the occasion. Cork is rainy, as much of Ireland invariably is in February, or any given month of your choice. Smashing people and pubs, mind. Shockingly expensive to eat out, but dere's ya Celtic Toiger doying roight before yer (I find out I am roughly one eighth Irish later this year so this isn't racist).
March
I remember nothing about March 2012 apart from the fact it was freakishly warm and sun-kissed and we discovered that at 89 pence, Aldi's 6 pack ridged crisps are every last bit the quality McCoys can't sell you for under £1. We went for a couple of sunny long distance bike rides, genuinely feeling as smug as the Sussex dwelling pseuds we are.
April
And the rain came down. I remember even less about fucking April. It's a shit month, the very worst of all of them. Who actually LIKES April? I know we had my parents round to our tiny flat for delicious roast lamb at Easter, which was something of a small triumph I suppose.
May
Wet. I remember cancelling a planned meeting with friends at the dog track because it was too wet for us to stand the horribly starkly lit indoor job centre vibe that you're forced to appreciate when it rains. I think I may have had to repair my bike extensively during this time. I dunno. Shit! This is getting difficult.
June
We went to timewarp rural Suffolk to see J's hilarious beige slacks wearing Dad and his missus. Nice and predictably cosy. Actually prepared this time for the cut of his Partridge esque 1970s jokey bloke down the pub jib. Though I'll never quite be on the same wavelength as the Daily Mail reading golfing man, I warm to him. Conflicted bugger - ex-army and resolutely Middle England, yet harbours a baffling but nonetheless sane and extremely healthy disdain for the The Royals and The Jubilee. Very wet month. Some posh old woman throws a national holiday for some reason so thousands of apocalyptically sad, dead-eyed, desperate, stupid and hopelessly servile cunts ironically or non ironically have stupid street parties in the pissing rain with their stupid Union Jacks, stupid bunting, stupid cup cakes and fucking ridiculous 'Keep Calm & Carry On' teatowels. Cunts.
July
Latitude festival! Doing things right this time as 30-somethings! Not camping in horrible noisy zone full of horribly loud, self assured, entitled and jumped-up little Ollies, Olivias and Olivers pilling and puking their privileged little cocks and fannies off! Pop up tent for extra storage! John Hegley! John Cooper Clarke! Paul Heaton! Simple Minds doing early stuff! Elbow in full commercial swing! The pretty tunes and razor wit of Rufus Wainwright. Better than 2011, if not for the rain. Paul Weller wins Tour De France.
August
A nation unfathomably gawps at the hideously expensive, overblown and grotesque spectacle of the Boris Olympics and Boris Paralympics in London, which as a non sportist and non Tory I start off despising and end up despising only slightly less. Because it's always nice to see British people doing very well in a series of completely redundant competitive physical activities that do nothing to empower, enrich or enlighten the human species whatsoever. Best memory - getting home just in time to miss Usain Bolt inevitably win one of those running very fast in a straight line things. It lasted 10 seconds.
10 seconds again, for the uninitiated:
1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10... end.
People actually paid hundreds of pounds to see that reductively pointless spectacle, the utter utter berks.
September
Nice little holiday in Lanzarote. Lovely apartment with ace kitchen. Hired bikes to whizz through the warmness and had an enjoyably cheap time, despite the sheer number of horrible, boorish, tedious and overweight British people. Good GOD. They're ALL pig-ugly, they ALL have bad tattoos and they ALL smoke like it's going out of fashion. Why, just fucking.... why.... still? It's 2012. How?
October
Nice month. Liked this one. One of my oldest and best friends got married to his lovely Czech fiancee and we all travelled over to her home town to join them. 12 hour long slightly awkward language barrier international English/Czech wedding party! Boy, can those Czechs dance.... Ceske Budjovice absolutely beautiful, Prague absolutely beautiful. Returning very soon. Mmmmwah!
November
Bonfire in Lewes on the 5th, best for a few years. Fireworks down at Commercial Square masterful. J's hood, back with the homies, nice. Satisfied enough to find I'm not a paedophile, despite having once possibly lingered a little too long on breasts that might have belonged to a 15 year old schoolgirl on the bus in 1998, when I was 16. Hair gets shorter, facial fuzz accumulated.
December
Disappointing austerity Xmas works do, cramped into upstairs kitchen and entirely self-catered. A far cry from the lavish restaurant based do we had back in '08. Still manage to have plenty of things left to buy by the 21 December, despite having the most organised Xmas shopping itinerary of my life. Ach well.
Next: In 2013, I'm going to live another year, unless I die. This will get witlessly documented in a painfully unbecoming soundbitey style all over again, round about the same time of year. Look forward to seeing you. Cheerio!